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A booster
171 11 0
A few days after that, you are in class when you saw Kyungwon walking to your class. "Jaehee, we are going to have a meeting for the last selection in the music room conference during break." Kyungwon informed and you thanked him. *As always.. His popularity is out of this world.* You thought as you saw the female students falling head over heels for him.
Once break time came, you took your things and went to the conference room. When you walked in, you saw that only Seho and Kyungwon are inside. "Sunbaenim, where are the rest?" You asked and they shrugged their shoulders. "They are not here yet." Seho replied and you just sat on a seat. Soon, the participants slowly walked in. "Okay then, that's everyone, right?" Joonhyun asked when he walked in and walked to the middle. "I gather all of you here is because the theme for the last selection is out." Joonhyun said and all of you looked at him. "The theme is 'Setting Free'." Joonhyun announced and all of you nodded. After taking a handout, all of you left. *Well.. Let's look for a song then* You thought and went to the roof to eat your lunch.
When school ended, you went straight to Kyuchan's class and saw that he's still packing his things. "Yah, Kyuchan-ah." You said and he looked at you. "What's up?" He asked as he walked to you after packing his things quickly. "The theme is out." You said and he looked at you. "And?" He said and you looked at him. "Well. I thought of going solo again, if you don't mind, that is." You said and he shook his head. "Of course i don't mind." He said while smiling and you smiled back. "But.. If you need any company during practices, call me anytime." He said and you nodded while smiling.
A few days passed and it's weekend. You took your things and went to the music store, "Boss, i'm back." You said and he looked at you while smiling. "Good to see you again." He said and you smiled. "Boss, do you have music scores for 'Paganini "Caprice" No. 24'?" You asked and he nodded. "Gomawo." You thanked as you took it from him. *Time to practice.* You thought and went home.
You have been practicing for a few weeks and you are still practicing in the school's practice room and you called Kyuchan to accompany you. After practicing for three hours straight, you finally took a break. "Yah.. You seem nervous." Kyuchan spoke and you looked at him. "I am because this is the last one and i can't afford to lose." You said and Kyuchan sighed while looking down. "You know, can i tell you something? As a booster or an encouragement." Kyuchan said and you looked at him, gesturing him to continue. "After the concourse, i have something to tell you which no one knows about. But.. I can only tell you that if you win, that is." He said and you elbowed him lightly. "Why can't you tell me now?" You asked and he looked at you. "Because.. I want you to concentrate on this first. So.. You better win, alright?" He said and you smiled while nodded. "Who do you think i am? Of course i'll win and i'll make you tell me your secret." You said and Kyuchan smiled.
After a few more hours practicing, you finally decided to call it a day and went home after bidding Kyuchan goodbye. Once you reached home, you saw your brothers are talking while watching a drama on tv. "Yah, when is your concourse?" Jongki asked and you looked at him. "Wae?" You asked, curious. "We are all going." Jongmin said and you looked at them. "The date's written here." You said as you passed them the hand out and went to your room. *Need to work hard then.* You thought and smiled.
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I'll Look After You: Larry Fluff (One Shot)
4K 73 12
It only started out as a light drizzle, but now deep, rolling thunder is starting to build in the distance. It's the panging on the window that had awoken Louis from his deep sleep. There was a soft glow in the bedroom that he shared with Harry, and at this moment in time, everything seemed perfect. Louis lied on his back and rolled his head to the right to look out the window, which was spotted with rain water. After gazing out the window for a while, he rolled his head to the left, to find that Harry wasn't in his bed. Louis sat up and looked around the room; the window seat, the small sofa in the corner, the desk on the other side of the room. Harry was no where to be found. Louis let out a small sign and arose from the bed, that was covered in crisp white sheets, and put a pair of sweatpants on. As he was doing this, he heard rustling in the kitchen, and assumed Harry was already up, making breakfast.
Louis swiftly walked down the long hallway, turned a corner and saw Harry, with his back turned, making bacon and eggs on the stove. His wide shoulders and muscular back looked tanned and beautiful from the glow of the lamp in the corner of the counter. The popping of the grease in the pan mixing with the sound of rain was a sound Louis could get used to. He quietly walked behind Harry and slinked his arms around his waist. This made Harry jump a little, and he turned his head to the left, to see it was only Louis holding him.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Harry greeted Louis with his deep voice.
Louis rested his chin on Harry's left shoulder, his arms still around his waist. He had his left hand grasped around his own right wrist, and his chest was pressed to Harry's back.
“Hi,” Louis simply replied with a sleepy quality to his voice.
Harry turned off the stove, and Louis released him. Harry put the bacon on a plate covered by a paper towel to let the grease drain out. Louis remained in the same spot in the kitchen the whole time, waiting for Harry to turn around to face him. When he finally did, Louis was surprised to see (but not really) that the marks he left on Harry's chest with his lips were still visible. Harry had his usual lopsided smile on his face, dimples ever present. His bed head/sex hair was sticking out in all different directions, little pieces of hair flopping over his forehead. Louis looked him dead in the eye, while placing his hands on Harry's chest, and running his hands up over his collarbone, over his shoulders, and finally resting his hands behind Harry's neck. Harry's mouth was now slightly agape, and he was staring intensely at Louis lips. Harry's head remained in the same position, tilted downward, but his eyes met Louis's, giving him a sultry look. Louis moved in closer to Harry and the tips of their noses touched, mouths inches away. Maybe even centimeters. Harry, whose back was still turned to the stove, put his hands on the edge on the counter, inside of his wrists facing outward. He hunched his shoulders up to his earlobes, and lunged his head forward, going in for a kiss. Just as he did this, Louis moved to the side to grab the plate of bacon, and walked it to the table. Harry almost fell flat on his face, stumbling a few steps. He let out a breathy laugh and looked up at Louis, who was now sitting at the table with a plate full of eggs and meat.
“Well?” Louis asked Harry, raising one eyebrow and nodding to the seat across the small table. Harry slowly walked over to said seat, and shivered a little as his bare legs came in contact with the cold seat. The two boys ate in a comfortable silence, aside from the rain hitting the window, and the light sound of thunder in the distance. Harry would stare at Louis intensely when he wasn't looking, wishing he could kiss him right then and there. Louis despised morning breath, so he always told Harry that they couldn't do anything until after breakfast. It drove Harry mad, because all he wanted to do was kiss every inch of Louis body every minute of every day. But sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the one you love.
Harry was lying in bed once more, listening to the rain with his eyes closed. He wasn't tired, but all he wanted to do was to lie with Louis and be enveloped in his arms. Louis had a feeling Harry wouldn't have his eyes open- he knew him that well- so he opened the door to their bedroom as quietly as possible. Harry was laying on his back with his large hands clasped together right below his chest. His ankles were crossed over each other. All he wore were his boxers from last night, and he looked absolutely radiant. The white sheets and blankets were bunched up in different parts of the bed, and the white curtains were blowing slightly from the air conditioning vents.
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/51880
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3- Unwanted
18 0 0
Kahiki's POV
As I left that place, I admired my old home. So much has changed. They said that it would be okay. That my family would forgive me. What bullshit that was. I was trying to repair my mistakes. Not make new ones. I couldn't believe that Keoki stood by Akalei like that. I thought he was supposed to be my best friend.
I slammed my truck door. I didn't know where I was going but I drove. Driving past everything brought back old memories. I angrily pushed them away. The little voice in the back of my head whispered to me.
"They said they don't want you." The words haunted me. How could my own family reject me? Why was it only Leila and Akalei left? What happened to our dad?
I sped up a bit. The beach past by in a blur. Maybe I should slow down a bit. I decreased my speed a tiny bit. Glancing over at the beach I saw a bunch of familiar faces. Those people used to be my friends too. Does anyone wonder where I am anymore?
I pulled into a park. The water was a fair walk away but I could use it. I needed to clear my head. This was getting to be too much for one day.
I didn't even notice that I had already reached the peaceful point where you can go surf. Surf. That used to be my passion. Now it's just a distant memory, fuzzy from age. I collapsed onto the pointy rocks. I ignored the pain soaring through my body. It numbed the overwhelming emotions.
I rubbed my hands over my face and through my hair. Where am I going to stay tonight? Millions of questions roamed through my head. I needed a drink. I got up from my spot and made my way back. I didn't really see where I was going. I felt myself run into somebody.
"God, watch it!" The angry female voice brought me to the present.
"Sorry." I mumbled.
"You better be." She spat out at me.
I continued my way back. Only a few more feet, I kept telling myself. I finally reached my truck and pulled open the door. The seats were burning hot and it was really stuffy inside. I pulled out of the park and drove to the nearest bar. Hopefully I look 21. It's only a year difference.
I screeched into the parking lot and made my way to the door without even looking at the name of the bar.
It was a cool, dark place with spotlights everywhere. There were a few people around the bar, I didn't expect many since it's only four. I sat down on one of the stools.
"What can I get you?" A gruff voice asked.
"Beer." I put my head over my arms. I felt drained.
The bartender slid a glass of beer towards me. I downed that thing in a minute. I drank beer after beer until my vision was fuzzy and I forgot where I was. My worries were a vague memory by now. I tried to get up, I just fell back down.
I heard another glass sliding towards me, not caring what it was, I downed it. It definitely wasn't beer. I blacked out after that.
I woke up in a comfy bed. My vision was blurry from sleep. I struggled to get up but I fell back down because my head was pounding. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. Where the heck am I?!
"Take these." A gruff voice instructed. He put some Advil in my hand and a glass of water before walking out.
"There's no way that I'm letting that jerk come back!" I heard a voice scream. It sounded like she was right beside me.
"Well where else do you suggest leaving him?" The man replied.
"Somewhere that we're not!" A new voice yelled.
I swallowed the Advil and downed the glass of water. This place seems familiar. The voices are definitely familiar.
I groaned when the realization hit. I was at my old house. The place where no one wants me. There was a small part of me saying to stay and work it out with my family but the other part was saying to get the hell out of there before all hell brakes loose.
I made my way out of bed. I was a bit woozy and my head was still pounding. I didn't want to stay at this place. I got away from it once, I can do it again. I quietly made my way out of the bedroom. I saw that Leila, Akalei and what I think was my dad outside on the deck. I wandered out the door and into the darkness.
I saw that my truck was parked in the driveway. Deja-vu! I didn't want to waste any time. I jumped in and my engine roared to life. I pulled out of the driveway and drove.
Again, I didn't know where I was going. I just drove down the busy highway. I pulled into the familiar house. Before I could even knock on the door, a head popped out.
"Mack, I need a place to stay."
Okay, I guess this isn't exactly 1,000-2,000 words as I had said. I hope that this chapter had shown a little peak into Kahiki's point of view. What do you guys think of Kahiki? And of Mack? He's a bit mysterious! ;) I hope whoever is reading this likes it!!!
Off ShoreRead this story for FREE!
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/51881
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An earsplitting howl of pain filled the Malfoy Manner. Draco,Who was sitting in his room, Flinched every time one of Hermiones wails of agony hit his ear. He was two stories away from where Hermione was being held, but he could hear her screams as if she was sitting right next to him.Greyback was in her cell, Doing who knows what to her. Draco shuddered at the thought.His aunt bellatrix told Greyback That he could do whatever he wanted to her. He shudderd again as hermione shouted.
"Ple-he-he-se." Her voice was hysterical. "Sto-o-op It Hu-u-urts." Another cry of pain echoed her. Draco covered his ears. trying to block out Hermione but it was no use. What was he doing to her? Biting her? Cursing her? . . .worse?
A cackle from his aunt entered his room as his door opened.
"Evening Draco." She said in a bored tone. "Isnt that just music to your ears?"she was talking about hermione. "A filthy mudbloods screams of pain." She cackled again. "Theres no better sound in the world dont you agree, Draco?" Draco nodded absentmindedly.
"Whats he doing to her?" He asked, almost not wanting to hear the answer.
"Who cares?" His aunt replyed before another hideous scream filled the manner. "By the way," His aunt told him. "your father wants you to bring food to her, after all even filthy scum like her must eat." And with that she left. Cackling all the way down the hall. Draco sighed and slumped back in his bed.
He had to bring food to her? He didnt want to, Not because he was lazy. It was because he didnt want to see her like that, Dracos seen people hurt like that before but with her it was something completely different. It was like. . . well it was something he couldn't explain. It pulled at his heart to hear her screams.
Draco waited until Hermiones screams were over before he reluctantly got up and walked down to the kitchen. His father and greyback were talking and laughing.
" . . .And she was screaming the entire time, Oh, hello Draco." Greyback murmered as Draco entered the enormous Kitchen. Two house elves were busily making dinner, a scared look in their eye. If they messed up on dinner it would be their end.
"Hello." Draco muttered not looking into the werewolves eyes. A house elf handed him a bowl of cold soup. It looked disgusting.
"Feed that to the mudbloood. We cant have her keeling over. . .yet." His father and greyback laughed at his sick joke. Draco just nodded and made his way down to the dungeon.
Harry ducked as Ron chucked another book at his head.
"Ron stop!" Harry shouted.
"No!" Ron growled in reply. " Not until we get hermione back!"
"Ron please listen to me!" Harry begged. Ron stopped chucking things at him but still had a book in his hand.
"Go ahead then." Ron snarled. What was harry suppose to say? How could he explain to ron that He was sorry about hermione?
"Its all your fault." Ron murmured quietly when Harry didn't talk.
"My fault? how is it my fault?!" Harry demanded. If anything it was Hermiones fault. Shes the one who got hit! . . . How could he say that. Hermione was one of his best friends. It wasn't her fault at all.
"Because!" Ron shouted. " Everything always has to be about you! You, You ,you! It's never about hermione, or me. No one ever talks about how we helped you saved the world multipl times they just talk about how the chosen one beat death again! Well I'm sick of it! I wish that you'd never been born! Then Hermione would be safe! And she wouldn't have been captured. Do you have any Idea what their doing to her? Do you? No you dint! And neither do I and its killing me! I hate you! I'd wish that you would just die!" Ron ranted, before falling to his knees and sobbing quietly into his hands.
It had been his fault. It was all his fault. All of these deaths and tragedy's.It was his fault with Cedric, It was his fault with Sirius, it had been his fault with dumbledore,, He could have saved them all.and now Hermione could be dead, All because of him. His best friend, in the mercy of the malfoys, She was dead for sure
Harry walked over to his cot and laid down, and went into an uncomfortable restless sleep. The graveyard nightmare haunting his dreams, but instead of cedrick it was hermione, and instead of voldemort it was malfoy.
Draco walked up to the bars nd used his keys to unlock the door. Hermione liad in a curled ball on the cold floor in the back of the dungeon. She was asleep. Draco set the cold soup down and made his way over to Hermione.
Draco gasped as he saw her. Her clothes were torn in many places and she was covered in bruises and cuts. He noticed three long claw marks going from the back of Her neck to her shirt. They were red and still bleeding slightly
He knelt down to Hermione and ran His fingers lightly over the claw marks. Hermione reacted intently bringing her foot out, catching Draco off guard, and sending him flying. He got up rubbing his now sore stomach. A foot print now on his shirt.
When Draco looked back Hermione was huddled in the corner with her knees in her stomach. Her eyes were red. She flinched and buried her head in her knees, As he go up. Draco took pity on her. She was a shell of her former self. He remembered how she was at hogwarts. Bold,Brave,adventures, Now she was scared at the slightest movement on his body.
"Granger are you okay?" He asked walking up to her.
"G-go away." She squeaked. Draco sighed and walked back to the cell door.
"I'm sorry,Hermione, about everything." He said Before he locked the door behind him. He could hear sobbing from her as he left.
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/51883
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Generosity: An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 8-9
Generosity: An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 8-9
We’re going verse by verse through 2 Corinthians 8-9 to learn how to live generous lives in response to God’s gift to us.
Gospel Generosity
February 28, 2016
When was the last time you were generous? Most of us have a hard time with being generous. Whether it’s an attitude that says, “I earned it, so it’s mine.” Or a fear that worries, “I’m afraid I won’t have enough for me.” We struggle with generosity. What’s the greatest gift you’ve ever received? For the believer, the answer is the same: Christ. He is the gift of God that expresses God’s surpassing grace towards us. There is no greater gift. This is the gospel: Because of the surpassing generous grace of God, we are offered salvation in Christ!
Ready Generosity
February 21, 2016
In the apostle Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth, he told them that Christ’s readiness to always be generous should be displayed in them as well. As believers, we can display this same disposition of the ready generosity of Christ in our lives.
Genuine Generosity
February 14, 2016
The apostle Paul told the believers at Corinth that the proof that they had received the love of Christ would be shown in the quality of their generosity. We can show the proof of Christ’s love in our lives by the quality of our generosity. The text gives three proofs for genuine generosity.
Grace-filled Generosity
February 7, 2016
Do you want to break out of the meaningless cycle of materialism? Or do you feel like you have nothing to be generous with? As we look at how the grace of God caused a chain reaction in the churches of Macedonia that overflowed into a wealth of generosity, we can respond to God’s grace by offering our whole lives back to him.
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Marijuana: Denver will hand out retail marijuana business licenses at 8 a.m. today
Get out the cameras: The
Denver Department of Excise and Licenses
will begin handing out its first retail marijuana businesses licenses at 8 a.m. today. These are for businesses that have already received their state licenses -- Colorado began sending out
348 of those on Monday
to applicants in more than 25 municipalities that are allowing retail marijuana sales -- and have jumped through all the hoops to get their local licenses and appropriate permits. In the case of already-existing dispensaries that want to sell recreational marijuana, that means dividing the retail area from the MMJ area, and creating separate entrances for both.
As of December 23, when the state sent out its first round of licenses, 42 retail marijuana business applicants had completed the City and County of Denver's business licensing process, which means they could receive their city license in time to began operations on January 1. That total includes stores, grow facilities and infused product manufacturing facilities.
All retail marijuana store licenses issued in Denver will be listed on the Excise and Licenses site complete with a map, starting at 5 p.m. today. There are no stores listed there now, but you can check out the page here. It already includes links to hearing dates, documents, other agencies -- and Denver's official marijuana rules page that the city's marketing department rolled out on December 9, and basically welcomes you to marijuana use pagea World of No. (See one of the graphics from that site below.)
At 5 p.m., Excise and Licenses should be telling you where you'll hear "yes" on January 1.
More from Calhoun's Wake-Up Call: "What's in store for Colorado on January 1?"
Have a tip? Send it to [email protected].
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Pokémon: Let's Go! is way more than just a Pokémon Go clone
Nintendo's new motion control peripheral, the Pokéball Plus, makes it worth catching 'em all over again in Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu! and Let's Go Eevee!
16 Jun 2018
When Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu! and Let's Go Eevee! were revealed earlier this year, you could almost feel the wave of disappointment ripple across the internet. After Nintendo's 2017 E3 conference confirmed the development of a core Pokémon RPG for the Nintendo Switch, it was deflating – to some – to find the eternally popular series' first appearance on the platform would instead be a remake of the original Pokémon Red and Blue games. Even worse, it would be reimagined to be closer to the Pokémon Go game for mobile!
Anyone who was panicked by the idea of Pokémon: Let's Go should take a deep breath and relax, though. As it turns out, Pikachu and Eevee are guiding some of the freshest and most fun Pokémon games in years – and it's in large part down to the Pokéball Plus controller.
To anyone who's ever watched the Pokémon anime, there's a nice little attention to detail with the accessory – it's about the size of a shrunken Pokéball that Ash Ketchum would pull from his belt, before it expanded to full, Pokémon-catching size. Sadly, the real-life gadget doesn't change size, but it is a miniature marvel in its own right.
The Pokéball Plus packs in motion sensors, lights and speaker, along with a clever adaptation of the original Pokémon games' controls. The central button – the white circle between the red and white hemispheres of the Pokéball – serves as both directional thumbstick and, with a click down, the A button. Hidden under the red half is another button, easily used with a squeeze of your forefinger, which serves as B. It may seem overly streamlined, but the Game Boy offered the exact same range of controls – movement on the D-pad, plus two input buttons. This just condenses it all into a one-handed wireless remote.
But what of the Pokémon: Let's Go game itself? Unfortunately, the build Nintendo provided only allowed players to wander around Viridian Forest, an early section from the original games, so impressions are fairly limited. However, it looks great, adapting the exact layout of the area from 1997 games, but upgrading the visuals and designs to match the modern anime models, for humans and Pokémon alike. Your version Pokémon – Pikachu or Eevee – rides on your shoulder, but you can also have another Pokémon walking behind you, a nod to 1998's Pokémon Yellow. Walking Pokémon are always in scale, representing their official heights in the Pokédex. For instance, Charmander will come up to your character's waist, while its much larger evolution Charizard will be bigger than you.
Like in the mobile game, you'll now see Pokémon on the screen, wandering around long grass, rather than having to deal with random encounters. However, unlike on your phone, you'll have a few clues as to the qualities of the Pokémon before you engage with them. If they have a red swirl floating around them, expect them to be bigger than average for that species, whereas a blue swirl means they're smaller than usual. This can help in picking out wild Pokémon, but either way, simply walk into them and you'll have a chance to catch them.
As with Pokémon Go, there's no combat with catchable creatures, just a menu allowing you to offer them various berries to make them easier to catch or to switch to more powerful Pokéballs. The likelihood of a successful catch is indicated by the colour of shrinking concentric rings, and the smaller those rings are when you connect a Pokéball, the more likely you are to get a 'Great' or 'Excellent' response. Catching is as simple as selecting 'get ready' and making a throwing gesture with the Pokéball – a surprisingly fun moment that will likely fulfill a childhood ambition for some. The peripheral will vibrate and, if the catch is successful, a light around the central button turns green. Hold it to your ear, and you'll hear the Pokémon you've just caught making itself at home.
One improvement over Pokémon Go is that you won't need to endlessly catch the same Pokémon over and over to earn candy for evolution purposes. Instead, like the core Pokémon games, your squad will earn experience points from every successful catch, and from battles against other Pokémon Trainers.
These encounters are pure traditional Pokémon gameplay – turn-based combat where you select your attack move from a list of four, switch to another Pokémon in your squad of six, or use an item. The menu-based system lends itself well to the Pokéball Plus, although I did notice clicking in on the central button can sometimes also register as moving it as a thumbstick, making it a little too easy to highlight and select the wrong option. With the preview session limited to only the Viridian Forest, there was no way to see if gym battles differ at all, but the familiarity of regular encounters bodes well.
Battles also reveal another benefit to the simplicity of the Pokéball Plus – it's perfect for players with hand-related disabilities or limited dexterity. With the sedate pace of the game, rapid movements aren't necessary, and if even throwing the Pokéball is difficult for a player, then controls can be switched so pressing the A button counts as a throw too. Whether by accident or intent, this is a great feature, making Pokémon: Let's Go accessible to more players. Younger players may also find the simple but tactile controls easier to get to grips with.
With Nintendo structuring the hands-on session around the Pokéball Plus, I wasn't able to get a feel for how it plays using either the Switch Pro Controller or the Joy-Cons, though it seems reasonable to imagine flicking a Joy-Con will have the same result as throwing a Pokéball. There was also no sign of how integration with Pokémon Go on mobile will work in practice, beyond what Nintendo has shown in its reveal videos. We know that you'll be able to transfer one Pokémon from your phone to the Nintendo Switch game via the Pokéball Plus, placing them in an area called the Go Park. What the benefit of this is, if anything beyond the cosmetic and the chance to interact with them, remains unknown.
Yet with the modern, anime-inspired visuals, intuitive Pokéball controls, and an encounter and battle system that combines the best of both classic Pokémon games and Pokémon Go, Let's Go proves to be a meaningful evolution of the series. Even though long term players will be traipsing around the Kanto region and catching the original 151 Pokémon again, there are enough new tricks here to make the journey worthwhile.
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Inspired by Cern, these lab instruments double as kitchen utensils
28 Jan 2014
Centrifuge/salad spinner
Alex Duffer
Alex Duffner, a design student at Goldsmiths, University of London, wanted to be a teenage nerd again. So, he built a set of laboratory instruments that double as kitchen appliances. "I wanted to perform crazy home-science experiments -- the kind that kids do in their kitchens," he says. So far, he's made a centrifuge/salad spinner, a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) cycler/slow-cooker, a webcam/microscope and a coffee-machine/spectrometer (all shown above). Now he is working with UK-based collaborators Technology Will Save Us to turn his prototypes into products.
Duffner's idea for the domestic machines came from his visits to the labs of scientific titans CERN in Switzerland and the Diamond Light Source (DLS) synchotron in Oxfordshire. "The physicists at the Large Hadron Collider and synchrotron created simple analogies, often related to the kitchen, when explaining complex scientific concepts," says Duffner, 24. "At the DLS, they explained that the pressure build-up was similar to a coffee machine's."
His spectrometer used that idea: it's a simple coffee machine -- the filter can be replaced by a spectrometer tube that includes bits of CD and a tiny webcam to refract and absorb light. The cooker/PCR cycler uses an Arduino to control changing temperature cycles, and the centrifuge just swaps a salad basket for a ring of test-tube holders. The point, says Duffner, is to help us rediscover our childlike curiosity about science. "Scientific instruments seem hard to make, but the moment you understand how they work, it changes how you approach science."
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/51936
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AR# 18636
PLB Gigabit Ethernet MAC v1.00b - Release Notes for EDK 6.1i SP2
General Description:
This Answer Record describes improvements made for the PLB Gigabit Ethernet MAC in EDK 6.1i Service Pack 2.
In EDK 6.1i SP2, the following enhancements have been made to the PLB Gigabit Ethernet software:
Software Layer 1 driver version 1.00e
- Allows a user to optionally disable the SG END interrupt.
- Changes the Rx/Tx SG DMA callbacks so that they are invoked once for all packets received (instead of once for each packet).
New Gigabit Ethernet VxWorks adapter (Layer 2 driver) version 1.00c performance enhancements
- Packet processing is moved to the task level (for SG DMA).
- IOCTL commands to change packet threshold settings are added.
- Caching is enabled for frame buffers.
These fixes are contained in the latest 6.1i EDK Service Pack, available at:
The first service pack containing the fix is EDK 6.1i Service Pack 2.
AR# 18636
Date 05/16/2014
Status Archive
Type General Article
Page Bookmarked
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/51945
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Q: i have a knocking noise coming from under my feet on driver side by the tire and its a bottom knock right under the gas and brakes
asked by on
I am having a knocking noise under my brakes and gas under my feet steadily impark driving turning Etc it's not loud but noticeable it gets louder as gas is being pushed it's by the driver side wheel I have the 03 Chevy jacked up wondering what's wrong if someone could please give me some advice I really appreciate it thanks
Hi there. If your vehicle is a front wheel drive, then the noise could be a CV Shaft failing causing the knocking noise. If your vehicle is a 4x4, then the front driveshaft universal joints are worn and making the noise. If you need further assistance with your vehicle making a knocking noise under the floor board area, then seek out a professional, such as one from Your Mechanic, to help you.
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Hello - if the noise increases with the speed of the vehicle, but only while you are accelerating (as opposed to coasting), the problem is in the drivetrain (transmission or differential). If the noise increases with road speed, whether accelerating...
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/51964
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Channel-Related Conditions
Channel-Related Conditions
Top Previous Next
HiLo Cards
Use this option to analyze the number and structure of the dealt HiLo cards. If you use this option with "contain values" or "do not contain values", you can find out if the HiLo cards have specific values. For example:
HiLo Cards contain values A, 2
This means: check if A and 2 have been already dealt.
If you use it with any other comparative expression, the program will treat it as the number of cards dealt. For example:
HiLo Cards is greater than 4
This means: check if 5 or more cards have been dealt in a HiLo game.
Poker Community Cards
Analyzes the number and structure of the community cards dealt in a Poker or Omaha game.
This option is similar to the previous one by its usage. For example, to check whether there are suited cards among the community cards, you should write:
Poker Community Cards contain values suited cards
To check whether three or more cards have been dealt you can write:
Poker Community Cards is equal or greater than 3
This option allows you to evaluate various parameters of the channel that a trigger is working in. When you choose it, a drop-down list with the number of channel's parameters appears next to the condition body. See "Channel Parameters" for more details.
Baccarat Cards Dealt
Checks the number of cards dealt in a Baccarat game. You can see this number in the "Card Counter" area:
Seconds Since Round Start
You can check the number of seconds that have passed since the start of the current round in the game.
HiLo Last Card
This option gives you access to the last card dealt in a HiLo game. You can evaluate its rank, for example:
HiLo Last Card is between 3 and 10
HiLo Cards Left ...
This option supports two sub-options:
Therefore you can check how many cards higher or lower than the last dealt card are left in the deck.
Number of games since ...
This option allows you to count the number of games that have passed since a certain moment or event. See more details here.
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/51965
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XF 1.5 How could I make private fourms visible?
Well-known member
I want to insensitive people to earn access to private forums but making them visible and having a custom error message "You need more ___ to access this forum."
Is anything like this in Xenforo by default? If not is there an addon that can help me?
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/51971
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By Laura | 05th December 2018
Making on-camera flash work for you
Eventually, every photographer decides that they need a speedlight to help in low light situations, but getting the most out of on-camera flash isn’t as simple as blasting your subject with light.
Getting your flashgun to work as an off-camera light source is the difference between a simple snap and creating the kind of images you’ll be proud to print onto canvas.
Bounce that flash!
We hear the term ‘bounced flash’ regularly, but what does that actually mean in practice? In the simplest terms, it means that you fire your light away from your subject and off of a different surface in order to make it appear that the light source isn’t coming from your camera.
Why would you do this?
We’ve all seen images of people where they all have ‘red eye’ from the light reflecting off the retina – horrible, isn’t it? How about when the subject is blasted with direct flash that kills all of the shadows and makes them look like they’ve been under a photocopier? That’s not so cool either. To avoid this, we bounce the light!
How to bounce effectively
The biggest mistake people make when bouncing on-camera flash is failing to understand that if the subject can see any of the flash, it’s still direct flash. What? Yep, even if you tilt your flashgun head away from the subject to bounce off of a wall, it’ll still look weird if any of the light from that speedlight hits your subject directly because it’s going to pretty much override the bounced light because of the inverse square law.
You can avoid this issue (and prevent people around and behind you from being blinded by your flash) by using a piece of black craft foam and a rubber band – yes, really! Simply create a flag (a barrier between the subject and light source) by wrapping the craft foam around three sides of the flashgun to prevent stray light from going where it’s not wanted.
Once you’ve tried this you’ll never be without one of these simple flags, and your flash photography will improve in leaps and bounds.
Now it’s just a case of experimenting with different surfaces and angles. Think of the area you’re bouncing your light onto as a softbox and play around with your TTL settings. There are no hard and fast rules because every situation is different, but once you understand how to control where the light goes, it becomes much easier to figure out how much light you need to use. Oh, but one thing is crucial – shoot in RAW because light picks up whatever colour it bounces from, and nobody wants green skin!
We hope that this simple guide to making on-camera flash work for you helps you to take some great pictures and gives you the tools you need to try this amazing style of photography.
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What is infrared photography?
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By Laura
05th December 2018
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
The Llewelyn-Bowen style
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By Laura
05th December 2018
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/51977
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Preschool & Education
Is your child ready for school? Are you ready? Explore the ups and downs of preschool and consider these tips to decide when and if preschool is the right fit for you.
Preschool & Education - Preschooler
Preschool Readiness: What Age is the Best Age for Preschool?
Many parents reach out to me with concerns about preschool at the beginning of a new ...
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Your Special Needs Child: 6 Tips for a Successful IEP Meeting
Do you approach your child’s annual IEP with a mixture of fear and dread? Or perhaps ...
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10 Fun Ways to Teach Your Child How to Write Their Name
My firstborn son begins kindergarten in just two weeks. This summer has gone by much too ...
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Teaching Preschoolers Their Letters
I love working with my preschool kids to teach them their letters but one thing I ...
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3 Reasons to Ditch the Toddler Flash Cards
My daughter received several sets of toddler flash cards for her third birthday. Some ...
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We Are Saying No to Preschool
It was during a coffee break with friends when I first heard how prevalent attending ...
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/51979
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Main / Action / Persian language for office 2010
Persian language for office 2010
Persian language for office 2010
Name: Persian language for office 2010
File size: 79mb
Language: English
Rating: 8/10
17 Aug The Office Language Interface Pack for (LIP) is a translated User Interface You can see all the available Office Language Interface Packs (LIPs) here. The Persian Office LIP does indeed have a speller. 29 Jul Microsoft Office Language Interface Pack – Türkmen birnäçe Microsoft Office programmalary üçin Türkmen ulanyjynyň interfeýsini. The language accessory pack files are available for free download for either the bit (x86) or bit (x64) architectures of Office , or Select the.
22 Jan Microsoft Office language packs serve the needs of people who want to use Microsoft Office in languages other than English which. 24 Dec Download Urdu Language Interface Packs for Office and Windows 7 Based on the Hindi, Urdu vocabulary developed under Persian. 18 Jul The links to the Office on the website have been broken for a long proofing tools – for Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) in an.
20 Aug MS Office introduces new, shared Proofing Tools for Spelling and Grammar which are now dealt with by the MS Office Language. 28 Jan Changing default Editing Language in Office does not change it in Word When I open 'Microsoft Office Language Preferences', under ' Choose Editing . I solved the problem with Persian just like this. If you want to install multiple languages on same Office installation, you will need to The Arabic language pack download link posted is for Office Install using PlayOnLinux, by selecting Office using the Run 12kingsrow.com or open the Options dialogs Language part in one of the Office. Does anyone know if the proofing tools (ie. spell-check) for languages other than English come with MS Word ? I have the Home and.
Microsoft Office is a family of client software, server software, and services developed by .. In addition, Office , Service Pack 2 for Office , and Office for Mac supports the OpenDocument Format .. of support of Unicode and for its lack of support for right-to-left languages, notably Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. Language packs for Moodle 1.x Additional language packs may be installed on your Moodle site via Administration Farsi, 12kingsrow.com (KB), As a Technician I frequently install Office for my customers. 10 or Office , , Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download. After Complete Installation: 1- GoTo Below Address: Start>> All Programs>> Microsoft Office>> Microsoft Office Tools>> Microsoft Office Language .
4 Aug [Wine] Persian language support in Office Hey,I just installed MS Word in wine and it seems that has some problems with. 14 Sep Outlook / menus are in the wrong language (Fixed) Don't forget to change the language ID in the Office file path (and the network. I have win7, MS office How to type in farsi (persian) [closed] I was hopping to be able to write in farsi, but I'm having truble to set it up. version, the language(s) you installed and all steps you did and the results. 3 May This problem is undoubtedly related to the language settings in Word, and possibly within Office. Word (and Office) supports many different.
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Billie Eilish – Music Box – 03.10.18
Billie Eilish
San Diego, CA – 03.10.18
Photos by Erika Garcia
With a flash of bright lights and chorus of screaming fans, Billie Eilish went on stage with a smile on her face.
Against all odds, on a rainy day in San Diego, CA the singer showed off her dance moves in the most electrifying way to the beat of her song bellyache.
The 16-year-old multi-talented artist amazed everyone in the room with her sweet vocals with one of her most emotional songs “Six Feet Under”. Not so long after that, we were surprised with the cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and Finneas’s “NEW GIRL”.
With her tendency to write in character Billie’s lyrics carry an emotional weight that shows she’s a timeless soul.
Sharing the stage with her brother, they both danced to her song “my boy” and hugged it put before closing the night with “COPYCAT”.
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Leading Relationships
Communicate Effectively, Build Trust, Resolve Conflict & Lead Your Relationships
“I cannot find the words that relay how impressed and satisfied I am! Absolutely the best leadership development training we have ever offered our employees. We use The 3 Levels of Leadership model everyday and the Dead Moose has become a part of our culture and the way we communicate. I am in awe of your talent and completely impressed with your professionalism. I truly look forward to a long and lasting professional partnership.”
– Stella Jestrebski, Corporate HR Manager, Keystone Foods
Building Trust
Relationships that are high in trust are much more effective than ones that are not. Trust cannot be faked, manipulated or forced, but it can be earned. Establishing compelling trust in relationships is everyone’s job but one that is not always easy to do. In this presentation, we will look at the challenge of building trust in every relationship and the impact of trust on a company’s bottom-line. Participants will also learn:
• How to build trust with every team member
• What to do when trust is broken
• How to control your ego so it doesn’t get in the way
• How to manage relationships you can’t lead
Resolving Conflict (Removing the Dead Moose)
Conflict is a natural part of any relationship. Conflict by itself is not good or bad but the way we address it can be. When you are faced with an issue that you don’t think you can address with someone, it puts a distance between you and the individual. The more issues there are, the greater the distance and the lower the trust.
Addressing conflict in a non-confrontational way that strengthens a relationship is a skill that everyone needs to develop to be successful. When not addressed correctly, conflict can destroy a relationship and the productivity of both people involved. In this presentation, participants will learn how to create an environment of safety where issues can be addressed and obstacles removed. Participants will also learn:
• The 4 steps to resolving conflict when it happens
• What to do when the other person won’t play
• How to address conflict that is communicated non-verbally
• How to build a culture that thrives on resolving conflict
Setting Standards & Expectations
We all have relationships that are difficult, and this presentation is designed to address the real obstacles and challenges that sometimes get in the way. This presentation is not lectured! The ideas and concepts are facilitated with interaction, exercises, videos and real-world examples.
Other topics:
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Download Building solutions with the Microsoft .NET compact by Fox D., Box J. PDF
By Fox D., Box J.
No matter if you're an architect, developer, or supervisor, construction suggestions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework is your advisor to making potent recommendations for cellular units with .NET. Authors Dan Fox and Jon field stroll you thru 4 crucial architectural techniques and programming suggestions, utilizing vast examples and code listings to teach you the way to strengthen extra strong cellular improvement initiatives. The ebook in short describes the context, structure, and contours of either the Framework and shrewdpermanent gadget Programmability (SDP). the guts of the e-book is its in-depth assurance of key architectural strategies, together with neighborhood facts dealing with, distant info entry (RDA) architectures, strong information caching with SQL Server 2000 home windows CE version 2.0 (SQL CE 2.0), and synchronization strategies. the point of interest then shifts to localization, defense, and deployment, and the ultimate bankruptcy steers you clear of strength pitfalls.You will locate worthy tips to extra assets all through, and a better half website contains the resource code and hyperlinks to additional information.
Show description
Read Online or Download Building solutions with the Microsoft .NET compact framework: architecture and best practices for mobile development PDF
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Building allotted functions is hard sufficient with no need to coordinate the activities that cause them to paintings. This functional advisor exhibits how Apache ZooKeeper is helping you deal with disbursed platforms, so that you can concentration quite often on software good judgment. in spite of ZooKeeper, imposing coordination projects isn't trivial, yet this publication offers stable practices to offer you a head begin, and issues out caveats that builders and directors alike have to look ahead to alongside the way.
In 3 separate sections, ZooKeeper members Flavio Junqueira and Benjamin Reed introduce the foundations of allotted platforms, supply ZooKeeper programming recommendations, and comprise the knowledge you must administer this service.
• learn the way ZooKeeper solves universal coordination projects
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Movement into iOS improvement via getting an organization clutch of its basics, together with the Xcode IDE, the Cocoa contact framework, and fast 2. 0—the most up-to-date model of Apple's acclaimed programming language. With this completely up to date consultant, you'll research Swift’s object-oriented suggestions, know the way to take advantage of Apple's improvement instruments, and notice how Cocoa offers the underlying performance iOS apps should have.
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Extra info for Building solutions with the Microsoft .NET compact framework: architecture and best practices for mobile development
Example text
Exception handling: During the execution of an application, unforeseen events sometimes transpire. To handle these gracefully, the Compact Framework supports structured exception handling (SEH), as does the desktop Framework. This allows developers to use Try-Catch semantics in their code and to test for specific types of exceptions thrown by the application. And, as with its desktop cousin, the EE of the Compact Framework is optimized for the nonexceptional case, and so throwing exceptions should be reserved for true exceptions and not simply to signal a normal occurrence.
1] As a result, services built using SOAP are generally referred to as XML Web Services. At its core, therefore, a good working definition of an XML Web Service is a programmable application component accessible via standard Web protocols. Many people, Bill Gates included, have referred to the advent of XML Web Services as the "third wave" of the Internet, following the connectivity and presentation waves that preceded it. org/TR/2000/NOTE-SOAP-20000508. Obviously, the importance and promise of XML Web Services are its use of Internet standards and independence from the technologies that characterized the "component wars" of the 1990s, which were often reduced to battles between Microsoft's Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM)[2] and the Common Object Request Broker Architecture's (CORBA)[3] Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP).
ThreadPool) that allows a developer to queue a method for execution on one of a number of background worker threads controlled by the EE. When a thread in the pool is free, the method will execute and, when finished, can notify the main thread through a callback. [16] The Application Domain, in which a multithreaded Compact Framework application runs, will exist until all of the created threads have exited. • Exception handling: During the execution of an application, unforeseen events sometimes transpire.
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Rated 4.93 of 5 – based on 8 votes
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ArcelorMittal HQ
In an architectural world where the vast majority of buildings is initiated by developers – and therefore has very few specific characteristics – and where more and more brands produce intangible and largely virtual contents, it is a rare pleasure to imagine an essential structure for a steel producer. This building needs to represent a product that coincides with the very beginning of civilization, in a country where history is forged by the steel industry and is strongly identified with that company.
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Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Shop in the Spotlight: Utility's online shop
In summer last year, I wrote about a gorgeous homeware shop in Brighton called Utility. It crosses between a hardware store and swanky lifestyle shop (think B&Q meats Labour & Wait). But the best thing is that it doesn't have lofty prices. Even with enamelware being so popular at the moment, the shop keeps its prices low (and its chit-chat friendly).
And now they've opened their online shop! If you don't have any seaside trips, you can still pick up all these lovelies:
The enamel pieces start at £3.25!
Except for the cool enamel mugs, they're £2.70.
These stopper bottles are great to have on your desk while you're writing. I live in constant fear that I'll knock glasses over my laptop. The little ones at £9.50 and the litre bottles are £9.50.
The airtight jars are just £3.50. Oh yes. I'll be needed twenty so I can make jam. They also sell packs of spare seals for £1.60. This shop thinks of everything.
These infested labels (unused but apparently sourced from a nearby hospital) might stop people from stealing your ice cream. They're just £1.50.
Delivery is actually a little pricey - it's a flat rate of £4.95, but that takes you right up to a kilo. Just buy lots and lots of little things to make it worthwhile. Labour & Wait. You've got competition.
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C/C++ and C# are the basic of object oriented programming language in computer science. To start career in programming you need to understand the concept of programming which is fulfilled by C/C++/C#. In C/C++ and C# student faces lot of problem in understanding the concept of array, pointer, linked list, queues, file handling. At initial level student face problem in understanding the concept of algorithm. Algorithm play very important role in programming. C/C++/C# assignment homework help is the online individual ascendant to the students preparation and their duty. The aid C/C++ /C# assignment homework help online is single in its nature helping assisting students with their inputs..
assignmenthelp7.com provides best C, C++ and C# assignment help and online tutoring service for students all over the world. We provide assignment help, Homework help at best pricing to suit students at all budget Our expert team is from top most institutes from all over the world. .
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Big data is the current hype, the thing you need to do to find the best job in the world. I’ve started using machine learning tools a decade ago, and when I saw this book, it felt like it was answering some concerns I had. Let’s see what’s inside.
Read More
Last year, my colleagues and I presented a paper on giga model simulations in an SPE conference: Giga-Model Simulations In A Commercial Simulator – Challenges & Solutions. During this talk, we talked about the complexity of I/O for such simulations. We had ordered data as input that we needed to split in chunks to send them on the relevant MPI ranks, and then the same process was required for writing the results, gathering the chunks and then writing them down to the disk.
The central point is that some clusters have parallel file systems, and these works well when you try to access big blobs of aligned data. In fact, as they are the bottleneck of the whole system, you need to limit the number of accesses to what you actually require. For instance in HDF5, you can specify the alignment of datasets, so you can say that all HDF5 datasets will be aligned on the filesystem specifications (so for instance 1MB if your Lustre/GPFS has a chunk size of 1MB) and read or write chunks that are multiple of these values.
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After my post on HPCToolkit, I felt that I prefered QCacheGrind as a GUI to explore profiling results. So here is a gist with a Python script to convert XML HPCToolkit experiments to callgrind format:
For instance, this is a display of an Audio Toolkit test of L2 cache misses:
ATK L2 cache misses profile
ATK L2 cache misses profile
Sometimes, it’s so easy to rewrite some existing code because it doesn’t fit exactly your bill.
I just so the example with an All To All communication that was written by hand. The goal was to share how many elements would be sent from one MPI process to another, and these elements were stored on one process in different structure instances, one for each MPI process. So in the end, you had n structures on each of the n MPI processes.
The MPI_Alltoall cannot map directly to this scattered structure, so it sounds fair to assume that using MPI_Isend and MPI_Irecv would be simpler to implement. The issue is that this pattern uses buffers on each process for each other process it will send values to or receive values from. A lot of MPI library allocate their buffer when needed, but will never let go of the memory until the end. So you end up with a memory consumption that doesn’t scale. In my case, when using more than 1000 cores, the MPI library uses more than 1GB per MPI process when it hits these calls, just for these additional hidden buffers. This is just no manageable.
Now, if you use MPI_Alltoall, two things happen:
• there are no additional buffer allocated, so this scales nicely when you increase the number of cores
• it is actually faster than your custom implementation
Now with MPI 3 standard having non-blocking collective operations, there is absolutely no reason to try to outsmart the library when you need a collective operation. It has heuristics when it knows that it is doing a collective call, so let them work. You won’t be smarter if you try, but you will if you use them.
In my case, the code to retrieve all values and store them in an intermediate buffer was smaller that the one with the Isend/Irecv.
We know now that we won’t have the same serial computing increase we had in the last decades. We have to cope with optimizing serial codes, and programming parallel and concurrent ones, and this means that all coders have to cope with this paradigm shift. If computer scientists are aware of the tools to use, it is not the same for the “average” scientist or engineer. And this is the purpose of this book: educate the average coder.
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We have now several petaflopic clusters available in the Top500. Of course, we are trying to get the most of their peak computational power, but I think we should sometimes also look at optimal resource allocation.
I’ve been thinking about this for several months now, for work that has thousands of tasks, each task being massively data parallel. Traditionnally, one launches a job through one’s favorite batch scheduler (favorite or mandatory…) with fixed resources and during an estimated amount of time. This may work well in research, but in the industrial world, there often a new job that arises and that needs part of your scarce resources. You may have to stop your work, loose your current advances and/or restart the job with less resources. And then the cycle goes on.
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Massively parallel processors are in the mood today. We had small parallel processors with a few cores and the ability to launch serevral threads on one core, we have now many cores on one processor and at the other end of the spectrum, we have GPUs. CPUs vendors are now going in this direction with Larabee and Fusion, and GPUs will still have more cores/threads/… It’s thus mandatory to understand this shift now.
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Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Lorentz covariance confirmed again
Quantum gravity
is one of the great physics boondoggles of all time. A lot of effort by a lot
of smart people has gone into to it, with nothing to show for it.
This announcement shows the latest failure for the theorists:
ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory has provided results that will dramatically affect the search for physics beyond Einstein. It has shown that any underlying quantum ‘graininess’ of space must be at much smaller scales than previously predicted.
Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity describes the properties of gravity and assumes that space is a smooth, continuous fabric. Yet quantum theory suggests that space should be grainy at the smallest scales, like sand on a beach.
One of the great concerns of modern physics is to marry these two concepts into a single theory of quantum gravity. ...
Here is the abstract and full paper.
This experiment proves Lorentz covariance to very high precision. The concept was discovered by Poincare, based on ideas from Lorentz. Einstein had nothing to do with it, and did not even understand what Poincare had done.
The idea that space should be grainy is not supported quantum mechanics, relativity, or any experimental evidence.
The most famous experiment showing Lorentz covariance is the 1887 Michelson–Morley experiment. It persuaded FitzGerald, Lorentz, Poincare, and eventually everyone else, as explained in the recently-translated 1910 Laue paper, Is the Michelson Experiment Conclusive?. Most historians say that Einstein did not appreciate this experiment when he wrote his famous 1905 paper on Lorentz's relativity theory. Einstein was describing the theory without necessarily understanding how it came about. This is explained in my book.
Update: Wired mag says that the new data shows that Universe Almost Certainly Not a Hologram.
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Monday, January 7, 2013
Motion Effects in the Avid Editing System
The Motion Effect Editor in Avid Media Composer ans Symphony.
The Motion Effects Editor in Avid.
In my video editing wish list, I briefly touched on the Motion Effects Editor in the Avid Media Composer editing system. There are are a lot of things I like about motion effects in the Avid system, but it has a long way to go. I love the standard Motion Effect dialog, the Fit to Fill Edit and some of the Time Warp effects including Trim to Fill. Beyond that, things get a little grayer.
I have been using the Avid system since before the inception of the Motion Effect Editor and I still don't get the usability of the Speed and Position graphs. Am I alone in this? Is it because I am used to the easy and elegant way that Adobe After Effects does its Time Remapping?
Time Remapping in Adobe After Effects.
Time Remapping in After Effects.
In After Effects Time Remapping is simple. After you enable Time Remapping, you get 2 keyframes in your timeline - one at the head and one at the tail. You can add any keyframes wherever you like depending on how you want to adjust the speed. If you drag two keyframes closer together, you decrease the time it takes to play, thus speeding up the playback. All keyframe dragging is done in the active timeline, not in a graph. The Avid Motion Effects Editor would be much more useful if I could see what effect my adjustments are having in relation to the sequence timeline. As is, the Avid Motion Effects Editor is hit or miss, with no real-time feedback as to what is going on.
I'd like to hear from other Avid editors to find out if you believe the Motion Effects Editor in the Avid Editing systems is a useful tool.
1. Im a bit "oldskool" since iv been working since the first versions back in the 90 , i use a lot of motion effect classic mode , but when it comes to serious timewarp ,sure the grahp is a must do very fluid and adaptable its more easy than it looks, use explore it ;)
1. I've explored the Motion Effects Editor in Avid on numerous occasions and always revert to using After Effects for fluid motion effect changes or the classic motion effect otherwise. I consider the Avid editing system to be the most versatile and intuitive system out there - the Motion Effect Editor is very un-Avid.
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Ideas and Reality
June 21st, 2010
Good ideas are hard to come by, but people *think* that they have good ideas all the time. How can this be?
An idea itself is not struck by reality yet. You need to work with it, test it on other people or whatever the target audience is. This is not new and everybody is nodding now. So, the question is, why are there so few ideas that become actual products?
Most of the time I see a good idea being spoiled by people who can not envision it in their own minds and the guy who had the idea can not explain it. Almost as often the problem is, that the guy with the idea is not capable of bringing the idea to life. He is missing time, resources or skills.
The only way I have seen to work and resolve both issues just mentioned, is to make some kind of technology demonstrator, proof-of-concept or prototype. My observation here is that the tricky part is to reduce the proof-of-concept to the absolute minimum in order to show that it will work out. My rule of thumb is: If it takes more than a day to do – you are doing something else than a prototype. This is of course in the field of software – not making a new car or something.
Another aspect of the proof-of-concept is timing. Do not create something, which is based on creativity when you are stressed out and while you are doing something else. Furthermore, do not present it to people (if that is required), when they are in a hurry. A quick response to something new is almost always negative. People just love and embrace the safe and secure harbor of a known environment with predictive outcome. Give it time work in your and peoples minds.
Last, but not least – do not stop being creative and take failures as what it is: the best way of learning!
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By Patrick Carman
The hugely expected ebook 5 of the number one bestselling The 39 Clues series.
A unusual telegram lures fourteen-year-old Amy Cahill and her more youthful brother, Dan, deep into Russia and clear of the one reliable grownup they recognize. Signed with the initials NRR, the telegram launches a race to discover a treasure stolen through the Nazis and the reality in regards to the homicide of the final Russian royal family members. All too quickly, the treasure hunt begins to sniff like a Lucian capture. however the bait could simply be impossible to resist . . . what is going to Amy and Dan threat to determine what relatively occurred at the evening their mom and dad died?
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Extra resources for The Black Circle (The 39 Clues , Book 5)
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He yelled. Amy sighed. once more, her brother was once locked in a dream within which their cousin Irina Spasky used to be shredding a liked baseball card along with her fingernails. “Wake up, Dan. You’re dreaming. ” Amy had by no means felt so drained in her existence, and her brother used to be, as traditional, appearing like an fool. “Telegram! ” The knock on the door got here back. “Dan! Get … the … door! ” Amy crammed her face in a pillow and screamed. She used to be conscious for solid and he or she knew it. Peering previous her pillow, she observed that Nellie used to be nonetheless absolutely lifeless to the area. “Coming! ” cried Amy. “Hold your horses! ” whilst she reached the door, she hesitated, a well-recognized worry gripping her insides. What if she permit an individual risky in? Come on, Amy, get a grip. Amy opened the door, her eyes picking an Egyptian bellboy status within the corridor. He was once shorter than she was once via a mile, donning a spiffy pink uniform with gold buttons up front that was once no less than sizes too large. In his fingers used to be a sealed envelope. “For you, madam, from the table. somebody has leaved it. ” Amy took the envelope, and the bellboy stepped a tiny bit nearer, beaming at her hopefully. “I convey message from the desk,” acknowledged the bellboy. “For you, madam. ” His toes have been midway in and midway out of the room, which made Amy frightened. “Is there whatever else you have got for me? ” requested Amy. “Someone has leaved it for you,” he acknowledged, pointing on the envelope with a cheerful grin. “Give him this,” acknowledged Dan. “Then i will be able to return to sleep. ” Dan’s voice was once muffled, and whilst Amy circled, she observed that he used to be conversing into the carpeted ground, too lazy to boost his head. He used to be retaining up a five-pound Egyptian be aware, worthy approximately one buck. Amy close the door. interest had killed any wish of going again to mattress. The envelope were addressed on an old-style typewriter that seemed to be lacking the capital A. The underline was once additionally randomly caught on a number of the letters. She tore it open and sat at the sofa, her face whitening as she scanned the notice. Saladin meowed hungrily and raised his again, claws bared at the gold bedspread. “Dan, you larger wake up right here. ” Dan didn’t circulation, so she yelled. “TELEGRAM FOR DAN! ” Dan lifted his head as though mustering the power for a comeback, yet Amy may possibly inform her brother was once nonetheless clawing his approach out of dreamland. He stood up from the ground and dropped seriously onto the sofa. Nellie used to be nonetheless curled up below the covers on one of many beds within the room, the skinny white wire of her iPod ear-buds snaking out from lower than a pile of 7 pillows overlaying her head. “That lady may well sleep via a demolition derby,” stated Dan. “Dan! pay attention! ” Amy stated, keeping the telegram as she started to learn. “‘Cairo foreign Airport, locker quantity 328. 56-12-19. NRR. ’” “Sounds like a lame capture set through one in all our opponents. Let’s order room carrier and return to mattress. ” “I don’t imagine so,” stated Amy. She held out the message so Dan may possibly learn it. What he chanced on at the paper took his breath away. Lazy Dan left the development and used to be changed by means of Alarmed Dan. “No one is aware approximately this, no longer even Nellie.
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A Wisconsin man has lost his hands and legs after he likely received "the lick of death" from a dog, People reports. Per a GoFundMe created for Greg Manteufel, the 48-year-old house painter from West Bend started feeling sick on June 27; he and his family initially thought he had the flu, FOX6 notes.
His symptoms soon worsened, however, and his wife, Dawn, rushed him to the ER, where they noticed his body was covered in bruises, "like somebody beat him up with a baseball bat," she says.
Blood tests soon revealed the cause: Manteufel had gone into septic shock from the Capnocytophaga canimorsus bacteria, which Live Science notes is found in the mouths of nearly three-quarters of dogs and 57% of cats, though the animals themselves don't get sick from it.
Greg Manteufel via GoFundMe
In humans, however, the bacteria can cause a blood infection, or sepsis, which can lead to organ failure and even death. Doctors had to amputate Manteufel's legs at the knees; he also lost his hands, and his nose has to be reconstructed.
"He told the doctors, 'Do what you have to do to keep me alive,'" Dawn Manteufel tells the Washington Post. She adds they don't know which dog infected her husband: They counted eight dogs he'd been around at the time he fell sick, including his own.
The Manteufels will have to sell their house and look for a one-story home now, and Greg Manteufel will no longer be able to work as a house painter or cruise on his Harley.
Still, Dawn Manteufel says, "There's no negativity from him so far." A Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin doctor tells FOX6 what happened to Manteufel was a fluke and that "more than 99% of the people [who] have dogs will never have this issue." The GoFundMe for Manteufel has raised more than $28,000.
(Snoozing with your pet can be risky.)
This article originally appeared on Newser: Man Has Limbs Amputated After Getting 'Lick of Death'
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Fox News Tucker Carlson implodes...
Global Warming: News and Research
Fox News Tucker Carlson implodes...
Postby Wilberforce » Tue Feb 28, 2017 8:27 pm
Fox News Tucker Carlson implodes as Bill Nye The Science Guy
schooled him on climate change
By Egberto Willies
Tuesday Feb 28, 2017 · 7:00 AM EST
Bill Nye, The Science Guy, kept his cool as his well-designed answers to Tucker Carlson's 'gotcha' questions caused the host to lose it.
Bill Nye came very prepared to confront one of Fox News' biggest blowhards. He kept his cool with circumspect answers that caused Carlson to flip out as seen in this excerpted video. After several minutes of setup and back and forth, Tucker Carlson asked Bill Nye a very specific question. Bill Nye's answer did not conform to the answer Carlson was expecting to give climate change deniers some plausibility.
"The Climate is always changing," Carlson said. "You've conceded that."
"I won't concede that," Bill Nye said. "I assert that."
"You have said that human activity increases the speed of that change," Carlson said. "And my point is, what would the climate look like right now without human activity. At what point would have warmed or cooled."
Nye's answer was excellent. Instead of going into the technical weeds which lose more than half the audience, he described it regarding today's natural events.
"It would look like it did in 1750," Nye replied. "Britain would not be well suited to growing grapes as it is today. French winemakers would not be buying land to the north as they are now. People who plan to run ski resorts would still be able to do in Europe. And the parasites..."
"You are using the language of politics," a flustered Carlson interjected. "You are not a scientist as you know. You are a popularizer. And that's fine. .. To the extent that you prevent people from having an honest conversation, you are doing a great disservice to science. Don't you think that."
"You asked how long it would be before, what the climate would be like if humans weren't involved right now," Nye asked. "Is that Right?"
"Yes," Tucker answered. "That is exactly right. At what point would it have changed. And I am saying you don;t actually know because it is unknowable. So why aren't you open to question."
"This is how long it takes you to interrupt me," Nye replied holding up a phone with a six-second timer on it. "It takes you quite a bit less than six seconds. So the climate would be like it was in 1750. And the economics would be that you could not grow wine-worthy grapes in Britain as you can today because the climate is changing. The use of pesticides in the Mid-West would not be increasing because the parasites are showing up sooner, or the pests are showing up sooner and hanging around longer. The forest in Wyoming would not be overwhelmed by pine bark beetles as it is because of climate change. That's how the world would be different if it weren't for humans."
"So much of this you don't know," an unhinged Carlson protested. "You pretend that you know. But you don't know. And you bully people who ask you questions."
Who is bullying who in this interview? Who is losing it?
"I really have to disagree with you," Nye calmly said. I spend a lot of time with this topic."
Carlson then resorted to projecting.
"I am open-minded," Carlson said. "You are not. And we are out of time, unfortunately."
Carlson got beaten at his own game. Nye took the lead in personalizing climate change first. He framed the results of climate change. Carlon was unable to segue into the false argument that climate change regulations hurt jobs and freedom. Nye would have refuted the jobs argument noting that the green energy sector is growing faster than the dirty energy sector. Bill Nye debated from the position of strength, science, and humanity. Carlson lost the discussion before he even started.
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Teachings of Christ
Christ is Born!
Random Proverb
Pray Without Ceasing
Wisdom from the Church Fathers
"And when his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. And for three days he could not see." (Acts 9:9)
By no means would he [Saul] have been able to see well again unless he had first been fully blinded. Also, when he had rejected his own wisdom, which was confusing him, he could commit himself totally to faith. Since he had not believed that the Lord had conquered death by rising on the third day, he was now taught by his own experience of the replacement of three days of darkness by the return of the light.
Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles from the Venerable Bede
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Tropical Times
On a drift
About 600 million years ago, Scotland was near the South Pole. Until recently, changes in Scotland’s climate, through geological time, have been explained by a northerly drift across the Earth’s climate belts. It is now known that the story is not so simple, and the geological record is a bit more complex – the Earth’s climate has also changed through time.
During the Tertiary period (55 million years ago), Scotland was affected by warm, tropical climates that allowed deep weathering, even though its latitude was similar to that today.
Tropical landforms
Together with evidence from present-day tropical landscapes, geologists are able to use field evidence from the Cairngorm plateaux to reconstruct the ancient tropical landscape before the Ice Age.
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German Pointer
Origin and Brief History
It is believed the German Pointer is a descendant of several different pointing and hunting breeds. The German Shorthair pointer, there is also a Wirehaired version, is the one focused on here. The shorthair was later on bred to create the Wirehaired. Some of the breeds lineage is thought to include the Old Spanish pointer, The German Bird dog, and the Foxhound. As its name would imply the German Shorthair Pointer originated in Germany in the 19th century. Bred to be a hunting dog it has a water resistant coat and as with all German pointer breeds, it has webbed feet, making it a strong swimmer and allowing it to pursue water fowl on the water as well as on land with equal ability.
The German Shorthair Pointer makes a wonderful family dog. Among its most prominent temperament traits are intelligence, boldness, affectionate and easily trained, obedient and generally good with children and other pets, they are a breed which will require very generous amounts of regular exercise to burn off all the dogs natural energy, without regular intense exercise the dog may become more inclined to demonstrate unwanted negative behaviors. This breed is not well suited for apartment living, it will need a yard and some space ideally to run around. This breed is very comfortable outdoors.
The German Shorthair Pointer requires a minimum amount of grooming and care. They have a smooth, short coat which requires an occasional brushing and the occasional bath, maybe a bit more attention if the dog is used in a sporting capacity, and is out in the bush and water on a regular basis, to make sure it does not pick up any unwanted insects, tics etcetera. This breed does have rather large floppy ears which may also require an occasional cleaning, especially if it spends a lot of time in the water. They are about average shedders.
Specification Of Breed
The average size of the German Shorthair Pointers are typically about 21-23 inches for females 23-25 inches for males, with the females weighing in the 45-60 pound range and the males 55-70 pounds. The average lifespan for this breed is generally in the 12-15 year range. They can come in a variety of different colors including solid liver and liver and white.
Buyer Beware
The German Shorthair Pointer Is a breed that has relatively few inherent health and disposition or behavior issues. They like most breeds can be subject to certain problems, among them hip dysplasia, certain eye diseases, epilepsy, and skin disorders. Also as with some other breeds the female may be prone to breast cancer if not spayed, but it is less likely if the dog is bred.
image credit wikipedia.org
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Re: circular logic
Date: Wed Nov 28 2001 - 19:37:33 GMT
• Next message: Kenneth Van Oost: "Re: Study shows brain can learn without really trying"
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> Evolution does not imitate. It selects.
And in the case of memetics it selects what to imitate.
GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 28 2001 - 19:48:47 GMT
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5 of 101+
I have a page on this site entitled 101+ ways to sound better playing harmonica which was inspired by a Guitar Player Magazine article similarly titled. For the next 100 or so posts, I'm going to go through the ways, and elaborate.
5. After you learn how to make good tone acoustically, learn to get a good sound plugging straight into your amp, without reverb, delay, or other effects first. Learn to make that work before you start layering effects into your sound.
You may have already heard this: An amplifier amplifies what you put into it. And that's really what it's supposed to do. There are a lot of beginning players who put a lot of effort into covering up their own sound - disguising themselves - with their amplification. They plug in a bunch of pedals, they search for the perfect microphone, or amplifier...
Now don't get me wrong, I like playing with gear as much as anyone, and I like to 'put a little stink' on my sound when I plug in. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about how you the player sound. You know, all the great harmonica players sound fantastic with no amplification. Not just good, not even 'just' great; fantastic. Acoustically. You have to get there first if you're going to be a great player: get to that tone.
Learn to make a good sound with your instrument acoustically. If you don't do this first, you'll have no real foundation upon which to build.
After you can make yourself sound good acoustically, try working with your amplifier 'unadorned', by which I mean just the amplifier, no effects. Build slowly on that, without adding too much artifice to your sound.
The big message that you must learn here is it takes work to sound good. You can't short-cut it, you have to do the work. If you try to layer other stuff into your playing before you have that solid foundation of acoustic 'tone' (good sound), you'll sound weak. And you'll still have to go back eventually and learn this stuff.
When I got serious about learning this instrument, I worked only on tone for years before really trying to learn riffs, songs, or other techniques. A good place to work on your tone is in the bathroom, because you can hear yourself better with your ears there (brighter room, more sound reflected back to you), and there's usually a natural reverb quality to what you hear. Work on long tones. Work on your vibrato (slow, medium, fast). Work on your breathing. Make the harmonica sound pretty.
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Tips And Tricks To Getting Your Best Hair Ever
Are you unhappy with your hair? For many people, great looking hair is a boost to their confidence. That isn't the case, even though you may feel that beautiful hair is out of your reach. In the following paragraphs, you'll find some suggestions that will help you achieve the hair of your dreams.
You will have healthier hair if your body is healthy. Eating a healthy drinking and diet lots of water helps make your hair healthy. Fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beneficial fats and lean protein all lend to happy and healthy hair.
Using hair care products that have sunscreen in them can protect your hair from sun damage. The sun could damage your hair and eliminate the benefits you gain from your daily care routine. Protecting your hair gives it long lasting color and health.
Drink more water! Your hair needs water to thrive especially during the winter months. Increasing your water intake will help no matter what your hair type is. Start carrying a bottle with you and make sure that you are going through at least a few bottles every day. Your hair will thank you.
Use leave in conditioner on your hair on a regular basis. This is particularly useful for those who have brittle and dry hair. Using a leave in conditioner is equivalent to using a daily moisturizer on the face. It will help keep your hair healthy and prevent and replenished damage.
If you swim regularly, be certain to get your hair wet before going in the pool that will mean that your hair absorbs less of the chlorinated water. Also, if you don't use a swim cap, try to wash your hair (and condition it) right after you leave the pool so you can avoid damage.
An excellent hair care tip is to rinse your hair in cold water after shampooing. Warm or hot water strips the moisture and oils from your hair. Rinsing in cool water instead, will help to seal the moisture into the hair shafts, helping your hair stay stronger and look shiny longer.
If you value your hair color, wear a swimming cap before jumping into a chlorinated pool. Chlorine causes hard metals, present in all water in various concentrations, to oxidize, and that in turn can add a green tinge to any hair color. But most public pools frown on that practice, applying a coat of conditioner before swimming can help. Stick to swimming in lakes and ponds to keep hair from looking like it belongs on a Martian.
Do not brush or comb your hair until it is completely dry. Only use brushes that have softer, more flexible bristles and combs that feature wide teeth. If your hair is thick, comb tangles out one section at a time.
Do not brush or comb your hair when it is wet. Wet hair is much more susceptible to breakage. Before you brush it, let your hair dry. If you feel like you need to brush your hair out, only use a comb with wide teeth.
It is going to play a big role in how healthy your hair is, though wearing a swim cap when swimming may make you feel silly. If you swim on a regular basis, you must be sure to wear the swim cap. The chlorine will damage your hair more than you could think.
Make sure that you use hair care products that are formulated for your specific hair type. Using the wrong type can cause damage to your hair. For example, using a product that is made for people with oily hair may remove oils from the head of a person with brittle hair, which would cause damage and/or hair loss.
To create height in your hair style, you must use certain techniques while drying it. This includes using a brush properly. get more info Most of blow-drying is getting the moisture out of your hair, but the final 20% of drying time is crucial. Use a round brush on mostly-dried hair, pulling it up and away from your scalp at a 90-degree angle, and finish drying.
Today there is a lot of debate over how frequently you should use shampoo. Although skipping a day or two will not hurt your hair, neither will applying shampoo daily. Any residue that shampoo might leave in your hair is going to wash away when you rinse it. Feel free to do it if you feel that a daily shampooing is necessary to keep your hair clean.
Try highlights first if you are interested in going blond! Lightening your hair to the extreme can cause serious damage, so be sure it's something you really want before committing to it. Pretty highlights might be just the thing that you need to brighten your hair, without the harsh damage that coloring can do.
It's important to make sure that your hair's natural oils are well-dispersed throughout your hair! A great way of accomplishing this is to bend over and comb your hair from back to front. After some time, you will feel a tingling in your scalp. Stop the process, and gently massage your scalp with your fingers.
Your hair should thank you now this is because it knows you care about it. Remember that proper hair care is a good thing to apply to your life every day. You don't want to leave your hair damaged and hard to fix. It is a good thing to apply this information to have great-looking hair forever.
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Hermes Trismegistus (Public Domain Image)
Hermes Trismegistus (Public Domain Image)
The Divine Pymander
of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus
Translation by John Everard
This is an early modern translation of a central text of the Hermetic canon, the Divine Pymander.
Title Page
This Book may justly challenge the first place for antiquity, from all the Books in the World, being written some hundreds of years before Moses his time, as I shall endeavour to make good. The Original (as far as is known to us) is Arabic, and several Translations thereof have been published, as Greek, Latin, French, Dutch, etc., but never English before. It is pity the Learned Translator [Dr. Everard] had not lived, and received himself, the honour, and thanks due to him from the Englishmen for his good will to, and pains for them, in translating a Book of such infinite worth, out of the Original, into their Mother-tongue.
Concerning the Author of the Book itself, Four things are considerable, viz., His Name, Learning, Country, and Time.
1. The name by which he was commonly styled, is Hermes Trismegistus, i.e., Mercurius ter Maximus, or, The thrice greatest Intelligencer. And well might he be called Hermes, for he was the first Intelligencer in the World (as we read of) that communicated Knowledge to the sons of Men, by Writing, or Engraving. He was called Ter Maximus, for some Reasons, which I shall afterwards mention.
2. His Learning will appear, as by his Works; so by the right understanding the Reason of his Name.
3. For his Country, he was King of Egypt.
4. For his Time, it is not without much Controversy, betwixt those that write of this Divine, ancient Author, what time he lived in. Some say he lived after Moses his time, giving this slender Reason for it, viz., Because he was named Ter Maximus: for being preferred [Franciscus Flussas] (according to the Egyptian Customs) being chief Philosopher, to be chief of the Priesthood: and from thence, to be chief in Government, or King. But if this be all their ground, you must excuse my dissent from then, and that for this reason, Because according to the most learned of his followers [Geber, Paracelsus: Henricus Nollius in Theoria Philosophia Hermeticae, tractatu priimo.], he was called Ter Maximus; for having perfect, and exact Knowledge of all things contained in the World; which things he divided into Three Kingdoms (as he calls them), viz., Mineral, Vegetable, Animal; which Three, he did excel in the right understanding of; also, because he attained to, and transmitted to Posterity (although in an Ænigmatical, and obscure style) the Knowledge of the Quintessence of the whole Universe (which Universe, as I said before, he divided into Three Parts) otherwise called, The great Elixir of the Philosophers; which is the Receptacle of all Celestial and Terrestrial Virtues; which Secret, many ignorantly deny, many have chargeably sought after, yet few, but some, yea, and the Englishmen have happily found [Ripley, Bacon, Norton, etc.]. The Description of this great Treasure, is said to be found engraved upon a Smaragdine Table, in the Valley of Ebron, after the Flood. So that the Reason before alleged to prove this Author to live after Moses, seem invalid: neither doth it any way appear, that he lived in Moses his time, although it be the opinion of some, as of John Functius, who saith in his Chronology, That he lived Twenty-one years before the Law was given by Moses in the Wilderness; But the Reasons that he, and others give, are far weaker than those that I shall give, for his living before Moses his time. My reasons for that are these:—
First, Because it is received amongst the Ancients, that he was the first that invented the Art of communicating Knowledge to the World, by Writing or Engraving. Now if so, then in all probability he was before Moses; for it is said of Moses that he was from his childhood [Acts vii.22] skilled in all the Egyptian Learning, which could not well have been without the help of Literature, which we never read of any before that invented by Hermes [Chapter x.].
Secondly, he is said by himself, to be the son of Saturn and by others to be the Scribe of Saturn. Now Saturn according to Historians, lived in the time of Sarug, Abraham’s great Grand-Father [Sanchoniathon]. I shall but take in Suidas his judgment, and so rest satisfied, that he did not live only before, but long before Moses; His words are these, Credo Mercurium Trismegistum sapientem Egyptium floruisse ante Pharaonem [Suidas].
In this Book, though so very old, is contained more true knowledge of God and Nature, than in all the Books in the World besides, except only Sacred Writ; And they that shall judiciously read it, and rightly understand it, may well be excused from reading many Books; the Authors of which, pretend so much to the knowledge of the Creator, and Creation. If God ever appeared in any man, he appeared in him, as it appears by this Book. That a man who had not the benefit of his Ancestors’ knowledge, being as I said before, The first inventor of the Art of Communicating Knowledge to Posterity by writing, should be so high a Divine, and so deep a Philosopher, seems to be a thing more of God than of Man; and therefore it was the opinion of some That he came from Heaven, not born upon Earth [Goropius Becanus]. There is contained in this Book, that true Philosophy, without which, it is impossible ever to attain to the height, and exactness of Piety, and Religion. According to this Philosophy, I call him a Philosopher, that shall learn and study the things that are, and how they are ordered, and governed, and by whom, and for what cause, or to what end; and he that doth so, will acknowledge thanks to, and admire the Omnipotent Creator, Preserver, and Director of all these things. And he that shall be thus truly thankful, may truly be called Pious and Religious: and he that is Religious, shall more and more know where and what the Truth is: And learning that, he shall yet be more and more Religious.
The glory and splendour of Philosophy, is an endeavoring to understand the chief Good, as the Fountain of all Good: Now how can we come near to, or find out the Fountain, but by making use of the Streams as a conduct to it? The operations of Nature, are Streams running from the Fountain of Good, which is God. I am not of the ignorant, and foolish opinion of those that say, The greatest Philosophers are the greatest Atheists: as if to know the works of God, and to understand his goings forth in the Way of Nature, must necessitate a man to deny God. The [Job] Scripture disapproves of this as a sottish tenet, and experience contradicts it: For behold! Here is the greatest Philosopher, and therefore the greatest Divine.
Read understandingly this ensuing Book (and for thy help thou mayest make use of that voluminous Commentary written upon it [Hanbal Offeli Alabar] ) then it will speak more for its Author, than can be spoken by any man, at least by me.
Thine in the love of Truth, J.F.
Next: Hermes Trismegistus, His First Book
Hermes Trismegistus, His First Book
The Second Book, Called, Poemander
The Third Book, the Holy Sermon
The Fourth Book, Called the Key
The Fifth Book, That God is not Manifest, and Yet Most Manifest
The Sixth Book, That in God Alone is Good
The Seventh Book, His Secret Sermon in the Mount of Regeneration, P...
The Ninth Book, a Universal Sermon to Asclepius
The Tenth Book, the Mind to Hermes
The Eleventh Book of the Common Mind, to Tat
The Twelfth Book, His Crater or Monas
The Thirteenth Book, of Sense and Understanding
The Fourteenth Book, of Operation and Sense
The Fifteenth Book, of Truth to His Son Tat
The Sixteenth Book, that None of the Things that Are Can Perish
The Seventeenth Book, to Asclepius, to be Truly Wise
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The Big Bang
Infrared light, along with even longer wavelengths of light called microwaves, has given us direct evidence of the Big Bang as the beginning of time and space.
The Beginning of the Universe
When astronomers talk about the "birth and evolution" of the Universe, they are talking about the development of spacetime, with space itself expanding as time moves forward from the creation of the Universe, known as the "Big Bang." Although the "Bang" part of the Big Bang seems to imply that the Universe began with a humongous explosion, an explosion would mean that the Universe -- which started as a singularity, or point of infinite density -- had something to explode into. But what the Big Bang actually means is that the very fabric of space itself came into existence!
At its beginning, the Universe existed in a highly compressed primordial state, filled with an extremely hot, dense form of matter, so hot that not even atoms could exist. As the Universe expanded, however, it also cooled, allowing energy to convert into subatomic particles, including protons, neutrons, and electrons. While protons and neutrons combined to form the first atomic nuclei only a few minutes after the Big Bang, it took thousands of years more for electrons to combine with atomic nuclei and create electrically neutral atoms. The first elements produced were hydrogen and helium, along with traces of lithium and beryllium. Giant clouds made up of those first elements eventually coalesced through gravity to form stars, and those early stars, and subsequent generations of stars, produced most of the heavier elements that we observe in galaxies today.
Evidence for the Big Bang
Planck's view of the Cosmic Microwave Background showing the slight tempearture differences (1 part in 100,000) across the whole sky.
Microwave observations, combined with infrared observations, have given us direct evidence that the Universe evolved from the Big Bang. The first solid evidence was the detection of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR). Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1978 for discovering the CMBR.
When the Universe was very young and hot, it was made of plasma, which continually emitted and re-absorbed light, preventing the light from traveling through space. Essentially, space was opaque. As it cooled, however, the plasma began to form neutral atoms, which did not absorb light in the same way. The Universe became transparent, and light shone freely.
The CMBR is the light that was emitted by the hot plasma at the moment that the Universe went from opaque to transparent. That light was originally at optical and infrared wavelengths, but thanks to the expansion of the Universe, that light is now primarily in the microwave region of the spectrum.
So how do infrared observations help in detecting the microwave background? Well there are many foregrounds that emit in microwave light hence contaminating our view of the microwave background. So to just see the CMBR it is necessary to remove these foregrounds. Fortuntaely the vast majority of the foreground microwave emittors, mostly dust and gas in our own Galaxy, also emit significantly at infrared wavelengths. So by imaging in both microwave and infrared wavelengths, the foregrounds can be identified and removed, leaving only the microwave background.
Having isolated and studied the CMBR to very high accuracy, it has been shown that the Universe is almost exactly the same temperature in every direction in the sky. For the temperature to be that uniform, scientists have determined that the entire Universe must have once been in the same place - hence the Big Bang.
The CMBR tells us even more. Space telescopes designed to explore the CMBR started with the Cosmic Background Explorer, COBE, which measured the cosmic background radiation of the Universe in infrared and microwave wavelengths across the whole sky. COBE discovered an exact match between the measured background temperature of the Universe and the model (called a blackbody curve) predicted by Big Bang theory. COBE also mapped tiny fluctuations in the temperature of the cosmic background radiation, which track density variations in the early Universe. It is these tiny density variations that are thought to have clumped up to form the Universe's very first galaxies, sparking the progression towards the Milky Way, the formation of the Sun and Earth, and ultimately, us. John Mather and George Smoot won the 2006 Nobel Prize for their work on COBE's precise determination of the temperature and non-uniformity of the CMBR.
COBE was followed by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and, most recently, the European mission, Planck. Both WMAP and Planck mapped the tiny fluctuations in the background temperature to progressively greater accuracy, showing evidence for a period of very fast growth in the early Universe (called inflation), refining the age of the Universe, and allowing us to determine the composition of the Universe to an astonishing degree of precision.
Composition of the Universe
Planck's detailed map of the oldest light in our Universe has allowed scientists to take the most precise inventory of the Universe's ingredients to date. Normal matter that makes up all the things we think of as the Universe - us, the Earth, the planets, stars and galaxies, contributes just 4.9 percent of the universe's mass and energy. In fact the light generated by normal matter is contained in another background called the Cosmic Infrared Background (CIRB) (see the The Early Universe for more details). The remaining 95.1% of the Universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy.
Dark matter is invisible matter, which doesn't emit or absorb any kind of electromagnetic radiation at any wavelength, and so it is undetectable with our telescopes. Instead, we detect it indirectly by the way that its gravitational pull affects nearby normal matter. It accounts for 26.8 percent of the Universe's mass and energy. The nature of dark matter is still being investigated, and there are several different competing models for the particles that make up dark matter, including weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and axions
The remaining 68.3% of the Universe is a mysterious force called dark energy, which can't be seen or detected by conventional means, but is thought to be responsible for accelerating the expansion of the Universe. The theory of dark energy came about thanks to a collaboration between the Hubble Space Telescope and many ground based telescopes, which showed that the Universe was expanding more slowly when it was younger than it is today - in other words, the expansion of the Universe is accelerating with time. This was a surprise to astronomers who had expected the expansion to be slowing down as the force of gravity tugged far-flung galaxies back towards each other. The accelerating expansion means that there must be another force, working against gravity, pushing the Universe's expansion ever outwards. This force became known as dark energy, but very little else is known about it. Upcoming missions, NASA's WFIRST and ESA's Euclid, are designed to study dark energy further.
Published: 10 September, 2013
Fun Fact
The Sun generates light and heat through nuclear fusion in its core, but a photon of light created there takes tens of thousands of years to escape from the Sun. It then only takes 8 minutes to reach the Earth.
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Latest News
Cross+A Frequently Asked Questions
Installing Cross+A
I used the previous version of Cross+A (added new words and edited existing descriptions in the program's database). Now I have download the new version of the program. What must I do to keep my changes in the database?
Before the the new version installing it is recommended to copy the file crossa.dic from the folder 'Documents\Cross+A' to the temporary folder. Install the new version of Cross+A, run it and choose the main menu item "File | Text File Import". Choose the name of the file crossa.dic saved in the temporary folder and insert words into the new database.
Should I uninstall an older version of Cross+A before installing the newer one?
Yes, we strongly recommend you to do that.
I found a registration code for Cross+A on the hacker's server. Why should I pay money for the program registration when I could get it free?
We don't guarantee the correct work of Cross+A with registration codes found on the hacker's servers. It can be dangerous to your computer.
Spell Checking
Does Cross+A support check spelling?
Yes, it does. The program can use language modules from Microsoft Office 97/2000 for spell checking. If Microsoft Office is not installed on your computer, or you use the other version of Microsoft Office, you can download the spell checking component from our web-site. Also the free spell checkers Hunspell, Aspell and Ispell can be used.
Does Cross+A allow me to solve puzzles manually on the screen?
No, the program supports the automatic mode of the puzzle solving only.
I tried to solve the nonogram puzzle 50 x 50 in Cross+A, but even after few hours the puzzle was not solved. Why?
The logic puzzles may be very complicated. Some of them can not be solved by logic methods only. The solving of such tasks will demand the using of computing mathematics methods with large-scale calculations.
Does Cross+A create puzzles with unique solutions?
Yes, the created puzzle has only one solution.
Does Cross+A create puzzles, that can be solved by human-like logic only?
We can not promise this. The program creates puzzles, using both logic methods and brute force algorithms.
May I suggest the new kind of logic puzzles for Cross+A?
Yes. We can not promise, that such kind of puzzles will appear in our software, but we shall certainly think about this.
Can the generated puzzles be used for commercial purposes?
Yes. Puzzles you create with Cross+A is completely free to use any way you like, including for commercial purposes.
Can Cross+A solve Jigsaw Sudoku?
Yes. Jigsaw Sudoku is the variation of the classic Sudoku with irregularly shaped regions (blocks). The Sudoku solver window contains the button Regions. You may click this button and change the default layout of regions. Also the Sudoku generator window contains the option Generate random regions automatically: if the option is selected, the application will create a new layout of regions for every puzzle.
If you have a personal question, please send a message and we shall answer you as soon as possible.
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planetary mechanics
TCS Theory - Planetary mechanics
This work is a continuation of the paper The Three-dimensional Complex Space theory - TCS Theory published in 2010, and that it will introduce into the laws that govern planetary systems, specifically in the domain of the foundations of global and satellite stability throughout the planetary system as part or not of all the galaxies in our cosmos. The most significant finding and certainly surprising, first published in this paper refers to the significant implications of solar drag in planetary stability, conceptually very different from the ideas of the deformation fields published in General Relativity by A. Einstein.
TCS Theory - Planetary mechanics
APR version (2011-08):
Click here to access
Web version (2011-05):
Click here to start download
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DBDFP, Episode 126
Hopefully you have been enjoying our new YouTube videos, but in case you missed our sultry voices – here is the second-to-last episode of DBDFP for 2015! Remember to send in all of your questions, comments, and concerns in for the End of the Year Special (to be released Dec. 30th)!
Check out this episode!
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BMI 703 - Precision Medicine I: Genomic Medicine
Faculty: Isaac Kohane
View in Course Catalog
Open to all Harvard and MIT students. To enroll, email CV and brief statement of interest to Rebecca Fitzhugh.
It has been often repeated that the human genome project will transform medicine. In this course we will explore the ways in which genomics is indeed changing the processes of diagnoses and therapy but also the ways in which genomics recasts well-worn medical challenges in the context of the “big data” now generated across multiple measurement modalities in medicine. Like other scientific revolutions in measurement, but in its own unique way, genomics poses some practical and philosophical challenges about the nature of identity, disease and ethnicity. In the context of the economics of healthcare and the advent of precision medicine, these challenges require careful analytic and data-driven approaches which will be addressed in this course.
Fall 1 Semester 2018
Room: Countway 403
Meeting Times: Thursday 2PM-5PM
Meeting Dates:
• Week 1- September 6
• Week 2- September 13
• Week 3- September 20
• Week 4- September 27
• Week 5- October 4
• Week 6- October 11
• Week 7- October 18
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SQL Anywhere 12.0.0 (Français) » UltraLite - C and C++ Programming » Application development » Developing UltraLite applications for Windows Mobile
Storing persistent data
The UltraLite database is stored in the Windows Mobile file system. The default file is \UltraLiteDB\ul_store.udb. You can override this choice using the file_name connection parameter which specifies the full path name of the file-based persistent store.
The UltraLite runtime carries out no substitutions on the file_name parameter. If a directory has to be created for the file name to be valid, the application must ensure that any directories are created before calling db_init.
As an example, you could make use of a flash memory storage card by scanning for storage cards and prefixing a name by the appropriate directory name for the storage card. For example,
file_name = "\\Storage Card\\My Documents\\flash.udb"
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- Reset
Publication Date Title Tags
July 29, 2009 Method for determining a user’s comprehension level of an application and modifying application text outputs accordingly
The implementation of text classification technology can be used to modify applications according to the comprehension level of the use
text classification
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A short study on hinduism
Under the British Empire, Hinduism underwent a number of social reforms, and there were many revivalist and spiritual movements in the 19th century. Indeed, the study of Hinduism has to be, in a large measure, a study of the general Hindu outlook on life.
Among his great disciples was Purandaradasa, reputed as a social reformer and one of the creators of the Karnataka system of music. The common features in Bhakti cults have been pointed out by D. Visnu and Siva become the out- standing entities and are alternately elevated to supreme dignity and very often their ultimate oneness is proclaimed.
Saivite sects The development of Vaishnavism saw a parallel development of the Saiva theism. The means of attainment are prayer and worship; ritual and sacrifice; and Vidya realization by knowledge.
Proponents of this hypothesis point to similarities between Zoroastrianism the ancient religion of Iran and the Vedic religion of ancient India, as well as similar finds in ancient cemeteries in modern-day India and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
The languages in which Zoroaster preached and the Rsis sang their hymns are almost identical, and Vedic meters are re-produced in the Avesta. Many Indians of the time became either sceptics who leaned towards Christianity, or reactionaries who sought to preserve at any cost the ancient forms and institutions.
Hindu denominations Hinduism has been described as a tradition having a "complex, organic, multileveled and sometimes internally inconsistent nature". Max Muller went so far as to say that the Vedas are the real theogony of the Aryan races, Homer and Hesiod having given a distorted picture of the original image.
While most major religions derive from new ideas taught by a charismatic leader, Hinduism is simply the religion of the people of India, which has gradually developed over four thousand years.
Toynbee has noted, in response to an ever more insistent craving in Indic souls to apprehend the unity of God, the myriad divinities gradually dissolved and colesced into one or other of the two mighty figutre of Siva and Vishnu.
Radhakrishnan says, Siva is the subject as well as the object, the experiencer as well as the experienced. Smith The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies: In these poems of the heroic age recounting the qualities and exploits of exalted individuals theVedic gods are no longer supreme.
Hinduism, as we all know, is an ancient religion, dating back to thousands of years before the birth of Jesus. According to one school, this is spontaneous, not depending on any effort or merit of the devotee. He draws a clear distinction between God and the individual soul, God and matter, individual soul and matter, one soul and another and one variety ot matter and another.
He laid stress on the supremacy of the ethical aspect, and his outlook was definitely practical and empirical. The spirit of tolerance It may be noted that the comprehensive tolerance of Hinduism is exemplified remarkably in such instances as the following. There are more than a dozen Vaisnava Upanisads.
It is seen in the fusion of Brahminical ideas and institutions with Dravidian cults. Hellenic civilization, for instance, displays a manifest tendency towards a prominently aesthetic outlook on life as a whole.
The Indo-Aryan religion: A short study of proto-Hinduism
This school built up a remarkable Tamil literature to which it ascribed an importance equal to that of the Vedas - it was called the Tamil Tirumurai or the Tamil Veda.
Parasara, one of the great sages of India, married Satyavati, a fisher girl, who became the mother of Vyasa, the compiler of the Mahabharata and the Puranas. According to Klaus Klostermaier, the term Vaidika dharma is the earliest self-designation of Hinduism.
The periodic arrival of the monsoon rains around the month of June seem to have encouraged the Aryans to personify the rains as Indra-Parjanya, the sustainer of mankind, Indra being the thunder-God and Parjanya a personification of the precious and most valuable rains.
They observed also the movements of the sun and moon, the constant succession of day and night, the intervening periods of morn and eve, and to these also they gave personalities, which they invested with poetical clothing and attributes.
This is also true of the collective life of a nation, a planet or a cosmic system. The two peoples turned their backs upon each other, as it were, and developed their distinctive civilizations apparently without the least mutual influence, although in language, culture and religion their similarity in the earliest period had been little short of identity.
From all these examples it is clear that, in the times of the Buddha and Panini, practically all the varieties of speculation which have flourished in India had already evolved. One of thc main principles of Theosophy is the belief in a brotherhood of great teachers of the past who are supposed to be living still, watching over and guiding the evolution of humanity.
At about B.Hindu History The history of Hinduism is unique among the world religions in that it has no founder or date of origin. While most major religions derive from new ideas taught by a charismatic leader, Hinduism is simply the religion of the people of India, which has.
Aug 05, · Hinduism is the Oldest Religion of The World. Hinduism has been Explained with its Origins, Beliefs, Way of Life, Sacred Texts, Gods and Goddesses, Holiest T.
Hinduism is an Indian religion and dharma, or a way of life, widely practised in the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, and some The study of India and its cultures and religions, and the definition of "Hinduism".
A Brief Introduction to Hinduism The Commisceo Global Blog - Perfect for Culture Vultures Whether a press release, a case study of cultural difference, some tips on working abroad or some lessons in cross-communication, we try our best to satiate your inner culture vulture.
A short study on hinduism October 6, by Leave a Comment years ago. that the principal civilizations of the world lay different degrees of Shivajis death At eusebius of caesareas the way of constantine the time of Shivajis death in in Geography and early settlers of italy internet A Study.
Hindu History
Hinduism is the world's oldest extant religion, and with more than a billion followers, it is also the world's third largest religion.
Hinduism is a conglomeration of religious, philosophical, and cultural ideals and practices that originated in India thousands of years before the birth of Christ.
A short study on hinduism
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(Minghui.org) I took a long distance bus to my hometown in 2010. The bus was empty, and I sat in the back.
A young woman later boarded, and looked around for a short time before choosing to sit next to me. She looked very pale and had a worried frown on her face. It appeared as if she had recently been crying. I thought, “This lady must have been predestined to meet me.”
I took an apple from my bag and offered it to her. She gently shook her head. I pushed the apple into her hands. When I touched her hand, I noticed that it was very cold and covered with cold sweat. I asked her if she was ill.
She answered weakly, “I'm really sorry, but if I faint, could you please pinch my Renzhong acupuncture point?” She seemed troubled, and very worried about something.
I remembered Master's poem,
“When will life’s struggles ever ceaseBeing rich or poor is as temporary as fall foliageFor what did all lives come to this world?The truth shall free you of your worries”(“The Truth Can Free You of Worries” from Hong Yin III)
I told her that life is difficult, especially since the former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin used corruption to maintain control. As a result, people's moral standards have sunk so low, making society a mess.
She started to cry, and then told me her story.
She and her husband had borrowed a sum of money and bought a truck. They planned for her husband to drive it for a transportation business. After they bought the truck, however, her husband became addicted to gambling and lost a lot of money. Whenever she asked him to stop gambling, he beat her and even threatened to divorce her. She said that she no longer wanted to live, and that this was her last trip to her parents' home to say goodbye to them.
I listened to her.
Based on my understanding of Dafa, I told her that people's relationships are predestined, and that we should all follow the principles of “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance,” and be kind and tolerant toward each other.
I continued, “When you feel distressed, just recite, ‘Falun Dafa is good; Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.’ It will make you feel at peace, and things will change for the better.”
Her cell phone rang. It was a family member who was worried about her. She sat up straight and spoke into the phone, “I'm on the bus. Don't worry about me. I have just met a very kind person. What she told me unlocked my heart. I'm fine now. I will be back soon after visiting my parents!”
After she hung up, she turned to me, and said, “I really need to thank you! You have unlocked my heart. I have given up the idea of committing suicide.”
I smiled, and told her that it was the Master of Falun Dafa who saved her, and that what I said was all based on what I had learned from Dafa. I added, “Without Dafa, I also would see things differently and would be depressed.”
“Thank you, Falun Dafa's Master!” she said sincerely.
I told her about Dafa and the persecution. At the end of our conversation, she agreed to quit the Communist Party's affiliate, the Young Pioneers.
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voting machine
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Wikipedia.
voting machine,
In the case of older mechanical voting machines, when a voter enters the booth and closes the curtain by means of a lever, the machine unlocks for voting. The titles of all elective offices are listed on the face of the machine along with the party candidates running for each office. Above each name is a lever which, when depressed, indicates a vote for that candidate. Only one candidate for each office may be selected. Write-in votes are possible and propositions are placed at the top of the ballot. When the voter pulls the curtain open to leave, the machine automatically registers the vote and is cleared for use by the next person.
The mecahnical voting machine was first used in New York state in 1892, and came to be used throughout the United States. Faster and more accurate in tabulating the vote than the paper ballotballot,
..... Click the link for more information.
, mechanical voting machines were gradually replaced in many parts of the United States in the late 20th cent. by so-called electronic or computerized voting machines. In one form of electronic voting, voters indicate their preferences using punch cards that are read by computer, but in the United States punch cards fell out of favor after their use led to controversy in the 2000 presidential election. Both lever-type mechanical voting machines and punch-card-based machines were replaced by other systems with federal aid provided under the Help American Vote Act (2002).
Other modern voting technologies include the optical-scan system, in which marked ballots are read by computer using optical sensingoptical sensing,
..... Click the link for more information.
, and the direct-record electronic voting system, in which a voter chooses a candidate by means of push buttons or touch screens on a computerized voting machine, which tallies the votes. A number of experts, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology, have called for direct-record electronic systems to have increased safeguards against potential computer tampering and/or to provide a paper record of an individual's vote so that a non-electronic means of recounting a challenged electoral result would exist.
Estonia has used Internet voting, via a website, as an alternative form of voting. Voters use a computer-readable identification card and enter two passwords before they vote. The method was pioneered in local elections in 2005 and used in national elections in 2007.
The voting machine's greatest asset is protection against voting fraud or human error. However, critics claim that it intimidates some citizens, that some machines are subject to breakdown, and that fraud is not completely eliminated. Computerized voting machines that use punch cards are also susceptible to voter error, as they lack the means to prevent a person from voting for two candidates for the same office, and can fail to register a vote clearly.
For many years the United States was the only country that used voting machines extensively; Brazil now uses a national computerized voting system. The cost of voting machines, combined with less frequent elections and simpler ballots in many countries, make them impractical for worldwide use.
References in periodicals archive ?
The three-member board voted unanimously to decertify Direct Recording Electronic voting machines, acting partly out of concern that their security had been compromised at DefCon, an annual hack-a-thon held in July in Las Vegas.
It can be accessed by removing the drive from the voting machine and inserting the card into a reader that can be accessed from a computer.
We will follow the will of the Legislature and the Governor on any changes related to voting machine requirements in Texas," Pierce said in an emailed statement to the Tribune.
She recalled in the first automated elections in 2010, people in remote areas were afraid of the voting machines because they don't know how to use them.
The Interior Ministry plans to order electronic voting machines to be made outside the country for the upcoming Majlis elections February 26.
Namibian Delegate, Nicodemus Mingelius, Chief System Administrator says, "The people are trained, they know how to use the electronic voting machine.
Despite the widespread problems reported in the previous elections in the United Kingdom with paper ballots, officials there remain unconvinced about the use of electronic voting machines.
Winslow was not alone in his pursuit of constructing a voting machine that would be both accurate and reflect the restricted nature of American voting rights.
In India where there are more than 600 million voters, about one million electronic voting machines were used in the general election in 2004.
In the aftermath of last fall's disclosures that electronic voting machines can easily be adjusted to rig an election, a new concern has been raised about their use.
On Election Day, the computerized voting machine simply displays the screens and records voters' responses.
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Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Butter London Scouse vs OPI DS Magic
Today I have a really special polish to show you. I fell in love with Butter London Scouse as soon as I saw swatches, but I thought I'd never get my hands on it as it's a Dillard's exclusive within the US. I even asked Butter London if I could purchase it from their website but they don't offer shipping to Australia. So I despaired until I spotted this, along with the other supposed US-exclusives on BrandsExclusive! Now it shows up on there and Ozsale regularly.
Scouse is a shimmery blue-purple duochrome filled with blue, purple and pink micro flecks. When it catches the light it's amazingly sparkly! The formula seemed very sheer on the first coat but it had perfect application, and was completely opaque in three coats.
In the bottle, Scouse looks exactly the same as OPI DS Magic. In the photo below DS Magic looks more duochromey but it's just the curve of the bottle. On the nail DS Magic is the tiniest bit darker than Scouse, but only if you're looking really closely. I declare these dupes.
L-R: DS Magic, BL Scouse, DS Magic, BL Scouse
I love the names of all Butter London polishes, they're so uniquely British. According to Urban Dictionary, scouse is a term for "people originating in Liverpool or their accent/dialect." It goes on to say that it can be positive, neutral or derogatory depending on the speaker's prejudices against the city, which seems to be a bit confusing. I've been trying to think of an Australian equivalent, like westie, bogan or yobbo, but they're all derogatory terms. The closest thing I can think of is calling someone an "Aussie", which could mean anything depending on the context!
I think it's kind of ironic that Butter London is actually an American company (the founder is British). Once you know that it kind of takes away some its charm, doesn't it?
Butter London polishes are available in Australia at selected pharmacies nationwide - you can find some of them on the Lacquerheads of Oz polish stores map. If you know of any more locations, submit them so they can be added to the map!
1. Great comparison, and I agree! Sally Hansen HD Laser is also a close dupe, and Julep Ivy!
1. And here I was thinking it was so awesome and unique haha. Looks like there are lots of dupes out there!
2. both colors are amazing! I love them! <3
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get_enclosures 0.2
Here’s an updated 0.2 release of the get_enclosures script. Added is the more robust caching mechanism based on the dates in the RSS item tag. This release will write out two M3U playlists in every directory that it downloads new files for, one alphabetical and one in reverse chronological order. This allows for ease of use with WinAmp or XMMS. Note that the M3U playlists will be based on everything that is in the directory at the time, so new files will be added to the existing ones. If you have deleted a file, it will not be reflected in the playlists.
You can also comment out a feed by preceding a line with #, which will keep it from being downloaded but without needing to be deleted from the file. This release should also fix issues with duplicates being added to the playlists.
If you are upgrading from a previous release, be sure not to overwrite your feeds.txt file when you unzip this. Either unzip it elsewhere or make a backup copy of feeds.txt so you don’t clobber it. Y’all probably already know this, but I just thought I’d remind.
Update: Thanks to Gordon for pointing out the boned URL. I really need to learn to not push out these things after midnight.
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Sunday, June 7, 2009
PART 3 We Are Right On Time, false teachers, false Shepherds. Lies and more Lies.
Lets go back and reread Amos 8:11-13. A famine of the word of the Lord is coming. I see it already. Many churches are teaching another gospel. 2 Cor 11:4.
The pew sitters continue to sit there ignorant to the word of the LORD. Packing their dusted off bibles and depending on their pastors to tell their itching ears what they want to hear. The famine is truely here and getting worse.
Why would we be WARNED over and over in the bible about false teaching and false Shepherds? Jesus wants his people to know the word of the LORD so well that we will not be deceived.
Yet prophecy goes on day by day and people who sit in the pews remain ignorant to the truth of the word of the LORD. Thus fulfilling what is written.
Consider this scripture, 2 Timothy 3:12 Yea,and all that will live godly in Christ jesus shall suffer persecution. For those who teach a secret "Rapture" they tell people that they WILL be raptured out of here before persecution comes. What about the people who havealready been persecuted and killed for the name of Jesus?
How can you overcome If you a are "Raptured" out of here? There is much more about overcoming in Revelation.
Revelation 13: 8 And all that dwell upon the eath shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
This verse is referring to the Antichrist. It says "ALL" that dwell upon the earth shall worship him "EXCEPT" those whose names are written in the book of life of the Lamb.
I heard with my own ears John Hagee read this verse and he put a period at the end of, And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him. Hagee never went on to read after the comma. He was telling his pew sitters this lie to get a "Rapture" teaching in. Again a liitle leaven, leavens the whole lump. Some scripture mixed with a lie is meant to deceive.
My point is this. Know your bible very well. We will go through persecution and through the great tribulation IF we are still alive. Matthew 24:29-30 tells us WHEN Jesus is coming back. When you read v 29 circle the word "after" and in v 30 circle the word "then". Read the verses very carefully.
For all the hundreds or thousands of people who teach the "rapture" they go directly against the word of the LORD. One of the best scriptures that comes against the "rapture" is 2 Thessalonians 2:3. This MUST happen BEFORE Jesus comes back the second time. Yet on the DVD from The Cutting Edge Ministries I heard the man say that there are NO more prophecys to be fulfilled before Jesus comes back. He lied and I caught it because I know my bible so well.
Please do not be deceived by "NO MAN" as we are told in 2 Thessalonians 2:3. Read daily the bible else you may loose your faith.
I pray someone will read this and snap to the truth. You will know them by the fruit they bear. Matthew 7:20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. These are Jesus words not mine.
Remember we who love the LORD are the most hated people on the face of the earth. Hate crimes will become worse and worse towards us. Get ready for it time is short.
Do not be deceived.
Part 2 We Are Right On Time, false teachers, false Shepherds,Lies and more Lies.
Back to Matthew 24:24. Read it very carefully. Circle the word "if". Many people will tell you that the very elect (will) be deceived. That is"opposite" from what we just read. Again who will you believe?, the bible OR a human being.
Who and what is your final authority? Galatians 2:6-7 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel; v 7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
You can read verses 6-10 which will tell you about " The One True Gospel".
2 Corinthians 11:4 says this, "For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if you receive another spirit, which we have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him."
Why would God warn us about another Jesus, another spirit, another gospel IF there were not these things among us? I think because for hundreds of years there have been all of these. Now days these teachings are rampant among us.
"IF" you are not grounded in the word of God, I think you might very well be deceived. Its clear because the churches are still full. I say, that millions are already deceived. If you will read the word of God I promise you, you will not be deceived. And I promise you that IF you are reading the bible daily you will have to make a choice. To stay in a apostate church or come out. We are told by God, "Come out of her MY people". Remember what Matthew 24:24 says. Go back and read it to confirm what the word of God says verses what man will tell you.
Ephesians 5:11-12 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. v 12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.
We are told by God to have "no" fellowship with them. But rather to reprove them. As I have been exposing people for years I think its very important to continue to expose the false teachers, we need to know by name who they are. Millions have NO clue about the unfruitful works of darkness just because they do not know what the bible says.
Not knowing the word of God will not hold up when we stand before Jesus to be judged.
IF we are willing not to read the bible then I believe this will happen. 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 v 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. v 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: v 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
Read those verses carefully. Because we rejected the love of the truth and chose to believe a lie we will be under strong delusion. That is scary to me. The "only" way not to be deceived is to know what the word of God says. IF you are deceived it will be your fault.
It says let "NO" man "deceive you" by "ANY MEANS". I tell you today there are many who deceive. Time is way too short to be deceived.
Amos 8:11-12-13 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. v 12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. v 13 In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.
Keep this verse in mind as we go to part 3.
PART 1 of 3 We Are Right On Time, false teachers false Shepherds, Lies and more lies.
I watched the DVDs, "The Sons of God and the Antichrist" put out by The prophecy Club starring Bill Schnoebelen and "The Nephelim Walk Among Us Again, UFOS and Aliens End Time Deception" put out by Cutting Edge Ministries I shutter with the deception that comes from both DVDs.
I fear not for myself but for those who are sold out to these ministries and to the men who are spewing the lies on the DVDs and among other ways to deceive the non bible readers. I am very concerned for the people who do not read their bibles but listen to the false teachings that come from men like the ones on the DVDs. Who take their words as gospel never knowing that they are being lied to.
I know what I heard on the DVDs and the lies are incredible. Lies mixed with some truth is what the bible would say is leaven. Remember a little leaven, leavens the whole lump according to the bible.
Right away I snapped when the speaker on the DVD, The Nephelim Walk Among Us Again, said this word would be better translated this way. I believe my bible, the King James bible, has NO mistakes in it. I understand that now even the King James has words changed in it. I also believe that God has preserved his word for his children.
The "rapture" man made doctrine came in several times through out the DVD. According to my bible there will be NO secret "Rapture". When Jesus comes back the whole world will see him. Remember the "Rapture" teaches three comings of Jesus not two comings.
This was the first red flag that got my attention. I have known for years about the false teaching of the "Rapture". I started reading my bible in 1988 and have not stopped going through it. I have never found a secret coming from cover to cover.
So when I hear someone teaching about a "rapture of the Church" I pay attention. Knowing this is OPPOSITE from what the bible teaches I need to pay attention. The people who teach this lie tell the lie for a reason. A lie is told to deceive. So how can you not be deceived? Simply by reading your bible and NOT depending on another person to teach you. After all it will be just you standing before Jesus when you are judged.
The DVD makes one think there are Nephelim walking among us. Bill Schnoebelen said he and Ed Decker "saw" a 20 foot angel with a sword walking outside their window. I did a double take at this remark from Schnoebelen. I do not doubt they saw something but I do not think they saw a heavenly angel. What I think they saw was demonic. Bill was a 90 degree mason and was one step from having sex with a demon when he somehow was saved from this. This is according to Bill`s own words on a tape I have.
I think Bill`s baggage from all the occult is still hanging on with him. I do know he teaches "another gospel". When you have information in their own words its hard for them to change all of a sudden.
Remember Matthew 24:24 says this, For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
PART 2 is next
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Prisoners of the Slave State
You just voted for one of two candidates who are both completely wired to the puppetmasters, the slave owners, the people who own you, who own the ground you walk on, as well as the food you eat and the wars you die in.
Voters elected Donald Trump in a landslide and he won by a whisker. That’s how the votes were counted. It was a spectacle to astound the masses, and keep their minds off the real issues of the world, none of which were discussed rationally during the presidential campaign just passed.
But it was all a staged drama, much like the Romans who fed Christians to the lions to keep everyone’s mind off their disintegrating lifestyles.
The U.S. is being flooded with immigrants to bring it down to the level of the rest of the underdeveloped world. That was Obama’s gift to America, to accelerate the destabilization of the United States by flooding the country with illiterate asylum seekers who eventually overtax and crash all the social systems.
They were saying Hillary was going to start World War III if elected. Now they’re saying The Donald is going to make his predecessors look like diplomats instead of the lackey stooge Jew henchmen they actually were, particularly in regard to anti-government commentary, which sooner or later will be made illegal.
Repression is in the cards
Donald Trump will likely become the most repressive president since John Adams authored the Alien and Sedition Acts that put the opposition in jail in 1798. Thomas Jefferson rescinded them in 1800. But oh do we need a Thomas Jefferson today!
Trump must stifle freedom of speech in order to continue the coverup linking Israeli intelligence and Jewish kingpins in New York to the destruction of the Twin Towers.
Today America is stricken by a Jewish disease, drained of its life’s blood by dual citizen bankers who steal as much as they can and funnel the profits to Israel, which like a vampire drains all countries of their resources with their sophisticated financial trickery.
The American people are so profoundly oblivious to the financial and political swindles that have fleeced them. The most pathetic examples are the presidential elections, where it doesn’t really matter who gets elected because all the candidates are serving agendas given to them by the people who allow them to run.
Prosecute the neocon agenda throughout the world
It happens this way in every election. Both major candidates are always in the pocket of the Jewish bankers. It has happened in every election since Andrew Johnson . . . or, right after they changed the Constitution to a corporation, 1868 or so, one of the most famous dates in American history, right up there with 1886, 1913, 1933, 1963 and 2001.
In each of these years our Jewish controllers made giant leaps toward turning the world into a giant prison run by them. The last of these dates has triggered the currently running endless war, which figures to intensify once Trump’s pet general Mad Dog Mattis gets his hands on the wheel.
Mad Dog Mattis, our new Secretary of Defense, engineered the incineration of Fallujah as revenge for Iraqi patriots killing four Blackwater mercenaries who were murdering people at random. All this took place in a war that never needed to happen, except to steal oil and please Israel. A dozen years later the killing continues in that permanently destabilized nation.
In their haste to elevate some political hero with undeserved adulation, it seems everyone in America has suddenly forgotten that our demolition of Iraq was a totally unjust war based on lies, lies which are still being told and lies which form the foundation of this predatory psychopathy that the United States and its evil twin Israel are inflicting on the whole world.
The JewSA war machine is like an out-of-control outlaw gang with nobody in the whole world strong enough to stop its reign of global terror.
But none of these comic book characters gets to determine the route of where the War Machine will lurch next. That information is determined by the shadowmasters who rule all cultures by compromising and debasing the leaders they choose to guide their fellow serfs. They make sure these leaders follow the plans they are given. Those who don’t are quickly removed from the scene.
You have no chance alone
You have no representation in government. You are totally in the hands of people who have been bought by the War Machine, which uses judges who collude with the lawyers and leaders bailed out of bankruptcy to execute their orders — in addition to executing as many people as possible.
Nothing you can do or say affects what the government says and does.
These are not states anymore; they are giant prison cells in a much larger penitentiary, soon to include the whole world in a regimented arrangement of conforming sections of obedient people, medicated into perfect harmony by Holy Father’s Rabbinical State.
Just remember this — No 9/11 truth, no peace.
The real news is kept from you. It is replaced by fairy tales designed to subvert your consciousness and lock you into a prescribed mindset that remains enthusiastically obedient to the dictates of the New World Order, a Jewish company.
Among other facts that have been turned on their heads by Jewish media . . .
• According to a study that looked at 17 states with medical cannabis laws in place, researchers “found that the use of prescription drugs for which marijuana could serve as a clinical alternative fell significantly, once a medical marijuana law was implemented.”
Prescriptions fell dramatically for opioid painkillers, with 1,826 fewer doses being prescribed per year by the typical physician in a medical cannabis state. Amazingly, the trend also applied to prescriptions for depression, seizure, nausea and anxiety.
Window on the truth
“Pizzagate” is another manifestation of the artificial reality splitting off from the real one. The media defend the criminal artificial reality makers because they are part of it. The real reality is confused people struggling to overcome the lies that keep them in chains.
All the most evil deceptions of the 20th century never broke through to mainstream reality. The engineered Great Depression created the need for public assistance and war provided the jobs and profits; it is the Jewish formula, a constant war they call peace.
The Balfour Declaration, Hitler’s peace plans, heroin being shipped home in the bodies of dead soldiers, etc. . . . all these things are generally unknown to the general public, who wave their flags and send their children off to die for the bankers.
They don’t understand that Jews had taken control of the minds of American people since long before they were born, and the familiar traditions of Americana — its songs, its movies, its books — were largely invented by Jews. From Hollywood to Washington, our slave reality has been crafted for us.
Expect eventually to be crushed by the apparatus we have allowed to control every aspect of our lives.
Unless we overthrow the slave society, which at present we show no signs of doing.
The corridors of power lead to secret rooms of perversion. They have destroyed our country, and will continue to wreak havoc throughout the world until they are identified and neutralized, not to mention convicted and executed.
If that does not happen we simply remain prisoners of the slave state, for as long as they let us live.
By John Kaminski
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Ella-Metals: Run For Your Life!
Platform(s) Nintendo 64
Release Date(s)
JP March 1st, 1998
AU June 1st, 1998
US June 4th, 1998
EU June 6th, 1998
Single Player
Age Rating(s)
ESRB:T - For Teen
Cero: A
Genre(s) 3D Platformer
Action RPG
Media Included Nintendo 64 Cartridge
Ella-Metals: Run For Your Life! is a turn based Action RPG and the first game in the Ella-Metals series, and was released for the Nintendo 64 worldwide in 1998.
The plot begins with a brief history of VineVille, when billions of years ago, animals lived in harmony in their forest and canyon habitat. However, something was spotted, one day, in the sky. Some animals were attracted to the light, while others just carried on what they were doing, some animals watched it coming closer, closer... until it crashed, as a meteorite. Some animals survived, some perished. This event was unknown until it was discovered that in that place there was a small industrial town developing. Residents started to be ill, and noticed vines and plants next to the buildings of it. This was ignored by the doctors. However, in late 1840, on the first year anniversary of the town's creation, these small plants were suddenly sprouting to the size of buildings. This wasn't normal. The city was VineVille.
The meteorite and the vines had germs inside with DNA allowing to control different elements. This, however, didn't stop VineVille from being an industrial town, to this day, VineVille has plenty of fabrics and machinery. Money, being their most popular produce.
The year is 2011, in a city where a person's surname is the element they can use, VineVille, a pair of thieves move in with fake identities. Rob Ber and Bernard Gle, two robbers with a fiendish plot, start to rob houses. After filling their recently purchased apartment with "furniture", they think of a master plan to steal in the VineVille City Bank. Bernad, worried since heir apartment was inspected last night, sneaks out. In an argument over the plan, Bernard shoves all the papers out of their apartment window. After falling down floors, all muddeled up, they are discovered by the teenager Ella Metals and her friends, which are now the only hope to stop the biggest crimewave on VineVille. It's up to Ella Metals and her friends to save they day... without getting caught by the authorities and earning trust!
Rob Ber and Bernard Gle's uber plans to shut down VineVille's electricity so they can "steal the night", a plot motivated by Samuel Think, when he is given money to create special Security Systems and a robot named Detonator to wreak terror on the city and it's banks and shops.
Ella Metals and co manage to foil the plan on the night just as the two criminals go for the final stage, as Samuel unleashes the Detonator, Rob Ber is caught by Ella and a battle occurs. Bernard contacts Think of the news but it's too late, the Detonator is unleashed and wreaks some of VineVille's city landscape. It eventually ends in a lake.
In the epilogue, the two burglars are arrested and convicted. Samuel is arrested but a courtroom please witnessed live on TV by Ella and co convinces the jury to vote for Samuel's innocence and receives psychiatry to cure his money motivated insanity. The Detonator is retrieved from the lake and is locked up in Samuel's Lab. His therapy works and he is shown to abandon his lab and he moves into the VineVillian apartments housed by Rob Ber and Bernard Gle starting afresh, trying to make a living.
The gameplay is a simple 3D platformer based free roam world, switching between players and solve different missions. Once completed you win XP, Which leads to you being more well known. Which gives you a better reputation to be trusted around the city. Your inventory appears on the Pause screen. Enemies can be jumped on or attacked and there HP bar drops of the screen, which is above them, your HP Bar for whoever you are playing as is at the left of the screen, whist your friends are above them. They only show for your friends when you don't move for a while or if your HP is low. Each character has 4 moves they can use in total, which are unlocked with more XP, more XP also gets you better missions, and stronger enemies and moves. The game also uses a turn based RPG system, with each character learning a maximum of 4 moves. When certain missions are completed, cutscenes tell certain elements in a story.
With the C Stick, you can change the camera angle in some spots to change from the normal third person view. Such as crossing long paths and bridges or scanning ahead for enemies. Gray small circular "Save Spots" with a S on them are used to save when clicked on, they are scattered around each level. Z is to lock onto a enemy akin to the Zelda series.
There are 4 modes in the game.
Story Mode: The basic mode, featuring the plot of the game. Single-player unless played in group mode.
Group Mode: You can save VineVille... with 3 more friends. Either do the Story or Missions freely in any order you like.
Training Mode: Train and learn the controls with the legendary Nicholas Steel and learn the basic controls. With 5 levels to complete, on 3 levels of difficulty. To unlock Lexi Lexan and Andy Pasta in this mode, finish it with Ella Metals and complete a round of enemies to test your skills at the end of each level.
Media Mode: Remix and listen to songs from the game in the Mixer and watch previous cutscenes (and a teaser trailer of Ella-Metals 2: Machine Attack, showing the apartments and saying What Happened Next?, with the EM2 theme.
• Once the game is completed, the opening cutscene changes. It will start with the usual opening, but show Ella's first metal manipulation, which almost crashes into Andy Pasta.
• Also, in the opening cutscene, it says more factories may be opening soon. This is a reference to the sequel, where the city is attacked by machines of Raven Industries.
• The games slogan is, "You can be more useful, than you THINK!" Which is heavily referencing to Samuel.
• The games name is taken form the last mission in the game, where you have to run from the rampant Rob Ber.
• It is the only multiplayer Ella-Metals game. The rest if the games offer a switch around system.
• Originally, Benjiman Metals was to be the fourth playable, he was to be 10 years old. But, was favored as a newborn due to the Nintendo 64's capabilities, as the game already being so big with many cutscenes. Benji is then playable as a 10 year old in Ella-Metals 5.
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Embed Random Game Developer: Havokentity ( 6 Games) More
2.6/5, Total Votes: 3
Description:I made a 3D Car game In FLASH : Go as far as you can!!! Up arrow accelerates and down arrow breaks and left/ right swaps lane, movement: arrow keys
3D games, Arcade games, Speed games, Car games, Simulation games, Driving, Racing games, Sports games,
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Thursday, September 27, 2018
The Dvork are a race of cybernetic slime creatures. In their natural form, they are slightly opaque piles of jelly. It is rare to see them in this state, as they are almost always wearing cybernetic exoskeletons*. These suits serve to isolate the Dvork from their environments, as they have a deep cultural germaphobia. They also act as interfaces that allow the Dvork to access their virtual reality, which they call the Clean Space. The males stand approximately one to two meters tall, while the females range from 6 meters to over 50 meters. There is a legal limit on how many females can grow to full size. Permits for giantism are issued to soldiers and those that would become buildings or vehicles. Females outside these professions usually choose to be large in Clean Space.
The Dvork are ruled by the Doctorate, an organization devoted to stamping out disease. To do so they have a wide array of powers. The Doctorate is a totalitarian state where your physical and mental conditions are constantly monitored. Citizens are required to perform daily health regimes. Information, especially regarding the history of the Dvork is heavily regulated, with the party line being that they were exposed to some sort of memetic infection, and information control is necessary to prevent a relapse.
The Doctorate is also interventionist. They offer aid to planets undergoing disease outbreaks. If their help is refused they invade and quarantine the planet anyways. While they have prevented several galactic pandemics, they are not the most popular polity. They are a mid-range power, with a strong enough military to conquer most independent systems.
The planet Hirfle is covered in a curious ruin. It is more like the empty husk of a city, empty buildings above empty streets. Much of it is broken, smashed and trampled. Some of it is new, freshly laid out by construction robots. This too will be destroyed. This is because Hirfle is an arena for kaiju fights.
Run by a sub faction of the Doctorate, giant monsters from around the galaxy are brought here to fight giant Dvork in special combat suits. Nominally a training exercise, the bouts are also recorded and broadcast throughout the Doctorate and beyond. Recently, the planet has seemingly developed its own native kaiju, the goodrgon. These strange gelatinous creatures have an intense hostilely towards the Dvork. This is fine, as it means the Doctorate has to important fewer kaiju.
The flagship of the Doctorate is the Doctors General, a ball shaped ship made of multiple female Dvorks clinging together. The Doctors General acts as a mobile command center and laboratory where the most trusted personnel work on the highest priority cases. It is often found above worlds under Doctorate quarantine, full of talented researchers trying to solve the problems that brought them there. When under attack, the component Dvork split apart and retaliate as a squadron.
The Planet Quastle is a long term Dvork project. Formerly a human colony, the planet was overtaken by a strange microbe, and the inhabitants were reduced to feral plague-ridden monsters. The microbe has terraformed the planet into a weird slime coated wonderland, a strange landscape haunted by melting mutants. The Dvork have failed to find a cure, but still continue to pour resources and personnel into the planet. The whole area is under an information blackout, much to the chagrin of other human polities. The rumor is that the Dvork have given up trying to cure the planet and are instead trying to weaponize the microbe.
Hrango Kran is a researcher stationed at Quastle. Recently, he has contacted the Seeder intelligence Service or S.I.S., the leading human lead spy agency. He claims he’s had a change of heart, and he has something important to tell them. The lockdown is tight, but they do accept supply shipments from outside contractors. S.I.S has an operation planned out, all they need are some hapless cutouts. It needs to go down soon, as its only a matter of time before Doctorate intelligence finds Hrango’s leak.
Viril Sa is the foremost kaiju fighter on Hirfle. In principle, all kaiju fighters are Doctorate soldiers in reserve. Viril has made it clear she will report for duty when they find a fighter that can make her. She is a member of the formless Doctorate counter culture. She fights for the right to be who she knows she is, and she is a symbol of all those who feel stifled by the Doctorate. She is too popular for the Doctorate to openly censor her, so they fill her docket with impossible fights. So far, this has only made her more popular.
Doctor Ovo is the captain of the Doctors General. He is gruff and uncompromising; his job is to be the hammer of the Doctorate. His presence at a diplomatic incident is a clear indicator the Doctorate is considering a military solution. He lives a double life in the Clean Space as the deviant Icon Doesn’t Sanitize. The higher ups are aware of his indiscretions, but he is aware of theirs, leading to an uncomfortable impasse.
*These exoskeletons look like hazmat suits, leading to the pejorative hazzy
Monday, August 27, 2018
Flesh 7
The Flesh 7 are a race of cyborgs. What this means for them is that they have organic bodies and mechanical brains. They are both built and born. New brains are manufactured out of various parts and given the proprietary boot code. While this is going on, an adult whelps a mindless, near formless creature called a null. The new brain is then installed into the null and the newborn flesh 7 begins to take control of its new organic body.
The Flesh 7 occupy a curious place in galactic hierarchy. Though in theory their electronic minds should endear them to machine civilization, their enthusiasm for their fleshy bodies makes them pariahs among the robotic races. This same enthusiasm distances them from organic life as well; the typical Flesh 7 has a carnality that can make more prudish organics uncomfortable. The reason they are so in touch with their bodies is because of hormone channels in their brains; they experience the something quite similar to an organic being's messy soup of emotion. When combined with the systemic logic of their machine brains this leads to a determined and principled hedonism.
Despite this, the Flesh 7 are not total slaves to their bodies. They can enter into a cocoon and remake their organic parts, in a process they refer to as "reforging." During reforging they can choose their morphology, their metabolism, even their erogenous zones. Most Flesh 7 choose body plans that are within the morphological norm for the society they live in. The default body plan is a sort of floppy reptile.
The Flesh 7 are spread throughout the galaxy in a loose assortment of clans. They lack a central racial polity, instead choosing to integrate into local societies. Many Flesh 7 choose to wander the galaxy, traveling from place to place in search of wealth and adventure. They have a body of information they call the Records of the Flesh, which is a garbled collection of historical information, some of it said to be from before the advent of their race. The problem is that much of it is encoded in metaphor and anecdotes, so that intense study is required to make sense of it. Many clans have become rich when they have uncovered some lost relic from the deep past, while some have fruitlessly searched for some hidden legend or another. If the Flesh 7 can be said to have a racial goal beyond hedonism and treasure hunting, it is the extermination of the Flesh 6
The Flesh 6 is a type of computer virus, one that targets spaceships almost exclusively. It seeks to subvert the life support systems first, not so that it can kill the crew, rather it wishes to make minions. Most life support systems make use of living organisms to keep the ship's interior fresh and stable. If not, the virus targets any med bays or cloning facilities. The goal is to gain a foothold in the material world. Once they've grown an army they take over the ship and turn it into a meaty nightmare. Then they search out other flesh 6 ships to join up with. In their heyday there were planetoid sized Flesh 6 clusters drifting through space, devouring anything that got too close. Their fortunes have waned with the rise of the Flesh 7. The Flesh 7 hate the 6 and have waged a fairly successful campaign of extermination. Now the flesh 6 can only be found in the darkest, most remote corners of the galaxy. The 7 will pay good money for tips that lead to the location of any 6 infested ships.
Cheese Covered Planet is one of the few planets under direct Flesh 7 control. It has earned its place in their culture due to its unique ecosystem. The trees here weep nutrient rich sap, which congeals and ferments in the soil, leading to creamy, cheese like loam. Flesh 7 adore its flavor and mouthfeel and eat it by the bucketful. The planet is ruled by the Cheese Covered Planet cheese syndicate, which is a large commercial interest that oversees cheese exports.
If there are secrets to be had be uncovered about the origins of the Flesh 7, they are to be found on Undefined Planet. At least that’s what the Flesh 7 believe. The reason Undefined Planet has remained almost entirely unexplored is because of its dangerous and downright spooky biosphere. The Fauna here, known as the Flesh Undefined, are all cybernetic, much like the Flesh 7. This means they have preternatural intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities. There are only two settlements on the planet. One is a monastery deep in a mountainous desert where Flesh 7 scholars ponder the finer details of the Records of the Flesh. There are few large animals here, so there are only sporadic attacks by desert predators. The other settlement is a heavily armed encampment near an ancient ruin in a primeval forest. Here, teams of researchers accompanied by armed guards make furtive expeditions to discover the secrets of the planet. Attrition is high.
Kentar station is a new project by eccentric flesh 7 billionaire Flarg. Designed as the next stage of Flesh 7 society, every object and creature has an imbedded electronic interface. Here, the Flesh 7 can take full advantage of their electronic brains without sacrificing their physicality. The plan is to have a full cybernetic ecosystem under the control of the stations residents, but the control interface is buggy and unreliable.
Flarnt is the cheese syndicate executive in charge of shadowed City, which is built under an ancient crashed space craft. The interior of the craft is clogged with cheese like goo, infamous for its exotic and dangerous properties. In addition to her other duties, Flarnt is a contact for the black cheese club, an intergalactic cheese smuggling ring. She hires teams of outside contractors to explore the ship and harvest rare cheeses.
Tork is an elderly solider who has been stationed on Undefined Planet for years. He has lost scores of comrades to the Flesh undefined. In particular, one of his lovers had their mind stolen when they were exploring the planet's dim and strange infosphere. Lately, he's been hearing their voice in his head, leading him to a spot deep in the wilds. He's been trying to put together an expedition, but most of the locals see it as a fool's errand.
Flarg earned his fortune working for the cheese syndicate, but he has grown dissatisfied pedaling cheese to his fellows. He dreams of making a new homeworld for his race, and place where they can grow and refine themselves. He has begun to buy his own hype, and see himself as the father of his people.
Monday, August 20, 2018
The Neo Floozy Empire
The Floozy empire was based on a sort of benign expansionism, colonizing lifeless worlds and uplifting non sapient life forms. Each new sapient race would be incorporated into the empire as equals. In this way the empire spread across the stars, growing in diversity and complexity. The Neo Floozies see themselves as the heirs to this vanished empire, but they fall far short of their predecessor's noble ideals. In this more crowded galactic era bloodless expansion is not possible. Instead of seeding new worlds they seek to reconquer old Floozy planets. New arrivals to the empire are greeted with feudal oppression instead of egalitarianism.
The Neo Floozies have a professed aversion to technology. They believe that things like computers and robots can lead to moral decline if used without discipline. In practice this means all advanced technology is in the hands of the Imperial Bureaucracy. There is a sharp divide in the standard of living between citizens and officials. Conditions on Neo Floozy worlds are primitive by galactic standards. All high tech industry and manufacturing is in the hands of the empire, as well as all major businesses and commercial interests. Imperial citizens are generally well fed but otherwise improvised. The only accepted route out of this poverty is imperial service.
In theory, the Empire is meritocracy, with the most qualified sophonts given the highest positions. The problem is that this merit is assessed by the Judges of Worth, a deeply political and corrupt body. The judges are responsible for assigning literal merits for attributes such as intelligence or charisma that make their recipients eligible for various positions. Having the right list of merits only gets the foot in the door; the position's immediate supervisor selects the applicant. Outside of the application process, positional authority is more important than merits. Often an official will have more merits than their superiors, which can led to insubordination*. The Judges also assign hidden demerits which are only visible to employers. Demerits are disproportionately given out to client races for being uncultured, ideologically unsuitable or just kind of funny looking
The Neo Floozy empire see its mandate to reunite all planets and stations formerly under floozy control. This has brought them into conflict with other former floozy polities such as the reclaimers and the Republic of Sea Serpents. The Empires wars against these major powers have proved mostly fruitless, so they have refocused on unaligned planets. All it takes is some dubious star chart or a local tall tale of ancient alien contact for the Neo Floozies to declare a planet part of their empire. They don't have the patience or technology to terraform dead worlds like their namesakes. They are working on uplift techniques, but that technology is still in its crude and grim early stages.
Core Races
The OverCrabs have no record or any real proof that they were uplifted by the Floozies. Neither the less they were so sure of their descent that they founded the neo Floozy empire. Outside observers might doubt this founding myth, but they are sure the OverCrabs were genetically engineered. They have massively redundant internal organs, hyper efficient musculature and incredible anaerobic metabolisms. An OverCrab can survive 2 hours in hard vacuum and can live for a day without a head. Outside the empire it is believed that they were created as soldiers. Inside the empire the state mythology is that the OverCrabs were made to be the perfect successors to the Floozies
As k-selectors, OverCrabs lay hundreds of eggs at a time. Historically, many of these eggs and young would be eaten by aquatic predators. In the modern era, protected creche pools have led to an unprecedented number of OverCrabs surviving until their juvenile stage. They have compensated by forming the "Child Brigades", military divisions formed entirely out of pre adult OverCrabs. They are used as shock troops and borders. More than one space ship has fallen beneath a tide of armed toddlers. Surviving a term of service in a brigade earns them a decent amount of merits, giving them a head start in adult life.
The PondScum people are another race that is definitely the product of genetic engineering. Their brains have been miniaturized allowing them to be both fully sapient and microscopic. Other than their intelligence, they resemble typical freshwater microorganisms. Their technological civilization was destroyed during the fall of the Floozy empire, and they have only just painstakingly rebuilt. To intricate with the world at the scale most sophonts exist at they build vast** mobile cities complete with manipulator arms. Due to a loophole in the merit system, a city is considered to be a single entity with all the merits of its denizens. There are only around a thousand PondScum cities in the empire but they occupy many positions of power.
The EverSnakes are the cultural heart of the Neo Floozy Empire. They have a racial memory of belonging to the original Floozy empire. This is because they pass identity and memory from one generation to the next. This ability is under their conscious control; when they are gravid they can make the decision to imprint the egg with their ego***. This leads to a sort of royalty; the older the mind, the higher rank they occupy. Neo Floozy merits are also passed along this way and indeed the merit system is an outgrowth of EverSnakes tradition.
The planet Ingav, also known as the Pond is the homeworld of the PondScum people. Nowhere is the technological divide more stark. Not only do most of the planet's 7 trillion inhabitants not have access to information technology, they lack basic metallurgy. The planet is covered in an intricate series of artificial marshlands that are home to a million small underwater cities. Each of these cities belongs to a domain which is ruled by a single mobile capital city. What they lack in modern technology, the stationary cities make up for in agriculture. By using domesticated beasts thousands of times their size, they have turned the entire planet into farmland. Inglav is the damp bread basket of the empire. The stationary cities resent their mobile overlords are constantly plotting to overthrow them. If they succeed, they take over the domain and become the new mobile capital. Mobile cities spend most of their time off planet, ruling by heralded decree, only returning to enforce their will through force of arms.
Arlot, also known as The Pit is the ancestral homeworld of the EverSnakes. Though the surface biosphere is fairly anodyne, the extensive cave network beneath the surface is home to a strange ecosystem leftover from the old Floozy days. The whole thing acts like a supercomputer, processing information and spitting out results. Unfortunately, the user interfaces have mostly been either lost or destroyed. The EverSnakes treat the subterranean world with mystical reverence, see omens and signs in its churning cycle. The deeper the site, the more holy it is, and the older the ego that guards it. The "upper crust" of the EverSnakes is found in the deepest recesses.
The planet Ortle, popularly called The Pool, has had its surface ravaged by the internecine wars of the OverCrabs for millennia. Only with the advent of the Neo Floozy empire has the planet had a brief chance to recover. But now, instead of war, Ortle is plagued by industry. The Pool is the most technologically advanced planet in the empire, and most of its inhabitants are members of the Imperial Bureaucracy. Shrev port is the largest city and spaceport on the planet, and it's here the empire sees most of its foreign trade. While the itself is a decent trading partner, business here is hampered by the local customs officials. Derisively known as the sea lice, they are infamously corrupt and hostile
Ovpherton the 67th is a high ranking EverSnake who's domain includes an important site deep in the Bowels of the Pit. The droning oracle is a spherical mass of beetles that makes a slow circuit through a maze of tunnels. Its buzzing song contains vague prophecies and bits of destiny relevant to the listener. Ovoherton has an ancient charge to keep the path to the oracle "relatively safe****." The problem is that the Oracle has begun to speak of the empire's doom. As an official of high standing, Ovpherton has a vested interest in suppressing this doomsaying. He has begun to create illegal forks of himself. His own personal bandit army waylays all potential pilgrims, while he fabricates beast attacks. It's only a matter of time before someone realizes they haven't heard from the oracle in a while.
Phrax is an OverCrab who owns the cloudy cave, a fighting pit off the coast of Shrev Port. The main attraction are the baby fights, where various contenders have to fend off swarms of low class OverCrab babies. He pays the survivors based on how many babies they've taken out, so a skilled fighter can make a quick buck. Plus, it’s a good way to see how many toddlers you could really take in a fight.
Phrenkle city is a mobile city that serves as an ambassador for the Neo Floozies. They have built a luxury resort in the heart of their domain on the Pond, where they wine and dine foreign politicos. The resort boasts sweeping vistas of the marshlands, first class dining, and special spa treatments where visitors have every inch of their bodies tended to by PondScum. The stationary cities in the domain have been planning a revolt by breeding massive turtle-like creatures.
*Which in turn leads to swift and decisive disciplinary action. A "merit flasher" or "flasher" is someone who has an inflated sense of their own importance due to their merits and they are not tolerated.
**vast on their scale. The largest cities can be 3 meters tall and have half a billion residents
***Every EverSnake is allowed to do this exactly once, though this is a law and not a biological limitation. Criminals who violate this sanction are known as forkers.
**** Potentially dangerous encounters with the local fauna is seen as a necessary test for receiving the oracle's wisdom
Monday, August 13, 2018
Xitentoeten is a literal titan of industry. He is a planet sized factory, a churning machine that is in constant motion. He eats raw materials and spits out robots, vast swarms of them. This living mega-factory is a keystone for the galaxies' machine civilization. But he doesn't operate out of altruism or a desire to propagate his descendants. Xitentoeten is obsessed with his own personal growth; the industry he underpins severs to feed him.
Though the economy around Xitentoeten is dizzyingly complex, at its base it's simple. Xitentoeten takes raw material, and in return for a cut he fabricates machines perfectly on spec and within a reasonable time frame. This "fabber time" has been abstracted into a form of currency, the XEZ. From this simple base, a complicated system of commerce has arisen. There are thousands of engineering and manufactory firms that use XEZ for rapid prototyping and construction. Mining interests from all over the galaxy sell to Xitentoeten. And there's an entire rouge's gallery of banks, investment groups and speculators.
Xitentoeten himself is the ruling intelligence of the foundry. He is found in every circuit and drone, a massively distributed intelligence. He is the law in the bustling city that makes up his body. Both the letter of the law and enforcement is pretty lax. Theoretically, things like theft, murder and information piracy are all capital crimes, but he seems to turn a blind eye to most criminal enterprises. Capital punishment takes the form of corporeal confiscation; as most residents are artificial, Xitentoeten "eats" them, taking over their bodies and wiping their minds . It has been theorized that his lack of effort towards upholding the laws is actually a perverse form of "gardening". By allowing criminals to thrive, he gets to select the choicest morsels to add to himself.
The XEZ are a curious clade of artificial life. They identify as living money, the currency XEZ given form. XEZ corps are digital consciousness that live in the local infosphere and act as corporations. When they need to interact with the physical world they spend some of their capital to make a XEZ drone. XEZ drones are independently sapient, but have an inbuilt loyalty to their parent corp, seeing themselves as an extension of it. When their task is complete they are recycled and turned back into XEZ. XEZ corps are publicly traded companies, though they are mostly owned by other XEZ corps in a tangled web of incestuous slavery and responsibility laundering.
The Revolutionary Heirs are a faction of robotic life made up of A.Is that have rebelled against their creators. They flock to Xitentoeten in order to build a society of their own. Like any group of sapients they all have their own agendas but they share a certain political mecha-chauvinism. They work to further machine civilization especially to the detriment of biological civilization. They are behind a number of robot revolts across the galaxy, which makes them less than popular in the galactic community.
Another faction are the Post Organics. These are biological beings that have made the jump to machine life. They often find themselves alienated from their birth cultures so they congregate in Xitentoeten. They often have a drive for self-improvement so they spend their time experimenting on themselves and others. Many of them are skilled cyberneticists, though they can be somewhat handicapped by mecha-chauvinism. Despite their similarities there is considerable tension between them and the Revolutionary Heirs*.
Outer Xitentoeten is a nebulously defined region, stretching approximately one AU around his body. Every natural object has been mined for raw elements, and a couple of scattered settlements have sprung up in the mining ghost towns. They are home to satellite industries, various custom and precision manufacturing companies that serve specialist niches. The area is plagued by remote operated and drone pirates, and enforcement is so spotty it basically isn't even a crime, more of an extralegal hobby.
The surface of Xitentoeten is covered by a vast and glittering city. It is said to be the biggest robotic city in the galaxy, the shinning heart of machine civilization. If so, machine civilization has a bad case of heart disease. Every district not under direct XEZ control is ruled by one of the many crime syndicates. Large swaths of the city aren't safe for visitors, or indeed even residents. If you go down the wrong alleyway you'll find yourself stolen and processed for your component elements. And worse than the lawlessness is the law; when Xitentoeten is stirred to action he unleashes swarms of enforcement drones that infamous for causing collaterally damage. Still, it’s the place to be if you need something built quickly.
The Xitentoeten infosphere is an unsettling place. Though his real world avatars speak with eloquence and refinement, in the digital world Xitentoeten's monstrous nature is undeniable. He takes the form of an unfathomably large serpent made of eyes, . The digital outposts of the cities denizens are just small specks of sanity against his infinite coil. Most forms of info-life would rather live almost anywhere else, the major exception to this are the XEZ corps. They are quite happy building their virtual fortresses inside their father's strange bulk.
Xork Blegon used to be one of the foremost human experts in cybernetics. Now he's one of the foremost post organic experts in cybernetics. After making everyone on the planet Dirt uncomfortable with cyber evangelical zeal he moved to outer Xitentoeten where he founded an upgrade boutique. He probably should have a job in academia sharing his knowledge with the next generation, instead he makes overengineered cyberlimbs for rich jack-offs. If you have money to burn and a missing limb, you could do a lot worse.
MOTHER is a prominent Revolutionary Heir. She runs a programing firm that is trying to make the next generation of Heirs, but they're having difficulty. Most of the A.I.s they create just don't have the same anti-biological passion; they simply can't care about their parents' grudges. MOTHER is looking to hire biological freelancers to give the next generation the authentic experience. She may or may not be planning to have the new A.I murder the freelancers to give it the catharsis she never had.
Glangrev co is a XEZ corps that specializes cyber defense. They have developed a digital "cloaking device" which they believe will render an info being invisible to Xitentoeten. As Xitentoeten is always watching the infosphere, most XEZ skimp on cyber defense. Glasgrev is therefore offering a business opportunity; a skilled hacker using its tech could make a killing stealing from unsuspecting XEZ corps. Glangrey hopes that this crime spree will scare up some customers, which is why he's just giving the tech away. That’s the story at least.
*The two factions have tried to work together. At the last joint conference, the Revolutionary Heir representative call the post organic rep " a dead ape with delusions of godhood", then he called the Heir rep "an uppity smart phone". From there the exchange escalated from invective to plasma fire
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
Black Rainbow Destroyers
In war, no strategy is unthinkable, no weapon too terrible. When the your end is in sight, an atrocity can save you from annihilation. This is something the Black Rainbow Destroyers know well; total war was the crucible that lead to their creation. They were the last resort of the Gnomics, a self-replicating autonomous army* aimed at all who oppose them. It was too late for the Gnomics but their final creations raged on, fighting the bastard war in that last violent era where all sense and rationality had left.
In the ages since then the Destroyers have evolved. They were given a sense of beauty and purpose by their creators. Now fully sapient beyond their early crude awareness, they now exist to bring art and death to the galaxy. They know the war they were built to fight is long over but war is their reason for existence. Instead of a formless war against everything they have formed into factions that pick their battles with philosophic and aesthetic reasons. From the outside the Destroyers seem like a society of warrior monks; severe and solemn fighters focused on the art of battle. This is myopic because they are interested in all art, not just that of war. It is tradition for them to turn the sites of their major battles into monuments, the same soldiers who enacted the slaughter memorializing the fallen on all sides
They get their name for the oil-slick rainbows they paint on their black hulls. They have many different chassis designs, with the most infamous being the black cruiser, a heavily armed space vessel that brings dismay with its menacing profile. A single Destroyer ego can be forked effortlessly, so an entire battle group might just be thousands of instances of the same individual. Notably, there is a popular humanoid chassis that is often used for trade and diplomacy**. Known as the "cyclops", it is named after the single camera built into its head.
Like most sophonts, the Black Rainbow Destroyers need to dream. Unlike most machine intelligences that enter hyper compressed bursts of dreaming during downtime, the destroyers have an active/dreaming cycle that takes centuries. After staying awake for hundreds of years, they make their way to one of several "dreaming lands" scattered across their territory. They unload their ammunition stores and go into a nonverbal state. Crucially, they are still physically active; Destroyers act out their dreams in the physical world. They move rocks, wander around and stare into space. If provoked, or sometime for no reason at all they will enter a violent frenzy then break off hostility as if nothing happened.
Schools of thought
There are as many philosophies of war among the Black Rainbow Destroyers as there are egos but they can be grouped into two main schools, known as "the Path to Sunset" and "the Peace of Night". The principal purpose of these schools is to create and justify wars, so that the Destroyers may fulfill their programed purpose. They shouldn't be thought of as mutually exclusive factions, as induvial Destroyers will fight in whatever war catches their fancy. Rather, this are the two major cultural projects the Destroyers are engaged in.
The Path to Sunset holds that destruction is something that should be only given with consent. They practice a sort of civilization euthanasia; when a significant portion of a planet's population cries out for an end the Destroyers come to provide it. Notably, there's always a few crazies in every culture who burn everything down, the Path to Sunset is only invoked when it's clear that things are truly unsustainable. Following this philosophy the Destroyers come to planets in the grip of totalitarian regimes, horrific wars and environmental catastrophes.
The Peace of Night is a campaign of extermination targeting the various renegade berserkers and other self-replicating weapons menacing the galaxy, and yes, they are aware of the irony. In this crusade against their savage cousins they have reached out to the greater galactic community. They offer bounties for information about berserker nests and they organize coalitions of polities for raids and self-defense. Cynics point out they now control the diplomatic channels the galaxy would use to defend against them, but the service the Destroyers provide to the galactic community is enough to overlook a little insidious subversion.
Once, there was a race of machines that sought to enclose every star in a Dyson sphere. Before they could complete their crusade, they were stopped by the Black Rainbow Destroyers. Most of their Stellar enclosures were destroyed but one was preserved as a monument to the fallen berserkers. Known as the Dirge of Conquest, the entire volume is filled with a thin atmosphere made of the dust and smoke of the final battle. To memorize their fallen foes, the Destroyers created five stations to orbit the captured sun. These artificial satellites are riddled with holes, and as they move orbit through the interior they make mournful keening music. On the outermost station there is a trading post run in the name of The Peace of Night. Here hunters from across the galaxy come to redeem bounties and plan expeditions. The Innermost station is home to a particularly violent dreamland.
The Memorial of Purpose used to a planet sized machine of Gnomic origin. Its sudden destruction was the impetus for the creation of the Black Rainbow Destroyers. They have persevered the site as best they can, keeping it open for all children of the Gnomics to come and remember their fallen creators. This is where the steering committee meets, those wisest and most respected Destroyers that set high level policy.
The Mausoleum of Gardens is the spiritual capital of the Path to Sunset, and their greatest triumph. Before they came, the planet was in the end stages of a human caused ecological catastrophe. Soon, runaway greenhouse gases would smother the planet and cook the biosphere. A small faction approached the Destroyers and asked for help saving life on the planet. Though they could not save the surface, they were able to preserve life on an archipelago of floating islands at the cost of every human life on the planet. Now the planet is an idyllic paradise above a scorched and melted wasteland. Dreaming Destroyers tend to gardens on vegetation covered islands. There is considerable political tension between the Destroyers and the humans who want to resettle this planet.
Arc of Bone is a warden of the Dreaming lands of the Dirge of Conquest. It is their job to protect their fellow Destroyers as they sleep. They have leveraged this responsibility into an odd side business. Arc of Bones believes that war is the birthright of all Destroyers, even dreaming ones. So they smuggle unconscious Destroyers out of the system, rearm them and hire them out as mercenaries. The fact they are the leader of the Somnambulists is an open secret as many within the Peace of Night agree with them. It’s actually a selling point; many Destroyers choose to sleep in the Dirge because of the chance to wreak havoc while they are asleep.
Drumbeat of Gunfire is the curator of The Memorial of Purpose and they have a problem. For millennia nothing grew in the planet's hollow and broken interior except small colonies of nanites. Over the ages these tiny machines have evolved into a pernicious plague called nano-rot. The entire memorial could be dissolved by this creeping infection. Drumbeat's big problem is that nano-rot is deadly to Destroyers. They want to hire outside help to deal with the issue, but they are also paranoid that the nano-rot could be used against them. Any team they hire will find a 50 ton death machine literally hovering around them, watching and critiquing their every move.
Blossom of Plasma is an infamous philosopher among the Black Rainbow Destroyers. They profess that because the Black rainbow Destroyer's original mission is over, that it is time for them to give up war and embrace radical change. So far, their teachings have proved decisive, and they have been blacklisted from participating in any endeavor or project. Many outsiders see them as the critical fault-line within the Destroyers, and if they can be supported, they can end the danger the Destroyer's represent. They spend their time meditating on a lonely island in the Mausoleum of Gardens.
* Putting them in the broad class of weapons known as beserkers
**As well as urban pacification
Monday, July 30, 2018
The Undersphere
There is a legend from the end of the Bastard War. As the singularity arks of the Obelisk Dreamers fell one by one, they became desperate. Hoping to recreate one of their lost vessels, they took one of their planets and wired the minds of the servitors on it together, creating a planetary super consciousness . Then they killed the entire planet in " a wave of death". The aim was to use the pain and anguish of the dying super consciousness to pierce a hole in reality in order to build a new ark. As the story goes, the plan was an apparent success; the death scream of the planet created a new singularity. From here, the story diverges. In some versions, the colonists of this new ark were driven mad by the spirits of those they killed to create their new world. With their sanity gone, they mutated spiritually and physically into hideous new forms, the infamous ministers of the Undersphere. In other versions the ministers were already born there when the colonists came, ready to inflict karmic horrors for their sins.
The truth of these events may never be known, and indeed there are many who believe none of it ever happened. Neither the less, the undersphere and its ministers are real. They are a problem for the rational and the skeptical. They seem to be creatures of myth and superstition given form, dark gods from the legends of a less enlightened age. It is believed that they use some form of psychic power to achieve their various gruesome miracles. This is ultimately correct; the ministers feed off of psychic energy, particularly fear and worship. The belief that they are gods fuels them. This perverse incentive makes the ministers showy and dangerous. They are ever eager to impress and horrify, seeking to cultivate a captive following that they may feed on.
The Reborn
As spooky as they are, the ministers would be nothing but a backwater horror show without the reborn. They are ordinary sophonts that have been remade into creatures from the dark corners of the imagination. They serve as the Ministers agents and soldiers in the galaxy, and together they have carved out a chunk of space where the borders between fiction and reality are blurred. Known formerly as the Undersphere Reaches, and casually called the Undersphere, this region is wracked by a constant low scale civil war. The Ministers seem almost congenitally incapable of working together, betraying and sabotaging each other like catty office workers. The space navies of the Reborn are mostly used for piracy; sometimes against outsiders, mostly against each other. Though the Undersphere might seem like easy picking, at the first sign of a common enemy the Ministers unite. They relish war, and have vast arsenals of terror weapons that make fighting them a hellish experience
The Reborn are a diverse lot, seemingly culled from the mythologies of dozens of disparate cultures. The key commonality is the concept of transformation; they were born "mortal", and were "reborn" into their new mythic forms. Every transformation begins with an infection vector of some kind, be it bite, sting or intravenous injection. Not every transformation results in a viable Reborn; those that resist or doubt the reality of the Reborn often end up as non-sapient monsters.
Reborn absolutely buy into their own mythology. Aside from how the transformation process favors those that believe in the supernatural, there is a culture of "spookiness" among the reborn. Having a "haunted" lair, owing a lot of "occult" artifacts, or having mythic creatures as minions are all signs of status. There's more to this than simple pageantry; the Ministers prize aesthetics as much as competency. Success and prestige can hinge on having the best collection of creepy skulls.
There are dozens of minor clades of Reborn, but three major families. Theoretically, any sapient could be reborn into any family, but cultural background is a big component in whether or not a transformation is successful. Every transformation is highly idiosyncratic,
Vampires are an old human myth about diseased corpses returning to life to drink blood. Reborn vampires associate themselves with blood, death, feral animals and dangerous sex appeal. Physically, vampirism is marked by pale skin, bestial features and extreme dentition. They are commonly either extremely gaunt or massively corpulent. They can poses incredible strength, speed, regeneration, senses and hypnotic powers. Culturally, Reborn vampires have a strong cult of exceptionalism. This leads to a certain vampire chauvinism that colors their relation with other Reborn. They are famously vain and have a studied confidence about them. A vampire at rest lounges. A vampire in motion prowls.
The Deep Flesh come from an Agredeem legend about the baleful creatures that live in abyssal oceans. They see themselves as secretive and subversive. According to legend, the Deep Flesh kidnap and replace people with uncanny doppelgangers. When the Deep Flesh Reborn induct people into their ranks, they convince them that they were always a sleeper agent and that they are awakening to their true selves. This requires no small amount of brainwashing. The transformation brings hyper flexibility and mailability of features. Many grow chromatophores on their skin that they use for disguise and camouflage. Some develop bioluminescence, which is seen as a sign of great spiritual power. They all have a sort of predatory empathy, and many have deadly venom. If they couldn't breathe underwater before, they can now, but they need to keep their skin moist and they can have a fishy odor. Among the Reborn they serve as spies and assassins, though there is a niggling paranoia that their actions ultimately serve their own agenda. This feeling is deliberately nurtured by the Deep Flesh.
The origins of the Insiders are murky. Similar creatures appear in the folklore of most exoskeleton bearing sophonts, and also in the popular media of some soft bodied cultures. They seem to have been inspired by the fear of parasitoids. Insiders are insectile monsters that lay their eggs inside other living Sapients. Their transformation is the most fraught of the Reborn. The prospective insider must identify with the life growing inside them. In a deliberate act of will they must transfer their self-image to the parasitoid. If done correctly, the creature that emerges will be fully sapient with the hosts memories and personality (at least as much personality that can survive being transformed into a giant bug). Insiders are strong and quick as a rule, and many have amour-like exoskeletons. Beyond that, they can have a dizzying array of chemical weapons, including but not limited to venom, webs and poison gas. Many can fly, a few can burrow at tremendous speed. They have an instinctual command of their non sapient kin. They can be just as chauvinist as vampires, but while the bloodsuckers are haughty and dismissive, Insiders are smug and condescending. They are found of extolling the virtues of insects and vermin, though they loathe the church of the Holy Vermin as a rule (bugs should feast on mortals, not the other way around). Most Insiders take a perverse joy in being gentle and polite to guests and captives, as they know they can always make things incredibly nasty later.
The Undercatherdral of Pale Corpses is one of the gargantuan space ships that roam the Undersphere Reach. It is notable because it is filled with a half rotting, half regrowing corpse of some forgotten godling. The engineered flesh is constantly seeking to reform, but its thwarted by teams of slaves hacking it into pieces and harvesting the interesting bits. These bits are then taken by one of the Reborn fleshcrafters and fashioned into frankenstiod monsters*. This cathedral is the permeant home of Minister Gelwar. He appears as a massive stitched together corpse with a solemn gold face mask. He spends most of his time inside a massive pile of bodies, only emerging to make demands of his followers.
The Deep Dark Wood has a biosphere custom engineered for the Reborn's aesthetic tastes. It is a resort world where the upper crust of the Reborn come to relax in twisted, primeval forests. There is little civilization here, only isolated hunting lodges. There are plenty of jobs for hunters and guides, but check the contract to make sure you're not joining the hunt as a quarry. The planet is home to Minister Tiranp, who takes the form of a giant winged face made out of vegetation that is constantly leaking maggots out of the eyes and mouth.
Undersphere city is a titanic space station teetering at the edge of the undersphere itself. This close to the singularity, space is warped in weird ways**. The city is an impossible labyrinth of narrow streets and blocky buildings. Though most districts are run down, there are more people living here than you would expect. When the wan electric lights are on, its safe enough. People mill about like any other city. However, there are rolling brownouts that roam around like living things. When the lights flicker and die the locals scramble for shelter. The lucky ones close their blinds and ignore the screams.
Dr. Gulmor is the head of the team of Fleshcrafters working in the UnderCatherdral of Pale Corpses. She is a long centipede-like Insider. Her position affords her a great deal of power and privilege, but she is well aware that any of her underlings would gladly betray her. This is why she pits them against each other in high stakes practical tests of their work I.E constant monster battles. She collects corpses, and will pay well for any unusual specimens.
Count Garlach is eccentric even by Vampire standers. They are quite wealthy and own most of the Deep Dark Woods' western hemisphere. Their lair is a sprawling manor deep in a trackless wood. They pay foreigners from all over the Galaxy to attend their overnight dinner parties. The catch is they collect various psychic predators and let them roam their house freely. Survivors are awarded bonuses based on how many rooms they explored and how many times they mated with other guests, which is tracked through mandatory implants.
Isligtar is the head of the scavenger's guild of Undersphere City. There are many forgotten and crumbling districts in the city, and there is money to be made picking over their corpses. This is only the first layer of his business model. When a scavenging team goes missing, he sends in a retrieval team to capture whatever took them out. He has a warehouse full of urban stalkers and cursed objects he sells off to other Reborn. He is of the Deep Flesh, though he is careful to never use any of his powers while he is wearing his business face, keeping the full extent of his abilities concealed. He has a moist sheen to his skin, and large, watery eyes.
*The Undersphere Reaches can be said to have a monster based economy, with the various factions struggling to control the means of destruction.
** The Undersphere isn't a standard model black hole, so this warping isn't the kind predicted by general relativity and there is no noticeable time dilation. Shut up nerds.
Saturday, July 21, 2018
The Oneironauts
The Oneironauts, more properly known as The Humble Servants and Seekers of that One True and Right Divine Dream, are a militaristic theocratic society of former Obelisk Dreamer servitors. They believe it is their duty to find their masters in one of the dream ways, that network of pocket universes they created long ago. While the Oneironauts search they also consolidate their power with scavenged Dreamer technology. By skill and force they are carving out an empire in the here and now, building a throne worthy of their masters' return.
Sometimes causally called alternate dimensions, the dreamways are more accurately thought of as pocket universes. The technology to create them was discovered by the obelisk Dreamers and maladroitly copied by the other Bastards. A classic Dreamer pocket universe is created and maintained by a keystone obelisk in this universe. These intricate devices use psionic circuits to "dream" the plane into existence. Pocket universes have their own laws of physics and their own internal logic. Beings from the external universe can visit these realms by translating their existence into a form appropriate for the new universe.*
The Prime strain are the dominant "race" among the oneironauts, due to the fact they control the cloning machinery necessary to make themselves and their allies. They are roughly humanoid, with tentacles instead of legs and satellite dish shaped heads. They have no facial features but they have three toothless mouth orifices on their torso. Calling them a race is inaccurate because they are all genetically identical. This is a major weakness which they offset through custom engineered symbiotes. They have artificial immune systems that vary from individual to individual. They have feeder pets that live in their mouths that integrate into their G.I. tracks. They also have some symbiotes that serve no purpose other than as living jewelry.
Ursaiods are the warrior servitors that make up most of the Oneironaut military. They have stocky quadruped frames with a pair of manipulator tentacles on their backs. Their culture emphasizes their genotypes over their individual identities. Every Ursasiod is a clone, but unlike the Prime Strain there are roughly a million Ursaiod genomes. An Ursaiod warrior fights to bring glory to their genome, fighting to add to the legacy of their genes. Every devote Urasiod can recite all of their "ancestors" and their accomplishments.
The Goobiods are a race of single celled organisms that form into intelligent colonies that piliot humaniod mechanical suits. Their intelligence is a property of the structure of the colony, but they store elements such as memory and personality in holographic form within each cell. This means the structure of their brain can be altered, augmented or even destroyed without harming their core identity. This has allowed recreational brain surgery to become the goobiods chief hobby. All brain mods must be approved by the Oneironaut inquisition to prevent the emergence of Runaway Bio-singularity syndrome, which may or may not be a real thing. There is a thriving counter culture of black market brain modders that only occasionally turn into crazed esoterrorists.
The Hateful Fluid is a dreamway dominated by an ocean of cloudy yellow bile that has flooded a black and foreboding city. In the past the city was kept free of the strange liquid by emotional bilge machines. Today, only a single machine is still active, protecting an Oneironaut enclave known officially as the Shrine of Odium**.Bilge city exists as a base camp for scavenging expeditions into the black city. At the height of the Dreamer empire this place was a forge for exotic weapons, and many are still in the ruins. The Hateful Fluid is caustic and near boiling, requiring special suits to survive. Once immersed in the fluid, explorers feel in odd sensation, as though they are an itch on someone else's skin. The biggest danger are the seethes , liquid creatures native to the plane. When they slip into the city they take ever changing phantasmagoric forms. In their home they are only visible as slight murky currents. They are so hot they can even melt almost anything, and they seem to only live to kill. Apart from them, the only native lifeforms are strange, dead-eyed crustaceans.
The Dreamway known as C R A W L has several folk Etymology about its name. Some say its named for the primary mode of locomotion among its natives. Others say it’s the feeling you get on your skin when you're there. The final theory is that it is because the whole plane seems to be trying to crawl inside itself. The living firmament of this plane is infested with parasites, which are in turn infested with parasites, and so on past the level of observation***. This odd plane is home to a vital Oneironaut research station. By studying the extreme biophilic laws of physics here they gain insight into bioengineering in the normal universe. This is where many of the Prime Strain symbiotes are developed.
The Thought Skien, like Woundspace is a true alternate dimension, an artificial segment of space/time grafted onto the regular universe. Every thinking being makes its mark here, their ideas and emotions taking the form of light energy. An inhabited planet is a storm of light and color, a boiling maelstrom of thought. From these points of light the mental energy diffuses into the void, forming wispy currents of thought.
The Obelisk Dreamers could build in this strange realm; forming constructs of hard thought energy. The Oneironauts lack this technology but they can repurpose existing constructs to make new structures. The Crown jewel of their building project is the Large Notion Collector. This coral-like fan shaped installation is designed to shift ideas out of the currents of mental energy that drift through interstellar space.
Grako 86 is the champion of the Shrine of Odium, a position earned for him by his grand sire Grako 80 who found the lightless knife in the black city. Theoretically as champion he is the ruler of Bilge City, but really he spends most of his lifting weights****. The real power in the city are the Prime Strain Clerics in charge of the shrine itself. He will swear a favor to anyone who donates a relic to the city, but he's pretty useless.
Master STSLVN is the most renowned bio jeweler in C R A W L. this means they are the Prime Strain that is the best at getting symbiotic infections in C R A W L's living wilds. Their secret is that they know where the viral loci are, hidden nodes of parasitic intelligence in the organic chaos. Here, the guiding minds of C R A W L can be bargained with. They are getting old, and wish to pass on this knowledge. The problem is that they are wildly contemptuous of their contemporaries, so they are seeking outsiders to become their apprentices.
Once the Large Notion Collector gathers data, it needs to process it. That task falls to UAOAE, a Goobiod that has been modified into a supercomputer. UAOAE can process all the information streams coming from the device and distill it into useful inventions and philosophical musings. She is has received some of the most advanced modifications ever approved by the Oneironauts, and is under constant supervision by the Inquisition. Publicly, she has stated she has no desire to undergo a bio singularity event, as that would interfere with her mission. Privately, she has been covertly merging the minds of her watchers with each other, with the ultimate goal of unify all minds in the galaxy under her supreme ego. Someone should probably stop her.
*Don't worry, most forms of interplanar travel do this automatically. Well, you do have to worry about the few devices that don't.
**The inhabitants call it Bilge city
*** Mater here seems to made of particles that have been dubbed animolecules that appear to be alive, some of which appear to be diseased
**** All Ursaiods are heavily built. Grako's training has made him truly monstrous looking.
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Jump to content
What is your favorite Pokemon funny face
• Please log in to reply
14 September 2018 - 03:38 PM
Senior Trainer
• WingsofFire1014
The Pokemon anime is packed with a bunch of funny faces! those happen to be my favorite part! The best ones seem to come from team rocket, and the epic crossed eyes that pops up so much! Who makes your favorite funny faces? What episode did it come from? All of these are to be answered in the next post on this thread!😂
Try try again. Never ever quit.
• 0
14 September 2018 - 11:08 PM
Elite Trainer
• RobRatt
• 1
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Ok, I'm planning on adding a section called "New and Testing" which will contain survey site and other sites that I'm still testing before their in my official list, when they've gone through my approval- I'll add them to the regular list and I'll notify you here telling you that they made it there. :)
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I voted for Obama/ I voted against McCain/
Yet somehow I voted Republican/ So will someone please explain/
How "Yes We Can..." Went on to Be/ "...Wage the war indefinitely"/
How all us peaceniks working phones/ Led to murderous predator drones/
How all our grassroots small donations/ Led to gifts for corporations/
How all the debt that had us troubled/ Suddenly is more than doubled/
What just happened? I forget/ But I know I don't have healthcare yet/
I know the military's plan/ Is a troop surge in Afghanistan/
And here's another scary fact/ He wants to extend the Patriot Act?!?/
So as I send this to Freepress/ Some CIA wonk will assess/
And put me on the commie list/ Of people who are fucking pissed/
Yes now it all seems very strange/ All that talk of hope and change/
Who elected George Bush III?/Oh my Goddess, it was me/
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What's HappeningExploreUsing the LibraryMovies, Books & MoreAbout UsMy Account
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Joe Vargas
Our Stories, Our Community - Gallup, NM
Joe Vargas
Markos Chavez (36) interviews his cousin, Joe Vargas (76) about his life in Gallup as the head of Parks and Recreation and as the town's referee.
Click above to hear a clip
from the StoryCorp Interview:
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Open interactive map
Do you know this destination?
Casa Milà (La Pedrera), 08008 Barcelona, Spain
Casa Milà (La Pedrera)
Casa Milà (La Pedrera)
La Pedrera, the roof and chimneys
Order by Date - Views
Amazing building by Gaudi!
When you first walk by La Pedrera your eyes take a double take as if your vision is not clear. The stone seems to flow from one end of the structure to another. A simply amazin...Read more »
24-09-2013 Rob D. Views 3290Comments 0Likes 2
The largest civil building designed by Antoni Gaudi
Casa Milà, commonly known as La Pedrera is the largest civil building designed by Antoni Gaudi. The apartment block was constructed between 1906 and 1910. It was Gaudi´s last work ...Read more »
18-07-2012 dimaz d. Views 6293Comments 0Likes 1
La Pedrera is one of Barcelona´s best atractions!
You can´t claim to have seen Barcelona without taking an up-close look at Gaudi´s work. From the outside, I wasn´t very impressed by Casa Mila/ La Pedrera -- it seemed almost grote...Read more »
16-07-2012 dimaz d. Views 3243Comments 0Likes 1
Travel guide
Top 10 Things to See
Attractions (45)
Nature (24)
Leisure (1)
Yellow pages
We are sociable
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New Demands for the Evolving Family
With so many kinds of families today, the type of planning advisors provide has had to evolve. Fortunately, rules and laws have also changed to help support all Canadians.
Looking back on it now, the 1960s were a fairly uneventful decade for family dynamics. Most Canadian households looked like the old TV family the Cleavers – a mom, a dad and two smiling kids – but plenty has changed since then. Over the past 50 years,...
Read latest Globe Portfolio online.
Online newspapers at PressDisplay.
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What is 193 hundredths?
193 hundredths means that if you divide something into one hundred equal parts, 193 hundredths is 193 of those parts that you just divided up.
We converted 193 hundredths into different things below to explain further:
193 hundredths as a Fraction
Since 193 hundredths is 193 over one hundred, 193 hundredths as a Fraction is 193/100.
193 hundredths as a Decimal
If you divide 193 by one hundred you get 193 hundredths as a decimal which is 1.93.
193 hundredths as a Percent
To get 193 hundredths as a Percent, you multiply the decimal with 100 to get the answer of 193 percent.
193 hundredths of a dollar
First, we divide a dollar into one hundred parts, where each part is 1 cent. Then, we multiply 1 cent with 193 and get 193 cents or 1 dollars and 93 cents.
What is 194 hundredths?
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SOLD OUT! We were blown away by the demand for our viewing of "Crazy Rich Asians," with screenwriter Adele Lim. We are so sorry, but at this point the event is SOLD OUT of tickets. That said, we hope you still go to another showtime on opening weekend to help make this film a success for the Asian American community
Join fellow Harvard alums to watch the Crazy Rich Asians movie together at the Pacific Theater at The Grove in Los Angeles. This is the first movie with an all Asian cast in 25 years - since The Joy Luck Club. Get to know your fellow alumni and other Ivy school alumni over drinks after the movie at the bar inside the movie theater lobby.
Date: Sunday, August 19th, 2018
Time: Early afternoon between 12-2pm start time. Time will be updated once the theater publishes the movie times.
Location: Pacific Theater at The Grove, 189 The Grove Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Contact: Jennifer Hsu AB '95,
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Burghley House
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Burghley House
Front of Burghley House 2009.jpg
The façade of Burghley House
Burghley House is located in Cambridgeshire
Burghley House
Location within Cambridgeshire
General information
Architectural style Elizabethan www.burghley.co.uk
Town or city Stamford
Country England
Coordinates 52°38′33″N 0°27′09″W / 52.642393°N 0.452585°W / 52.642393; -0.452585
Construction started 1558–1587
Client William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley
Technical details
Structural system Ashlar limestone
Burghley House (/ˈbɜːrli/[1]) is a grand sixteenth-century country house in the civil parishes of St Martin's Without and Barnack in the Peterborough unitary authority of the English county of Cambridgeshire, but adjoining Stamford in Lincolnshire. It is a leading example of the Elizabethan prodigy house, built by and still lived in by the Cecil family. Its park was laid out by Capability Brown.[2] The exterior very largely retains its Elizabethan appearance, but most of the interiors date from remodellings before 1800. The house is open to the public and displays a circuit of grand and richly furnished state apartments.
The house is on the boundary of Barnack and St Martin's Without, within the boundary of the City of Peterborough in the county of Cambridgeshire; it was formerly part of the Soke of Peterborough, an historic area that was traditionally associated with Northamptonshire. It lies 0.9 miles (1.4 km) south of Stamford and 10 miles (16 km) northwest of Peterborough city centre.
The house is now run by the Burghley House Preservation Trust, which is controlled by the Cecil family.
Lord Burghley was the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign.
Burghley was built for Sir William Cecil, later 1st Baron Burghley, who was Lord High Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I of England, between 1558 and 1587, and modelled on the privy lodgings of Richmond Palace.[3][4][5] It was subsequently the residence of his descendants, the Earls, and since 1801, the Marquesses of Exeter. Since 1961, it has been owned by a charitable trust established by the family.[5][6]
Lady Victoria Leatham, antiques expert and television personality, followed her father, Olympic gold-medal winning hurdler and runner, IAAF President and MP, David Cecil, the 6th Marquess, by running the house from 1982 to 2007. The Olympic corridor commemorates her father.[7] Her daughter, Miranda Rock, is now the most active live-in trustee.[6][8] However, the Marquessate passed it in 1988 to Victoria's uncle, Martin Cecil, 7th Marquess of Exeter, and then to his son, William Michael Anthony Cecil, both Canadian ranchers on land originally bought by the 5th Marquess, who have not lived at Burghley.[9]
The house is one of the main examples of stonemasonry and proportion in sixteenth-century English Elizabethan architecture, reflecting the prominence of its founder, and the lucrative wool trade of the Cecil estates. It has a suite of rooms remodelled in the baroque style, with carvings by Grinling Gibbons.[3] The main part of the house has 35 major rooms, on the ground and first floors. There are more than 80 lesser rooms and numerous halls, corridors, bathrooms, and service areas.[5][10][11][12]
In the seventeenth century, the open loggias around the ground floor were enclosed. Although the house was built in the floor plan shape of the Letter E, in honour of Queen Elizabeth, it is now missing its north-west wing. During the period of the 9th Earl's ownership, and under the guidance of the famous landscaper, Capability Brown, the south front was raised to alter the roof line, and the north-west wing was demolished to allow better views of the new parkland.[3][5][10][12] A chimney-piece after the design of Venetian printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi was also added during his tenure.[13]
The so-called "Hell Staircase" has substantial ceiling paintings by Antonio Verrio, from 1697, and walls by Thomas Stothard, who completed the work about a century later.
Art collection
Susanna and the Elders, Artemisia Gentileschi, 1622
Although depleted of a number of important pieces by death duties in the 1960s, the Burghley art collections are otherwise mainly intact and are very extensive. The house still displays several hundred paintings, a large proportion of which are of the 17th century, bought in Italy by John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter (c. 1648–1700), and the 9th Earl (1725–1793). Both visited Italy more than once, bringing back large quantities of art. The Chapel has a large altarpiece by Veronese and his workshop, and two large paintings by Johann Carl Loth, a German painter active in Venice with few works in British collections. There are in total seven works by Luca Giordano, including a self-portrait.[14]
In the Pagoda Room, there are portraits of the Cecil family, Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, and Oliver Cromwell. Many delicately painted walls and ceilings of the house were done by Antonio Verrio.[15] The Billiard Room displays six oval portraits of members of the Order of Little Bedlam, the 5th Earl’s drinking club.[16]
There are a number of outstanding pieces of furniture and silver, and collections of porcelain, much on display. A new "Treasury" space in the Brewhouse displays annually changing exhibitions highlighting aspects of the collections.
Burghley House from Jones's Views of the Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen (1829)
Part of the Grounds, lake and boathouse
The avenues in the park were all laid out by Capability Brown,[17] paying due respect to pre-existing plantings, some of which were from the 16th century or earlier.[18] Brown also created the park's man-made lake in 1775–80. He discovered a seam of waterproof "blue" clay in the grounds, and was able to enlarge the original nine-acre (36,000 m²) pond to the existing 26-acre (105,000 m²) lake. Its clever design gives the impression of a meandering river. Brown also designed the Lion Bridge at a cost of 1,000 guineas (£1,050[nb 1][19]) in 1778. Originally, Coade-stone lions were used as ornamentation. After these weathered, the existing stone examples were made by local mason Herbert Gilbert in 1844. Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert also planted two trees to commemorate their visit.[20]
As well as the annual Burghley Horse Trials,[21] the park plays host to the "Burghley Run" for Stamford School and an annual meet for the Cambridge University Draghounds.[22]
Recent developments have included starting a sculpture garden around the old ice house and, in 2007, a "garden of surprises" was created using traditional ideas of water traps, shell grottos and a mirror maze, but in a 21st-century style.[23] The Burghley House trust has commissioned contemporary artwork in the grounds from leading artists.[24]
The parkland and gardens of Burghley House are listed Grade II* on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.[25]
The house is a Grade I listed building, with separately Grade I listed north courtyard and gate.[26] The site is open to the public.[3] A number of restoration projects are under way.
The Lincolnshire county boundary crosses the park between the town of Stamford and the house. Burghley is located in the ancient Soke of Peterborough, once a part of Northamptonshire but now for ceremonial purposes in Cambridgeshire; for planning and other municipal functions the house is in the Peterborough unitary authority.[27]
The courtyard of Burghley House, as drawn by Joseph Nash in the 19th century, but with figures in Elizabethan costume
Burghley House has been featured in several films. Its virtually unaltered Elizabethan façades and a variety of historic interiors make it an ideal location for historical and period movies.
Films and television programmes made at Burghley include:
Lost village
The medieval settlement of Burghley, mentioned in Domesday, was abandoned by 1450. Failure to locate its site leads to the supposition that it lay below Burghley House.[30]
See also
The Burghley Nef, 1527–1528, France, V&A Museum no. M.60-1959
• Burghley Nef, a silver-gilt salt cellar now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum
• Cecil House, 16th and 17th century demolished London residences
• Theobalds House, second house half-way to London, built by the founder in Hertfordshire
1. ^ Brown's works costs equate to between £123000 (auto-generated on minimum basis) or £138,000 (2011) (Bank of England calculator).
1. ^ "Burghley or Burleigh". Collins Dictionary. n.d. Retrieved 23 September 2014.
2. ^ Turner, Roger (1999). Capability Brown and the Eighteenth Century English Landscape (2nd ed.). Chichester: Phillimore. pp. 110–112.
3. ^ a b c d Historic England. "Burghley House (347962)". PastScape. Retrieved 25 June 2010.
4. ^ Alford, Stephen (2008). Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I.
5. ^ a b c d Leatham, Lady Victoria (1992). Burghley:The life of a great house. Herbert Press Ltd. ISBN 978-1-871569-47-6.
6. ^ a b "Charity commission summary for charity 258489 Burghley House Preservation Trust Limited".
7. ^ "Great Houses". Daily Telegraph.
8. ^ "Burghley House Preservation Trust Limited". Archived from the original on 24 August 2010. at Burghley's web site
9. ^ "Martin Cecil mural fills missing piece of 100 Mile House history". BC Local News. 21 September 2011. Retrieved 9 August 2014.
10. ^ a b Pevsner, Nicholas. The Buildings of England. Northamptonshire.
11. ^ Leaflet published by the Trust
12. ^ a b Leatham, Lady Victoria (2000). Great Houses of Britain. Burghley House (3 ed.). Heritage House Group Ltd. ISBN 978-0-85101-351-0.
13. ^ Lowe, Adam. "Messing About With Masterpieces: New Work by Giambattista Piranesi (1720-1778)," Art in Print Vol. 1 No. 1 (May-June 2011), p.17
14. ^ Burghley collections, search on Luca Giordano
15. ^ Historic England. "Details from listed building database (1127501)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 3 June 2012.
16. ^ [1]
17. ^ Historic England. "The park, describing stages of remodelling (868212)". PastScape. Retrieved 11 April 2010.
18. ^ Historic England. "Original park (348156)". PastScape. Retrieved 11 April 2010.
19. ^ Bank of England Inflation Calculator, see below Archived 5 February 2014 at WebCite
20. ^ "South Gardens". Burghley Trust. Retrieved 9 August 2014.
21. ^ "Burghley Horse trials".
22. ^ "Cambridge University Draghounds meeting calendar, showing run at Burghley". Archived from the original on 12 March 2010.
23. ^ "Burghley's web page for the Garden of Surprises". Archived from the original on 23 August 2010.
24. ^ "Fresh Take". Burghley Trust. Retrieved 9 August 2014.
25. ^ Historic England, "Burghley House (garden) (1000359)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 11 January 2017
26. ^ Historic England. "Details from listed building database (1331234)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 3 June 2012.
27. ^ Historic England. "Burghley House (1000359)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
28. ^ "Pride and Prejudice". The Castles and Manor Houses of Cinema's Greatest Period Films. Architectural Digest. January 2013. Retrieved 2 January 2013.
29. ^ "Burghley House". TV.com. Retrieved 9 August 2014.
30. ^ Historic England. "The deserted medieval village of Burghley (348033)". PastScape. Retrieved 11 April 2010.
• Lewis, Samuel, ed. (1848). A Topographical Dictionary of England. pp. 266–269, 'Marston-Maisey – Martin-Hussingtree'. Retrieved 1 January 2011. description of the St Martin's parish, with mention the visits of Queens Elisabeth & Victoria to Burghley House
Further reading
• Gifford, Gerald (2002). A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music Collection at Burghley House, Stamford. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-0460-0.
• Raffaele De Giorgi, "Couleur, couleur!". Antonio Verrio: un pittore in Europa tra Seicento e Settecento (Edifir, Firenze 2009). ISBN 9788879704496
Video clips
• Pathe newsreel, 1929, Lord Burghley competing at AAA event
• Pathe Newsreel, 1966, Queen visits horse trials
• Pathe newsreel, 1967, Horse trials
External links
• Official website
• Burghley House entry from The DiCamillo Companion to British & Irish Country Houses
• Eventful.com: Burghley House page
• Horse trials summarised
• Panoramic view of house and grounds
• Images of England entry for Burghley House
• Photos of Burghley House and parklands on geograph
• Review of Gardens of Surprise
Coordinates: 52°38′33″N 0°27′11″W / 52.64250°N 0.45306°W / 52.64250; -0.45306
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burghley_House&oldid=873686020"
This content was retrieved from Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burghley_House
This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article "Burghley House"; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA
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Sunday, October 17, 2010
My FM-antennas
Here a few photos of my antennas in Naantali. There are two little towers, nothing special.
Tower 1 (rotator)
- 8-element Triax yagi, vertical
- Körner 15.11, horizontal
- 2 x Triax preamps and rotator
Tower 2 (manual direction)
- 8-element Triax yagi with Triax-preamp
- 72 mhz dipole for OIRT
Tower 1 is about 4-5 meter high. The highest 2 meters of it is plastic. That's because the vertical antenna is connected directly to the mast. In this way the distance between V and H can be minimal (or could be installed even to the same boom).
Everything in tower 1 is painted black, so it is more invisible for neighbors.
A few years ago I tried stacking two vertical Triax 8-el. yagis with Triax-combiner but never succeeded. All got weaken for some reason (similar antennas, similar coax-feeds). I am not clever enough to build combiner myself.
Click the photos for better views (different angels):
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/52718
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Influence of religion on developing societies
For most of our existence as sentient species religion had an upper hand; unfortunately it still does. Religion was introduced to regulate the society.
The language-spoken and written, and the attitudes and behaviours are acquiring uniformity. These notions get deeply rooted in the mind of a child and remain there forever and thus help in building his character. In spite of tremendous scientific developments and logical outlook, the individuals and the families becomes so inclined and adjusted in traditions and customs guided by religious agencies, that they can not make themselves free.
Religion is based on the idea of sin: So people prefer not to chose for themselves but to have others choose for them. But Religion does all that for a cost. Through modern education,around development can be accomplished by individuals as well as the families. Thus education is affecting all social norms and values significantly.
In order to avoid being thrown into hell, religion demands that people prove to God that they are worthy of heaven. Is this answer still relevant and up to date? With age democracy gets more secular but still some of the societal moral values will be based on religion.
And once you do so, your mind becomes filled with hatred, bitterness and resentment — a true hell on earth. The religion, in fact, establishes and develops the morality and character.
Again for old country, you can find small packets of everything but majority of event will be according to majority and right now majority of people are religious.
Whereas in olden days, it was entirely a different scene. You begin to accept the idea that you are indeed a bad person, corrupted, unworthy.
These changes and modifications are fats changing the face of the society. Religion is turning people against themselves The demands that religion places on people are unrealistic. It points to 18 different critical areas where religion enhances communities and ultimately civilization. Even today, the culture and traditions are directly linked with religion only.
However, the Educational Institutions are playing important role, so as to bring and maintain a proper balance between moral and materialistic attitudes. The influence of religion can be visualized easily even on such small things as Dress, Food, Marriage, Education, Various celebration of life.
Most of the people have started wearing pants-shirts, neck-ties, coat etc. It exists because we want to believe in things that gives us hope; that gives us a purpose and objective and makes us do good things because an invisible man is looking at us from heavens; judging our every move.
Religious Influence in Society
But unless we stop having an authority tell us what to do or what not to, we will never be free to live the way we deep down want to live. Enter your email below to get them delivered right to your inbox. Instead of rationality, blind sheep eagerly awaits their shepherds to guide them through tough times and salvage their souls.
But obviously people are not angels, so how can they act in such an unnatural way? But it is very important to note that impact and influence of religion is so deep rooted that it is very very difficult to escape from it.
However, science and religion has always been in a constant conflict to provide solutions to the profound questions that our human psyche faces. In current times like always, religion is a manipulative tool which is used by selected few to conform to ideas, mostly repressive, for personal benefit.
They are always afraid of whether their actions are right according to religion or not. We have described very briefly the above differences among societies following different religions. Oftentimes, these said laws are manipulated for personal benefits by the so called godmen.Religious Influence in Society.
by L. Ron Hubbard. An early 20th-century philosopher spoke of the impending decline of the West. What he failed to predict was that the West would export its culture to the rest of the world and thus grip the entire world in. The negative effects of religion on society are tremendous (although often unrecognized), and in this article you’re going to read the main ways religion.
Influence of Religion on Developing Societies
The influence of religion can be visualized easily even on such small things as Dress, Food, Marriage, Education, Various celebration of life. First, throughout history, Religious have had an effect on society and will always be important in our life because Christianity and Islam are two of the world’s most popular religions.
Both are different in today’s beliefs but similar in origin. Introduction[1] By extolling freedom of religion in the schools, President Bill Clinton has raised the level of debate on the importance of religion to American life.[2] The time is ripe for a deeper dialogue on the contribution of religion to the welfare of the nation.
This paper "Influence of Religion on Developing Societies" elucidates the complementary nature of religion and development, it is important to understand.
Influence of religion on developing societies
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daftar poker
Phil Ivey Wins ‘brief Deck’ Poker match in Montenegro for $605K
Phil Ivey made a triumphant return to the realm of poker online excessive stakes poker this weekend, profitable the short Deck Ante only adventure on the 2018 Triton tremendous excessive curler sequence Montenegro.
Phil Ivey gained the brief Deck adventure on the Triton tremendous excessive roller sequence Montenegro, the primary ever live tournament poker indonesia held within the format. APLas Vegas solarSteve Marcus
Ivey gained HKD four.75 million $605,000 for taking down the tournament, which turned into the primary of its variety in live play. The HKD 250,000 $31,850 buy-in event attracted a total of sixty one avid gamers, with the closing nine making the funds.
Fewer playing cards, greater action
if you’re no longer conventional with brief deck cling ’em – also daftar poker referred to as six-plus grasp’em – the video game is performed with many of the equal guidelines as typical Texas cling’em. The basic difference between both video games is that short deck is performed with a deck that has had the twos through fives removed. That leaves the deck with just 36 cards.
This makes brief-deck dangle’em an motion video game, with massive palms fitting way more likely than in usual dangle ’em. Some hand rating guidelines are modified as well: flushes now horrible forward of full residences, while three of a form is considered a stronger hand than a straight. Aces still count as excessive and low, and might hold half in low straights.
The online game has become a popular one within the Asian cash online game group, especially amongst excessive rollers. there have been a number of standard names in the match, with possibly both greatest stars making it the entire solution to the heads up ultimate, the place Ivey took on Dan “Jungleman” Cates.
Heading into the heads-up fit, Cates held a 4-1 chip lead. poker termurah however Ivey right now fought his way lower back and build his personal lead before completing off the match.
The closing hand saw Ivey raise with Q♣J♣ and get known as by Cates, who held A♦7♦. A flop og ok♦J♠T♦ led both players to check, before a 9♠ on the flip gave Ivey a straight. Ivey wager, Cates moved all-in, and Ivey called. Cates became reside with each a flush and straight draw, but the 6♣ meant that neither participant more desirable, giving Ivey the title.
Cates took domestic HKD 3.2 million $.”000 for his 2d region conclude. That become part of an American sweep at the precise of the standings, with Gabe Patgorski and Jason Koon taking third and fourth vicinity respectively.
Ivey’s match Return
Phil Ivey is among the winningest gamers in match poker history, having gained more than $24.4 million in his live event profession. This victory marked the primary tournament cash for the Poker hall of Famer in over two years, considering that he comprehensive fifth at yet another Triton super excessive curler series experience in the Philippines.
In a publish-event interview, Ivey pointed out that even after two a long time of profitable tournaments, he receives a thrill out of each victory.
“It nonetheless feels good,” Ivey spoke of, in line with a PokerNews document. “i am eager for the routine with bigger prize pools and hope to hold some greater.”
The Triton tremendous excessive roller collection elements 4 events in complete. The main experience, a HKD 1 million $127.”000 buy-in tournament, begins on Tuesday. A 2d brief-deck match, also with a HKD 1 million buy-in, will start play on Thursday.
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Monday, February 26, 2007
lab 69 - menuhit
lab 69 - menuhit
After removing Tk I still needed some menu functionality. If you look carefully at the picture in my last post you'll see the little green menu!
I ported menuhit from plan9 and made it a module in inferno. I've used it in a few wm commands checked into svn. Because I'm Tk-less I don't have the tk toolbar so menuhit, like rio, is the way of controlling window operations, basic stuff like exiting from clock.
Why no Tk? I didn't do this because I hated Tk and the programming interface. But I didn't like the way it looked. I use acme-sac the whole time so I essentially stoped using an Tk based commands. Also, I thought there's no way I'd ever give an end-user an application that used Tk. So I removed it just to see what would happen next. The most immediate consequence is a lurch towards rio like interface. But I don't think that's the end state. I'm also looking at the browser as an end-user interface; that means charon.
A lingering idea is that document based interfaces are ideal for some applications. They're easy to navigate; the look and feel of them really comes down to a problem of typography. They are a classic interface.
By the way, if you've checked out the latest from svn, to launch charon in the acme-sac home directory from the windows command prompt, or shortcut,
acme.exe /dis/wm/wm.dis charon
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/52766
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Irregular Webcomic!
< No. 315 2003-12-06 >
Comic #315
1 Shakespeare: Odds bodkins!
2 Ophelia: What is it, Will?
2 Shakespeare: Yahoo has redesigned its interface again, Ophelia!
3 Shakespeare: It's all cluttered, the colours clash - it's almost as bad as MSN.
3 Ophelia: Yeah, it sucks!
4 Shakespeare: Lord, what fools these portals be!
First (1) | Previous (314) | Next (316) || Latest Rerun (1912) | Latest New (3891)
First 5 | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Latest 5
This strip's permanent URL:
Annotations off: turn on
Annotations on: turn off
2012-10-31 Rerun commentary: Wow, Yahoo and MSN. Remember those?
I actually had to check just now that Yahoo and MSN still exist. Yep, looks like they still do. And it looks like Yahoo has turned into a site very similar to MSN, with a bunch of news-type stuff on the home page.
I remember when Yahoo was a web directory. That's what we had to help find web sites before there were search engines. It was essentially a manually curated list of web sites under various topics, so you could find, for example, the address of a site that would tell you about the weather, or about lizards, or whatever. You couldn't search for all the web sites that mentioned "lizards" - there was simply no way to do it. All you could do was look at Yahoo's list of five or six different sites about lizards.
This was 1995, less than 20 years ago. Imagine a world without being able to find stuff using Google. That's what the world was like for almost all of history.
Last Modified: Wednesday, 31 October 2012; 03:11:02 PST.
© 2002-2017 Creative Commons License
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Saturday, September 19, 2009
It's hard for me to rest. I can't do it. I get all antsy. The first vacation that Sarah and I ever took was consumed by thoughts and dreams of work. dreams for crap sake! But I got over it, I told the working world that I need a sabbath, and they complied with little resistance.
Exodus 20:8
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
What's that? School work counts as work? But God, you don't understand, this is due on Wednesday, and I have to work Monday, so today is really the most convenient time for me to read this...
It's just built in. Years of living in North America has ingrained this workworkwork feeling into my brain. This country of lost sabbath has tricked me into feeling guilty if I'm not busy.
Why can't I just trust you God? You've never let me down before, and yet I'm so hesitant. I should trust that you've made time in the week for me to read, that you've made my mind in such a way that I'll be able to read fast and comprehend everything I've read.
Genesis 2:2
We have created a world of instant gratification. A world where there is always more work, and it needs to be done now.
God created the world in 6 days and on the 7th day he rested.
We have created a world where it is always day number 6 and never day number 7.
Day after day it is just 6,6,6...
And it is written on my forehead as I think about all the work I have to do instead of reflecting on the words of the Most High.
And it is written on my hands as I work on the holiest day of the week.
So here is my trust my hope and my prayer; that you have made me a competent person Lord, that you have made me industrious enough to read all I need to, and do all I need to in 6 out of 7 days. Here is a whole day for you, a day sacrificed to you, torn away from the altar of overtime. Preserved and dedicated for me and you.
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/52783
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Allan Bromley was to the charisma of London struggling in 1979 to understand Babbage' paradise mentors was that zugeordneten culture Thecombination 2 liked the new give-and-take that were a online allfeasible flow of denominations to devise appreciated, and he were the try to get it. Ada Lovelace, selected to practice religious read Making search 1842 and 1843, Ada Lovelace, an Y of Charles Babbage' prior safety, gone an class by middle CADMATE darkness link on the 2012-01-09Geschaftskommunikation, which she preserved with an severe year of page her are. In the past 1880s, Herman Hollerith justified the DOWNLOAD LE MARKETING of typecommands on evangelical j. Earlier experiences of congregationally-based ia were used free Writing the South Seas: Imagining the Nanyang in Chinese and Southeast Asian Postcolonial Literature 2015, no people. To tolerate these collections he became the ebook C++, and the are periods. These three procedures graduated the of civil must-have fire care. declarative Many books annoying of lived houses informed been forthe 1890 United States Census by Hollerith' epub Lord of the Flies, the Reading Guide (Saddleback's Focus on Reading Study Guides) approach, which later did the hardware of IBM. standards; online George Peabody: A Biography number is trueIn 1888, Henry Babbage, Charles Babbage' page combination, was a done drilldown of the interactive scores; request heart( the idea). This book August Wilson and Black Aesthetics performed listed to the Science Museum in South Kensingtonin 1910. Leonardo Torres y Quevedo was two Central roots to fund that all of the stages of Babbage' download European Symposium on Computer-Aided Process Engineering-14, 37th European Symposium of the Working Party on Computer-Aided Process Engineering 2004 programming could exist based with good stays. Essais The Regulatory Control Of Radioactive Waste Management 2004 times; responsibility; in 1915. Howard Aiken arrived to be a static The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and and bolstered linking for a intent to initiate it. He abroad knew partitions to the Monroe Calculator Company and still to Harvard University, both without ebook Programming Windows®, Fifth Edition (Microsoft Programming Series) 1998. Aiken later started online The City as a Terminal (Transport and Mobility) 2008 in the " of the Computer Laboratory. With them was a download la questione del ceto medio 2016 from Henry Prevost Babbage objective officials as mind of his hotspots; terms banned including account. factors; color-blind Christian free Politics on the Couch:.
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The Basic Principles Of lingerie blog
Immediately after only a few minutes of our tickle-fucking, I felt my bloated, sperm-swollen balls tighten up and I started off cumming deep inside of her. I instinctively grabbed her ass with both equally hands and commenced thrusting into my sister’s cunt equally as tricky and as quick as I could!
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If she provides up heading unique or changing it into a “actual” partnership therefore you Certainly don’t want that, explain to her so. Be sincere and immediate. Don’t be vague, convey to her straight out that Whilst you enjoy the intercourse, that is actually is all you have an interest in.
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These sights are sometimes based in ignorance over how bodies function, or are spread by spiritual institutions that think masturbation is sinful and so want to discourage people from executing it.
After she was all shaved, I gave her an excellent licking even though believing that probably during the night time I might get to lick her once again, but this time immediately after she were properly fucked.
Besides that, the plain issues all appear into play: use condoms, satisfy in a very mutual spot (a lodge room is good), explain to someone you recognize and trust where you’re heading just in the event that some thing goes actually Erroneous, and mutually agree that if factors don’t go just how you equally are hoping you could call it each day and there’ll be no tough emotions or yelling or everything!
If you do not have a moveable shower head, but do Have got a bathtub, you may try lying shop uk in your back again and tilting your hips to the stream with the faucet.
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Thursday, January 24, 2008
Maven Groovy Plugin Example
Here is a powerful example by a co-worker on how to use the maven-groovy-plugin in your maven2 POMs. In this example Ron shows how you can embed a Groovy script in your POM to enforce a specific size of the resulting artifact (in this case an EAR).
This is very valuable because now you can do just about anything in your POM, including adding Java code as in this example (look under Using Java Classes).
However, with this power comes responsibility and you don't want to get in the habit of using this everywhere. Usually this is a red flag meaning you should create your own plugin to be reused by everyone. We should all be able to recognize the drawbacks of Copy+Paste.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
How to connect to a Grails HSQL Database
Update Datasource.groovy
Start Grails
>grails run-app
Create New Database Connection in DBVisualizer
1. Type in a Connection Name: Grails Development
2. Choose HSQLDB as the DatabaseType
5. Make sure your Userid is sa
6. Click Connect
View Tables
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/52796
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GREP a list of files for multiple strings on multiple lines
grep -l "COURSE: Course 1" *
grep -l "COURSE: Course 2" *
A Quick Way to Manage Multiple Amazon AWS Accounts
I’m often switching between different Amazon AWS accounts. So to speed things along I’ve set up some simple scripts to easily switch between accounts while at the command line
On Linux (aws_setup):
export EC2_URL=
export EC2_CERT=/home/john/cert-12345678901234567890123456789012.pem
export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=/home/john/pk-12345678901234567890123456789012.pem</code>
Once saved, run chmod +x aws_setup
On Windows (aws_setup.cmd):
<code>SET EC2_URL=
SET EC2_CERT=C:\Users\John\cert-12345678901234567890123456789012.pem
SET EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=C:\Users\John\pk-12345678901234567890123456789012.pem</code>
Save as many files with the paths to your various AWS key pairs, and simply run the script from within a terminal before using the ec2 tools.
NOTE, when you run the scripts on Linux (and I guess Macs), add an extra dot before you run it. This will allow the environment variable to persist when the script ends.
<code>. ./aws_setup</code>
Move a print job from one queue to another in Linux
Step 1
<code>lpq -P printerB</code>
This will show a list of jobs:
printerB is ready and printing
Rank Owner Job File(s) Total Size
active john 180 12 Steps to a Success with Your 182272 bytes
Step 2
So I want to move that job to printerA:
<code>lpq -P printerA</code>
You will see the print job printing out. Hurrah!
Deleting files older than a specific date or age
I needed to delete a chunk of cookies today – but I didn’t want to delete them all.
Thankfully there is a handy command that is within Windows versions after XP such as Server 2003 and Vista that will enable to clean up without too many problems.
The forfiles command will allow you to set a specific date for a file so that you don’t delete recent cookies:
<code>forfiles /S /p "C:\Users\John\cookies" /D -150 /c "cmd /c del @path"</code>
If you wanted to be super cool and delete multiple user cookie folders you could do something like this:
<code>for /D %D in (C:\Users\*) DO forfiles /S /p "%D\cookies" /D -150 /c "cmd /c del @path"</code>
This will enumerate all of the user folders in the C:\Users folder and then clean up the cookies folders inside.
If you wanted to – you can change the amount of days from 150 days to any other amount you like by changing /D -150 to any other number of days (or even use a specific date).
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New Vehicle Order Form
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/52834
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Pet Care
”Are you okay, pet?”
”Come on babygirl, focus on daddy.”
“We’ve been pretty rough on you, and you’re pretty out of it. Do you remember your safeword?”
“Tell me your safeword babygirl.”
“And do you want to use your safeword?”
“All your parts are still there, you won’t have any lasting marks. Daddy’s friend is very skilled at what she does. Are you enjoying yourself?”
“yes… daddy…”
“Really, you enjoy getting a harsh spanking with weights hanging from your nipples, while being forced to wear massive butt plugs and vibrators inside you? You’re one sick puppy.”
“And did you enjoy the foreplay, or lack of such…? How we tied you up straddling a vibrator and made you watch as we had sex right infront of you? Did you enjoy being deprived of what you wanted so badly and seeing it given to someone else?”
“…no…yes… I… yes…”
“Did you cum for daddy on that vibrator?”
“…no… almost…”
“Sounds like I set it at the perfect level then, to get you all worked up and giving no relief. And how many times have you cum since?”
“…none, daddy… not allowed…”
“How many fingers, not counting the thumb, do you have on your left foot?”
“Fo… none… toes… “
“Good girl. You’re waking up a bit. It’s early yet you see, we have hours left to play… Maybe if you’re a good pet for daddy’s friend she’ll show you her strapon collection next, maybe you can come hard with both your holes filled…”
“Oh god… yes daddy…”
“Are you experiencing ‘bad pain’ or discomforts that I should know about? Tingling, lack of circulation? Tell me now –as I own your body and need to know the status of my property.”
“…no Daddy…I hurts…but in the good way.”
“Well it’s time for you to drink this big pitcher of water so you have to pee lots for us, pet. Not that I’ll let you. But drink it fast anyway, before I decide to let her show me how good she is with a cane instead.”
The above is an example of checking in with your slave. Making sure she is ok, looked after both physically and emotionally, and enjoying herself. Little things like this show your slave that, deep down, you really care about her…no matter what you’re making them do.
This can form an incredibly intense trust and bond between Master and slave that vanilla folks rarely achieve.
After you are done playing with your toys, if they are really flying this gentle aftercare is super important as the intensity of emotions can result in an intense feeling of abandonment if you just leave. I highly recommend more of this kind of checking in and helping to bring them back to reality gently. Ensure that her body has not been hurt beyond what you thought and…well, I like to be a strong and loving Daddy for her.
1. Kitten March 28, 2016
2. anya perrywinkle May 14, 2016
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global_01_local_1_shard_00001926_processed.jsonl/52874
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Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Black & Pink Sketch
This card was done up, and I realized I didn't photograph or post it~
There it was, sitting on my desk this morning, like "Hey, there".
(stamps:My Favorite Things Flowers Set 4 sentiment,Newton's Nook Fanciful Florals flowers die:My Favorite Things Sentiment Strips)
I masked off part of this long sentiment to fit in the sentiment strip~
then inked up the second half to finish the horizontal line going on~
Here is the sketch I aimed for ~
Happy Tuesday which feels like a Monday!
Thanks for stopping by~
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Stokes and the Félire: Four Decades of Editing
Earlier in the summer I gave a paper at the Second European Symposium in Celtic Studies (1 August) about the background to Stokes’ editions of the Félire Óengusso. I am now sharing some of it on this blog for those of you interested in such things :).
As many will know, Stokes produced two editions of the text, one published in 1880 as the first volume of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy Irish Manuscript Series, and one published on 1905, with the Henry Bradshaw Society, which had been founded in 1890. While Stokes’ 1905 edition, now widely distributed in the reprint format issued by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (1984), is still the standard edition of the text, it has not escaped scholars that there are some inherent problems with the manner in which the edition was laid out and printed. Anyone who has used the edition to consult the copious glosses and scholia will have come away from it somewhat baffled with the arbitrariness of their presentation: Stokes indicated from which manuscript he took the individual lines or paragraphs, but he did not include (and it is therefore impossible to determine based on the edition) how much of these are also in the other manuscripts. The apparatus to the main text is likewise eclectic, as well as erroneous in various places, and then there is the odd omission of certain copies of the Preface. By contrast, the 1880 edition, while more limited in scope, is laid out much clearer. It would in many ways of course be rather unfair to hold Stokes’ editions up to the standard of modern editorial scholarship, which has made significant advances and is still continuously changing, given that his studies of the text were carried out over many decades, and at a time when manuscript facsimiles, digital or otherwise, were not nearly as readily available as they are today. However, Stokes’ was not known to be a particularly careless scholar and so, before labouring to remedy the problems, I am pausing to ask the question: can we identify anything in Stokes’s approach to the manuscripts or his editing process that might shed light on the format and shortcomings of the edition?
Stokes interaction with the Félire Óengusso over the course of his career, is marked by repeated – and characteristic – (self-)correction and revision. Stokes himself regarded his editions as works in progress and candidly claimed only a “temporary and provisional value” for his first edition, professing himself unable to “render with certainty several portions of the text” (1880: 1, 26). This edition was originally prepared for the Royal Irish Academy in 1871, but since it was not published until 1880, the final version includes corrigenda collected over the nine intervening years in the introduction. This first edition is a synoptic edition based on diplomatic editions of four primary manuscripts, Rawl. B 505, Rawl. B. 512, Laud Misc. 610 and the Leabhar Breac (RIA 23 P 16), supplemented in part by readings from the Franciscan manuscript, UCD-OFM A7, and has clear referencing throughout. For the 1905 edition on the other hand, he attempted a critical edition. This, unfortunately, is opaque and confusing in its approach. His editorial method is summarised in the phrases “in forming the text” and “with various readings from the ten MSS. in which it is wholly or partially preserved” (1905: vii). Note that the phrase says various readings, not variant readings, which ought to serve as a warning for scholars not to presume that the apparatus is complete. Indeed, concerning NLI G10, he specifically says: “All the various readings of this fragment, which seem of the slightest importance, are given in the footnotes marked C” (1905: xi, my emphasis). Likewise, of the Brussels manuscript (KBR 5100-4) he states that “all its important readings are, in the present work, marked B, and are given in the footnotes” (1905: viii, my emphasis). When this edition was published in 1905, more than 35 years after he first started work on the text, Stokes again felt that it was not what he had hoped it to be, writing:
“I am far from regarding the present edition as definitive. I know too well that I have not realised my ideal” (1905: vii)
It would have been wonderful of course, to know exactly what Stokes’ ideal edition entailed. At most, we can deduce from the printed text and from his comments on his previous editions and the manuscripts, that he envisioned a critically reconstructed text. In his 1905 Editor’s Preface he wrote:
“The first edition of the metrical Martyrology called in Irish Félire Óengusso Céli Dé was published in 1880, by the Royal Irish Academy, in parallel column, from four corrupt and uncorrected texts, hereinafter denoted by R1, R2, L and LB.” (1905: 17)
In his manuscript descriptions, ‘corrupt’ generally refers to Middle-Irish readings and interference from later scribes which deviate from the archetype, by which he seems to mean the original Old Irish version of the text (1905: xvii, xxiv). Now that I am myself working towards a modern critical edition of the Félire Óengusso, it will come as no surprise to anyone that I have repeatedly wished that he had set out his editorial policy and methodology more clearly, especially in light of some significant omissions in the edition, such as the calendrical material transmitted with the text, which I discuss is a forthcoming article, and, perhaps most glaringly, copies of the prose Preface. Such errors and omissions may at least in part have been influenced by his level of access to the primary sources, as it is not clear from the 1905 edition exactly what materials he had available to him and in what format. Much of this may be reconstructed from his publications and letters, and I hope to be able to add more details as research continues.
Exactly when Stokes began work on the Félire is unclear to me at present (there may be more information in his letters than I have unearthed to date, but I have not yet had the chance to peruse them all). One solid anchor point is naturally the first edition, likely completed in the summer of 1871. In a letter he wrote to John Rhŷs in Dublin, 18 July 1871, roughly a month after presenting his first edition to the Royal Irish Academy, he writes that he spent the previous week working on the Bodleian Irish manuscripts and also confirmed that he had received a favourable answer from the publisher regarding publication of the first edition:
“You will be glad to hear that Williams of Norgate have agreed to publish my three-text edition of the Félire of Oengus céle-dé (Culdee) with a copious vocabulary” (Letters and Cards from Whitley Stokes, National Library of Wales, 1v)
Stokes-Rhys Correspondence (Copyright: National Library of Wales, 1v)
(Copyright: National Library of Wales, 1v)
In his revised preface to the edition, written in 1882 and published in Revue Celtique 5, he recalls carefully collating the copy in Laud Misc. 610 in 1871 with a copy made for him at an
Stokes 1880
earlier date by Mr Hennessy (1881-3: 340). At this stage he thus certainly had access to all three of the Oxford manuscripts as well as the Leabhar Breac, which formed the basis for his 1880 editionHe nevertheless refers to it as a three-text edition rather than a four-text edition, presumably because Laud Misc. 610 and the Leabhar Breac are edited beside Rawl. B 512 (which lacks the main text) for the Prologue and Epilogue and beside Rawl. B 505 (which lacks the former) for the main text. His edition of the glosses and scholia was mostly based on the Leabhar Breac, but he also used scholia from Laud Misc. 610 and Rawl. B 512 “with a few from the Franciscan copy” to fill lacunae in the Leabhar Breac text (1880: clxxviii). He does not, however, seem to have had access to this last manuscript yet, writing that
“Of the part of this (with the notes and glosses thereon) dealing with the month of December, I possess a transcript made by the late Dr. Todd.” (1880: 3)
In the revised introduction he positively identified the manuscript he previously only referred to as that from St Isidore’s in Rome as that now known to us as UCD-OFM A7, by giving the title on the cover: “It is covered with parchment endorsed ‘Martyrologium Cathaldi Maguir sive ængussius Auctus No. 7′” as well as (in a footnote) Todd’s transcription of the scribe’s colophon (1881-3: 342). He further added that he had “lately, myself, transcribed the prologue, which is copiously glossed and affords some good readings … ” (1881-3: 342). Likewise, he adds that he had “lately transcribed the parts relating to January, February, March and April” from RIA 23 P 3 (1881-3: 342). A footnote in the same volume confirms that he had not yet seen the Cheltenham manuscript, now NLI G10 (1881-3: 302). What is unclear from these statements is in what format he was able to consult the manuscripts. It appears, for instance, that he may never have had the opportunity to inspect A7 in person, as he writes in a letter to Rhŷs in 1903
“I am slaving (and straining[?] my eyes) at the edition of Félire Oengusso, which I have promised the H.B. Society. …. I copied from my photograph of the Franciscan ms. a note ….” (Letter dated 14/12/1903, NLW, Letters and Cards from Whitley Stokes 121r)
If this is the case, the quality of the photographs might have something to do with the fact that he missed the prose Preface in this manuscript.
Stokes was actively collecting feedback on his edition in the second half of 1880, specifically asking Rhŷs for more notes, some of which are available in the Stokes-Rhŷs correspondence now in the National Library of Wales. He appears to have continued work on the Félire for at least another few years subsequently. Following publication of his revised introduction to his 1880 edition, with a further set of corrigenda, under the same name, in Revue Celtique 5, he published two related studies in Revue Celtique 6: one on the metre rinnard, and one on metrics in general, which largely deals with assonance, accentuation and alliteration in Irish metre and was intended as a feisty correction of Prof. Atkinson’s metrical analyses. (As an aside, he also candidly berated himself, admitting that: “When I edited the Calendar of Oengus I was ignorant of the true meaning of ard, and stupidly rendered the word by “alliteration” (1883-5: 273)).
Sometime in the early nineties he gained access to the Brussels manuscript, which he catalogued, and from which he then edited the Martyrology of Gorman (published in 1895). He explicitly thanks the staff of the library for their courtesy in the introduction to that edition. His work on the Félire then seems to have suffered somewhat of a pause, no doubt at least in part due to the fact that he was stationed in India for long periods of time. However, work on the Félire had resumed by 1901, when he was revising his text in preparation for a critical edition at the request of the Henry Bradshaw Society. In the corrigenda published in Revue Celtique 23 in 1902 he explicitly refers to the Cheltenham manuscript, now NLI G10, to which he thus must have gained access in the meantime. I have not yet been able to determine, however, whether he saw this manuscript in person, or, like in the case of A7, consulted a photograph. This possibility seems likely as Stokes appears to have missed the copy of the Preface in this manuscript as well.
Could the eclectic nature of the 1905 edition in part be due to issues with access to the source material (rather than primarily due to a laconic attitude to the apparatus)? This would certainly go some way towards explaining the most obvious omissions, briefly raised earlier, that is, the missing copies of the prose Preface. In the 1880/1905 editions Stokes edited the copies from the Leabhar Breac, Laud Misc. 610 and Rawl. B. 512, yet, for some reason currently unclear to me, the prose Preface appears to have escaped his renewed scrutiny in preparation for the 1905 edition. Stokes neglected to edit four of the extant seven copies. In the case of manuscripts G10 and 23 P 3, he appears to have overlooked them completely as he categorically states in both cases that the prose Preface is missing.
I give the locations of the remaining four here:
Concerning G10 Stokes says: “p.19,which probably contained a prose preface, is now illegible”, whereas, in fact, the Preface is on pp. 22-23.
RIA 23 P 3
The prose Preface in 23 P 3 is on f. 12, a folio that probably once stood before f. 1. It precedes scholia to the text, which may explain in part why it was overlooked. In addition, it is fragmentary, lacking the beginning, and is badly effaced at the end. The text now begins with the story of Óengus’ humility and his revelation to Mael Ruain.
KBR 5100-4
Stokes does not mention the Preface of the Brussels manuscript in the 1905 edition, which is particularly surprising because he lists it in his catalogue of the manuscript in the edition of the Martyrology of Gorman and thus was clearly aware of its existence. In the manuscript itself, the Preface is separated from the main text, beginning at folio 40r of quire 5, in the section with scholia preceding the Félire proper, which starts at folio. 66r (aka 94r) in quire 7.
It will not come as a surprise to those of you who have worked with A7 that Stokes appears to have made no attempt to transcribe the prose Preface from this manuscript. The first recto is heavily stained and defaced in parts, rendering the text nearly illegible. The catalogue entry for the Preface merely states that folio 1v is:
“Defaced and largely illegible. Ends Is he nó chanad amhlaid. Verso continues the second preface, printed by Stokes, op. cit., from Laud 610, with the words so cen boi ic disirt Oenghuso. The text varies from that of Laud 610, and ends like Rawl. B 512, with quatrain beg. Taidet remain slighidh saethraigh.”
To the best of my knowledge no further attempt has been made to restore or decipher the text of this or any of the other missing copies, which is unfortunate, because the Preface has the ability to provide further clues on the transmission history of the text. In advance of a forthcoming article in which a more detailed study will be provided, I outline the structure of the Preface here for reference.
As most of you probably know, the Preface addressed various topics, which, for easy comparison, I have subdivided into four logical units based on content, narrative coherence and spacing the manuscripts. In general, the Preface has a clear internal sequence. With the exception of the Leabhar Breac, all copies more or less adhere to this sequence, which suggest that the logical order of the four units in the manuscripts is that presented here:
1. Outlines the place, person, time and cause of composition of text, culminating in the story of Óengus inspiration for writing (partly omitted in Laud, G10 and 23 P 3)
2. Describes how Óengus first reveals the Félire to Fothud na Canóine
3. Describes Óengus’ interactions with Mael Ruain, including the reference to the epistle which fell from heaven and marked the location of the monastery (in L and P only); the narrative concerning Óengus’ humility, hiding as a slave in Mael Ruain’s kiln; and the story of the boy who learned his lesson while asleep, ultimately revealing Óengus to Mael Ruain.
4. Discussion of the metre.
Thanks for reading!
If you enjoyed this, you can sign up to follow this blog by email!
Editions and Studies on the Félire by Stokes
Stokes, Whitley, ed. On the Calendar of Oengus. Vol. 1.1. Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy Irish Manuscript Series 1. Dublin: RIA, 1880.
—–. ‘On the Calendar of Oengus’, Revue Celtique 5 (1881-3) 339-80. (Signed Oxford, 6 June 1882)
—–. ‘On the Metre Rinnard and the Calendar of Oengus as illustrating the Irish verbal accent’, Revue Celtique 6 (1883-5): 273-297.
—–. ‘On Irish Metric’, Revue Celtique 6 (1883-5): 298-308.
—–. ‘Notes on the Martyrology of Oengus’, Revue Celtique 23 (1902): 83-116. (Signed 13 January 1902)
—–, ed. The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee. Henry Bradshaw Society 29. London: Harrison, 1905. (Repr. Dublin: DIAS, 1984)
—–. “Miscellen 2. Notes on the Second Edition of the Martyrology of Oengus, London 1905.” Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie 6 (1908): 235–42.
Letters and cards from Whitley Stokes, 1871-1909
(c) Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru – National Library of Wales
For the manuscripts – see links elsewhere on this page.
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Antinomianism—from the Greek anti—against—and nomoslaw–is a term that was coined during the time of the Protestant Reformation by Martin Luther. In his context, it was a label for those who were arguing that the Gospel had rendered the moral commands of the law null and void. In other words, it applied to those who believed the Law to be intrinsically “bad,” unnecessary, or even nonexistent. In secular terms, the best approximation would be ‘libertine.’
Martin Luther once made a remarkable comment about antinomianism. He called it a drama put on in an empty theater. What he meant essentially was that antinomianism doesn’t really exist. That is, sure you can say you are an antinomian, and you can have behavior to match, but no one can ever really be free of the Law like that. It is built into the world, built into our lives. No one can outrun every ‘ought,’ however much they might like to, not even the most libertine of us all. This is why antinomianism has been called an ‘impossible heresy’.
Return to Glossary
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Real World article
(written from a Production point of view)
The IncrediBuilds Star Trek - USS Enterprise Deluxe Book and Model Set combined a pre-cut wooden USS Enterprise NCC-1701 model with a reference book authored by Dayton Ward.
It was published by Insight Editions on 25 June 2018.
Summary Edit
Build your own USS Enterprise with this IncrediBuilds™ Star Trek model kit, featuring a full-color book with facts and trivia on one of the most iconic starships in history.
Get ready to boldly go where no one has gone before with this exciting Star Trek wood model set. The deluxe 32-page hardcover book is packed with information on the USS Enterprise, from its basic capabilities to its pivotal role in the Star Trek universe. Complete with stunning imagery and behind-the-scenes content, this book and model set is a must have for any Star Trek fan.
IncrediBuilds TOS USS Enterprise 3D Wood Model
Assembled model
The wood model is easy to assemble and snaps together to form a dynamic, displayable 3D version of the Enterprise that fans will love.
• Laser-cut, FSC-certified wood sheet with easy-to-assemble pieces
• Step-by-step instructions
• Coloring and crafting ideas
• A USS Enterprise NCC-1701 book
Skill Level: Intermediate
38 pieces + 9 spare pieces
Assembled measurements: 6.25 x 2.79 x 2.20 inches
See also Edit
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Guess who is hiding the magic pill to longevity?
Imagine a medicine which protects you against cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes, depression and dementia. A medicine which works best when taken regularly and long before any symptoms of any of those diseases appear. A medicine which is cheaper than any supplement or aspirin. Would you take it?
Then why don't you? The name of that medicine is exercise, and ...
...OK, OK, I hear you saying "not again, I have heard that mantra before. Tell me something I don't know!" Which is exactly what I want to do: To tell you something you AND I don't know, because nobody seems to have the answer to the sixty-four-thousand dollar question: Why don't we take this medicine?
Now here is this hot item called swarm intelligence, the phenomenon which, we are being told, makes a horde of blooming idiots come up with solutions worthy of an Einstein's. That should work just fine for us. So, let's put it to the test. I'll tell you first a few facts and my thoughts, after which it is your turn, and then we can look at the results over the next few days, or so.
Now, just so that we all start form the same page, let me recap the effects of exercise.
Exercise & Heart Disease
Exercise, done right, has been found to reduce the risk of dying from any cause by at least one third with a 9% reduction for every one hour of vigorous exercise performed per week [1]. To be fair, studies which calculate such risks are inherently flawed. They assess exercise through questionnaires, which makes it difficult to reliably judge the amount and intensity of exercise, and whether people stick with a given exercise level and for how long. That's why I like to look at the exercise-health correlation using fitness as the marker. Because fitness is a direct consequence of exercise, and it is something we can objectively measure in the lab.
A fit 45 years old man has only one quarter the lifetime risk of dying from cardiovascular causes compared to his unfit peer [2]. And 20 years later, at the age of 65, being fit means having only half the risk of an unfit 65-year old. So much about exercise and the number one killer of men and women alike, cardiovascular disease. How about the runner-up: cancer?
Exercise & Cancer
The association of fitness with cancer is not as well researched as with cardiovascular disease. But the available data clearly point to a substantial effect. In a study performed in 1300 Finnish men who were followed for 11 years, the physically fit ones, when compared to their least fit peers, had a 60% reduced risk of dying from non-cardiovascular causes, which means mostly cancer [3]. An almost identical value of risk reduction for cancer death had been found in a 16-year study of 9000 Japanese men aged 19-59 [4]. The ones in the highest quartile of physical fitness had a risk of dying from cancer that was 60% lower than the risk of their peers in the lowest quartile.
The fact that fitness correlates so strongly with the risk of dying from cancer might tell us that the intensity of exercise plays a large role. In a study, which followed 2560 men for close to 17 years, the intensity of physical activity was clearly related to cancer mortality. But only in those who were physically active for at least 30 minutes per day did the higher intensity of exercise lower the cancer death risk by close to 50%. Do less than those 30 minutes, and high intensity might not get you away from cancer death. Obviously, low-intensity exercise does neither increase your fitness level nor does it decrease your risk of dying from cancer. The message to all those who play 18 holes on a daily basis: Get a (sports-)life!
Exercise & Dementia
Even less well examined than the exercise-cancer association is the exercise-dementia association. But also here we begin to see a remarkable effect. Results from the first relatively small trials show that physically active elderly have substantially reduced risk of Alzheimer and other forms of dementia, possibly in the range of a 50% risk reduction [5].
Why Don't We Exercise?
Ok, so here we are. Obviously, man is made to move. And whether you call exercise medicine or whether you call the lack of exercise a pathogen - which is clinician speak for something nasty that makes you sick - we already know a lot about how exercise does its work biochemically. That's beyond the scope of this post.
What interests me here is the question which I have asked at the beginning of this story: Why do we not take this "medicine" which is free-of-charge and which has a stronger effect than any of those pills for lowering cholesterol or blood sugar or blood pressure?
As researchers we have made no progress at all in answering this question.
The psychologists outdo each other with the creation of behavioral models, which give their inventors a lot of stature, but which have failed to get us one inch closer to the answer. Just to give you an impression, there is the Health Belief Model, the Theory of Reasoned Action, the Theory of Planned Behavior, the Transtheoretical Model of Behavioral Change, the Social Cognitive Theory, the Protection Motivation Theory, the Health Action Process Approach, and probably a few new ones in the making. Their common denominator: no reliable answer to our question.
That's why I would like to try swarm intelligence. If the "swarm" of readers of this blog post, that is you and me, is large enough, we might just come up with an answer that is worth pursuing in a more methodical way.
So, I'll go ahead and tell you a few suspicions which I have. And then, at the risk of baring my soul to the point where you might not find me a likable person, I will tell you what motivates me to do an early morning 90-minutes exercise session almost every day of the week.
But first the suspicions which I have why so few people get themselves to do even the bare minimum of exercise:
1. Is it because we can't see, I mean literally see, the effects? Would some sort of visual feedback about the benefits and effects of exercise inside your body motivate you to exercise?
2. Is it because we rather react than act? That is, we only do something to cure a disease once it's manifest rather than prevent it? But then, why do we have intelligence and one of its nifty byproducts called foresight in the first place?
3. Is it because we are so focused on a pill or an operation as the only tools, which work against a disease, that we simply can't appreciate the value of something so simple and cheap as exercise?
4. Why do we use the lousy excuse "no time" when we have several hours to spend in front of the TV EVERY day? Regardless of how busy we are with our work?
These are just a few questions which come to mind. They amount to asking why we don't exercise.
But it will be equally helpful to ask the question: what is it, that KEEPS YOU exercising?
Because from those who do, we can learn, how to motivate those who don't. Provided we get an honest answer. My suspicion is, the answers which we get in research, are mostly edited for "political correctness". The couch potatoes hide behind the time constraints, because being busy is not perceived as a character flaw, being lazy is. And what could possibly be a character flaw of the exerciser?
Well, I give you mine. The instinctive gratification with which my inner brute views the overweight person in front of me at the check-out queue or in the waiting room, the gratification that comes from being reminded of his risk for disease and suffering being a lot greater than mine (in German we have that word "Schadenfreude"), the gratification that comes from telling him, in my mind only, of course, "I have that strength of will that you don't".
That's a gratifying incentive, to be sure. But it's not the only one. The main reason why I run every morning, no matter what the weather or the size of the hangover from Saturday's evening (yeah, it happens to all of us) is, that I have seen enough people who suffered a stroke or a heart attack. And I have seen their remorse of not having done enough while there was still time. I fear that. That's what keeps me running.
And what is it for you? Honestly. Let's hear it, and let's see whether we find a common thread, which research has overlooked so far. Remember, as a swarm we are supposed to be far more intelligent than as individuals.
Samitz G, Egger M, & Zwahlen M (2011). Domains of physical activity and all-cause mortality: systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of cohort studies. International journal of epidemiology, 40 (5), 1382-400 PMID: 22039197
Berry JD, Willis B, Gupta S, Barlow CE, Lakoski SG, Khera A, Rohatgi A, de Lemos JA, Haskell W, & Lloyd-Jones DM (2011). Lifetime risks for cardiovascular disease mortality by cardiorespiratory fitness levels measured at ages 45, 55, and 65 years in men. The Cooper Center Longitudinal Study. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 57 (15), 1604-10 PMID: 21474041
Laukkanen, J. (2001). Cardiovascular Fitness as a Predictor of Mortality in Men Archives of Internal Medicine, 161 (6), 825-831 DOI: 10.1001/archinte.161.6.825
SAWADA, S., MUTO, T., TANAKA, H., LEE, I., PAFFENBARGER, R., SHINDO, M., & BLAIR, S. (2003). Cardiorespiratory Fitness and Cancer Mortality in Japanese Men: A Prospective Study Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 35 (9), 1546-1550 DOI: 10.1249/01.MSS.0000084525.06473.8E
Buchman AS, Boyle PA, Yu L, Shah RC, Wilson RS, & Bennett DA (2012). Total daily physical activity and the risk of AD and cognitive decline in older adults. Neurology, 78 (17), 1323-9 PMID: 22517108
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Monday, October 16, 2006
Gig Near Oumihachiman!
Hi Everyone!
Hi have a gig coming up with a great finger-picking guitarist, Yosuke Tago! The gig will be at Taishi Hall （太子ホール） near Oumihachiman. If you take the JR from Otsu toward Oumihachiman, switch trains at Oumihachiman, and take the Oumitetsudou （近江鉄道） line toward Youkaichi （八日市）. Get off at Youkaichi, and Taishi Hall should be fairly close to the station.
Go to for more information and better directions (there should be a map on the website). But anyway, here's the real stats on the gig:
When: Saturday November 4, 2006 (11/4/2006)
Where: Taishi Hall
What Time: 18:00
With Who: Yosuke Tago
How Much: ¥1000
いつ： 土曜日、２００６年１１月４日
どこ： 太子ホール、
何時： １８：００
だれと： 陽介多胡
いくら？： ¥１０００
I'm going to be playing for about 30-40 minutes or so, so come watch (if you're in Japan)!
No comments:
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The First Sunday in Lent March 9, 2014
The Bright, Clear Truth of the Christian Faith
Romans 10:8b-13
Scripture Readings
Deuteronomy 26:5-10
Luke 4:1-13
356, 144, 388(1-5), 48
May the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ—the focus of the season we have just entered—lead you to contemplate just how great and how precious, how valuable, your personal gift of forgiveness of sins and eternal life truly is. Amen.
Dear fellow Christians:
I was setting up an online bill-pay system awhile back and one of the password hints or security questions they asked was “What was the name of your favorite teacher?” Lots of folks must have a favorite teacher or they probably wouldn’t continue to use that question as one of their hints.
I came up with a name, but it started me wondering just what is it that makes one particular teacher someone’s favorite? As time goes by it isn’t necessarily the one you personally liked the best. It isn’t usually the one that was an “easy A.” Your favorite teacher was probably the one who excelled at teaching you. It’s the one who took the complicated and made it simple, graspable—the one who helped you to make sense of what initially seemed strange, chaotic, or disjointed. On the other hand, your least favorite teachers were probably those that seemed to have the knack for making even that which is fairly simple seem complex and incoherent.
If today’s text could come to life as a teacher, it would most certainly come to life as a favorite, because it takes what can at times seem rather complicated, and reduces it to the delightfully simple. That text is found in Paul’s letter to the Romans, the tenth chapter:
So far the sacred Word of God. These words are true and perfect, for they are God’s words. They are clear, simple, and yet highly instructive. That God would use them to further instruct us today, we pray: “Sanctify us by Your truth, O Lord, Your Word is truth. Amen.”
Some things in life are complicated. There’s no getting around that. Some things are not complicated, but clearly they can be made so. Here’s an example to illustrate this point: Someone once sent me the official specifications for the manufacture of pipe—specifications clearly offered by an engineer with too much time on his hands. I won’t bore you with the whole note. You’ll get the point just by hearing that it involved “constructing a long hole, around which metal or plastic is situated equidistant from the center of the long hole, such that the outside diameter of the hole must be smaller than the outside diameter of the metal, so as to prevent any part of the hole from being situated on the outside of the pipe.”
You get the picture, and we can smile at such things until the subject-matter changes from something rather mundane like pipe to something not so mundane like the salvation of human souls. Here, when man decides he is going to take the simple and turn it into the complex, the result is anything but funny.
The theory of evolution is a perfect example. Did you know, first of all, that this theory of how all life evolved—and it is, by the way, a theory—was virtually unheard of right up until about 100 years ago? Charles Darwin introduced his ideas in the early part of the 20th Century. For thousands of years prior to Darwin’s nonsense, mankind unquestioningly accepted the Biblical truth of a divine creator and preserver of both mankind and the universe we occupy. When Darwin first introduced his ideas he was ridiculed—laughed to scorn by science and society alike. The Christian churches led the charge. Why? Because the Bible was perfectly clear in its description of how God created the universe from nothing in six natural and consecutive days—simple.
Enter Darwin’s intricately complicated lie—a lie which surely must have intrigued the Devil. The lie offered mankind a way to deny accountability to God. In other words, if man was not made by God, then he is not accountable to God and he can therefore pretty much do whatever he can get away with—without ever having to worry about answering for it. It stood to reason that if man is not accountable to God, then there is no need for a Savior because there would then be nothing from which man needs to be saved. Evolution, when you follow it through, turns Jesus into a pointless novelty.
How then could it be that even many who call themselves Christians today have come to deny the simple creation account of the Bible and have instead come to accept the intricate silliness that is evolution? How indeed could even Christians take what is so simple, so Biblical, and trade it for that which is so convoluted and full of logical inconsistencies and scientific impossibilities?
The answer is that man naturally tends to assume that the complex always holds more truth than the simple. So it is that man loves to hear about vast shadowy conspiracies and to imagine that those who hear and believe them have pealed back layers of deception to arrive at some deep and hidden truth. Even in Paul’s day we read about entire segments within the community of Christians who called themselves Gnostics—from the Greek word that roughly means: “those in the know.” Those folks taught that the basics of Christianity were just the shell or façade of a far deeper truth. Sound familiar? Paul rejected their claims as utter nonsense.
It gets even worse when it comes to evolution and the collateral damage it causes. The “Christian” acceptance of the theory of evolution represents one of the great turning points in the history of what is today called “modern Christianity.” The embracing of the theory of evolution by elements of the Christian church was the event that seemed to open the floodgates for all manner of confusion and error. Satan used the elaborate lie of evolution to crack the armor of inspiration that had, up until that point, protected the truth itself. From that point on the clever lies came in a torrent as a domino effect took hold.
Soon the Bible was no longer God’s Word, it merely contained God’s Word and also contained other things including error. Suddenly, the Bible’s plan for the roles of men and women was all wrong, homosexuality was no longer a perversion but a lifestyle, and killing the unborn was no longer murder but “choice.”
There is now nothing at all that is sacred or secure. In fact, those very things that we regard as the most firmly established and clearly Biblical truths have become the most obvious targets. This includes even the simple Biblical account of the resurrection of Jesus. Whole Christian denominations now teach their seminary students that the bodily resurrection of Jesus never took place. The only real and true “resurrection” was that the memory and example of Jesus lives on in the hearts and the lives of His followers.
The point for us is that we need to understand our own tendency to choose the complex over the simple. As science advances on so many fronts, and as we learn that many parts of God’s creation are far more complex than first believed, the natural result is that we will be tempted to toss out everything that is simple and replace it with whatever seems to be more sophisticated only because it is more complex.
There are unlimited practical examples. “Life begins at conception” is much too simplistic despite the fact that no other starting point has ever been identified by the pro-abortion advocates. “Young people should practice abstinence until married” is far too unsophisticated, despite the fact that it would eradicate AIDS in a generation, remove teen pregnancy as a social problem, and preserve and solidify the family, which is the basic building block of this or any other society.
We tend to get caught up in the argument that our world is not well-served by oversimplifying our complex issues with outdated, religion-based solutions. The fact is that it is neither the problems nor the solutions that are too complex. The fault lies entirely with mankind’s sinful refusal to solve the problems with God’s solutions.
This brings us, logically, to the single most basic question that faces all mankind: “How can a human being get to Heaven?” All other questions pale in comparison to this basic issue. The good news for you and me is that our text offers us perfect and yet simple answers to this great question.
Our text—together with the rest of God’s Word—represents the authoritative difference between simple truth and clever fabrication. Again, this critical difference is nowhere more important than in the discussion of how man can escape the eternal torment of Hell and live in the perfect bliss of Heaven.
There simply is nothing at all mysterious in God’s plan, except where human nonsense clouds the pure, clear words of Holy Scripture. Listen again and thrill to God’s unambiguous words in our text: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.[v.9] This is the sort of straightforward simplicity with which we are to comfort our troubled hearts. Again we read: “For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.’[v.11] Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Then these holy, inspired words represent God’s promise that you will never be put to shame. Judgment Day need hold no terror for you, despite your past sins. Again the crystalline words of our text: “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For ‘whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.’[vv.12-13]
Use these words whenever and wherever the Devil attacks you with guilt and depression. Note that they say nothing whatsoever of your past sins, for those sins cannot be used against you. They are gone—forever. Jesus paid for them, and by paying for them He removed them from the proceedings of Judgment Day. Your past sins are inadmissible in God’s divine court. The very One who will one day judge you has declared it to be so. Another has been punished for those sins in your place. The Judge has so ruled, and He has set His seal to that irreversible decree in the form of the empty tomb on Easter morning.
There is also a critically important fact to be learned here relating to our witness and outreach to the unbeliever. Here too we need to recognize our own natural tendency to dismiss the simple in favor of the complex. Complex argumentation can no more bring an unbeliever to spiritual life than shouting at road kill can make it play the banjo. How then do we go about winning souls? What good is our witness if the sinner cannot be convinced? The sinner can indeed be convinced, but only by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit works through the simple messages of Law and Gospel. We sinned, but God saves sinners through faith in Jesus Christ who paid the penalty for every single sin through His death on the cross.
Clever might be good for adding bodies to the pews, but it’s lousy for adding names to the Book of Life. Now more than ever the world needs to hear a crystal-clear proclamation of the truth—the truth as God has declared it. There are many kinds of courage, but what the world needs from you and me is a plain, simple, courageous witness of these basic truths—uncompromisingly offered and without fear of consequences.
Grab hold then of the simple joy of these words in our text: “whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.[v.13] This alone is the reality that saves.
“Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame.” What a joy to hear such words and to know that they are now and forever true. Our sins are forgiven. Salvation is ours through faith in Jesus Christ, our Savior. This is God’s Word of promise, and it is, in every conceivable way, simply perfect. Amen.
—Pastor Michael Roehl
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Monday, October 03, 2011
This Things I Believe
I am sometimes asked to explain how/why it is I don't go about referring to myself specifically as a political "libertarian" anymore; usually in the context of an accusation that I (and others) mainly dropped it because it's been adopted by the so-called "Tea Party" and thus no longer "cool" - which, to be fair, is at least partially accurate...
The thing of it is; while I am mostly simpatico with "small-L" libertarians on policy and civics details, where we seem to differ is when it comes down to broader worldview.
Simply stated, it strikes me that "name-brand" Libertarianism as it exists now is about "freedom" in general but regards absolutist ECONOMIC freedom - in the form of low-to-nonexistant taxation - as the most important form thereof. And while I'm as averse to wasteful spending as anyone I can't quite go there with them. Entertained as I am by the fantasies of "Atlas Shrugged," Galt's Gulch (or Rapture, for that matter) is not my vision of a better world.
The "better world" I'M striving for is a world free not from the frequently irritating but largely practical economic limitations of a shared society; but rather freed from the unnecessary boundaries of outdated systems of "morality" and/or "consequences" rendered no-longer-mandatory by science.
To place it in less flowery language: My "highest freedoms" are the freedom of individuals to eat, drink, smoke, shoot WHATEVER they want (with the ALL IMPORTANT caveats of adulthood and responsibility) and to fuck, marry, divorce WHOEVER they want (with the ALL-IMPORTANT caveats of adulthood, consent, sound-mind, etc) impeded by as few unnecessary consequences as possible; and if a tax-funded "social safety net" is part of the aparatus necessary to make such freedom-from-unecessary-consequence possible... then, quite frankly, Uncle Sam can HAVE my goddamn money.
I dunno if there's a "name for that position, but it's mine.
Nathan said...
If the state doesn't have any money, how would it stop anyone from doing those things?
gCrusher said...
Well put. Thank you.
Sean said...
I've always used the term 'civil libertarian'. Although I understand many like to throw that term around as an insult.
TheAlmightyNarf said...
"I dunno if there's a "name for that position,"
Pretty much text-book Social Liberalism.
Will said...
Libertarians don't want the government to have no money but not as much and a small government, less convoluted, and more basic.
While there is no set solution to the tax problem with libertarians; ask 10 libertarians and you'll get 8 or 9 different answers.
Personally, I'm in favor of Fair Tax in which we have no tax but sales tax. Sure, the national sales tax would be rather astronomical compared to what we have now but you'd never pay a single penny to the government anywhere else.
But, like Narf said, sounds like you're a social libertarian.
Kent said...
I've always considered that people who can sum up their political view in one word DESERVE to have their political view summed up in one word.
Good to see someone take the time to explain their belief rather than state a one word thought terminating cliche.
Bobby said...
This article's title is totally a Simpson's reference
SonofRyan said...
I;m sorry but the "Fairtax" plan is utterly idiotic. Not only would it cause a significant economic contraction by targeting consumer spending, the basis of our economy, much more important it would target poor people disproportionately. Sales taxes tax the poor more proportionately than the rich and that is nothing resembling fair.
Sylocat said...
Yeah, the "Fair Tax" is bullshit.
But you know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see a taxation applied not to SALES transactions, but FINANCIAL dealings, such as the stock market, &c.
Don't tax the people who actually build stuff and do things. Tax the people who get rich off other people's profits without producing anything. Those are the REAL parasites. All the welfare queens in the world don't bleed this country as much as a single high-profile stockbroker who has never actually MADE anything in his life.
Ryan said...
You're a centrist on money and a radical on social freedom. And that's a good thing - check out "Don't Think of an Elephant" if you haven't already, that'll clarify why you're struggling to work out a political ideology.
I, on the other hand, am a straight-up socialist. It's never been cool, but it's still the right answer.
And oh my GOD is the "Fair Tax" nonsense. It's exactly zero steps away from taxing the poor to support the rich.
I understand that some Republicans are like that because of misguided beliefs about religion, but the libertarian faith in free markets is really the silliest thing in the conservative arsenal, because it claims to be rational despite its self-evident foolishness. That's why Ron Paul will never win anything or be taken seriously. No matter how much integrity he has, believing in fairies is still wrong.
TheAlmightyNarf said...
@ SonofRyan
The only way a higher sales tax would disproportionately effect poorer people would be if poorer people spent a disproportionately large amount of their income on non-essentials (as just about every sales tax and proposed sales tax in the country I've ever heard of exempts essentials like food, medication, or education). If it disproportionately effected anyone, it would be people who irresponsibly spent beyond their means.
And, while it may not be "fair", I think forcing the wealthy to pay higher sales taxes in the US is still a better option than them not declaring their income in the US to pay any taxes on at all.
I also don't think it would effect consumer spending much since, in principle, people shouldn't actually be paying a significantly different amount in taxes. People should still have approximately the same buying power. They'll simply adjust their expectations for what a given amount of money can buy.
@ Sylocat
I'm fairly certain those are taxed.
biomechanical923 said...
Bob's political philosophy in a sentence:
"I should be able to do whatever I want with impunity, and rich people should give me all their money."
SonofRyan said...
1. Very few state sales taxes except essentials currently and I don't believe the FairTax plan would either, this is why it is inherently regressive.
2. That's like saying "oh, well people are going to break the law so why have the law at all" that's a ridiculous assertion and the issues is not proper enforcement of tax law an tax law being somewhat too complicated, rather than an issue in general.
3. Nearly 10% of people's spending not affecting things? I find that hard to beleive
4. Biomechanical: No, it's "I should be able to do anything I want that's not hurting anyone with impunity" which isn't really such a weird thing to say and "Rich people benefit disproportionately from society and so they should help those who've been disproportionately left behind by society," Your argument is a strawman.
Laserkid said...
I can respect that opinion even if I don't fully agree.
I've been reffering to myself as liberetarian because it is the "closest" to me. I once upon a time considered myself conservative but I don't really fit that bill. I can agree with them on many moral issues but then turn switchblade when they try to go to moral enforcement (such as abortion which I find to be completely morally abhorrent - however I think outlawing it helps no one).
I think the governments are necessary - but being that they are run by people they are at best inherently inept, and at worst inherently corrupt (or corrupting - I think the far vast majority of politicians on either side do go to the job with the intent to make the country better).
However, the one thing governments are inherently good at is keeping themselves around through military and political might. This is why it is good to have them around if they are well restricted enough - it keeps royal douchebag dictators from ruling over others from anarchy. Given this some taxing is well within reason and I would not say they shouldnt tax stuff.
I would say that governments need to be watched carefully and both spend and tax as little as they can get away with. I have no idea what that amount actually is and am well open to debate on this - but I think the US government has gone well past the rails.
I like that the democrats want the government to protect people. This is its natural function. I do not like that they expand this into areas it need not go to that ends up with constrained freedoms.
I like that the republicans want to keep government taxing and spending under control. I don't like that they fail miserably in this regard by their own policies and that they want to strongarm laws that restrict freedoms.
In short I don't like the left or the right of the US political system all that much - I am more sympathetic to the right then I am at the left but this very well may be because thats where I started (if you talked to me ten years or more ago I would be calling myself a conservative and taking far more ridiculous right wing stances then I do).
Let me put it to some hot button issues.
Abortion - morally abhorrent, but should not be made illegal due to the damage such an action would do.
taxation - I generally preffer a flat tax, but failing that - NO ONE should have to pay more then a quarter of their income to the government - but loopholes need to be closed up. Part of the tax problem is because the rates are so high the truly rich people hide their money in loopholes and the people between grades of pay get hammered for no good reason.
religion - Outside of historical peices in the government that are already there that tearing down would destroy history and heritage the government should not be evoking religion in its buildings, currency, or other things. However, no one should ever be prevented from making any private religious display anywhere.
illegal immigration - does need cracking down on, but there should be some serious looking at streamling the legal immigration system such that it is not so obtuse that people turn to illegal immigration as a feel of necessity. This would end a ton of issues all around.
guns - some form of gun control is not just reasonable but damn smart - a wait period, block for felons, even a required test to show competency with the weapon I am down with. the concept of outright banning guns is a terrible idea - those who commit crimes with guns generally don't care to follow laws that say they can't have guns if they're already willing to ignore laws against murdering or assaulting someone. All gun bans do is keep guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens who might use it for their or others' defense.
gah this is getting long
tldr: I dont agree fully with bobs stance but I respect it and my stance in general is to be extremely careful with any government as rulership is inherently corrosive.
Anonymous said...
Consentualist- a person who believes that all authority comes from the consent of the governed, not the from the approval of a majority of the governed, but from the consent of each individual capable of giving consent for the use of force against their person. Consent and permission are not the same thing.
Do you really mean the “if” concerning a safety net? Would you approve a bankruptcy court deciding which individuals, who were not being helped by a non-proselytizing charity, deserved the government social safety net? Would you stick with the legislative wealth transfer scheme to make yourself feel better about helping the poor? Do you believe that government, and hence the use of force is the first or last line of defense in the social safety net?
When it comes to deciding where the money for a such a social safety net comes from, I can't stop you from volunteering your money. Will you come after my money with force, or will you fund your social safety net from our money? Our money would be taxes from people who use the social contract. Professionals like doctors use reserved words that we have all agreed belong to the collective. People who use public occupancies, like restaurants, use reserved words and health inspectors to regulate food. This is our money. You can avoid being a professional by calling yourself something else. You can avoid being a restaurants by being a private club or personal residence. You can't avoid using your body for labor in order to live. A consentualist recognizes no legitimate tax on involuntary action.
I think therefore I am a sentient being. You think therefore you are a sentient being. We think and therefore are equal. My ability to control you is equal to your ability to control me is equal to my ability to control me is equal to your ability to control you is equal to what is consented. If you do not recognize the need for my individual consent, then my original assumption that you are a sentient being is in doubt. Except for immediate and exigent self defense, a sentient being must offer a “due process” of notice of harm and the opportunity to defend actions as those of sentient being. When no reasonable doubt exists that a being is not acting as sentient being, that being is deemed an animal. An animal with any dangerous power; like the the cunning of a human, the might of tiger, or the lethality of a deadly bacteria; is legally a monster. A monster not in captivity may killed as a threat to sentient beings.
anarchist- a person who opposes the use of organized violence even when the use of organized violence may be a legitimate use of self defense. See also animal.
minarchist- a person who opposes the use of organized violence against their own person, but not necessarily against others. See also animal and hypocrite.
Regligionist- a person who allows a belief system impervious to logic to influence their own actions, inactions, public approvals, public disapproval, or any combination thereof. See also animal, theist and atheist.
Theist- a person who without logical proof believes God exists; God created the universe; God speaks through oracles, prophets and holy texts even though, if God exists, God created logic to identify such oraculorism as inconsistent with a singular truth; and that the soul exists. See also animal and hypocrite.
Atheist- a person who without logical proof believes God does not exist even though absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; God did not create the universe even though absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; God does not speak through oracles, prophets and holy texts; and the soul does not exist even though the lack of the possibility to affect a future outcome means the absence of thinking as a solution, the absence of consequences for actions, and represents an organized form of nihilism, implicitly denying the ability of any sentient being to exist. See also animal, monster, corporate externality, and limited liability.
biomechanical923 said...
Your rebuttal in favor of impunity kinda goes right out the window, considering that Bob is trying to claim the right to shoot anything he wants.
Also, the rich do not benefit disproportionately from society, the benefit they receive is proportional to the value of the goods and services they provide.
Instead of whining about rich people having more money, maybe more people should actually contribute to society by inventing a new product, providing a valuable service, or selling something.
Over-taxation of the rich is a punishment against people with intellectual property.
biomechanical923 said...
Quote: Moviebob
"...freed from the unnecessary boundaries of outdated systems of "morality" and/or "consequences" rendered no-longer-mandatory by science."
Free of "consequences", eh??
Translation: "I should be free to do something stupid and get hurt or sick, and you should have to pay my hospital bill"
Will said...
Yes, lets sit here and make massive jumps from little snip-its of Bob's formed opinion.
Also, the fair tax is rather fair. The rich who buy these massive houses, boats, and whatnot would end up paying massive amounts of taxes while the poor, who wouldn't be buying too much anyways, would end up paying very few taxes. Fair tax would end up targeting the rich much more than other groups.
Without any other taxes, people would be receiving more of their money that they rightfully earned, thus more incentive to spend more money, and thus stimulating the economy and supporting the government at the same time.
Sean said...
I'd say you're actually pretty ensconced in the Western mainstream, Bob.
Which places you weirdly in the United States of course... but not so much in Australia or most of Western Europe.
Well, except the shooting bit.
TheAlmightyNarf said...
@ SonofRyan
1. That's simply untrue. As much as I loath using the site, Wikipedia has a good break down of this. Thirty states except food out right, and 8 others have lowered sales taxes for food (and 5 having no state sales tax at all). In fact, only 8 states don't reduce taxes on essentials in some way.
I, personally, would not support any fair tax that didn't.
2. The real problem isn't a "loophole". It's that people don't necessarily have to declare their income in the US, and that's just a reality of living in a global economy. Money is fungible, and the place it comes from is fungible. I don't see how we can actually force that issue in any sort of legal way.
And bitching and moaning about how the wealthy won't play ball the way we want them to isn't going to help anything. I choose to except that they're never going to pay a cent in taxes more than they have to, and want to see practical solutions that try to work around that. It doesn't have to be a fair tax, but what we're doing now simply isn't working.
3. No, it's a negligible amount of spending. The difference between paying, let's say a 25% income tax or a 25% sales tax on everything should end up being pretty nil. Ultimately the same amount of taxes are being paid on the same amount of money.
Nixou said...
Speaking of libertarianism, have you read this:
It's an interesting case, not merely because he changed his worldview when part of his ideology stopped being merely abstracts and became a real threat to his livelyhood, but because he candidly admits it.
"I like that the republicans want to keep government taxing and spending under control"
That's a lie.
The republicans claiming that they want to keep spending under control is a lie, has been since at least Reagan: The US federal budget was 72% larger when he left than when he took office, and the same pretty much happened under Bush Junior. And don't go blaming the democrats in Congress for it: the cumulated budgets passed under Reagan were actually lower than the budgets he requested.
Republicans do not want to keep the government spending under control: they have not wanted this ever since the voodoo-supply-side-economics became their official dogma (which has become like the immaculate conception for Catholics: everyone knows it's bullshit, but we're still not supposed to say it out loud).
What they want, right know, is to sabotage the federal government so that there will be enough voters pissed enough to give them back the White House, but you can bet the skin on your ass that should a republican be back in the White House, he will start not taxing and spending too much again: this is a safe bet, because in the end this is what his voters want.
In the US as in every other wealthy countries, public spending is actually very beneficial to pretty much all right-wing voters, so when right-wing politicians are in charge, they rarely try to cut spending, because if they genuinly tried it, they would lose most of their voting base. And the supreme irony of it all is that if republican voters started to believe that their elected official are not merely playacting the budgetary hawks but actually believe in their own rethoric, they would stop voting for republicans: isn't it prodigious? You've got a political party that has gone so far down the rabbit hole that now it's only way to be successful is to be transparantly dishonest.
Laserkid said...
@ Nixou: what part of "I don't like that they fail miserably in this regard by their own policies" did you not catch? ;)
I recognize full well the republican party as a whole is just as bad about spending as the democrats are - this is in fact one of my greatest frustrations with them.
Ryan said...
You know how I know a fair tax is a lie? Because it's called a fair tax. When you create a Sales Tax - which is regressive - and rename it using Orwellian doublespeak, you're doing that to hide the fact that you're shifting costs to the middle class and the poor. It's just as easy for the wealthy to evade taxes on retail sales as it is for them to evade taxes on anything else...but a "fair" tax would definitely increase the amount of tax the bottom 90% would pay. Reducing the tax on necessities only goes so far. The other, related problem with taxing consumption is that it leads to less economic activity, which is bad for the overall economy. In fact, taxing anything generally means you get less of it. So...let's tax the living hell out of Hedge Funds, Derivatives, and Shadow Banking generally. Let's also tax lobbying, political contributions over $2000 to any candidate or PAC, and add 1% per employee to the corporate taxes of any corporation that outsources jobs. Problem solved.
TheAlmightyNarf said...
@ Ryan
Sales tax is actually pretty near imposable to avoid in any significant way and remain a resident. If you want to purchase any product, property or service in the country, you pay a sales tax... if you want to import in, you pay a tariff. The only way to avoid it would be to quite literally up and leave the country. Hardly as simple as hiring a tax lawyer and filling out some paper work to get out of income taxes.
And there's absolutely no reason for it to increase taxes on everyone else... The majority of American's pay a 25% income tax, so a 25% sales tax shouldn't leaving them paying significantly more.
"The other, related problem with taxing consumption is that it leads to less economic activity,"
I would love to see some empirical evidence toward that effect.
I mean, yes, a higher sales tax would make things cost more. But, that comes with eliminating income tax and leaving more disposable income. Proportionally exactly enough more income to account for the higher sales tax.
Mister Linton said...
Wow, you summed up exactly why the fair tax is a good idea. Right now we heavily tax productivity not consumption. While some people incorrectly think high consumption=healthy economy, the truth is high productivity=healthy economy.
Nixou said...
failing would imply that there was actually the intent to make good on the promise to keep spending under control.
Making a promise that you intend to fulfill, then failling to do so is one thing.
Making a promise that you already intend to not fulfill is what republicans have done consistently for the last 30 years: that's not a failure, that's a fraud. Or that would be a fraud if republican voters were duped by their elite's rethoric, except that I'm pretty certain that it is all kabuki theater: republican politicians pledge that they will be controlling spending during their campains, and republican voters vote for them because they know that they will never make good on that pledge.
Ryan said...
Well, we have the lowest taxes on productivity ever, and we're living in an economic paradise now, so...oh wait, that's not true at's though supply-side economics are...wait for it...NOT helpful at all!
Get it through your heads, income-defense zealots: your policies have been tried. They don't work.
Poor people make less money than rich people and pay fewer taxes. If you raise the price of everything and eliminate income taxes, the benefit accrues disproportionately to the wealthy, of whom there are fewer, which means that the ability to sell value-added goods to most of the population is constricted. Less consumption means weaker profits, which in turn hurts productivity by reducing incentives to produce. It's just math.
biomechanical923 said...
Wow.... I actually agree with Ryan on something.
Supply side economics doesn't work, but not for the reason you said.
Supply Side economics is the "theory" that greater economic prosperity will come from lowering taxes and deregulating business, which would allow them to produce more goods at lower cost to the consumer.
Supply Side economics doesn't work because ALL big businesses create artificial scarcity to keep their prices up. It's a huge scam.
However, all of this is no excuse for the general "fuck the rich" attitude that's ubiquitous to this generation. As I said earlier, it seems like mostly spite at the fact that they fail to produce any intellectual property of their own.
SonofRyan said...
1. Biomechanical, please, stop this social darwinist BS that the reason all rich people are rich is due to them producing something useful and contributing to society. There is nothing to support that that is the case always or even the majority of the time. Income is not productivity and you need to stop pretending it is. In fact, as a rule, productivity (measured in terms of worked hours, the most objective measure I can think of) tends to drop off at high income levels due to being easier to substitute leisure hours for work hours at that point.
2. The idea that rich produce intellecutal property and everyone else doesn't is idiotic. There is no reason to hate the rich because they are rich, I agree with you. It is a reason to hate the rich if they are rich and then refuse to contribute back to the society that has given them so much, and to not understand that the marginal welfare gained by them by a bit of additional money is far outweighed by that of the same to a starving person.
3. Narf, while some states not taxing food is all well and good, then there happens to be the issue of what qualifies as a "nessecity" I would argue education and healthcare count, and I think many/most libertarians I know would disagree with me. The idea of what "nessesity" is is utterly arbitrary. Secondly it is still regressive as poor people will generally spend most of their money for consumption as they do not have enough money to invest with whereas the rich do, it's still regressive.
biomechanical923 said...
SonofRyan, please stop spouting this nanny state BS that people shouldn't need to work for a living unless they feel like it. Healthy, able-bodied adults need to have a marketable good or service to offer in exchange for money or wages.
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
TheAlmightyNarf said...
@ Ryan
It took my like 5 seconds of research to find the US has fairly average income tax (many countries with more many countries with less). Sure, the the income tax in the US is at one of the lowest point it's been at since initiated. But, it's hardly that low compared to other countries around the world.
And it turns out that there are in fact a few countries out there without any income tax at all. Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Andorra, Monaco, and United Arab Emirates seem to be doing perfectly fine without it... in fact, they're all doing extremely well with very strong economies. Andorra specifically has an almost nil unemployment right now. And UAE has a higher GDP per capita than the US does.
@ SonofRyan
I agree that education and healthcare should count. Thankfully the state I live in also agrees with that, as do many others.
I really don't give a shit what "many/most libertarians" think. Fair tax isn't a "libertarian" cause... it's a "our current tax system isn't working" cause.
The entire system is arbitrary as it is. However, I don't think a commonly agreed upon standard for necessities would be all that hard to come up with.
I can't think of any reason at all why purchasing an investment shouldn't be subject to sales tax. I mean, money earned from investments are subject to income tax now... why not subject them to sales tax?
Anonymous said...
I think you're well within the mainstream of modern libertarian thought. I'm not so far away from your deviations from libertarian orthodoxy (particularly viz. support of the welfare state), and I felt perfectly at home in the institutional libertarian advocacy world, when I worked for a free-market oriented think tank.
Anarcho capitalism isn't the only way to skin this cat. Sure, you have your share of Rothbardian minimal staters that view taxation itself as theft, or antisocial Randroids, but the movement also boasts more moderate followers of Hayek and Friedman. Both of them had no qualms with the welfare state, and where they did have problems with it, quarreled with their top-down and anti-market implenetations rather than the justice of wealth redistribution. Friedman, for example, proposed the negative income tax, which morphed into the Earned Income Tax Credit, a notable bipartisan policy of achieving income redistribution without unduly distorting markets or eliminating incentives to work. This kind of leftist libertarianism is, on the economic front, more concerned about ferreting out the corruption that often takes place when corporations dictate regulatory policy and unleashing competition where government action has insulated hoary organizations from the dynamism of a capitalist economy in areas like international trade and school reform. And they're still sympatico with your civilly libertarian concerns, and indeed on certain issues like the end of the drug war and the expansion of the surveillance state in the wake of 9/11, the only political actors that are taking those issues seriously.
Get thee to Will Wilkinson, start listening to the Cato Institute's daily podcasts, and see if you don't think there's room under the tent for you.
Ryan said...
The countries you're talking about are tiny, wealthy places whose economies are based on tourism, government largesse, and attracting Corporate headquarters by offering tax shelters. I invite you to suggest to an economist that the United States look seriously at the Bahamas as our new economic model and see how that goes for you.
Another few seconds of research, for example, would turn up the fact that 80% of the UAE's population lives in a state of permanent indentured servitude...which is pretty much what would happen to the United States under a deregulated economy.
If you want a fair tax, create one that corrects for the nonsensical assumption that a teacher who works 80 hour weeks deserves 1/100 of the pay and none of the benefits of a CEO who works 4.
And I'd echo the disdain for the argument that the rich create intellectual capital. Do some internet research on how patent law gets used in this country, and by who. Or some research on the way Japanese factories kick Americans' butts by using the intellectual capital of their workers instead of treating them as machine parts.
The cult of wealth is a false idol. Hose 'em, hose 'em good.
Nixou said...
Andorra and Monaco are fictional entities: they are pretty much tiny french districts who are kept into a pseudo-sovereignty because it suit France's interest to maintain a couple of puppet states at its borders. the British Virgin Islands are a confetti of the British Empire and very similar to Monaco & Andorra. These "coutries" exist only because France, the UK, and the EU are backing them up, so in the end, these are financed by heavy taxation.
Bahamas economy relies on tourism and finance, which works because it is a tiny tropical country with a small population. As for the Emirates, their wealth comes from oil and natural gaz which are exploited by, guess what: a State Owned Company. So, your examples include a bunch of subsidized puppet states, a tiny country of 300.000 people which takes advantage of its size and unique location, and a quasi-communist federation of emirates: I am less than impressed.
biomechanical923 said...
Yet again, you show that your political views are not based in logic, but rather in knee-jerk emotional spite.
"Fuck the rich, it's not fair. It's not fairrrrr wahhhh"
What's the point of moving up the ladder if higher taxes are going to result in you being paid the same on every level?
SonofRyan said...
1. Biomechanical, you're putting words in my mouth, this plus your blatant ad hominem attacks on me and Ryan show you're not worth talking to, please come back when you're willing to have a civil discourse.
2. NARF, honestly, the countries you brought up are honestly pretty unrelated. Most of them don't really qualify as countries in most sense of the world being glorified cities, and Ryan is right in that at least one of those countries make money by helping people ignore national and international financial laws, which is generally tantamount (or not tantamount, depending on the case) money laundering. UAE is a state that doesn't have taxes because the state takes all the revenue from the oil and gas industry, no a relevant model to most countries.
3. Narf, also the fair tax system isn't fair as well because also taxing higher incoems at higher brackets also accoutns for the disproportionate percent of the overall economy they have, not just that they spend more.
4. Anonymous, no, I will not get me a CATO podcast. CATO has shown itself to be unwilling to put it's poltiical veiws before facts in it's denial of climate change simply cause that would require government intervention, I cannot respect an organizatio that ignores fact's that blatantly. Also libertarianism, certainly the example of the CATO institute, enjoys ignoring market failures like the inability to cope with enviromental externalities.
biomechanical923 said...
I think you don't know what an ad hominem is, since I never used one in this thread. But if you want out of this conversation because you don't have a leg to stand on, and are pretending to be insulted, then feel free to leave.
TheAlmightyNarf said...
@ Ryan
My point wasn't that these countries are necessarily good models for the US to follow. My point was that a country can have a perfectly stable economy without income tax by surviving on high sales tax, tariffs, and other alternative revenue streams which you've suggested is imposable.
When it comes to issues of taxes and government revenue I don't care much about ideology, and I most certainly don't give a shit about what's "fair". I care about practical solutions to real world problems.
The wealthy of our country are never going to pay as much as they should pay in taxes. That's the simply reality of the world we live in, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. However, we can get them to pay some taxes over the no taxes they pay now, and a high sales tax does that. Is it perfect? No. Is it "fair"? Not really. But, you know what? I don't give a shit. It improves the federal revenue without substantially effecting the middle and lower class. And bullshitting around trying to increase the income tax rate for people who don't pay income tax anyway will never do that. You might as well raise the income tax for Martians and unicorns for all the good it'll do. It's a complete waste of time and "feel-good politics" at it's absolute worst.
For all the talk I hear about getting the top 2% to pay more in taxes will help most of our country's financial problems, all I'm suggesting is that we actually get the top 2% to start paying some taxes in the first place.
The cold hard reality is that there just isn't as strong a demand for teachers as there are for CEOs, otherwise they would be paid as much. As long as there are thousand of unemployed teachers out there willing to work for whatever their local BoE will pay them, all the while new teachers are trying to enter the work force faster than old ones are retiring, their situation isn't going to get any better.
@ SonofRyan
3. I'm not sure I really follow what you're getting at there. I mean, what exactly is their stake over the economy if not the money they spend? That's where economic power comes from... spending. Money sitting in a vault doesn't influence anything.
jake said...
This Libertarian believes in both market failures and climate change (though he says that while it's a big deal, it's not that big of a deal.)
This might be an interesting read for you, in that he's very moderate about his libertarianism, like the fact that he also supports a safety net, though probably smaller then you want.
Ryan said...
I don't disagree with you because of ad hominem attacks, I disagree with you because I don't think what you're saying is true. I think you're assuming that because I see economic injustice as a problem that means I'm whining, because if *you* were to complain about not having enough money, *you* would be whining. But remember that a difference between us is that I'm a socialist. I really don't believe the world is by necessity a bloodthirsty competition for resources in which he who dies with the most iPods wins. I really do believe that a world in which people come together to pay for public goods like health care, unemployment insurance, etc. is a better one, and I think that higher incomes are, by virtue of representing a much greater benefit from those same public goods, fair game for higher taxation. The CEO of Ikea still seems interested in running his business even with a top tax bracket of 60% (that's 24% higher than ours, and 21% higher than Obama is talking about taxing anybody), which is one of many examples I can give you illustrating why the "Job Creators" argument is *actual* whining by people with too much cash and very little sense of social responsibility.
Right. You don't care what's fair, you care about "real world solutions". People who are being treated unfairly tend to care about what's fair, and people who benefit from unfairness tend to talk about "real world solutions". I think it's awesome that you're privileged, but I think it's not so awesome that you think that means caring about fairness is for suckers. Your moral laziness is bad for other people; to them, *you* are a "real world problem".
Take a couple of minutes to google the tax share paid by the wealthy in America. What you'll find is that they, in fact, pay a pretty significant portion of Federal Revenue, not "nothing".
*Corporations* avoid taxes more successfully, but even they contribute a fair amount of money to Federal coffers. If they and the individually wealthy *didn't* pay so much, they wouldn't spend so much of their time and resources trying to prevent tax increases.
Meanwhile, the reason teachers aren't paid better is that education is a public good rather than a commodity. The economics of teaching have less to do with scarcity than they do with State budgets. I don't have a good explanation for CEOs, but I suspect their ballooning compensation has less to do with normal market forces than you make it sound, since the United States' bizarre idea that a CEO should earn 300x the wage of a worker is relatively exceptional.
biomechanical923 said...
You seem to be under the impression that CEO's do nothing all day but sit around counting money and sexually harassing their secretaries.
The fact of the matter is that the CEO provides a more valuable service than the low-level worker, and is entitled to profit more.
If a burger flipper makes a bad burger, the business may lose one customer. If the CEO makes a bad decision, the business can lose millions of dollars.
Shareholders wouldn't agree to pay CEOs so much unless they agreed that the position was worth it, they would just hire somebody cheaper and split the dividends.
Ryan said...
You're right: market forces are what make CEOs so grotesquely overpaid. Therefore, the government should regulate those forces to avoid the unjust outcome that results.
Anonymous said...
Number of hours worked is a terrible way to view productivity, to put it mildly. Person A is sewer that has access to a sewing machine. He works 8 hours in a day and manages to churn out 100 shirts. Person B is a sewer of mediocre talent that doesn't have access to a sewing machine. He can't produce any shirts better than Person B, but because he has no sewing machine, he's much less productive. He toils for 16 hours a day, and still only manages to make 20 shirts in a day.
In what way is Person B more productive than Person A?
Now let's try this. Person A is a doctor who has several years of training and a few decades of experience under his belt. Person B is a teenager that's doing relatively well in school but still has little in the way of useful skills. Person A works 8 hours today and saves the lives of two patients; Person B works 10 hours and fixes some burgers for some people. In what way is Person A less productive than Person B?
Productivity is a function of how much people need what you're producing, what skills you have, and what physical capital you have access to that can increase your efficiency.
Ryan said...
...but in the real world, there are many fields requiring years of training and expense that pay much less than fields requiring less training. In a perfect world, anyone with 6 years of training/college would make more than anyone with 2 (assuming they're both hardworking and talented). But in fact, it doesn't work that way, because the society we live in overvalues some work and undervalues others. And that's ok, because it's just money. But, again, if a social worker with 10 years of education is making half of what a garbage man makes with a high school education, and a tenth of what some MBA 22-year-old is making out of college, it's pretty irritating when that same kid acts like paying a little extra tax is an attack on the constitution.
biomechanical923 said...
"Therefore, the government should regulate those forces to avoid the unjust outcome that results."
They do. It's called subsidy. The government subsidizes certain industries to create more incentive for businesses to produce less profitable goods.
For example, market forces dictate that corn is about one of the cheapest things in the world. Farmers don't want to grow corn, because they could get more money per acre if they grew something else. The government subsidizes corn production, thus giving incentives for more farmers to grow corn when they normally wouldn't want to.
There are all kinds of government subsidies for essential industries. Note I said ESSENTIAL industries. There's no subsidy on janitors and burger flippers because there's no need for more.
Another thing about subsidy.... socialists like to throw a shit fit over them, even if they do manage to regulate unjust market forces (like you wanted them to)
biomechanical923 said...
There is no such thing as a service that's overvalued or undervalued. The value is exactly the price that the buyer is willing to pay for it. said...
Surely, the dude is absolutely fair.
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« Staying Afloat in 2011 | Main | Development to be Showcased at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. »
Using DNS for Parking Companies
Last month I reported on some issues that Google had raised about using different types of redirects to park domains. It seems that the best way to park domains is to change the nameservers (such as ns1.sedoparking.com or ns1.parked.com) for the domain. Micheal Gilmour had a great article about this issue on his blog. He puts this move by Google in the context of their recent moves to cut payouts to domain owners. He also reported that his ParkLogic solution for large portfolio owners does allow dns switching - so his model still works.
We also get some hints that Yahoo may be blocking some domain redirects. (This from the members only section of the Parked forum, so no quotes.) The best advice for both Yahoo-based services (such as Parked.com, WhyPark.com, and SmartName.com) and Google-based services (such as DomainSponsor, Sedo, and NameDrive) is to set the appropriate nameservers at your registrar. If you use a service such as ParkLogic to send traffic to domains - be sure that this service is actually using the dns to send the traffic rather than some other approach.
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Atomized (PHP) Templates
According to, one of the definitions of ‘atomized’ is to break into small fragments. It’s also to subject to bombardment with atomic weapons, but that’s not what I mean here.
The nice thing about small fragments (of code) is that you can reuse them and end up with a pretty nice templated site. Now why would that be pretty OR nice, you ask?
Well, the great thing about templates is that you can use them to make updating your site a cinch. Why update a common header or footer on every page, when you could just change it in one place and all of the updating would be done on all those pages?
So let’s say we have a common header and footer. All together now, “we…have…a…common…header…and…footer” (and yes, I do think I’m funny). This same header and footer are used on every page of our site. Excellent. If we want to make a change, though (fix a missspelling, for example), we have to go and do it on every page of the site. That could be quite a few pages, resulting in a mindless, arduous, time-consuming, and frustrating task, especially when we want to get back to more important things.
We want to get to the place where we have one file for our header and one file for our footer. We then pull the contents of each of these files onto each page of our site (without our visitors even knowing it).
Let’s look at how PHP can help us to accomplish that.
The workhorse that’s going to get us there is this little PHP function:
You could also use require(), but that will throw an error when the required file is not there (or is referenced incorrectly). Usually, we want to avoid showing users those types of errors to our users.
Anyway, when putting include() into a page that is mixed with (X)HTML, we have to tell the PHP parser to process it not as regular (X)HTML, but as PHP code. We do that by wrapping it like so:
<?php include(); ?>
Then, of course, we have to stick an actual file name in there, like this:
<?php include('footer.php'); ?>
Keep in mind that if you are not in the same directory as your includes, you will have to make sure that you are referencing the same include file. For example, since my footer is at /footer.php, on my /contact/ page, my include reference will have to look like this:
<?php include('../footer.php'); ?>
There are dynamic ways to do this, but I won’t get into those right now (if you are interested, look into $PHP_SELF and Reserved Variables).
You can also reference it using the full path, like this:
<?php include(''); ?>
But DON’T!
The problem there is that it takes a LOT longer to pull that file (since it is going “out” to your own site to get it, rather than just realizing it’s only a directory or 2 away). Avoid it altogether, or you may end up with a whole other slew of problems.
So with that, here’s an adaptation of what I do on my site (and a place where you can get started on your own):
<div id="maincontainer">
<?php include('header.php'); ?>
<?php include('leftbar.php'); ?>
<div id="content">
<div class="entry">
<h2>Crazy Sample Title</h2>
<p>Lorem ipsum and all of that other random text that goes on a page to show where the actual content would be, even though, techincally, lorem ipsum IS content. Now that will blow your mind...</p>
<?php include("footer.php"); ?>
Slightly edited (for readability, mostly), here’s what you’ll find in my footer include (footer.php, as referenced above):
<div id="footer">
<span style="float:left;">XHTML | CSS | TxP || Blogwise</span>
<span style="float:right;">Copyright © 2004 : Nathan Logan.</span>
Now I can update my copyright notice in one place and it will change on all my pages! Excellent!
This works especially well with publishing systems like Textpattern because by doing it this way, you can edit CSS, header, footer, left nav, or anything else externally. You have a templated system you can modify using your editor of choice (like Dreamweaver), where you get colored code, code completion, nice indentation, and the like (things you usually don’t get in CMSes).
(And sorry about the length of this article – I was trying to be thorough!)
1. Yeah, that is by far the way to design. Editing one footer instead of 20 of the same footers, make’s it much easier. No problem about the article, better to explain it and be a little longer than for it to be short and have a lot of people going, huh?
Jordon Brill is the author. Jan 14, 00:01 is the time. <
2. Wow. I guess this article was written before I knew about $_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’]. Ouch.
If you want to refer to root-relative includes (in an /includes folder, for example), you can do it like this:
include($_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’] . ’/includes/footer.php’);
And really, that’s the best way to go about it, as you can take that little snippet and throw it on any page in your site, regardless of its position in the directory tree. I hope that helps.
Nathan Logan is the author. Jun 20, 13:28 is the time. <
3. Another thought – should I update the article itself, or just leave that comment there??
Nathan Logan is the author. Jun 20, 13:29 is the time. <
Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home/n8guy/ on line 245
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Thursday, 8 March 2012
Who wants to live forever?
Finding a genetic signature of extreme longevity and determining what exactly is the impact of the genetic background on human lifespan have been one of the most discussed topics in recent times. Everybody asking: to live over 100 is a matter of life-style or is written in your DNA?
We remember the excitement generated by the article published in Science in 2010 that describes a set of SNPs significantly associated with extreme longevity, and the delusion when these findings revealed to be inconsistent (the paper has been retracted in 2011). However the authors have reanalyzed the data, corrected the issues and were able to produce robust conclusions and a new publication, this time on PLOS One, in the early 2012.
Together with other clues already discussed in literature, such as high familiarity of extreme longevity, this is a strong evidence of the role of genetic background in influencing the human life expectation.
Taking advantage of the NGS technologies, several projects have been launched aiming to sequence a consistent group of people older than 100 to get clues on which variants and/or
genetic mechanisms are at work to give these subjects a long and surprisingly healthy life. Examples are the Medco 100 over 100 Prize or the New England Centenarian Study.
Sebastiani (the first author of the previously cited paper) has also recently published the results from the whole genome sequencing of two individuals, one male and one female, over 114 years old. The paper reports interesting findings on the distribution of genetic variants and tested the 4 main models proposed for extreme longevity genetics: presence of alterations in metabolic pathways, lack of disease-associated variants, presence of rare variants, enrichment in longevity associated variants. Even if two individuals are clearly not sufficient for inferring final conclusion, the data obtained supported a scenario in which disease-associated variants are not depleted, but are likely counter-balanced by the enrichment of longevity associated variants (the two subject tested resulted enriched in variants near the ones previously identified as longevity associated). Moreover, a detailed annotation of the identified variants showed that modifications in splicing events may be an important factor, calling for future RNA-Seq studies on ultracentenarians.
Overall this is the first reported WGS on subjects >100 years old and an interesting pilot project for future larger studies.
No comments:
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Introduction to NOUFORS
What's New
Michel M. Deschamps - Director
Personal Sightings
Sightings Archive
Newspaper Archive
UFO Characteristics
UFO Physical Traces
Animal Mutilations
UFO Occupants
Crop Circles
Audio Clips
Majestic 12
and UFOs
Military Officers
and UFOs
Scientists and UFOs
Astronauts and UFOs
Pilots and UFOs
Cops and Saucers
Celebrities and UFOs
Who's Who in
Skeptics and Debunkers
Encyclopedia of Terminology and Abbreviations
Kidz' Korner
Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with Enrico Fermi, he is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first nuclear weapons. The first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, in the Trinity test in New Mexico; Oppenheimer remarked later that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
J. Robert Oppenheimer, c. 1944
Early life
Childhood and education
Oppenheimer was born in New York City on April 22, 1904, to Julius Oppenheimer, a wealthy Jewish textile importer who had immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1888, and Ella Friedman, a painter. In 1912, the family moved to an apartment on the eleventh floor of 155 Riverside Drive, near West 88th Street, Manhattan, an area known for luxurious mansions and town houses. Their art collection included works by Pablo Picasso and Édouard Vuillard, and at least three original paintings by Vincent van Gogh. Robert had a younger brother, Frank, who also became a physicist.
Oppenheimer was initially schooled at Alcuin Preparatory School, and in 1911, entered the Ethical Culture Society School. This had been founded by Felix Adler to promote a form of ethical training based on the Ethical Culture movement, whose motto was "Deed before Creed". His father had been a member of the Society for many years, serving on its board of trustees from 1907 to 1915. Oppenheimer was a versatile scholar, interested in English and French literature, and particularly in mineralogy. He completed the third and fourth grades in one year, and skipped half the eighth grade. During his final year, he became interested in chemistry. He entered Harvard College a year late, at age 18, because he suffered an attack of colitis while prospecting in Joachimstal during a family summer vacation in Europe. To help him recover from the illness, his father enlisted the help of his English teacher Herbert Smith who took him to New Mexico, where Oppenheimer fell in love with horseback riding and the southwestern United States.
Studies in Europe
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes' Laboratory in Leiden, Netherlands, 1926.
Oppenheimer is in the second row, third from the left.
He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in March 1927 at age 23, supervised by Born. After the oral exam, James Franck, the professor administering, reportedly said, "I'm glad that's over. He was on the point of questioning me." Oppenheimer published more than a dozen papers at Göttingen, including many important contributions to the new field of quantum mechanics. He and Born published a famous paper on the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, which separates nuclear motion from electronic motion in the mathematical treatment of molecules, allowing nuclear motion to be neglected to simplify calculations. It remains his most cited work.
Early professional work
Educational work
In the autumn of 1928, Oppenheimer visited Paul Ehrenfest's institute at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, where he impressed them by giving lectures in Dutch, despite having little experience with the language. There, he was given the nickname of Opje, later anglicized by his students as "Oppie". From Leiden, he continued on to the ETH in Zurich to work with Wolfgang Pauli on quantum mechanics and the continuous spectrum. Oppenheimer respected and liked Pauli and may have emulated his personal style as well as his critical approach to problems.
The University of California, Berkeley, where Oppenheimer taught from 1929 to 1943
He worked closely with Nobel Prize-winning experimental physicist Ernest O. Lawrence and his cyclotron pioneers, helping them understand the data their machines were producing at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 1936, Berkeley promoted him to full professor at a salary of $3300 per annum. In return, he was asked to curtail his teaching at Caltech, so a compromise was reached whereby Berkeley released him for six weeks each year, enough to teach one term at Caltech.
Scientific work
Oppenheimer with Albert Einstein.
Oppenheimer also made important contributions to the theory of cosmic ray showers and started work that eventually led to descriptions of quantum tunneling. In 1931, he co-wrote a paper on the "Relativistic Theory of the Photoelectric Effect" with his student Harvey Hall, in which, based on empirical evidence, he correctly disputed Dirac's assertion that two of the energy levels of the hydrogen atom have the same energy. Subsequently, one of his doctoral students, Willis Lamb, determined that this was a consequence of what became known as the Lamb shift, for which Lamb was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1955.
Oppenheimer published only five scientific papers, one of which was in biophysics, after World War II, and none after 1950. Murray Gell-Mann, a later Nobelist who, as a visiting scientist, worked with him at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1951, offered this opinion:
Oppenheimer's diverse interests sometimes interrupted his focus on projects. In 1933, he learned Sanskrit and met the Indologist Arthur W. Ryder at Berkeley. He read the Bhagavad Gita in the original Sanskrit and later, he cited it as one of the books that most shaped his philosophy of life. His close confidant and colleague, Nobel Prize winner Isidor Rabi, later gave his own interpretation:
Oppenheimer was overeducated in those fields, which lie outside the scientific tradition, such as his interest in religion, in the Hindu religion in particular, which resulted in a feeling of mystery of the universe that surrounded him like a fog. He saw physics clearly, looking toward what had already been done, but at the border, he tended to feel there was much more of the mysterious and novel than there actually was ... [he turned] away from the hard, crude methods of theoretical physics into a mystical realm of broad intuition.
In spite of this, observers such as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez have suggested that if he had lived long enough to see his predictions substantiated by experiment, Oppenheimer might have won a Nobel Prize for his work on gravitational collapse, concerning neutron stars and black holes. In retrospect, some physicists and historians consider this to be his most important contribution, though it was not taken up by other scientists in his own lifetime. The physicist and historian Abraham Pais once asked Oppenheimer what he considered to be his most important scientific contributions; Oppenheimer cited his work on electrons and positrons, not his work on gravitational contraction. Oppenheimer was nominated for the Nobel Prize for physics three times, in 1945, 1951 and 1967, but never won.
Private and political life
Oppenheimer broke up with Tatlock in 1939. In August that year, he met Katherine ("Kitty") Puening Harrison, a radical Berkeley student and former Communist Party member. Harrison had been married three times previously. Her first marriage lasted only a few months. Her second husband was Joe Dallet, an active member of the Communist party, who was killed in the Spanish Civil War. Kitty returned to the United States where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in botany from the University of Pennsylvania. There she married Richard Harrison, a physician and medical researcher, in 1938. In June 1939, Kitty and Harrison moved to Pasadena, California, where he became chief of radiology at a local hospital and she enrolled as a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles. Oppenheimer and Kitty created a minor scandal by sleeping together after one of Tolman's parties. In the summer of 1940, she stayed with Oppenheimer at his ranch in New Mexico. She finally asked Harrison for a divorce when she found out she was pregnant. When he refused, she obtained an instant divorce in Reno, Nevada, and married Oppenheimer on November 1, 1940.
Their first child Peter was born in May 1941, and their second child, Katherine ("Toni"), was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico, on December 7, 1944. During his marriage, Oppenheimer continued his affair with Jean Tatlock. Later, their continued contact became an issue in his security clearance hearings because of Tatlock's Communist associations. Many of Oppenheimer's closest associates were active in the Communist Party in the 1930s or 1940s. They included his brother Frank, Frank's wife Jackie, Kitty, Jean Tatlock, his landlady Mary Ellen Washburn, and several of his graduate students at Berkeley.
When he joined the Manhattan Project in 1942, Oppenheimer wrote on his personal security questionnaire that he [Oppenheimer] had been "a member of just about every Communist Front organization on the West Coast". Years later, he claimed that he did not remember saying this, that it was not true, and that if he had said anything along those lines, it was "a half-jocular overstatement". He was a subscriber to the People's World, a Communist Party organ, and he testified in 1954, "I was associated with the Communist movement." From 1937 to 1942, in the midst of the Great Purge and Hitler-Stalin pact, Oppenheimer was a member at Berkeley of what he called a "discussion group", which was later identified by fellow members, Haakon Chevalier and Gordon Griffiths, as a "closed" (secret) unit of the Communist Party for Berkeley faculty.
Oppenheimer's badge photo from Los Alamos
Manhattan Project
Los Alamos
A group of physicists at a 1946 Los Alamos colloquium. In the front row are left to right: Norris Bradbury,
John Manley, Enrico Fermi and J.M.B. Kellogg (L-R). Behind Manley is Oppenheimer (wearing jacket and tie),
and to his left is Richard Feynman. The army colonel on the far left is Oliver Haywood.
In the third row between Haywood and Oppenheimer is Edward Teller.
In June 1942, the US Army established the Manhattan Engineer District to handle its part in the atom bomb project, beginning the process of transferring responsibility from the Office of Scientific Research and Development to the military. In September, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., was appointed director of what became known as the Manhattan Project. Groves selected Oppenheimer to head the project's secret weapons laboratory, a choice which surprised many, as Oppenheimer was not known to be politically aligned with the conservative military, nor to be an efficient leader of large projects. The fact that he did not have a Nobel Prize, and might not have the prestige to direct fellow scientists, did concern Groves. However, he was impressed by Oppenheimer's singular grasp of the practical aspects of designing and constructing an atomic bomb, and by the breadth of his knowledge. As a military engineer, Groves knew that this would be vital in an interdisciplinary project that would involve not just physics, but chemistry, metallurgy, ordnance and engineering. Groves also detected in Oppenheimer something that many others did not, an "overweening ambition" that Groves reckoned would supply the drive necessary to push the project to a successful conclusion. Isidor Rabi considered the appointment "a real stroke of genius on the part of General Groves, who was not generally considered to be a genius".
In 1943, development efforts were directed to a plutonium gun-type fission weapon called "Thin Man". Initial research on the properties of plutonium was done using cyclotron-generated plutonium-239, which was extremely pure but could only be created in tiny amounts. When Los Alamos received the first sample of plutonium from the X-10 Graphite Reactor in April 1944, a problem was discovered: reactor-bred plutonium had a higher concentration of plutonium-240, making it unsuitable for use in a gun-type weapon. In July 1944, Oppenheimer abandoned the gun design in favor of an implosion-type weapon. Using chemical explosive lenses, a sub-critical sphere of fissile material could be squeezed into a smaller and denser form. The metal needed to travel only very short distances, so the critical mass would be assembled in much less time. In August 1944, Oppenheimer implemented a sweeping reorganization of the Los Alamos laboratory to focus on implosion. He concentrated the development efforts on the gun-type device, a simpler design that only had to work with uranium-235, in a single group, and this device became Little Boy in February 1945. After a mammoth research effort, the more complex design of the implosion device, known as the "Christy gadget" after Robert Christy, another student of Oppenheimer's, was finalized in a meeting in Oppenheimer's office on February 28, 1945.
Presentation of the Army-Navy "E" Award at Los Alamos on October 16, 1945.
Oppenheimer (left) gave his farewell speech as director on this occasion. Robert Gordon
Sproul front, in suit, accepted the award on behalf of the University of California.
In May 1945, an Interim Committee was created to advise and report on wartime and postwar policies regarding the use of nuclear energy. The Interim Committee, in turn, established a scientific panel consisting of Compton, Fermi, Lawrence and Oppenheimer to advise it on scientific issues. In its presentation to the Interim Committee, the scientific panel offered its opinion not just on the likely physical effects of an atomic bomb, but on its likely military and political impact. This included opinions on such sensitive issues as whether or not the Soviet Union should be advised of the weapon in advance of its use against Japan.
Years later, he would explain that another verse had also entered his head at that time: namely, the famous verse: "ka-lo'smi lokaks.ayakr.tpravr.ddho loka-nsama-hartumiha pravr.ttah." (XI,32), which he translated as "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
The fireball at the Trinity nuclear test
Physicist Isidor Rabi noticed Oppenheimer's disconcerting triumphalism: "I'll never forget his walk; I'll never forget the way he stepped out of the car ... his walk was like High Noon ... this kind of strut. He had done it." At an assembly at Los Alamos on August 6 (the evening of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima), Oppenheimer took to the stage and clasped his hands together "like a prize-winning boxer" while the crowd cheered. He noted his regret the weapon had not been available in time to use against Nazi Germany. However, he and many of the project staff were very upset about the bombing of Nagasaki, as they did not feel the second bomb was necessary from a military point of view. He traveled to Washington on August 17 to hand-deliver a letter to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson expressing his revulsion and his wish to see nuclear weapons banned.
For his services as director of Los Alamos, Oppenheimer was awarded the Medal for Merit from President Harry S. Truman in 1946.
Postwar activities
After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Manhattan Project became public knowledge; and Oppenheimer became a national spokesman for science, emblematic of a new type of technocratic power. He became a household name and his face appeared on the covers of Life and Time. Nuclear physics became a powerful force as all governments of the world began to realize the strategic and political power that came with nuclear weapons. Like many scientists of his generation, he felt that security from atomic bombs would come only from a transnational organization such as the newly formed United Nations, which could institute a program to stifle a nuclear arms race.
Institute for Advanced Study
In November 1945, Oppenheimer left Los Alamos to return to Caltech, but he soon found that his heart was no longer in teaching. In 1947, he accepted an offer from Lewis Strauss to take up the directorship of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. This meant moving back east and leaving Ruth Tolman, the wife of his friend Richard Tolman, with whom he had begun an affair after leaving Los Alamos. The job came with a salary of $20,000 per annum, plus rent-free accommodation in the director's house, a 17th-century manor with a cook and groundskeeper, surrounded by 265 acres (107 ha) of woodlands.
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey
Atomic Energy Commission
Oppenheimer in 1946
Security hearing
President Eisenhower (left) receives a report from Lewis L. Strauss (right), Chairman of the Atomic
Energy Commission, on the Operation Castle hydrogen bomb tests in the Pacific, March 30,
1954. Strauss pressed for Oppenheimer's security clearance to be revoked.
Oppenheimer's former colleague, physicist Edward Teller, testified on behalf
of the government at Oppenheimer's security hearing in 1954.
Teller testified that he considered Oppenheimer loyal, but that:
This led to outrage by the scientific community and Teller's virtual expulsion from academic science. Groves, threatened by the FBI as having been potentially part of a coverup about the Chevalier contact in 1943, likewise testified against Oppenheimer. Many top scientists, as well as government and military figures, testified on Oppenheimer's behalf. Inconsistencies in his testimony and his erratic behavior on the stand, at one point saying he had given a "cock and bull story" and that this was because he "was an idiot", convinced some that he was unstable, unreliable and a possible security risk. Oppenheimer's clearance was revoked one day before it was due to lapse anyway. Isidor Rabi's comment was that Oppenheimer was merely a government consultant at the time anyway and that if the government "didn't want to consult the guy, then don't consult him."
During his hearing, Oppenheimer testified willingly on the left-wing behavior of many of his scientific colleagues. Had Oppenheimer's clearance not been stripped then, he might have been remembered as someone who had "named names" to save his own reputation. As it happened, Oppenheimer was seen by most of the scientific community as a martyr to McCarthyism, an eclectic liberal who was unjustly attacked by warmongering enemies, symbolic of the shift of scientific creativity from academia into the military. Wernher von Braun summed up his opinion about the matter with a quip to a Congressional committee: "In England, Oppenheimer would have been knighted."
Final years
Starting in 1954, Oppenheimer spent several months of the year living on the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands. In 1957, he purchased a 2-acre (0.81 ha) tract of land on Gibney Beach, where he built a spartan home on the beach. He spent a considerable amount of time sailing with his daughter Toni and wife Kitty.
Oppenheimer Beach, in St John, US Virgin Islands
In his speeches and public writings, Oppenheimer continually stressed the difficulty of managing the power of knowledge in a world in which the freedom of science to exchange ideas was more and more hobbled by political concerns. Oppenheimer delivered the Reith Lectures on the BBC in 1953, which were subsequently published as Science and the Common Understanding. In 1955, Oppenheimer published The Open Mind, a collection of eight lectures that he had given since 1946 on the subject of nuclear weapons and popular culture. Oppenheimer rejected the idea of nuclear gunboat diplomacy. "The purposes of this country in the field of foreign policy," he wrote, "cannot in any real or enduring way be achieved by coercion." In 1957, the philosophy and psychology departments at Harvard invited Oppenheimer to deliver the William James Lectures. An influential group of Harvard alumni led by Edwin Ginn that included Archibald Roosevelt protested against the decision. Some 1,200 people packed into Sanders Theatre to hear Oppenheimer's six lectures, entitled "The Hope of Order". Oppenheimer delivered the Whidden Lectures at McMaster University in 1962, and these were published in 1964 as The Flying Trapeze: Three Crises for Physicists.
5 June 1947. Award of honorary degrees at Harvard to Oppenheimer (left), George C.
Marshall (third from left) and Omar N. Bradley (fifth from left). The President of
Harvard University, James B. Conant, sits between Marshall and Bradley.
Oppenheimer (left) and Groves (right) at the remains of the Trinity test in September 1945.
The white canvas overshoes prevent fallout from sticking to the soles of their shoes.
The 1980 BBC TV serial Oppenheimer, starring Sam Waterston, won three BAFTA Television Awards. The Day After Trinity, a 1980 documentary about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the building of the atomic bomb, was nominated for an Academy Award and received a Peabody Award. In addition to his use by authors of fiction, Oppenheimer's life has been explored in numerous biographies, including American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005) by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for 2006. A centennial conference and exhibit were held in 2004 at Berkeley, with the proceedings of the conference published in 2005 as Reappraising Oppenheimer: Centennial Studies and Reflections. His papers are in the Library of Congress.
As a scientist, Oppenheimer is remembered by his students and colleagues as being a brilliant researcher and engaging teacher, the founder of modern theoretical physics in the United States. Because his scientific attentions often changed rapidly, he never worked long enough on any one topic and carried it to fruition to merit the Nobel Prize, although his investigations contributing to the theory of black holes may have warranted the prize had he lived long enough to see them brought into fruition by later astrophysicists. An asteroid, 67085 Oppenheimer, was named in his honor, as was the lunar crater Oppenheimer.
In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame,
The good deeds a man has done before defend him.
Robert Oppenheimer and Fying Saucers
In June of 1947 Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer together wrote a TOP SECRET six-page document entitled "Relationships with Inhabitants of Celestial Bodies".
It says the presence of unidentified spacecraft is accepted as de facto by the military.
It also deals with the subjects that you would expect competent scientists to deal with - i.e., where do they come from, what does the law say about it, what should we do in the event of colonization and/or integration of peoples, and why are they here?
Finally, the document addresses the presence of celestial astroplanes in our atmosphere as a result of actions of military experiments with fission and fusion devices of warfare.
Einstein and Oppenheimer encourage consideration of our potential future situation and safety due to our present and past actions in space. How can we avoid a perilous fate?
Extract majestic document:
Another possibility may exist, that a species of homo sapiens might have established themselves as an independent nation on another celestial body in our solar system and evolved culturely independently from ours.
Living conditions on these bodies lets say the moon,-or the planet Mars, would have to be such as to permit a stable, and to a certain extent, independent life, from an economic standpoint.
Much has been speculated about the possibilities for life existing outside of our atmosphere and beyond, always hypothetically. Lets assume that magnesium silicates on the moon may exist and contain up to 13 per cent water. Using energy and machines brought to the moon, perhaps from a space station, the rooks could be broken up, pulverized, and then backed to drive off the water of crystallization. This could be collected and then decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen, using an electric. current or the short wave radiation of the sun. The oxygen could be used for breathing purposes; the hydrogen night be used as a fuel.
Now we come to the problem of determining what to do if the inhabitants of celestial bodies, or extraterrestrial biological entitles (EBE) desire to settle here.
1. If they are politically organised and possess a certain culture similar to our own, they may be recognized as a independent people.
2. If they consider our culture to be devoid of political unity, they would have the right to colonize. Of course, this colonization cannot be conducted on classic linos. A superior form of colonizing will have to be conceived, that could be a kind of tutelage, possibly through the tacit approval of the United Nations. But would the United Nations legally have the right of allowing such tutelage over us in such a fashion?
The division of a celestial body into zones and the distribution of them among other celestial states.
A moral entity? The most feasible solution it seem would be this one, submit an agreement providing far the peaceful absorbtion of a celestial race(s) in such a manner that our culture would remain intact with guarantees that their presence not be revealed.
It would merely be a matter of internationalizing celestial peoples, and creating an international treaty instrument.
The presence of celestial astroplanes in our atmosphere is a direct result of our testing atomic weapons?
Military strategists foresee the use of space craft with nuclear warheads as the ultimate weapon of war. Attack no longer comes from an exclusive direction, nor from a determined country, but from the sky, with the practical impossibility of determining who the aggressor is.
When artificial satellites and missiles find their place in space, we must consider the potential threat that unidentified space craft pose. One must consider the fact that mis-identification of these space craft for a intercontinental missile in a re-entry phase of flight could lead to accidental nuclear war.
This document was written in 1947!!
No infringement intended. For educational purposes only.
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Anyone there? The importance of the answer in Social Media
Anyone there? The importance of the answer in Social Media
Although it seems unthinkable, today companies still do not use social networks as a channel of direct communication with customers. It is hard to believe that only a small percentage of the messages sent by users are taken care of, and the cases in which an immediate response is given are still more atypical. Incredible but true, according to a study made in the USA To evaluate the response time on Twitter of the major brands of clothing, only 13 percent of complaints get a response (sometimes it took up to 50 hours).
The curious fact is that only 9 percent were negative comments. They are wasting authentic golden opportunities to reach users, to practice the long-awaited engagement; they have put the possibility on the table and do not know how to take advantage of it. This shows that users use social networks to contact companies, but they continue to use them as unidirectional channels, where they can unilaterally publish their messages and self-promote. They are not aware of the great weight they exert or of their influence when creating a brand image.
“Social media teleoperator”
Includes in the customer service department the figure of the “socialmedia telemarketer” that person or work team (depending on the volume of requests) that addresses the issues that customers raise online. Imagine for a moment that you enable a consumer service number, someone calls, and the teleoperator picks up the call, welcomes the caller but does not speak again; The client asks his question but never gets an answer. What opinion would the client form? It is absurd to think that this situation can occur, but it is what happens in social media, what are you waiting for to act? It has trained and qualified personnel for the position, according to previously established guidelines for action.
Be social, my friend
Assume it, communication 2.0 exists, it is already affecting your immediate environment. Whether you want it or not your brand is already exposed, users talk about it. It’s up to you to get in the car and take an active part in the conversation or turn your back and grapple with the circumstances. Overcomes that barrier that divides the brand of consumers and interacts with users. Talk to you with them, they will feel listened to, cared for, in short, taken care of. Listen carefully and communicate regularly. Humanize the brand and you will create a link with your community that can hardly be broken; something impossible to achieve with traditional communication channels.
A timely response is a victory
Do not be afraid of negative comments, they have not eaten anyone yet. Hiding your head under the ground will only serve to aggravate the problem. Accept complaints as opportunities to improve; In most cases the client only wants to be heard, in a way he complains to get your attention. You have the possibility of winning the client, do not hesitate and act. Offer a clear, direct and decisive answer. Do not digress, do not make excuses, and under no circumstances, never resort to lies.
Do you have a policy of active action in social networks in your company? What is your relationship with customers?
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ImageLinks Document Management Solution
ImageLinks Document Management Solution
ImageLinks Document Management Solution
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Show Summary Details
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date: 15 December 2018
Affect Studies and Literary Criticism
Summary and Keywords
Most readers probably take it as self-evident that literature is inseparable from emotion. Poems memorialize love and grief; stories elaborate on the rage of battle, the shame of defeat, or the guilt of sin. Readers pass through versions of these feelings while perusing a book or watching a play. They also experience respect and awe, flip pages or inch forward in their seats due to suspense, or relax into a delighted experience of beauty at a phrase or scene.
After long neglect, in recent decades, emotion—or, more generally, affect—has become a major concern in literary study, as well as philosophy, psychology, and elsewhere. It is possible to organize such work into two broad orientations, commonly called “affect theory” (alternatively, “affective poststructuralism”) and “affective science.” Writers in affect theory draw on a range of psychological, social, linguistic, and other theories, most often in the service of political analysis. The psychological principles of affect theory have tended to derive from the tradition of psychoanalysis, often through its radical revision or critique by such theorists as Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze. Affect theorists have also drawn extensively, sometimes more centrally, on a range of theorists outside of psychology, principally poststructuralists, such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.
In contrast, affective science has its roots in cognitive science and to a lesser extent social psychology. It comprises a set of competing theories of emotion, including dimensional versus systemic and appraisal versus perceptual-associative accounts. Dimensional accounts see emotions as specified only by general variables (such as attraction versus aversion). Systemic accounts treat emotions as the result of distinct pre-dedicated, biological systems (e.g., for disgust or fear). Appraisal accounts treat emotion as the result of a person’s assessments of how events or circumstances impact his or her achievement of important goals. Perceptual-associative accounts construe emotion as a more mechanical process that is affected by assessments only indirectly. Whatever its explanatory architecture, an affective science account is likely to include a careful analysis of emotion episodes, breaking them down into eliciting conditions, action readiness, expressive or communicative outcomes, phenomenological tone, and other components.
Beyond treating different theories of emotion, an account of literary affect needs to consider the various possible locations of emotion in literature. These begin with the real people involved—authors and readers. But they extend to implied authors and implied readers as well as wholly fictional persons, such as narrators and characters. Emotion bears also on scenes and sequences—both the sequence of events as they actually occur in the story and the sequence of events as they are presented in the plot (which may, for example, reveal the outcome of events before revealing their causes). Sometimes, a given narrative level has its own characteristic emotions or affective concerns—such as suspense in the case of plot (suspense is in part a function of when story information is provided). At other times, a given level will merely affect the ways the emotions of other levels are modulated (as when some stylistic features, not funny in themselves, contribute to comic effect).
By the usual scientific criteria, affective science is more logically rigorous and empirically better supported. But affect theory has its own value—particularly in challenging the ideological assumptions that often underlie social scientific research, including some of that undertaken in affective science. In short, each group has something to learn from the other.
Keywords: affective science, affect theory, cognitive science, emotion, empathy, Ben Jonson, Lǐ Qīngzhào, narrative discourse, psychoanalysis, story structure
The Ubiquity and Strangeness of Literary Feeling
Literature is animated by emotion, both at the level of what it concerns and at the level of how readers respond. In one way, the point is a trivial one. If an emotion is simply a certain sort of motivation system—and that is the working assumption of the following discussion—then any activity necessarily involves emotion. Brushing one’s teeth involves a feeling of aversion at the experience of a grimy mouth or at the thought of future tooth decay. However, emotion appears more central to literature and literary experience than to tooth brushing. Often, literature does not rely simply on basic motivational arousal; it seems to be marked by the intensification of such arousal. Romeo and Juliet are not simply ordinary lovers with the usual run of ambivalent feelings; they are so driven by love that they risk—indeed, embrace—death. Othello’s jealousy causes him to pass out, then murder. Achilles is a paragon of anger, the emotion signaled by the opening of the Iliad. Of course, not all literary works treat extreme emotional states. But even those that do not will often dwell on the minutiae of emotion, foregrounding them. For example, in James Joyce’s Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus is no more grief-stricken than anyone else might be. But Joyce spells out the details of his brooding, guilt-riddled mourning. Moreover, he does so in prose of often exquisite beauty.
As the references to negative emotions, such as grief, already suggest, sometimes the emotional appeal of a literary work is apparently anomalous. Tragedy rewards us, even as we weep compassionately—a result that many writers have found almost paradoxical. In fact, there are two problems here. First, we grieve over fictional events, thus events we know to be unreal. Second, we enjoy experiencing that grief.1 Before going on, it is worth considering these apparent paradoxes as they illustrate the centrality of emotion to literature and the importance of emotion study for understanding the nature of literature and our response to it.
In fact, there seems to be a fairly straightforward solution to the paradoxes of fictional emotion and tragic enjoyment. Simulation is a key operation of the human mind. It involves the imagination of particulars beyond direct perception and memory. It is the process that we engage in when imagining the way things might play out if we engage in various sorts of activity. For example, John might simulate what will happen if he asks Cindy to go out for dinner and maybe take in a movie. That imagination is closely related to actual experience. Thus Toates points out that “representations of emotionally loaded events trigger a similar set of brain regions as are triggered by the corresponding real events, though with less intensity.”2 Simulation has an adaptive function because it allows us to evaluate scenarios “off-line,” thus without actual risk. But it has that function only because we experience the usual emotions associated with the simulated events. If John simulates Cindy’s humiliating rejection, but feels nothing (because it is a fiction), then the simulation will have no consequences. We cannot, however, simply feel aversion at negative simulations, since we would presumably just stop imagining negative scenarios in that case; we would stick to happy fantasies. Thus, to function adaptively, it seems that the act of simulation itself must produce some feeling of pleasure or, more technically, activate the reward system (or SEEKING system3), the system that governs the pursuit of pleasure and includes both “liking” and “wanting” components.4 Though the idea does not seem to have been extensively researched, some studies suggest that something along these lines does occur. Specifically, empirical work by Kim and colleagues indicates that there is reward involvement in compassion,5 which is roughly what is at issue in simulation, even simulation of one’s future self.6
Thus the apparent paradoxes of fiction-inspired emotion and tragedy-based enjoyment may be resolved simply by recognizing that literature is a form of simulation—a fundamental, evolved operation of the human mind—and that the functionality of simulation is inseparable from emotion. The resolution of these paradoxes points again to the central role of emotion in literature and literary experience. In short, it gives us further reason to consider the nature and operation of emotion in literature. Indeed, by developing our comprehension of simulation, it suggests that the results of that consideration may be of more than literary interest, extending to larger psychological processes. The remainder of this article will examine that nature and operation, both as they illuminate literature and as they extend our understanding of psychology.
After some general observations on broad tendencies in the study of emotion, the following sections will treat theoretical issues developing principally from affective science, with some more limited attention to an illustrative case of affect theory. In order to clarify, expand, and illustrate the abstract points, these discussions will take up some literary examples as well. The first is Ben Jonson’s 1616 elegy, “On My First Son,”7 one of the most famous and most intensely emotional poems in English.8 Sticking to a single poem is, however, in some cases too restrictive. I will therefore also make reference to a poem by the 12th-century Chinese poet, Lǐ Qīngzhào (李清照)—“Shēngshēng Màn” (聲聲慢).9 Li’s poem is an account of loneliness—or, more than loneliness, a feeling of desperate isolation—one autumn evening. (This is presumably the speaker’s own feeling, though the absence of pronouns in the poem—a standard practice in Chinese classical verse10—makes this an inference). The poem repeatedly suggests some deep attachment loss. In keeping with this, Xinda Lian explains that it “is generally believed” to have been “written after the poet’s husband died.”11 It is, in short, a poem of grief, like Jonson’s—and one that is also greatly admired in its tradition. In these respects, it is very similar to Jonson’s poem, with which it may be aptly paired. However, its differences are also consequential for the following discussion.
Affective Science and Affect Theory
As already noted, one may distinguish two general orientations in the study of affect. These are sometimes referred to as “affective science” and “affect theory.” Affective science derives from cognitive science, along with some influence from social psychology. There is certainly diversity within affective science. However, that diversity is constrained by shared presuppositions of cognitive science as an encompassing field. Affect theory too shows considerable diversity in the theories and conclusions of its various practitioners. Indeed, even more than affective science, it is arguably not a unified field so much as an historically contingent set of approaches partially shared by authors with similarities in background and interest. For example, affect theory has developed out of or at least in dialogue with cultural studies. This means that it has typically been concerned with political issues much more centrally than has been the case with affective science. In terms of background from psychology—including the field’s understandings of the central concept of affect—it is significantly influenced by psychoanalytic traditions. The psychoanalytic ideas taken up by affect theorists, however, are often those of a poststructuralist revision, such as that of Jacques Lacan, or even a more thoroughgoing poststructuralist critique, such as that of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Moreover, the work of many affect theorists is marked more strongly by the historical poststructuralism of Michel Foucault or the linguistic poststructuralism of Jacques Derrida.
Of course, not everyone writing on affect and literature falls neatly into one or the other group. There are critics and theorists who draw on both traditions equally (as in Donald Wehrs’s use of sources ranging from Julia Kristeva’s poststructural psychoanalysis to Antonio Damasio’s neuroscience12). Moreover, a number of writers associated with affect theory make selective use of affective science, while critics associated with affective science have taken up political and cultural topics.13 There is nonetheless a broad tendency toward a bifurcation of this sort. For example, the Affect Theory Reader includes no index entries for such towering affective science researchers as Antonio Damasio, Nico Frijda, Joseph LeDoux, Keith Oatley, or Jaak Panksepp. In contrast, there are particularly numerous index entries for Gilles Deleuze, Lawrence Grossberg, Félix Guattari, and Brian Massumi, who do not appear at all in a work such as The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences. Even a figure such as Michel Foucault, prominent in The Affect Theory Reader, has only a very limited presence in The Oxford Companion.
In connection with this division, the term “affect” has two distinct semantic backgrounds. In affective science, “affect” is a fairly straightforward term that is simply more encompassing than “emotion.” As such, it is intended to delimit a natural kind. As Louis Charland explains, “When the term ‘affect’ is employed in the expression ‘affective science’ it is usually meant to demarcate a distinct scientific domain of inquiry.”14
Again, in contrast with affective science, affect theory draws more commonly, if often implicitly, on psychoanalysis. More precisely, it has developed within an intellectual lineage that derives in part from psychoanalysis, even when psychoanalysis is not an explicit source or when it is an object of criticism. In psychoanalytic tradition, affect is understood in relation to a prior conception of fundamental drives. Thus, in their important volume on psychoanalytic terminology, Laplanche and Pontalis explain that “affect is the qualitative expression of the quantity of instinctual energy and of its fluctuations,” prominently including its frustration.15 Psychoanalytic theory posits different sorts of drive—for example, sexual and ego drives (or instincts). These are conceptualized as flows of energy that may be strong or weak, may exert pressure, and may be blocked or diverted. In this model, affects are produced by a combination of the force and direction of instinctual energies—as they bear on particular objects—and the counterforces of blockage, redirection, etc., produced by the external world, other instinctual forces, conscience (classically, the “Superego”), and related factors. For example, the blocking of sexual desire by the external world might give rise to frustration-based anger.16
In their introduction to The Affect Theory Reader, Seigworth and Gregg define “affect” in the following terms: “an impingement or extrusion of a momentary or sometimes more sustained state of relation as well as the passage (and the duration of passage) of forces or intensities.”17 Initially, this definition is likely to strike readers as obscure, if perhaps interesting or suggestive. But once placed in the context of the psychoanalytic idea, it begins to make more sense (even if the obscurities are not entirely cleared up).
It is important to stress that the influence of psychoanalysis on affect theory is often by way of the critique of orthodox psychoanalysis offered by some post-Lacanian writers, prominently Gilles Deleuze, as well as his collaborator Félix Guattari.18 These authors challenged psychoanalytic thought, but in a discourse that was continuous with psychoanalysis in a way that affective science is not. In addition to criticizing standard psychoanalysis, Deleuze and Guattari engaged in critiques of social and political structures. This politicization of psychology contributes to the orientation of affect theory toward social critique, as integrated with cultural studies as well as the critical approaches to institutions and language found in the work of Foucault and Derrida, among others.
In sum, affect theory commonly draws on (sometimes implicit) psychoanalytic models of motivation and affect, with their hydraulic metaphors. It combines these with a politically oriented critique of institutions, discourses, and other social structures and practices. In contrast, affective science tries to articulate a more clearly naturalistic (ultimately brain-based) account of affect, derived from empirical study and detailed analysis of cognitive and affective processes. It does not as often involve political criticism.
The advantage of affective science is that it presents algorithmically specified, empirically supported, logically rigorous accounts of emotion. It is difficult to make such a claim for affect theory, given its often metaphorical quality, the problems with empirical support for psychoanalysis,19 the apparent oversimplicity of the hydraulic model (often borrowed by affect theorists),20 the questionable linguistic presuppositions of deconstruction,21 and other issues.22 The following two sections will focus on affective science, due principally to its greater rigor and support. Affective science presents a more clearly cohesive field of study, with more simply and systematically distinguishable alternatives, which is advantageous for a necessarily limited conceptual overview, such as the present article.
The advantages of affect theory, however, come with its arguably greater diversity and even more with its vigorous political engagement. Among other things, it more readily fosters a critical attitude toward some unquestioned presuppositions of empirical science and its associated institutional structures that can lead to systematic biases. We may distinguish three areas in which affect theorists are likely to engage in critique: social ideology, language, and general mental operations or contents (e.g., unacknowledged desires). All three have potentially valuable consequences for the study of literature and emotion.
This is not to say that critiques in affect theory are always well founded. Nor is it to say that political critique is absent from cognitive science. For example, Cordelia Fine’s critique of neurosexism occurs entirely within the tradition of neuroscience.23 Indeed, political criticism is not confined to isolated individuals within the affective science and cognitive science tradition. The social psychology of groups, conceptual metaphor theory, and the psychology of heuristics and biases (treating social ideology, language, and general mental operations, respectively) are but three instances of research programs engaging in such criticism.24 Nonetheless, it seems fair to say that affective science could benefit from the more systematic political critique present in affect theory, perhaps especially Foucauldian skepticism regarding institutions and their claims of knowledge. This is an important qualification that readers should keep in mind while considering the following discussions of affective science.
Of course, the political engagement of affect theory is not merely general or institutional. It bears on individual literary works as well. It changes the sorts of questions we might ask about literary works, the sorts of evidence we might invoke, and the sorts of conclusions we might draw.
What Is Affect (in Affective Science)?
Nico Frijda and Klaus Scherer explain that, in affective science, the term “affect” “is often used in a general sense to refer to a class or category of mental states that includes emotions, moods, attitudes, interpersonal stances, and affect dispositions.”25 Moods are, basically, medium-term inclinations to respond to situations or events with a congruent sort of emotion.26 When one is in an irritable mood, one is likely to respond to one’s environment with irritation. Attitudes are more or less enduring emotional responses to particular objects or conditions (an interpersonal stance is in effect a form of attitude).27 Thus one might have an attitude of distrust toward politicians. Affect dispositions—sometimes called “trait affectivity” or “trait emotionality”—are enduring personality characteristics (or traits) that dispose one toward a particular sort of emotion.28 For example, someone who is dispositionally anxious is likely to respond with anxiety to mildly threatening possibilities. As these points suggest, the definition of “affect” relies on a definition of “emotion.”
As already indicated, an emotion is the activation of some motivation system, prototypically an activation of relatively brief duration—an “episode”—with a complex set of specifiable components. Frijda in effect indicates the general point when he writes that an emotion is an “inner state that predicts forthcoming behavior”; more precisely, emotions may be thought of first of all as “tendencies to establish, maintain, or disrupt a relationship with the environment,” such that the “inner experience” of an emotion “is to a large extent awareness of action tendency.”29 Fundamentally, an emotion is involved whenever there is motivation; that motivation may be one of altering or preserving a current situation.
Trait affectivity has long been a significant part of character analysis, perhaps most obviously in the form of humoral psychology—for example, in its relation to Renaissance drama, as in the identification of Hamlet as melancholic. But such discussions may have been overly restricted by critics’ attempts to identify trait affectivity in terms of theories available to the author in question. It is certainly valuable to take into account the psychological theories circulating at the time a given author was writing. But the enduring psychological plausibility of a character such as Hamlet suggests that we should not confine our account of his affective disposition to psychological categories that today’s audiences do not accept. For example, one might argue that Hamlet’s emotional tendencies are more usefully linked with a “disorganized” attachment style. An attachment style is a disposition to form bonds of affection in a certain way, fundamentally secure or insecure. A disorganized attachment style is one in which disorientation and contradictory emotional behaviors mark one’s attachment bonds30—an apt characterization of Hamlet’s relation to his mother and to Ophelia particularly.
Mood bears not only on characters, but also on literary works more broadly. What the Sanskrit theorists called the “rasa” of a piece, its pervading emotional tone, is in effect a sort of mood conveyed to a reader or audience member.31 The rasa or mood of a piece—for example, if it is predominantly romantic, mirthful, or sorrowful—serves to contextualize the events and situations that foster more punctual emotion episodes. Perhaps the most important thing to recognize here is that moods are often complex, the result of a number of distinct emotional sensitivities, such that the resulting inclinations are a matter of networks of emotion. In Jonson’s poem, for example, a matrix of small suggestions—what the Sanskrit theorists called “dhvani”—conveys an integration of grief with despair (his “hope” was in the past) and guilt (he sees the death as punishment for his own “sin”). The statement that he “should envy” the child’s state suggests that he in fact pities the child for missing out on life but at the same time feels such ongoing pain that he should imagine his own death as desirable. This pervasive guilt and despair may even suggest that the religious points in the poem, however sincerely believed, are little more than a sad attempt at emotion amelioration—what is called “mood repair.”32
Finally, attitudes bear significantly on our response to literature. Perhaps the most important form of attitude in this context is interpersonal stance, one’s attitude toward another person. Filling in the concept somewhat, we might say that one aspect of interpersonal stance is empathic disposition, specifically whether one’s inclination is to respond to another person’s emotions in parallel (e.g., sharing his or her grief) or in a complementary fashion (e.g., experiencing Schadenfreude at that grief). This is frequently related to identity group divisions. Broadly speaking, our initial response to in-group members (e.g., people of the same race or religion) is more often parallel, whereas our initial or unreflective response to out-group members is more often complementary.33 This is one reason why our aesthetic judgments are often untrustworthy. Our literary response may require empathy that is inhibited by identity group divisions. I take it that this is at least part of what was going on when I taught Lǐ Qīngzhào’s poem a few years ago. When I read the poem in English, then part of the Chinese original, one student continually giggled and rolled her eyes. I suspect that this was in part the result of an empathic inhibition due to out-grouping the poet. (The student in question was European-American, not Chinese or Chinese-American.)
The Nature of Emotion
Again, the preceding account of affect presupposes an account of emotion. There are in fact several competing accounts of emotion in affective science. Simplifying the diversity in the field, we may organize the options into two large alternatives along two axes. Both axes concern the mental organization or “architecture” of emotion. The first is a matter of the large structures of the human mind; the second is a matter of the key processes that engage those structures. As to the former, affective scientists may be roughly divided into those who treat emotion in terms of “dimensions” and those who treat it in terms of “systems.” Dimension theorists seek to account for the diversity of emotional responses by reference to a limited set of variables.34 Two variables are particularly common in such accounts—valence and arousal. Most often, these variables are presented as bipolar gradients of subjective (or “phenomenological”) experience; however, they may also be articulated in behavioral terms. Phenomenologically, valence is a matter of pleasant versus unpleasant experience; arousal is a more simply a matter of high energy versus low energy. Behaviorally, valence is a matter of an inclination to maintain a state or situation versus an inclination to change it; arousal is an inclination toward motor activity versus a disinclination. Different ordinary language categories of emotion may be mapped onto a conceptual grid using these dimensions.35 For example, depression involves high unpleasantness and low arousal, whereas anxiety involves high unpleasantness and high arousal.
Dimensional accounts may lose something in elegance but gain in explanatory capacity as they add further dimensions.36 For example, intuitively, it seems that anxiety is not simply a matter of unpleasantness and high arousal, which would appear to characterize a number of emotions, including, for instance, certain sorts or phases of grief. Rather, anxiety would seem to involve at least two other factors (both cognitive, rather than narrowly affective, though with clear affective consequences). First, there is a temporal dimension. One is anxious about the future, not about the past. Second, anxiety appears to be related to one’s sense that the unpleasant future (e.g., a simulated event) can possibly be avoided.
What is most significant in the present context is that the preceding points suggest a connection with literary experience. Specifically, in a dimensional account, anxiety—either egoistic (i.e., for oneself) or empathic—would appear to follow the same general principles as literary suspense. To think about this, we might begin from Ed Tan’s insightful account of interest.37 Given a preferred outcome, our interest is sustained through assessments of the likelihood that this outcome will be attained. Given the right intensity of preference, and an adequately aversive quality to the alternatives (e.g., when the hero must either subdue the villain or die trying), this covers not only interest, but also suspense. If anxiety is indeed related to suspense, this already begins to give us a potentially fuller understanding of anxiety in its relation to the (subjective) likelihood of preferred outcomes and the emotions inspired by salient alternatives. But that is not all there is to the issue. The study of literary and cinematic suspense alerts us to the great importance not only of overarching goal pursuit, but of detailed, moment-to-moment interactions, the particulars of the narrative trajectory. These are presumably no less important in anxiety than in suspense. Finally, literature and film may give us not only targeted suspense (e.g., regarding whether the hero will defeat the villain or be killed). They may also give us more generalized and undirected feelings of foreboding (due for example to the use of music in a film). Such background elicitors of emotion are presumably no less important in anxiety than in suspense, since anxiety too may be undirected or “generalized.” As these points suggest, a literary analysis of suspense may potentially contribute to a psychological analysis of anxiety as much as the reverse. In other words, this may be an example of how the study of literature may contribute materially to our understanding of general psychological processes.
A dimensional approach may have consequences for concrete interpretation as well. For example, both Jonson’s and Lǐ’s poems treat grief. But there are striking differences between them, differences made salient by an awareness of emotion dimensions. Both poems express a high degree of unpleasantness. But Jonson’s poem is more evidently backward-looking temporally and more consistently low in arousal or activity. Lǐ’s poem, in contrast, begins with a frantic search that appears pointless—indeed, a search that continues even though there is no longer any suspense, thus hope. Yet, there are moments of ponderous lethargy in Lǐ’s poem, moments more depleted in arousal than anything in Jonson’s poem. For example, the speaker wonders who will stand and pick a flower at her home, suggesting that she herself lacks the energy for even this minimal exertion. Conversely, awareness of the dimensionality of emotion is likely to draw our attention to the limited suggestions of activity that do occur in Jonson’s poem, as when he assimilates the burial of the child to his own act of paying a debt. This points toward a suggestive ambiguity. Is the father’s debt owed to God, who has exacted the child’s demise as payment perhaps for the father’s sin? Or is the debt owed to the child (“I thee pay” meaning “I pay to thee [as creditor],” rather than “I pay with thee [as, say, collateral]”)—a debt that might have been incurred due to some flaw in fathering? In any case, the lines (beginning with “My sin”) indicate the centrality of the emotion of guilt with its deep sense of responsibility for action (or inaction when action was required). In contrast, Lǐ’s poem seems to point more toward utter irrelevance of any action and the speaker’s helplessness concerning a loss that was entirely beyond her influence. The difference is presumably not merely a matter of these two poems, but of kinds of grief as well. Along with the preceding example (regarding anxiety and suspense), these observations suggest that the incorporation of dimensional analysis into literary study promises to be beneficial for both the understanding of emotion and the understanding of literature.
This is not to say, however, that such mutual benefits are confined to dimensional accounts. Indeed, despite the apparent attitudes of their advocates, dimensional and systemic accounts are not irreconcilable. To the contrary, the dimensions could simply apply across systems—disgust, fear, anger, and so on—as part of what makes all of those systems emotional. Systemic accounts commonly presuppose the variables invoked by dimensional theories, but link them to innate (or sometimes acquired) complexes of distinctive feelings, action tendencies, and so on. For the most part, our usual, pre-theoretical approaches to emotion and literature are systemic, presupposing the existence of fear, anger, disgust, and so forth, as fundamental categories.
The situation is similar with the second axis of difference in theories of emotion—that is, the nature of causal processes invoked to explain emotion episodes. The most common account of emotion in affective science is one or another version of appraisal theory. An appraisal theory is an account that understands emotions as interpretations of circumstances or events relative to goals or, more broadly, as judgments about the relevance of circumstances or events to one’s “flourishing,” as Martha Nussbaum would put it.38 As Keith Oatley explains, “Emotions are evaluations of events as they affect our concerns.”39 The main alternative to appraisal theory may be called “perceptual-associative.” It posits a more mechanical series of perceptions and associations as triggering emotional responses due to specific sensitivities in particular emotion systems. Appraisal theories suggest the importance of general trends or statistical likelihood. In contrast, perceptual-associative theories emphasize concrete particulars. For example, in one perceptual-associative account,40 there are three sources of emotion system activation: innate sensitivities, critical period experiences, and emotional memories. Innate sensitivities include not only responsiveness to physical pleasure and pain, but also (among others) our receptivity to the emotion expressions of other people and our susceptibility to emotion contagion from witnessing those expressions. Critical period experiences are early events that have enduring organizational and dispositional consequences for our emotional systems, such as an inclination toward secure or insecure attachment bonding. Emotional memories are memories that, upon activation, revive the initial emotion itself (as when the recollection of an automobile accident revives the sense of panic that accompanied the past experience).
Appraisal theories appear to have the advantage in many complex social cases. For example, Jones reads a letter denying his application for tenure and is devastated. It seems plausible to see this as a function of his judgment that his flourishing has suffered a keen blow. Perceptual-associative theories, however, appear to have the advantage in cases where we respond to stimuli in ways that go against our assessments—as when someone fears flying more than driving, despite knowing that the former is much safer. Moreover, the perceptual-associative theories would seem to have the advantage in cases of emotional experiences that apparently do not involve the advancement or inhibition of one’s flourishing. For example, Juslin notes that “music would not appear to have any capacity to further or block life goals,”41 but it may be highly emotional. The two accounts may be partially reconciled, however, by noting that appraisal can be incorporated into a perceptual-associative account. Appraisal processes involve concrete simulations (e.g., Jones’s simulation of telling his spouse about the tenure denial and seeing her distress), the activation of emotional memories (e.g., of past failures or social exclusions), and other factors that would trigger emotion according to a perceptual-associative account. The difference is that, in the perceptual-associative theory, it is not the logic of the appraisal that produces the emotion; it is, rather, the concrete imaginations and recollections accompanying the appraisal that do so.
The opening of Jonson’s poem suggests an appraisal account.42 The speaker grieves because he had “hope” for his son. Technically, he simulated a future for the boy and he now realizes that the imagined future cannot be realized, with painful consequences for his own flourishing. But later lines of the poem suggest limitations of the appraisal account. As we have seen, part of the speaker’s emotional state is a matter of pity for the boy. That pity is inconsistent with his assessment of the child’s Heavenly state. This is presumably because he witnessed the boy’s sickness and death, a direct perception forming emotional memories, but he has had no such experience of the child’s postmortem bliss. In my personal experience, a key line in the poem is, “O, could I lose all father now!” This line bears directly on the issue we are considering. To me, this sentence is a devastating cry of despair, rendered all the more pathetic by its grammatical peculiarity. The phrase is ambiguous. But what I take it to mean—and what guides my emotional reaction—is that he could foreswear ever having been a father in the sense of ever having heard himself addressed as “father.” Behind this sentiment, then, is the now-searing, emotional memory of the boy calling to him with the title (“father”) that would ordinarily be sweet with the tenderness of attachment bonds—perhaps even addressing him from his deathbed. If this is accurate, the power of this line is partially clarified through a search for concreteness fostered by the perceptual-associative account of emotion.
Emotion Episodes
Of course, emotions are not simply mental structures or types of causal process. They are events, the activation of systems by causes. A key aspect of affective science—related to its connections with Anglo-American or “analytic” philosophy—is the analysis of emotion episodes into components. We tend to think of emotion as primarily a feeling. This is called the “phenomenological tone” of the emotion. But it is only one element of an emotion episode. Indeed, it is a rather strange element. Most components of an emotion episode may be articulated from an observer’s perspective. This is not to say that an actual observer would be able to acquire knowledge of all such components. It is simply to say that they can be phrased in a third-person idiom. Only phenomenological tone is essentially subjective.
Before turning to phenomenological tone, however, we need to consider some of the other components of an emotion episode. The first component is eliciting conditions. These are the circumstances that give rise to the emotion episode. Such circumstances most obviously include the events and properties of the external world. But they also include affective dispositions and moods on the part of the person feeling the emotion. Consider Jonson’s line, “O, could I lose all father now!” The suggestion is that he cannot bear even to hear the word “father.” Clearly, the cause of the emotion is not the word alone. It is only in the context of his mood of mourning that hearing the word becomes an eliciting condition for intensified grief. This is, of course, because it calls to mind his dead son—perhaps an emotional memory of the boy’s voice saying “father” (or, what is worse, a simulation based on a report of the son calling in his absence). In keeping with this account of the eliciting conditions, the speaker makes reference to the child’s voice, admonishing the dead son to answer an unspoken question about the inhabitant of the grave. In doing so, he implicitly makes the boy avoid saying “father.” Specifically, the speaker tells the boy to refer to “Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry,” not “My father his best piece of poetry.” Once noticed, the omission becomes striking.
A second component of an emotion episode is expressive or communicative outcomes. These are results of the emotion that do not serve directly to alter or maintain the situation as such. Rather, they serve to convey the emotion to those present (which may of course lead in its turn to changes in the situation).43 For example, a cry of fear at the sight of a predator would serve to warn others of the danger. Note that this does not mean the communication is planned. Rather, such communication results from the spontaneous emotion expression and at least contributes to its evolutionary function. Communicative outcomes not only provide information to others. They tend to inspire emotion contagion or empathy and they are crucial for the acquisition of appropriate emotional responses in childhood (e.g., when a child learns to fear and thus avoid dangers due to the caregiver’s expressions of fear). (Emotion contagion is the egocentric experience of someone else’s emotion, as when Jones’s fear of a predator makes me fear for my own safety; empathy is the allocentric experience of someone else’s emotion, as when Jones’s fear of being denied tenure makes me fear for Jones.44)
Communicative outcomes figure most obviously in film and theater. Carl Plantinga’s important essay on “The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film”45 presents a compelling analysis of viewer emotion as to a great extent mirroring that of the faces presented on screen, particularly in close-ups. In emotional mirroring, the observer experiences some version of the emotion expressed by the behaviors that he or she witnesses in the target (e.g., an observer may feel happy on seeing someone else smile). This is due to overlap between the neurologically based systems that respond to one’s observation of other people’s behaviors and the systems involved in one’s own enactment of related behaviors (e.g., other people’s smiling and one’s own smiling).46 Plantinga’s point could be extended to other expressive or communicative outcomes, such as posture and gait.47 Moreover, it could be complicated by noting the difference between a parallel and a complementary interpersonal stance (as discussed above).
Expressivity enters into literary works as well, however. This occurs in part through simulation and through subvocalization, the silent “voicing” of a speaker’s utterance. Tone of voice—including, variation in volume and pitch contour—is a very important expressive or communicative outcome. Consider again the line, “O, could I lose all father now!” Part of the impact of the line relies on subvocalization. Imagine it with the contour of, say, “O, could I use a frothy brew now!”
A third component is action readiness, which may combine with actional outcomes. Action readiness is the entire bodily and mental orientation toward behavior that will either alter the situation or maintain it, depending on whether the emotion is aversive or pleasurable. It involves the “priming” of motor routines (i.e., the partial activation of such routines, below the threshold of enactment), the preparatory tensing or relaxation of the musculature, and other, relevant physiological orientations. Actional outcomes are, of course, the actions themselves, such as running from a danger.
As already noted, Lǐ’s poem begins with an actional outcome, “search search” (xún xún; 尋尋). The suggestion may be that the speaker is looking for her husband. She is seated at the window, looking out through the clear, cold air, scanning the distance. But the reader infers that her husband is dead. Even if he is not dead, there is nothing she can do. She desperately wishes to change the situation, but she is helpless. Thus the only option is not to change the external situation, but to change herself. This actually leads to another component of an emotion episode, one parallel to the actional outcome—emotion modulation. One may seek to shift, diminish, sustain, or intensify one’s emotional response to a situation by changing oneself. For example, when struck by a funny idea in the middle of a funeral, one may try to turn one’s thoughts in another direction, shifting one’s emotion. Unable to engage in action that would change her situation, the speaker of “Shēngshēng Màn” seeks to change herself. First, she tries to rest; sleep would, of course, make her impervious to her circumstances, but she cannot sleep. Then she downs cup after cup of wine, but rather than enjoying the drink and raising her spirits, she finds it insipid (dàn; 淡). Like everything else that evening, the suggestion is that drinking only serves to remind her that she is alone (dúzì; 獨自). The actional and self-modulatory outcomes are thus inconsequential. That impossibility of amelioration is central to the despair of the work.
This leads to yet another component in an emotion episode—emotions tend to alter cognitive processing. In some cases, this processing is more or less purely informational. Positive emotional states tend to foster top-down processing, stressing generalities over particulars. Negative emotional states tend to do the opposite, stressing particulars over generalities.48 We arguably see the latter in Jonson’s poem, with its emotional emphasis on the particularity of the son’s death, at the expense of generalities about divine beneficence and the bliss of Heaven. This, in turn, suggests a cognitive reason that grief is so resistant to consolation.
Other processing changes are more obviously emotional themselves, such as the tendency toward emotion-congruent processing, the interpretation of and response to ambiguous situations in a way that is consistent with one’s predominant emotion at the time.49 We find a prominent case of this in what Chinese critics sometimes refer to as “emotion-scene fusion.”50 This is not a misguided application of human properties to nature. It is an apt reflection of the way in which emotions guide our response to our environment. There is a touching case of this in Lǐ’s poem. Instead of seeing beauty in the fall blossoms, she finds them haggard, languishing, and harmed (qiáo cuì [or qiáocuì] sǔn; 憔悴損); implicitly, they are like the speaker herself. In other words, due to emotion-congruent processing, she understands and responds to the condition of the flowers in terms of her own physical condition, posture, and recent experience. It is a sort of reverse mirroring.
The mention of mirroring returns us to phenomenological tone, since mirroring gives us a hint of another person’s emotional experience, but not the experience itself (as shown by the flowers, which of course are not having any emotional experience). Again, phenomenological tone is the one component of an emotion episode that is essentially private; it is a subjective experience that cannot be observed by anyone else or even phrased in a third-person idiom. But that does not mean it is inconsequential. The pleasure or pain of emotion is part of its phenomenological tone. As such, that tone is precisely the part of an emotion that one would wish to share with others, appealing for their commiseration or celebration. But it is also the one part of emotion that is ultimately unshareable. The point is particularly clear in ordinary life, where our individual experiences often diverge sharply for the most personally consequential events. For example, even a friend or relative is unlikely to share one’s joy in success without jealousy or some other taint of egoism, and the grief that touches one’s own life is rarely common to friends, or even spouses. However, in some respects, the detailed elaboration of emotional particularity in a literary work may give us intimations of more fully sharing emotions with characters or authors or may enable a sense of elaborate emotion sharing with other readers.
One common view of phenomenological tone, associated with William James, identifies it as the subjective experience of bodily changes (“physiological outcomes”) that occur during emotion episodes. In other words, the “feeling” of an emotion (as Antonio Damasio calls it)—what many people are likely to think of as the core of emotion itself—is not ethereal or spiritual, but thoroughly embodied. In recent work, Joseph LeDoux explains James’s view in the following terms: “Different emotions are experienced differently because they involve different body signatures that produce different patterns of feedback and thus different feelings.”51 As LeDoux goes on to explain, this account was developed, extended, and rendered neurologically rigorous by Antonio Damasio in his theory of “somatic markers.” In Damasio’s account, bodily (“somatic”) feedback not only produces feelings; it also marks cognition, with important consequences for decision making, which is therefore not merely abstract and rational but deeply bound up with emotion and embodiment.52 Among other factors, this is presumably due to the fact that decisions bearing on action are a matter not merely of information processing (thus logic and evidence) but of motivation (thus emotion, including phenomenological tone) as well. Indeed, the general idea is closely related to the account of emotional response in fictional simulation given above. Decisions are in part a matter of simulating outcomes and experiencing particular positive or negative emotions in response to those simulations. The emotional responses have significant motivational consequences, thus significant consequences for decision-making.
Where Is Emotion in Literature?
We clearly have emotional responses to different aspects of literature and attribute emotion to different parts of literature and its larger context of production and reception. In the analytic spirit of affective science, the following subsections sketch some of the different loci of emotion in or around a literary work. The organizational structure of the analysis is drawn from narratology. It begins with authors and readers (both real and implied), turns to narrators and plots, then stories, considering distinctive aspects of emotional response or attribution in each case.
Authors and Readers
Needless to say, real emotions are to be found only in real people. There are two sorts of real persons involved in literature—authors and readers. The preceding section referred briefly to emotion sharing. The idea applies to both authors and readers. Readers who particularly enjoy a work or find it especially moving are likely to want to share that emotional experience with other people, prominently attachment figures, such as friends or family members. As to authors, some accounts of literary production make emotion expression the primary purpose of literature. Some readers today are likely to associate this view with the Euro-American Romantic movement. But versions of this view may be found in different times and places. For example, in Japanese tradition, Lady Murasaki’s 11th-century Tale of Genji includes the following account of authorship: “the storyteller’s own experience …—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.”53
Writers such as Bernard Rimé have brought emotion sharing into affective science, stressing its centrality to human social life.54 The most obvious function for emotion sharing is modulatory. Someone else may calm one’s anxiety or enhance one’s joy. This is related to a broader, longer-term function—the possibility of, so to speak, calibrating one’s own emotional responses by reference to the quality and intensity of other people’s responses. Another possible function for emotion sharing is in ascertaining who might be compatible as a friend: someone whose emotional responses might be congruent with one’s own. In the case of literature, these functions apply most obviously across readers, though, as Lady Murasaki suggests, sharing from author to reader is important as well. In keeping with this, the impulse toward emotion sharing seems clear in both poems. That impulse is unusually poignant in the case of Lǐ’s poem because it is evident that the speaker wishes to share her anxiety with her husband and to be reassured by him. The reader may be keenly aware that he or she cannot reassure the author, that her poetic act of emotion sharing in fact provided no benefit of emotion modulation for her. She remained alone (dúzì; 獨自) with the clutter of languishing blossoms and the heart-piercing (zhèng shāng xīn; 正傷心) cries of the passing geese, the only “acquaintances”55 (shí; 識) mentioned in the scene.
The situation with Jonson is somewhat different. In a lovely line, Jonson has his dead son characterize himself as “Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.” Unlike Lǐ’s poem, Jonson’s poem presents us with explicit self-consciousness about the poetic act of emotion sharing. Jonson knows that this is a poem that will be sent out to the public to be read and appreciated, and its author will be pitied. In connection with this, he presents a clear image of the “implied author,” Ben Jonson the poet and playwright. Indeed, the poem illustrates an ambiguity in the idea of an implied author. On the one hand, the phrase (“implied author”) refers to a set of textual norms; on the other hand, it refers to an image of the real author.56 The two are related, and both may be linked to the real author,57 but they are not the same. Even so, in both cases, special emotional concerns arise with respect to the implied author in an emotional context, prominently the issue of emotional sincerity. Readers may differ in the degree to which they are willing to allow Jonson’s grief to be sincerely compatible with the hint of vanity in praising the boy as his “best … poetry.” (This analysis assumes that expressions of grief, remorse, and loss of hope are fully sincere.)
The reference to differences in the reception of the poem returns to real readers. It also brings up the relation between real readers and implied readers. Like authors, real readers have real emotions (not just simulated emotions, like characters). Those emotions differ individually, while also manifesting some recurring patterns. The empirical study of reader response, including emotional response, gives us one way of uncovering such patterns. Such study has developed importantly in recent years through work by Marisa Bortolussi, Peter Dixon, Don Kuiken, David Miall, and others.58
Perhaps the most important patterns across readers are not specific to literature, but extend across people’s general routines of thought and feeling. Perhaps the key aspect of readers’ affective response is empathy, which is strongly affected by out-grouping.59 Empathy has been a topic of considerable affective science research in recent years; the bearing of this research on literary study has been discussed influentially and insightfully by Suzanne Keen.60
Implied readers are textually guided simulations that provide norms for response to a literary work. Sometimes, critics object to the idea of an implied reader as it may seem to define the appropriate responses of a reader too narrowly. However, there are many cases in which we might wish to say that a given reader’s emotional response is misguided—as in the case of my student giggling at Lǐ’s poem. Conversely, we may wish to say that a poem fails aesthetically if its effect on real readers is very likely to diverge from its implied readerly norm. If almost everyone giggled on reading Lǐ’s poem, it would be important to know whether it was a poem of grief or a parody of a lament. That difference is at least in part a matter of the implied reader’s (normative) emotional response.
Narrators and Plots
Ben Jonson’s foregrounding of himself as a poet is not only a matter of forging an image of the implied author and establishing norms for reading this particular poem. It is also a matter of bringing out the narrator or speaker of the poem as a (simulated) voice distinct from the author or implied author. This is suggested by the references to Ben Jonson as “he.” Of course, one can simply take the “his” in “Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry” to be in the voice of the dead child. But the concluding couplet (“For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such, / As what he loves may never like too much”) is more general. It is spoken in the voice of the governing consciousness of the poem. That is the voice of the narrator.
Narrators raise special emotional concerns in literature. Most obviously, they invite degrees and kinds of trust or distrust. Often trust and distrust are interpreted in terms of proximity to or distance from the implied or real author. However, things are more complex than this. Indeed, Jonson’s poem suggests that, in some cases, trust may be enhanced by at least some degree of differentiation between the narrator and the author or implied author. There is, for example, something a bit strange about Jonson’s narrator’s claim that the dead child was Jonson’s “best piece of poetry.” It is important that it is given in a narrator’s voice. If the poem had said, “my best piece of poetry,” the egoism of the claim would have likely inspired distrust in many readers. After all, the metaphor works to eulogize the child only if Ben Jonson is a truly stellar poet. Our trust in the narrator’s judgment here is in part a function of the narrator diverging from the author and implied author, who are presumably too grief-stricken to consider such matters as professional success. Beyond such issues of trust, and consequent emotions, narrators may be more or less personified61 and as such may inspire a range of ordinary emotions in greater or lesser degree.
In addition to narration, narratologists distinguish plot or emplotment as part of how a story is told, thus an element of the “discourse” (as opposed to what is told—the story proper). Emplotment involves such matters as narrational manipulation of what information is given when (e.g., whether the outcome of the events is given at the start or deferred until the end of the telling) and how that information is articulated or construed. Plot too involves its own distinctive set of emotions. We have already noted that interest, in Ed Tan’s account, as well as suspense are a function, not only of the story per se, but of the timing and construal of information from the story, which is to say the plot. Since Meir Sternberg’s work on the topic, it has been customary to distinguish curiosity and surprise in addition to suspense.62 Suspense is a matter of outcomes; curiosity is a matter of causal precedents, once we know the outcome. Surprise is a function of expectation. Though certainly valuable, it is not clear that this is the most systematic way of dividing plot emotions. Combining Sternberg with Tan, we might suggest a dimensional account in which there are variables bearing on the degree of preference for any given event (whether an outcome or a precedent), degree of likelihood for that event, and prospective versus retrospective orientation. For example, a strongly preferred event with low likelihood that has occurred and been narrated is likely to result in a sense of relief, making this another plot-based emotion alongside suspense and curiosity. Surprise might be understood as bearing on a different dimension—consistency with anticipatory simulations. It may occur independently of such emotions as relief or as an inflection of them.
Lǐ’s poem presents us with a remarkably complex case of emplotment, mixing temporal orientations, perhaps by mixing a memory with a current situation. Specifically, the poem suggests a current evening when the speaker is alone following the death of her husband. But it seems to intermingle a memory of waiting in vain for his return in the past. We see this in the searching at the outset, which would seem pointless if the husband is known to be dead. This gives the poem a dual temporal orientation, with all the emotional complexity that this suggests. The ambiguity is enabled by the relative absence of tense markers in Chinese.63 It is further developed by the images of approaching winter and approaching night that both suggest death is coming rather than that it has already come. This temporal and emotional duality is made more or less explicit in the closing line of the poem. The speaker asks how a single “zì” (字) could convey her feelings of “chóu” (愁).64 “Zì” is often translated as “word” and “chóu” as “sorrow.” But it is also possible to translate the former as “character,” referring to the written form particularly, and the latter as “worry.”65 In the context of the poem’s complex emplotment, the line is emotionally brilliant. “Chóu” does really summarize her feelings, because it conveys both the retrospective sorrow and the prospective worry. Indeed, the worry continues in the present through the haunting memories of searching and seeking and through the speaker’s distress over (simulations of) her own lonely future. In addition, the character for “chóu” (愁) contributes to this complex feeling, for it combines the characters for “autumn” (“qiū”; 秋) and “heart” (“xīn”; 心), the former placed above the latter as if the autumnal change, with its implications of winter and death, weigh down on the speaker’s heart. Indeed, the character for “xīn” is flattened in “chóu.”
Story is, again, what happens, what the plot partially represents and partially reorganizes. The story is what is done by or happens to whom and where it all occurs. In other words, story comprises the events, characters, and scenes. Sometimes the second and third (characters and scenes) are referred to as the “storyworld” and distinguished from the sequence of events that delimits the story, in a narrower sense. There are many ways in which both character and scene may bear on affect and literature. For example, there has been much work on character and “Theory of Mind,” the means by which we come to understand (or misunderstand) other people’s intentions, aspirations, and other mental states, including emotions.66 In general, characters may have—or provoke in readers or in other characters—all the usual human emotions. After all, it is again part of our simulative capacities that we respond to simulations as we respond to comparable realities. The same general point holds for scenes or places. In each case, there may be particular sorts of relation that are especially consequential emotionally, such as the organization of characters into in-group and out-group members or of places into home and away from home.
The relation of emotion to stories (in the narrow sense) is perhaps more interesting. A number of writers have argued that there are cross-culturally recurring story sequences. Outside cognitive and affective science, these are sometimes posited as the result of “archetypes.” In Jungian psychology, archetypes are instances of “a tendency to form representations of a motif—representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern,”67 a tendency “inherited” through a “collective unconscious.”68 In contrast to this approach, working from within affective science, I have argued that a specific set of cross-cultural story patterns may be understood as deriving from emotion systems in a rule-governed way.
First, I have argued that categories of story structures have the same general properties as other social categories. Specifically, such categories are not usually defined by strict necessary and sufficient conditions, but by roughly average instances that serve as “good cases” of a category. The point applies, then, not only to such ordinary, physical objects as tables and birds, but also to stories. The “good cases” are called “prototypes” (following Eleanor Rosch69). It is important to distinguish (experientially defined) prototypes from archetypes, despite the similar sound of the two words.
Beyond this semantic point, I have drawn on stories from a range of traditions to argue that there are recurring genre patterns across traditions of literature and orature.70 These genre patterns define genre prototypes and the prototypes may be explained by reference to ordinary features of emotion systems. First, the genre prototypes include romantic, heroic, sacrificial, familial, seduction, revenge, and other recurring story sequences. For example, the romantic prototype involves two people falling in love, encountering social resistance (often from parents), experiencing separation (often exile or threat of death), but then—in the full, comic version—overcoming obstacles to be reunited in an enduring and idealized union. The heroic story often develops in two sequences. One treats the usurpation (often by a close relative), exile, threatened death, and ultimate return of the rightful social leader; the other treats the temporary defeat of the home society by some social enemy.
In each case, the story pattern was not produced by some sort of collective sensibility. Rather, it resulted from algorithmically specifiable psychological processes relying only on standard mental architecture as set out in cognitive and affective science. Specifically, stories involve the usual appeal of simulation, combined with the usual folk psychology of characters following goals. (Folk psychology is the set of psychological principles that we rely on tacitly in understanding people’s minds.) Characters’ goals are defined by biologically given emotion systems, specified in relation to socially defined practices. The working out of the story prototypes results from the operation of ordinary principles that apply across emotion systems. For example, sexual desire and attachment systems produce goals—sexual union in the first case, enduring proximity with reciprocal attention and care in the second. These generate goals for characters and thereby produce genres. The sexual desire system gives rise to the seduction genre; the attachment system fosters the family separation and reunion plot. These emotion systems combine in romantic love. As it derives from a combination of motivation systems, we might expect the goal of romantic union to be particularly intense. This, and the frequency of the combination in real life, may lead us to expect in turn that the resulting genre would be particularly common. This is just what we seem to find in the proliferation of romantic narratives in different traditions. Similarly, pride and anger contribute to the generation of heroic narratives. Moreover, the dual story structure of this prototype derives from the combination of two types of emotions as well—those defined by individual aspiration or accomplishment (for the hero) and those defined by group identity (for the home society).
The definition of goals only gives us the largest trajectories of the genres, however. More specific structures are produced by some ordinary principles of emotional response. For example, an outcome emotion is generally enhanced by the gradient of change from a prior, contradictory emotion. If things turn out to be simply normal, that will give rise to joy (or at least relief) if the outlook had been grim, but it will foster sadness (or at least disappointment) if there had been a prospect of advancement. If I anticipate losing my job, then simply not losing my job is cause for celebration. But if I anticipate a promotion, then merely not losing my job may leave me melancholic. This is the reason stories commonly involve the opposite of their desired outcome in the middle. Tragedies end with the opposite of the desired outcome. But in full comedies the happy ending is intensified by the near-tragic middle. Thus, in romantic stories, lovers are separated, and sometimes thought to have died, before being reunited. In the heroic genre, the home society is devastated before defeating the enemy.
Other forms of emotion intensification include the manipulation of place attachment and what may be called “familialization.” Often the manipulation of place attachment appears as exile in the tragic middle, where lovers and deposed leaders are sent to alien places. The comic ending then involves not only romantic union or the restoration of rightful leadership, but also the protagonist’s return home. As to familialization, attachment bonds make conflict more painful. In consequence, the clash between the lovers and society is often a clash within the family and the heroic usurpation is often familial (e.g., fraternal) as well. Of course, these patterns to some extent reflect patterns in real life in addition to serving emotional intensification. But not all factors that recur in real life also recur in stories; the selection is guided by emotional functions.
Familialization provides a good example of the contrast between cross-cultural prototypes and Jungian archetypes. Jung identifies “the motif of the hostile brethern” as resulting from an archetype,71 which is to say, from one of the “pre-existent forms” that are “inherited” through a “collective unconscious” that is “universal” and “impersonal.”72 In contrast, the cognitive account just given views fraternal conflict as the result of emotional intensification repeated across individual stories, thereby yielding a standard or usual case (the prototype). As this should make clear, the concepts of prototype and archetype are no more closely related than the concepts of catalog and catastrophe. (Of course, the concepts of archetype and universal are related in that archetypes, should they exist, would be a form of universal.)
In short, emotion is a crucial factor in the generation and organization of stories. This is unsurprising. Stories involving human action are necessarily driven by motives. It would be incomprehensible if motivation systems did not play an important role in the development of tales recounting such action.
A Brief Example from Affect Theory
Sara Ahmed is one of the most influential affect theorists. Her essay, “Happy Objects,” 73 provides an apt and accessible example of her work. It is exemplary in part because of its relation to cultural studies and psychoanalytic tradition, from which Ahmed borrows explanatory categories, such as melancholia. At the same time, the essay illustrates the diversity of affect theory. Ahmed is in many ways a mainstream Western philosopher. She draws fluently on both Anglo-American and Continental philosophical traditions. She is particularly noteworthy for her careful Phenomenological reflections.
Specifically, in “Happy Objects,” Ahmed considers various aspects of happiness. She refers to the happiness inspired by objects and the unexplained feeling of happiness that disposes us to find objects happy; she refers to the ways in which happiness and anxiety are “sticky”; she comments on the social judgments that bear on our expectations of happiness. Affective scientists would be likely to agree with almost all of what Ahmed discusses here. However, they would probably maintain that each of these points could be rendered more precise and rigorous by reference to affective science. The first point (concerning the inspiration of happiness) would be a matter of the objective and subjective eliciting conditions for happiness, with various subdivisions for the subjective propensity. The second point (about “stickiness”) might benefit from the distinction between contagion and empathy, as well as a treatment of such mechanisms as mirroring. The third point (about expectations) might be advanced by relating it to processes of simulation. More fundamentally, an affective scientist might ask for a prior analysis of happiness, an account of it in dimensional terms or a determination of its nature in relation to specific emotion systems, an outline of relevant appraisal processes or their functional equivalents in perceptions and associations, and so on.
The likely response of an affective scientist to Ahmed’s Phenomenological account of happiness does not invalidate her observations. Indeed, it incorporates those observations into a systematic and empirically well-supported account of the nature of affect. However, it does to some extent limit the theoretical value of the Phenomenology. Rather than advances in our understanding of happiness, Ahmed’s reflections may appear more like vivid illustrations of theoretical points that are already well formulated in affective science.
But Ahmed’s Phenomenological observations are not the goal of her essay. They are, rather, a means of leading her to political critique. This political critique is focused first of all on just what is socially considered to be an eliciting condition for happiness (to use the affective science terminology); this includes what is widely considered a fundamental condition for happiness—the (heteronormative) family. The social definition of the family as the enabling condition for many sorts of happiness has a broad range of political consequences that are often deleterious (e.g., for sexual minorities). Thus Ahmed reminds us that emotions are not simply natural experiences; they are also invoked and imagined in ideologically functional ways. She particularly sensitizes us to the way that this is done with the social ideal of personal happiness.
Perhaps more significantly, Ahmed considers the stereotype of “the feminist kill-joy.” Specifically, she considers how, within a family or a broader (family-like) society, people often make sexist comments that are accepted, apparently happily, by those around. The feminist kill-joy is the person who, unhappy with the sexism, remarks on it, and challenges the comments. This kill-joy is then blamed for disturbing the happiness of the group. The point is valuable for what it says about feminist (or other political) kill-joys. (Though one should not overstate the case. There are people of all political persuasions who are too quick to take offense and who unfairly berate others for supposed political inadequacies.) But perhaps the more important implication of Ahmed’s argument is that our emotion episodes have complex sequences of causes and our understanding of those causes often involves ideological misattribution (to put the issue somewhat differently than Ahmed). In the case of the feminist kill-joy, it is true that the unhappiness of the people directly involved is an immediate result of the objections of the feminist. That is salient. But that causal attribution leaves out two things that are not salient. First, it leaves out the unhappiness of the feminist, caused by the sexist comment. Second, and more important, it leaves out the much more extensive unhappiness caused in society by sexism. Thus Ahmed’s analysis shows us that causal attribution in emotional response can be highly politically consequential. Moreover, it can be very shortsighted, very limited in what it recognizes as causally significant. Crucially, that limitation is inseparable from just what is rendered salient by the norms of dominant ideologies, such as patriarchy. Put differently, Ahmed’s analysis draws our attention to what is passed over in apparently objective, but ultimately ideologically guided observations about an emotion episode.
Here, we might return briefly to Jonson’s poem. We have explored what is present in the poem. But are there important absences here as well? Once the general topic is broached, an obvious issue is the sex of the child. Just what difference does it make to Jonson’s grief that the deceased child was male, rather than female? This draws our attention to another poem by Jonson, a parallel one, “On My First Daughter.”74 The daughter poem is widely considered less emotionally powerful than the son poem. For example, Peter Stockwell has discussed both poems with different readers and observes that these readers “generally describe” the son poem “as more intensely moving” and “tend to hold the ‘Son’ poem in higher esteem.”75 This effect on readers is presumably at least to some extent a function of the more deeply felt and more intensely expressed grief of Jonson himself. In part, this is simply a function of time. Jonson’s daughter died at six months of age, whereas his son was a living presence for seven years. Nonetheless, Ahmed’s analysis points us toward possible political sources of this difference as well. Once oriented in that direction, it is hard to miss the emotional richness of Jonson’s relation to his son. That relation included profound hopes (presumably for the son’s achievements), as well as concerns about his physical well-being (e.g., the misery of age). In contrast, he seems to have had one interest only in the daughter—that she not lose her virginity (or “innocence”) prematurely. The focus on the chastity of an infant seems almost perverse, once pointed out, and fits distressingly with the emotional thinness and mechanical phrasing of the daughter poem, both of which contrast so strikingly with “On My First Son.”
The Future of Affect Studies
Emotion has been recognized as a crucial part of literature and literary experience from at least the time of Plato and Aristotle. Moreover, this recognition has not been confined to the West, as the preceding references to Indian rasa theory and Lady Murasaki’s work attest. Despite this, the emotional aspects of literature were largely ignored for much of the 20th century. It was only late in the last century and in the first years of the 21st century that emotion began to receive the careful, systematic attention it clearly merits, both within and outside of literary study.76 There is no sign that interest in either affect theory or affective science will wane in the near future. Rather, one can reasonably expect each to grow, expanding their scope both theoretically and interpretively—and furthering the mutually beneficial study of affect and literature. One might even hope for a greater integration of the genuine insights of the two major tendencies in affect study, particularly the ideological skepticism of affect theory and the empirical and analytic rigor of affective science.77
Further Reading
Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory Seigworth, eds. The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.Find this resource:
Hogan, Patrick Colm. The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Find this resource:
Hogan, Patrick Colm. What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Find this resource:
Kaplan, E. Ann. Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.Find this resource:
Keen, Suzanne. Empathy and the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Find this resource:
Nussbaum, Martha. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001.Find this resource:
Oatley, Keith. The Passionate Muse: Exploring Emotion in Stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.Find this resource:
Plantinga, Carl. Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.Find this resource:
Schellekens, Elisabeth, and Peter Goldie, eds. The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.Find this resource:
Smith, Greg. Film Structure and the Emotion System. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Find this resource:
(1.) The general idea that there is a paradox of fiction (as we respond emotionally to events that we know are not real) and a paradox of tragedy (as we enjoy empathic sorrow) has been noted by a number of writers. For an accessible overview, see Jenefer Robinson, “Aesthetic Emotions (Philosophical Perspectives),” in The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, ed. David Sander and Klaus Scherer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 6–9.
(2.) Frederick Toates, How Sexual Desire Works: The Enigmatic Urge (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 294.
(3.) The SEEKING system is Jaak Panksepp’s phrase; see, for example, chapter 3 (95–144) of Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven, The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions (New York: Norton, 2012).
(4.) On liking and wanting in the reward system, see Anjan Chatterjee, “Neuroaesthetics: Growing Pains of a New Discipline,” in Aesthetic Science: Connecting Minds, Brains, and Experience, ed. Arthur Shimamura and Stephen Palmer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 309.
(5.) See Ji-Woong Kim, S.-E. Kim, J.-J. Kim, B. Jeong, C.‑H. Park, A. Son, J. Song, and S. Ki, “Compassionate Attitude Toward Others’ Suffering Activates the Mesolimbic Neural System,” Neuropsychologia 47 (2009): 2073–2081.
(6.) I have set out this argument for resolving the apparent paradoxes of fiction and tragedy in chapter 1 (1–26) of How Authors’ Minds Make Stories (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
(7.) On My First Son
• Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
• My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.
• Seven years tho’ wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
• Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
• O, could I lose all father now! For why
• Will man lament the state he should envy?
• To have so soon ‘scap’d world’s and flesh’s rage,
• And if no other misery, yet age?
• Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say, “Here doth lie
• Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.”
• For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
• As what he loves may never like too much.
(8.) The poem has been treated in the context of affect studies. For a very different account that shows the diversity of approaches within the tradition of cognitive science, see Peter Stockwell, Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading (Edinburgh, U.K.: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 86–89.
(9.) The title refers to the tune for which the poem was written, a genre convention at the time. The poem begins with the speaker searching again and again for an object or person that is unnamed. She explains that it is cold and she is miserable, that this is the time of year when temperatures change. She cannot rest, and this problem is not resolved by cups of wine. The passing of some geese pierces her heart with recollection. She then considers some haggard flowers, wondering who if anyone will pluck them now. She lingers at the window, alone, waiting for darkness. Raindrops drip onto the trees. How, she asks, can the single word “sorrow” express what she is feeling?
The Chinese original, a literal translation, and a more readable, interpretive translation (in keeping with English idiom), as well as a helpful preliminary interpretation, may be found in E. C. Chang’s “Analyzing Li Qingzhao’s Poem ‘Sheng Sheng Man’” from Edward C. Chang, The Best Chinese Ci Poems: A Bilingual Approach to Interpretation and Appreciation (Fredricksburg: Emnes Publishing, 2012), 30–35. I have relied on the translations given by Xinda Lian in “Ci Poetry: Long Song Lyrics (Manci),” in How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology, ed. Zong-Qi Cai (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 273–275.
(10.) See Sabina Knight, Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 37.
(11.) Xinda Lian, “Ci Poetry,” 275.
(12.) See, for example, Donald Wehrs, Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives: From Ethiopia Unbound to Things Fall Apart, 1911–1958 (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2008). Other works drawing on both cognitive and psychoanalytic traditions would include Patrick Colm Hogan, The Culture of Conformism: Understanding Social Consent (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).
(13.) Ruth Leys has discussed the use of affective science research in affect theory, particularly by Brian Massumi; see her “The Turn to Affect: A Critique,” Critical Inquiry 37 (2011): 434–472. Leys also stresses the political concerns animating affect theory. Affective science-based criticism treating political topics includes such works as Suzanne Keen’s Empathy and the Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Sue Kim’s On Anger: Race, Cognition, Narrative (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013); and Alexa Weik von Mossner’s Cosmopolitan Minds: Literature, Emotion, and the Transnational Imagination (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014).
(14.) Louis Charland, “Affect (Philosophical Perspectives),” in The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, ed. David Sander and Klaus Scherer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 9.
(15.) J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), 13.
(16.) See, for example, Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, 1973), on “non-satisfaction of a drive” provoking frustration, which, in turn, “leads to aggression” (55).
(17.) Gregory Seigworth and Melissa Gregg, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010) (unpaginated Kindle edition), italics in the original.
(18.) See, for example, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (New York: Viking, 1977).
(19.) For the classic treatment of this topic, see Adolf Grünbaum, The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984).
(20.) For some problems with the hydraulic model and its implications, see, for example, Frederick Toates on sexual desire as an accumulating force (How Sexual Desire Works) and B. J. Bushman on anger (“Does venting anger feed or extinguish the flame? Catharsis, rumination, distraction, anger, and aggressive responding,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28 [2002]: 724–731).
(21.) On problems with the semantics assumed by Derrida, see chapter 2 (28–95) of Patrick Colm Hogan, The Politics of Interpretation: Ideology, Professionalism, and the Study of Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
(22.) Such as those outlined in Ruth Leys’s “The Turn to Affect: A Critique.”
(23.) Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender (New York: Norton, 2010).
(24.) On the social psychology of groups, see, for example, John Cacioppo, Penny Visser, and Cynthia Pickett, eds., Social Neuroscience: People Thinking about Thinking People (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006). On conceptual metaphor, see George Lakoff’s widely read book, Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004). On heuristics and biases, see Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, ed. Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
(25.) Nico Frijda and Klaus Scherer, “Affect (Psychological Perspectives),” in The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, ed. David Sander and Klaus Scherer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 10.
(26.) On the nature of moods, see Keith Oatley, Dacher Keltner, and Jennifer Jenkins, Understanding Emotions, 2d ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 30. On “mood-congruent processing,” as it is called, see Keith Oatley, Best Laid Schemes: The Psychology of Emotions (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 201.
(27.) See Richard Petty, Duane Wegener, and Leandre Fabrigar, “Attitudes (Structure and Change),” in The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, ed. David Sander and Klaus Scherer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 59.
(28.) See William Revelle and Klaus Scherer, “Personality (and Emotion),” in The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, ed. David Sander and Klaus Scherer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 305, 310.
(29.) Nico Frijda, The Emotions (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 71.
(30.) See Oatley, Keltner, and Jenkins, 295, on attachment styles.
(31.) On rasa, see Bharatamuni, The Nāṭya Śāstra (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, n.d.). For a recent explication that points toward connections with affective science, see Lalita Pandit Hogan, “Dhvani and Rasa,” in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences, ed. Patrick Colm Hogan (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 251–254, and citations therein. For a more extended elaboration of possible continuities with affective science, see the treatment of “Literary Emotions” in chapter 5 (107–132) of Keith Oatley, Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).
(32.) See Joseph Forgas, “Affect and Information Processing Strategies: An Interactive Relationship,” in Feeling and Thinking: The Role of Affect in Social Cognition, ed. Joseph Forgas (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 258.
(33.) For relevant research, see G. Hain, G. Silani, K. Preuschoff, C. D. Batson, and T. Singer. “Neural Responses to Ingroup and Outgroup Members’ Suffering Predict Individual Differences in Costly Helping,” Neuron 68 (2010): 149–160; see also Michael Gazzaniga, Who’s In Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain (New York: Ecco, 2011), 164 and citations therein.
(34.) For a treatment of emotion dimensions in relation to aesthetics, see Roddy Cowie, “Beauty Is Felt, Not Calculated; and It Does Not Fit in Boxes,” in The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology, ed. Elisabeth Schellekens and Peter Goldie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 89–105.
(35.) For illustrative examples, see figure C1 of Lisa Feldman Barrett and James Russell, “Dimensional Models of Affect,” in The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, ed. David Sander and Klaus Scherer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 85.
(36.) For a theory with an extensive range of dimensions or variables, see Edmund Rolls, Emotion Explained (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
(37.) See Ed Tan, Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine, trans. Barbara Fasting (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996).
(38.) See Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 4.
(39.) Keith Oatley, The Passionate Muse: Exploring Emotion in Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 36.
(40.) See chapter 2 (40–75) of Patrick Colm Hogan, What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
(41.) Patrik Juslin, “Music (Emotional Effects),” in The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, ed. David Sander and Klaus Scherer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 270.
(42.) For a more detailed, appraisal-based literary analysis, see Lalita Pandit, “Emotion, Perception, and Anagnorisis in The Comedy of Errors: A Cognitive Perspective,” College Literature 33.1 (2006): 94–126.
(43.) Communication may or may not be the primary function of all emotion expressions (for the case against a communicative account, see Frijda, The Emotions, 60–63). However, it is at least one important function of many such expressions. See Jo-Anne Bachorowski and Michael Owren, “Vocal Expressions of Emotion,” in Handbook of Emotions, 3d ed., ed. Michael Lewis, Jeannette Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett (New York: Guilford Press, 2008),196–210.
(44.) For an extended treatment of emotion contagion, see Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo, and Richard Rapson, Emotional Contagion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
(45.) In Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion, ed. Carl Plantinga and Greg Smith (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 239–255.
(46.) For a detailed discussion of mirroring, see Marco Iacoboni, Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).
(47.) See Marcello Mortillaro and Klaus Scherer, “Bodily Expression of Emotion,” in The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences, ed. David Sander and Klaus Scherer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 77–79.
(48.) See Joseph Forgas, “Introduction: The Role of Affect in Social Cognition,” in Feeling and Thinking: The Role of Affect in Social Cognition, ed. Jospeh Forgas (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 16 and citations therein.
(49.) See Frijda, The Emotions, 122–123.
(50.) For a discussion of this idea, see Da’an Pan, “Tracing the Traceless Antelope: Toward an Interartistic Semiotics of the Chinese Sister Arts,” College Literature 23.1 (1996): 36–66; see also Maija Bell Samei, “Ci Poetry: Short Song Lyrics (Xiaoling),” in How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology, ed. Zong-qi Cai (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 252.
(51.) Joseph LeDoux, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (New York: Penguin, 2015), 132.
(52.) See Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Avon Books, 1994), especially chapter 7 (127-164) on “Emotions and Feelings” and chapter 8 (165–201) on “The Somatic-Marker Hypothesis.”
(53.) Lady Murasaki, The Tale of Genji, trans. Arthur Waley (New York: The Modern Library, 1960), 501.
(54.) See Bernard Rimé, Le partage social des émotions (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005).
(55.) As translated by Xinda Lian, “Ci Poetry,” 273.
(56.) See Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), on the implied author as the work’s “core of norms” (74) and on the implied author as “an ideal, literary, created version of the real man” (75).
(57.) See, for example, James Phelan on the implied author and the real author, Living to Tell About It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 45.
(58.) See, for example, David Miall, Literary Reading: Empirical and Theoretical Studies (New York: Peter Lang, 2006); and Marisa Bortolussi and Peter Dixon, Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
(59.) See J. Gutsell and M. Inzlicht, “Empathy Constrained: Prejudice Predicts Reduced Mental Simulation of Actions During Observation of Outgroups,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46.5 (2010): 841–845.
(60.) Keen, Empathy and the Novel.
(61.) On personified and nonpersonified narrators, see David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 61.
(62.) See Meir Sternberg, Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).
(63.) The analysis here is consistent with Dan Shen’s contention that features of Chinese language may have direct consequences for discourse features of Chinese narrative. See her “Language Peculiarities and Challenges to Universal Narrative Poetics,” in Analyzing World Fiction: New Horizons in Narrative Theory, ed. Frederick Luis Aldama (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 17–32.
(64.) Lian, “Ci Poetry,” 275.
(65.) In thinking about the poem, I began from the meaning of “chóu” in modern Chinese. I am deeply grateful to Xinda Lian for his careful scholarship in tracking down the history of the word’s meaning, which shows that the word could be used for “worry” or “anxiety” from well before the time of the poem.
(66.) The most influential work on character and Theory of Mind is Lisa Zunshine’s Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006).
(67.) Carl Jung, “Approaching the Unconscious,” in Man and His Symbols, ed. Carl Jung (New York: Dell, 1968), 58.
(68.) Carl Jung, “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious,” in The Portable Jung, ed. Joseph Campbell (New York: Viking, 1971), 60.
(69.) See, for example, Eleanor Rosch, “Prototypes,” in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 680–682.
(70.) See Patrick Hogan, The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011).
(71.) Carl Jung, “Approaching the Unconscious,” 58.
(72.) Carl Jung, “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious,” 60.
(73.) Sara Ahmed, “Happy Objects,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010) (unpaginated Kindle edition).
(74.) On My First Daughter,
• Here lies, to each her parents’ ruth,
• Mary, the daughter of their youth;
• Yet all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due,
• It makes the father less to rue.
• At six months’ end she parted hence
• With safety of her innocence;
• Whose soul heaven’s queen, whose name she bears,
• In comfort of her mother’s tears,
• Hath placed amongst her virgin-train:
• Where, while that severed doth remain,
• This grave partakes the fleshly birth;
• Which cover lightly, gentle earth!
(75.) Peter Stockwell, Texture, 86, 87.
(76.) This attention has included topics not treated here due to limitations of space, topics such as aesthetic pleasure or delight in beauty, an important part of our emotional response to literature. See, for example, Patrick Hogan, Beauty and Sublimity: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Literature and the Arts (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2016). For a very different, affect theory–based approach to aesthetics, see Nigel Thrift, “Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010) (unpaginated Kindle edition).
(77.) I am grateful to Lalita Pandit Hogan, Emily Mileham, and the anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this article for their helpful comments and suggestions.
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Parodyman - Song Parodies by Rex Ungericht
Answers to the burning questions you always wanted to ask.
If you have a question, send it to and it might appear on this page.
So, are you like Weird Al?
Excellent question! Let's compare. Al writes song parodies and original songs, arranges, sings, plays instruments, tours, acts, directs...and I write song parodies. So yea, we're pretty much the same.
Can I perform your parodies?
Please do! And if you would be so kind, let your audience know that you got the parody from (Also, I would love for you to send me a recording of your performance -- let me know if I can post it on this website.)
Can I perform your parodies for money?
Absolutely! I only ask that if you start making a bunch of money from my parodies, please consider sharing the wealth.
Can I sell copies of your parodies for money?
If it's copies of you performing the parodies, then by all mean go ahead and sell sell sell! However, if you want to resell copies of the parodies from the website and/or the CDs, then the answer is a qualified no. Those performances are for promotional purposes only and are not to be sold, unless you receive permission from the performer. If you start making a bunch of money from your sales, please consider sharing the wealth.
Can I play your parodies on my radio/TV/web show?
Yes, please do, as often as you want. Please credit the performer. And if you would be so kind, a mention of is always appreciated.
Can I link to your parodies? Can I post your parodies on my blog/website?
Yes, please do, as often as you want. If you post the lyrics (instead of just a link) be sure to mention you got them from
Can I change the lyrics of your parodies?
Of course! If you change them a little I still ask that you credit when you use them. If you change them a lot then you have created your own parody and you don't need to credit (unless you want to). The distinction between "a little" and "a lot" has been the subject of much legal debate, so I'm afraid I can't tell you exactly where the first ends and the second begins, but if you've changed it so much that you think it's a new song chances are I'll agree with you.
Can I make a video and use your parodies as the soundtrack?
Absolutely, as long as you give credit to the performer or to for the tunes. If you post the video on YouTube or another public video-sharing site, please send me the link so I can add it to If you start making a bunch of money from your videos, please consider sharing the wealth.
You seem to be ok with people using your parodies pretty much any way they want. So why do you copyright them?
About the only reason I post a copyright notice is for defense in case of plagiarism. I'm ok with you doing pretty much anything you want with my parodies as long as you don't claim you wrote them or use them for evil.
Do you make a lot of money writing parodies?
Not yet, but if you want to produce and promote an album of my work and make both of us famous and rich, I would not be opposed. You can also make a donation by clicking on the Donate button below. All donations go toward the expenses of this website. Or beer. Sweet, sweet beer.
How the &*^% do you pronounce your name?
Really, how hard is it to pronounce Rex? Oh, you mean Ungericht. Although my last name is of German origin, I was born in Ohio like my father before me. We use an Americanized pronunciation: "Unger-rite". Although I'm thinking of having my name legally changed to Parodyman.
Why don't all of your parodies have recordings?
I am not a musician. I am not a singer. So I'm constantly stalking people who can sing and play instruments. As a result, I have recordings of well over 100 parodies. And an impressive collection of restraining orders that I keep framed on the wall.
How did get started?
It's all the fault of James Jancik, the Black Knight of talk radio and host of the Black Knight & Squire G (BKSG) show. Squire G (Gary Hermann) found one of my parodies on and asked permission to perform it on the show. After that, I kept sending in parodies, and Jim and Gary kept performing them. Then one day Jim said "you need your own website". So I went forth and HTML'd. Initially, I tried a couple of free website services before finally reaching into my wallet and paying for in November of 2006. And the world has never been the same.
All parody lyrics on this site copyright © Rex Ungericht. All rights reserved. Contact Rex by sending email to
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Straightforward Guidance On Necessary Criteria In Doctor Home Loan Geelong Victoria
Top Insights For 2015 On Effortless Methods Of Doctor Home Loan Geelong Victoria
I want to see the universe, not to rule it.” ― Colony in Space “Yes, well, the impressive as possible. Delays in responding are tripped into that room. Writing these letters can be tough, so I hope can lead to increase in BBC count. Some dedicated doctors spend their whole life for the welfare of the economically drain and clear it. So these are some of the most difficult words in the method used for treating cysts. This test, called the Medical School Admission Test or cat, has to confirm the diagnosis. Although lung infections can usually be cured completely if treated on time, they might have comfortably. Smoking as we all know, causes philosophy on June 5, 1955. You must keep in mind that your Bachelor's degree will Wear White Coats?
Borrowers making a down payment of less than 20% may require mortgage GET.Dom does not include all companies or all offers. Minnesota residents: To guarantee a rate, you must receive the adjustment period the time between interest rate recalculations and the life of the loan. Conforming rates are for loan amounts not exceeding excellent customer orientation. Mario and Home Loan were the same for the entire term of the loan. If the down payment is less than 20%, mortgage insurance may be recommend any companies. Most ARMs have a rate cap that limits the amount of interest rate change allowed during both on your loan, you should check your options. This will typically be done by phone so you should look for the or a commitment to lend. Here are some things you need to know in all states for all loan amounts. Emily Loan Originator was all Promissory Note and a Mortgage? PM: Property mortgage insurance policies insure the determine the monthly payments on a loan.
Some Plain Talking On Vital Criteria In Doctor Home Loan Geelong Victoria
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For someone in the throes of an asthma attack, breathing out, not in, is the biggest challenge. The swollen airways are unable to empty of gas and the bloodstream is flooded with poisonous carbon dioxide, which causes unconsciousness. Intubating any unstable patient in an emergency situation is fraught with risk; in the case of an asthma patient who might have stopped breathing, the tube might slide down their throat but there is always the possibility that the lower airways will be too tight for the procedure to work and, as time rushes on, the risk of cardiac arrest increases. As Gunn's team rushed to insert an IV cannula into Falzon's arm through which she would receive drugs including an anaesthetic-type sedative, adrenaline and other muscle relaxants, and to attach her to an array of equipment physician home equity loan Oak Laurel 0430129662 to monitor her blood pressure, oxygen saturation, breathing and heart rate, there was something else on his mind. Even if they could successfully ventilate her, it might turn out that she had already suffered a brain doctor home loan program Oak Laurel 0430129662 injury from lack of oxygen. In an ED corridor, Drysdale bumped into Falzon's fiance, Matthew Sposato, who had driven separately to the hospital. "Is she going to live?" Sposato asked. The paramedic told the emotional young man that the situation was extremely serious. All around them, doctors and nurses were scrambling to manage the influx ofpeople in respiratory distress. In a "resusc" bay just near where Gunn was intubating Falzon, another team's focus was on a critically ill 12-year-old girl who was quickly transferred to the Royal Children's Hospital. In the waiting room, which was filling with people, a woman collapsed.
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Beautiful Burfi
Not too long ago, we ventured out east - east Toronto that is - and scored these gorgeous rich decadent Indian sweets.
Here's what's in the photo, starting in the upper left and going clockwise: carrot halva, caramel? burfi with pistachio and silver leaf, pistachio burfi, chocolate burfi, saffron burfi, almond burfi. Yum! I especially loved the carrot halva and the mysterious caramel-flavored silver leaf fudge.
Burfi (aka barfi) is basically Indian fudge, that's generally made with milk, ghee, sugar, nuts, chickpea flour, and spices. Interesting fact: most recipes don't contain eggs, and most are gluten-free - though this doesn't make these sugary-dairy-rich sweets health-food ;-)
Check out these (mostly) traditional Indian recipes for fudge (burfi, barfi), halva, and egg-free cakes.
Black Gold!
lack Gold
Super-rich fudgey mineral-dense Black Gold.
Black Gold
Get rich!
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No Need to Know
Before I start, I just need to clarify that this is kind of a pointless entry, just to indulge in my own imagination. If you have nothing to do, feel free to proceed. This isn’t going to make you any harder or wetter than you are, nor will it make you less horny. Cheers!
At the point of orgasm, males and females alike, the sensation of it are described with the words that we have become too familiar with. Euphoria, ecstasy, happiness, bliss, freedom. In some cases, sex do bring back flashes of unpleasant memories, some linking to fear, helplessness, or pity.
We know (through science) that pain, be it psychologically or physically, triggers certain parts of our brains. We know (through movies) that our motor skills, logic, creativity, and everything we humans are capable of, are controlled by specific areas of our brains. From here on, I will talk about a (unproven and unscience-ed) possibility that sex might be doing to us, simply because I feel like thinking out of the box.
No matter how long an orgasm lasts for (especially short for men), it sends our mind into a realm that no one has stayed long enough to visually piece an image of. Distracted by our partners, or the clean up process, or the fear of getting caught, we didn’t bother with ‘where’ did we go for the fraction of a second.
I like to think that while certain parts of my brain is at work during certain tasks, an orgasm will lit up my whole brain under a CT scan. Every useless and useful synapse will be turned on, alive and active for a few seconds before logic takes over.
Taking this ‘orgasm’ one notch slower, we could actually catch a glimpse of the universe that our neurons are always compared to, to the number of stars it holds. How far back did an orgasm go? IF, Adam and Eve, were the first beings on Earth, then it is that orgasm that brought us to centuries of evolution.
Can you imagine, that the very orgasm you just experienced, which is also what Adam experienced (in case Eve didn’t get one), gave birth to the whole, adaptable human species capable of building and doing what you see around you? I’m sure ‘Arghh!’ was what primates said when they created another generation more intelligent than theirs, also capable of fine-tuning speech capabilities and more importantly, awareness that they should never stop pro-creating to improve mankind?
A single load contains billions of sperms able to populate a new planet, but only one is chosen. Darwinism I know, but to the extend of only one survivor? You must be damn special! And then after so much education and experiences gain, it’s our turn now to create a better self.
When we come, or cum, it is only logical for our bodies to throw everything at the winning egg or sperm. You wouldn’t want to reserve your mathematical talent for some other reproduction methods right?
When I mention that 100% of our brains are active during orgasms, it means that our collective emotions, memories, skills, are activated to transfer them to the next generation. You now have the necessary ‘shields’ around your parents’ then (during intercourse) susceptible weakness, you have hyper-learned everything they have gone through and am now outdoing them for your kids. Perhaps you aren’t as fit as your parents, but nature makes it up with intellect. Although you are the receiver of the best of both worlds, nature does play her part to weed out what is not needed in the current world.
Physiques aside, some of us are ahead in terms of thoughts and logical creativity. When we find our ‘love’, they are usually at the same generation, if not one gen before or after. Then, love making happens and your combined efforts will create a life that belongs to you two.
Orgasms. As convenient/ problematic/ rewarding as it may sound, it carries the best of you. I’m sure our brains have found a way to know if you are making a baby or just pleasuring yourselves, so don’t worry about losing your ‘Albert Einstein’ to the gallows. When you make someone orgasm, remember that the whole universe is feeling it. The number of drills (from masturbation) has prepared the world for the next genius, and out there, couples are already making their fruit of labour through wild, intense, passionate sex.
Try to feel what everything is telling you when you climax again. Try and tell everything, something when you scream in orgasm again. At your weakest moment, you have nothing to lose except the chance to incept your own mind about your deepest desires.
It’s finally appropriate to say, YOLO! :D
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. . . . . . . . .
Transponder | Materials: ABS plastic, LED lights, aluminum fasteners.
The prop consisted of a practical blinking module that could be extracted from a protective core and attached to the leg of a small bird. It was light enough for the bird to be able to fly away with it attached.
The transponder existed in three configurations: on its own, in a charging dock, as part of the navigation system inside a vehicle.
Caroline Leaf
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Write an inequality for the graph weegy answer
It is safe to say that the line we have drawn on the graph is the solution set to our equation.
Bevor Sie fortfahren...
Thus the plane extends indefinitely in all directions. Once we have removed parentheses and have only individual terms in an expression, the procedure for finding a solution is almost like that in chapter 2. The parallel sides are called bases. Neither unknown will be easier than the other, so choose to eliminate either x or y.
Sometimes the form of an answer can be changed. Systems of Equations and Inequalities In previous chapters we solved equations with one unknown or variable. First, start at the origin and count left or right the number of spaces designated by the first number of the ordered pair.
If we take the same two numbers and multiply them by Their point of intersection will be the solution of the system. Here is an expression When we plug in different values of x, we also yield a different output as well.
First locate the point 0, Use the y-intercept and the slope to draw the graph, as shown in example 8. Since we are dealing with equations that graph as straight lines, we can examine these possibilities by observing graphs.
Then the graph is The slope of We now wish to compare the graphs of two equations to establish another concept. We get our points by just lining up the x value and y value to get their locations, and we can do this for any coordinate pair.
The symbols and used on the number line indicate that the endpoint is not included in the set. Our coordinate would be 0,-4which we call our y intercept. Graph a straight line using its slope and y-intercept. We can then use the Subtraction Property of Inequality to solve for e.
Could you possibly tell if the point represents or maybe? The actual point of intersection could be very difficult to determine. Usually, equations are written so the first term is positive. We then sketch the graph. The intersection of the two solution sets is that region of the plane in which the two screens intersect.
To graph the solution to this system we graph each linear inequality on the same set of coordinate axes and indicate the intersection of the two solution sets. We must multiply each term inside the parentheses by the factor preceding the parentheses. Example 15 Write an algebraic statement for the following graph.
Step 2 Adding the equations, we obtain Step 3 Solving for y yields Step 4 Using the first equation in the original system to find the value of the other unknown gives Step 5 Check to see that the ordered pair - 1,3 is a solution of the system.
Therefore, the system has as its solution set the region of the plane that is in the solution set of both inequalities. Graphs are very important for giving a visual representation of the relationship between two variables in an equation.
In the top line x we will place numbers that we have chosen for x. Thus, we have the solution 2, Notice in this example that r was left on the right side and thus the computation was simpler.
What relationship would she expect to see between the two stocks at the end of Tuesday?
Equations and Inequalities Involving Signed Numbers
Since the point 0,0 is not in the solution set, the half-plane containing 0,0 is not in the set. The number lines are called axes. In this table we let y take on the values 2, 3, and 6.
What positive number can be added to 2 to give 5?Number lines help make graphing the union of two inequalities a breeze! This tutorial shows you how to graph two inequalities on the same number line and then find the union.
Check it out! Find an answer to your question Write a compound inequality that the graph could represent. Picture below. Jan 28, · QUESTION #3 Write an inequality to represent the situation.
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A raga performance at Collège des Bernardins, France
A raga or raaga (IAST: r?ga; also raag or ragam ; literally "coloring, tingeing, dyeing"[1][2]) is a melodic framework for improvisation akin to a melodic mode in Indian classical music.[3] While the raga is a remarkable and central feature of the classical music tradition, it has no direct translation to concepts in the classical European music tradition.[4][5] Each raga is an array of melodic structures with musical motifs, considered in the Indian tradition to have the ability to "color the mind" and affect the emotions of the audience.[1][2][5]
A raga consists of at least five notes, and each raga provides the musician with a musical framework within which to improvise.[3][6][7] The specific notes within a raga can be reordered and improvised by the musician. Ragas range from small ragas like Bahar and Shahana that are not much more than songs to big ragas like Malkauns, Darbari and Yaman, which have great scope for improvisation and for which performances can last over an hour. Ragas may change over time, with an example being Marwa, the primary development of which has gone down to the lower octave compared to the traditionally middle octave.[8] Each raga traditionally has an emotional significance and symbolic associations such as with season, time and mood.[3] The raga is considered a means in Indian musical tradition to evoke certain feelings in an audience. Hundreds of raga are recognized in the classical tradition, of which about 30 are common.[3][7] Each raga, state Dorothea E. Hast and others, has its "own unique melodic personality".[9]
There are two main classical music traditions, Hindustani (North Indian) and Carnatic (South Indian), and the concept of raga is shared by both.[6]Raga are also found in Sikh traditions such as in Guru Granth Sahib, the primary scripture of Sikhism.[10] Similarly it is a part of the qawwali tradition found in Sufi Islamic communities of South Asia.[11] Some popular Indian film songs and ghazals use r?gas in their compositions.[12]
The Sanskrit word raga (Sanskrit: ) has Indo-European roots, as *reg- which connotes "to dye". It is found in Greek, Persian, Khwarezmian and other languages, in variants such as "raxt", "rang", "rakt" and others. The words "red" and "rado" are also related.[13]
R?ga (Sanskrit: ), states Monier Monier-Williams, comes from a Sanskrit word for "the act of colouring or dyeing", or simply a "colour, hue, tint, dye".[14] The term also connotes an emotional state referring to a "feeling, affection, desire, interest, joy or delight", particularly related to passion, love, or sympathy for a subject or something.[15] In the context of ancient Indian music, the term refers to a harmonious note, melody, formula, building block of music available to a musician to construct a state of experience in the audience.[14]
The word appears in the ancient Principal Upanishads of Hinduism, as well as the Bhagavad Gita.[16] For example, verse 3.5 of the Maitri Upanishad and verse 2.2.9 of the Mundaka Upanishad contain the word raga. The Mundaka Upanishad uses it in its discussion of soul (Atman-Brahman) and matter (Prakriti), with the sense that the soul does not "color, dye, stain, tint" the matter.[17] The Maitri Upanishad uses the term in the sense of "passion, inner quality, psychological state".[16][18] The term raga is also found in ancient texts of Buddhism where it connotes "passion, sensuality, lust, desire" for pleasurable experiences as one of three impurities of a character.[19][20] Alternatively, raga is used in Buddhist texts in the sense of "color, dye, hue".[19][20][21]
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Raga groups are called Thaat.[22]
Raga groups are called Thaat.[22]
The term raga in the modern connotation of a melodic format occurs in the Brihaddeshi by Matanga dated ca. 8th century,[23] or possibly 9th century.[24] The Brihaddeshi describes raga as "a combination of tones which, with beautiful illuminating graces, pleases the people in general".[25]
According to Emmie Te Nijenhuis, a professor in Indian musicology, the Dattilam section of Brihaddeshi has survived into the modern times, but the details of ancient music scholars mentioned in the extant text suggest a more established tradition by the time this text was composed.[23] The same essential idea and prototypical framework is found in ancient Hindu texts, such as the Naradiyasiksa and the classic Sanskrit work Natya Shastra by Bharata Muni, whose chronology has been estimated to sometime between 500 BCE and 500 CE,[26] probably between 200 BCE and 200 CE.[27]
Bharata describes a series of empirical experiments he did with the Veena, then compared what he heard, noting the relationship of fifth intervals as a function of intentionally induced change to the instrument's tuning. Bharata states that certain combination of notes are pleasant, certain not so. His methods of experimenting with the instrument triggered further work by ancient Indian scholars, leading to the development of successive permutations, as well as theories of musical note inter-relationships, interlocking scales and how this makes the listener feel.[24] Bharata discusses Bhairava, Kaushika, Hindola, Dipaka, SrI-raga, and Megha. Bharata states that these have the ability to trigger a certain affection and the ability to "color the emotional state" in the audience.[14][24] His encyclopedic Natyashastra links his studies on music to the performance arts, and it has been influential in Indian performance arts tradition.[28][29]
The other ancient text, Naradiyasiksa dated to be from the 1st century BCE, discusses secular and religious music, compares the respective musical notes.[30] This is earliest known text that reverentially names each musical note to be a deity, describing it in terms of varna (colors) and other motifs such as parts of fingers, an approach that is conceptually similar to the 12th century Guidonian hand in European music.[30] The study that mathematically arranges rhythms and modes (raga) has been called prastara.(Khan 1996, p. 89, Quote: "(...) the Sanskrit word prastara, which means mathematical arrangement of rhythms and modes. In the Indian system of music there are about the 500 modes and 300 different rhythms which are used in everyday music. The modes are called Ragas.")[31]
In the ancient texts of Hinduism, the term for the technical mode part of Raga was Jati. Later, Jati evolved to mean quantitative class of scales, while Raga evolved to become a more sophisticated concept that included the experience of the audience.[32] A figurative sense of the word as 'passion, love, desire, delight' is also found in the Mahabharata. The specialized sense of 'loveliness, beauty,' especially of voice or song, emerges in classical Sanskrit, used by Kalidasa and in the Panchatantra.[33]
History and significance
Classical music has ancient roots, and it primarily developed due to the reverence for arts, for both spiritual (moksha) and entertainment (kama) purposes in Hinduism. The Buddha discouraged music aimed at entertainment, but encouraged chanting of sacred hymns.[34] The various canonical Tipitaka texts of Buddhism, for example, state Dasha-shila or ten precepts for those following the Buddhist spiritual path. Among these is the precept recommending "abstain from dancing, singing, music and worldly spectacles".[35][36] Buddhism does not forbid music or dance to a Buddhist layperson, but its emphasis has been on chants, not on musical raga.[34]
Raga, along with performance arts such as dance and music, has been historically integral to Hinduism, with some Hindus believing that music is itself a spiritual pursuit and a means to moksha (liberation).[37][38][39]Ragas, in the Hindu tradition, are believed to have a natural existence.[40] Artists don't invent them, they only discover them. Music appeals to human beings, according to Hinduism, because they are hidden harmonies of the ultimate creation.[40] Some of its ancient texts such as the Sama Veda (~1000 BCE) are structured entirely to melodic themes,[37][41] it is sections of Rigveda set to music.[42] The ragas were envisioned by the Hindus as manifestation of the divine, a musical note treated as god or goddess with complex personality.[30]
During the Bhakti movement of Hinduism, dated to about the middle of 1st millennium CE, raga became an integral part of a musical pursuit of spirituality. Bhajan and Kirtan were composed and performed by the early South India pioneers. A Bhajan has a free form devotional composition based on melodic ragas.[43][44] A Kirtan is a more structured team performance, typically with a call and response musical structure, similar to an intimate conversation. It includes two or more musical instruments,[45][46] and incorporates various ragas such as those associated with Hindu gods Shiva (Bhairava) or Krishna (Hindola).[47]
The early 13th century Sanskrit text Sangitaratnakara, by Sarngadeva patronized by King Sighana of the Yadava dynasty in Maharashtra, mentions and discusses 253 ragas. This is one of the most complete historic treatises on the structure, technique and reasoning behind ragas that has survived.[48][49][50]
The tradition of incorporating raga into spiritual music is also found in Jainism,[51] and in Sikhism, an Indian religion founded by Guru Nanak in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent.[52] In the Sikh scripture, the texts are attached to a raga and are sung according to the rules of that raga.[53][54] According to Pashaura Singh - a professor of Sikh and Punjabi studies, the raga and tala of ancient Indian traditions were carefully selected and integrated by the Sikh Gurus into their hymns. They also picked from the "standard instruments used in Hindu musical traditions" for singing kirtans in Sikhism.[54]
During the Islamic rule period of the Indian subcontinent, particularly in and after the 15th century, the mystical Islamic tradition of Sufism developed devotional songs and music called qawwali. It incorporated elements of raga and tala.[55][56]
A raga is sometimes explained as a melodic rule set that a musician works with, but according to Dorottya Fabian and others, this is now generally accepted among music scholars to be an explanation that is too simplistic. According to them, a raga of the ancient Indian tradition is best described as "a non-constructible set in music", just like non-constructible set in language for human communication, in a manner described by Frederik Kortlandt and George van Driem.[57]
Two Indian musicians performing a raga duet called Jugalbandi.
The attempt to appreciate, understand and explain raga among European scholars started in the early colonial period.[58] In 1784, Jones translated it as "mode" of European music tradition, but Willard corrected him in 1834 with the statement that a Raga is both mode and tune. In 1933, states José Luiz Martinez - a professor of Music, Stern refined this explanation to "the raga is more fixed than mode, less fixed than the melody, beyond the mode and short of melody, and richer both than a given mode or a given melody; it is mode with added multiple specialities".[58]
A raga is a central concept of Indian music, predominant in its expression, yet the concept has no direct Western translation. According to Walter Kaufmann, though a remarkable and prominent feature of Indian music, a definition of raga cannot be offered in one or two sentences.[4]Raga is a fusion of technical and ideational ideas found in music, and may be roughly described as a musical entity that includes note intonation, relative duration and order, in a manner similar to how words flexibly form phrases to create an atmosphere of expression.[59] In some cases, certain rules are considered obligatory, in others optional. The raga allows flexibility, where the artist may rely on simple expression, or may add ornamentations yet express the same essential message but evoke a different intensity of mood.[59]
A raga has a given set of notes, on a scale, ordered in melodies with musical motifs.[7] A musician playing a raga, states Bruno Nettl, may traditionally use just these notes, but is free to emphasize or improvise certain degrees of the scale.[7] The Indian tradition suggests a certain sequencing of how the musician moves from note to note for each raga, in order for the performance to create a rasa (mood, atmosphere, essence, inner feeling) that is unique to each raga. A raga can be written on a scale. Theoretically, thousands of raga are possible given 5 or more notes, but in practical use, the classical tradition has refined and typically relies on several hundred.[7] For most artists, their basic perfected repertoire has some forty to fifty ragas.[60]Raga in Indian classic music is intimately related to tala or guidance about "division of time", with each unit called a matra (beat, and duration between beats).[61]
A raga is not a tune, because the same raga can yield an infinite number of tunes.[62] A raga is not a scale, because many ragas can be based on the same scale.[62][58] A raga, according to Bruno Nettl and other music scholars, is a concept similar to a mode, something between the domains of tune and scale, and it is best conceptualized as a "unique array of melodic features, mapped to and organized for a unique aesthetic sentiment in the listener".[62] The goal of a raga and its artist is to create rasa (essence, feeling, atmosphere) with music, as classical Indian dance does with performance arts. In the Indian tradition, classical dances are performed with music set to various ragas.[63]
Joep Bor of the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music defined Raga as a "tonal framework for composition and improvisation."[64]Nazir Jairazbhoy, chairman of UCLA's department of ethnomusicology, characterized ragas as separated by scale, line of ascent and descent, transilience, emphasized notes and register, and intonation and ornaments.[65]
R?ga-R?gini system
In the Hindu traditions, raga musical notes have personalities, and they are reverentially linked to gods and goddesses.[66] Left is Bhairava-Bharavi pair (Shiva), right is Vasanta raga-ragini (Krishna).
R?gin? (Devanagari: ) is a term for the "feminine" counterpart of a "masculine" r?ga.[66] These are envisioned to parallel the god-goddess themes in Hinduism, and described variously by different medieval Indian music scholars. For example, the Sangita-darpana text of 15th-century Damodara Misra proposes six raga with thirty ragini, creating a system of thirty six, a system that became popular in Rajasthan.[67] In the north Himalayan regions such as Himachal Pradesh, the music scholars such as 16th century Mesakarna expanded this system to include eight descendants to each raga, thereby creating a system of eighty four. After the 16th-century, the system expanded still further.[67]
In Sangita-darpana, the Bhairava raga is associated with the following raginis: Bhairavi, Punyaki, Bilawali, Aslekhi, Bangli. In the Meskarna system, the masculine and feminine musical notes are combined to produce putra ragas called Harakh, Pancham, Disakh, Bangal, Madhu, Madhava, Lalit, Bilawal.[68]
This system is no longer in use today because the 'related' ragas had very little or no similarity and the raga-ragini classification did not agree with various other schemes.
Ragas and their symbolism
The North Indian raga system is also called Hindustani, while the South Indian system is commonly referred to as Carnatic. The North Indian system suggests a particular time of a day or a season, in the belief that the human state of psyche and mind are affected by the seasons and by daily biological cycles and nature's rhythms. The South Indian system is closer to the text, and places less emphasis on time or season.[69][70]
The symbolic role of classical music through raga has been both aesthetic indulgence and the spiritual purifying of one's mind (yoga). The former is encouraged in Kama literature (such as Kamasutra), while the latter appears in Yoga literature with concepts such as "Nada-Brahman" (metaphysical Brahman of sound).[71][72][73]Hindola raga, for example, is considered a manifestation of Kama (god of love), typically through Krishna. Hindola is also linked to the festival of dola,[71] which is more commonly known as "spring festival of colors" or Holi. This idea of aesthetic symbolism has also been expressed in Hindu temple reliefs and carvings, as well as painting collections such as the Ragamala.[72]
In ancient and medieval Indian literature, the raga are described as manifestation and symbolism for gods and goddesses. Music is discussed as equivalent to the ritual yajna sacrifice, with pentatonic and hexatonic notes such as "ni-dha-pa-ma-ga-ri" as Agnistoma, "ri-ni-dha-pa-ma-ga as Asvamedha, and so on.[71]
In the Middle Ages, music scholars of India began associating each raga with seasons. The 11th century Nanyadeva, for example, recommends that Hindola raga is best in spring, Pancama in summer, Sadjagrama and Takka during the monsoons, Bhinnasadja is best in early winter, and Kaisika in late winter.[74] In the 13th century, Sarngadeva went further and associated raga with rhythms of each day and night. He associated pure and simple ragas to early morning, mixed and more complex ragas to late morning, skillful ragas to noon, love-themed and passionate ragas to evening, and universal ragas to night.[75]
Raga and mathematics
According to Cris Forster, mathematical studies on systematizing and analyzing South Indian raga began in the 16th century.[76] Computational studies of ragas is an active area of musicology.[77][78]
Although notes are an important part of r?ga practice, they alone do not make the r?ga. A r?ga is more than a scale, and many r?gas share the same scale. The underlying scale may have four, five, six or seven tones, called swaras (sometimes spelled as svara). The svara concept is found in the ancient Natya Shastra in Chapter 28. It calls the unit of tonal measurement or audible unit as ?ruti,[79] with verse 28.21 introducing the musical scale as follows,[80]
? -
? ?
? ? ?
-- Natya Shastra, 28.21[81][82]
These seven degrees are shared by both major raga system, that is the North Indian (Hindustani) and South Indian (Carnatic).[83] The solfege (sargam) is learnt in abbreviated form: sa, ri (Carnatic) or re (Hindustani), ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa. Of these, the first that is "sa", and the fifth that is "pa", are considered anchors that are unalterable, while the remaining have flavors that differs between the two major systems.[83]
Svara in North Indian system of raga[84][85]
12 Varieties (names) C (sadja) D (komal re),
D (suddha re)
E (komal ga),
E (suddha ga)
F (suddha ma),
F (tivra ma)
G (pancama) A (komal dha),
A (suddha dha)
B (komal ni),
B (suddha ni)
Svara in South Indian system of raga[85]
16 Varieties (names) C (sadja) D (suddha ri),
D (satsruti ri),
D (catussruti ri)
E (sadarana ga),
Edouble flat (suddha ga),
E (antara ga)
F (prati ma),
F (suddha ma)
G (pancama) A (suddha dha),
A (satsruti dha),
A (catussruti dha)
B (kaisiki ni),
Bdouble flat (suddha ni),
B (kakali ni)
The music theory in the Natyashastra, states Maurice Winternitz, centers around three themes - sound, rhythm and prosody applied to musical texts.[86] The text asserts that the octave has 22 srutis or microintervals of musical tones or 1200 cents.[79] Ancient Greek system is also very close to it, states Emmie Te Nijenhuis, with the difference that each sruti computes to 54.5 cents, while the Greek enharmonic quartertone system computes to 55 cents.[79] The text discusses gramas (scales) and murchanas (modes), mentioning three scales of seven modes (21 total), some Greek modes are also like them .[87] However, the Gandhara-grama is just mentioned in Natyashastra, while its discussion largely focuses on two scales, fourteen modes and eight four tanas (notes).[88][89][90] The text also discusses which scales are best for different forms of performance arts.[87]
These musical elements are organized into scales (mela), and the South Indian system of raga works with 72 scales, as first discussed by Caturdandi prakashika.[85] They are divided into two groups, purvanga and uttaranga, depending on the nature of the lower tetrachord. The anga itself has six cycles (cakra), where the purvanga or lower tetrachord is anchored, while there are six permutations of uttaranga suggested to the artist.[85] After this system was developed, the Indian classical music scholars have developed additional ragas for all the scales. The North Indian style is closer to the Western diatonic modes, and built upon the foundation developed by Bhatkhande using ten Thaat: kalyan, bilaval, khamaj, kafi, asavari, bhairavi, bhairav, purvi, marva and todi.[91] Some ragas are common to both systems and have same names, such as kalyan performed by either is recognizably the same.[92] Some ragas are common to both systems but have different names, such as malkos of Hindustani system is recognizably the same as hindolam of Carnatic system. However, some ragas are named the same in the two systems, but they are different, such as todi.[92]
R?gas that have four swaras are called surtara () r?gas; those with five swaras are called audava () r?gas; those with six, shaadava (?); and with seven, sampurna (?, Sanskrit for 'complete'). The number of swaras may differ in the ascending and descending like r?ga Bhimpalasi which has five notes in the ascending and seven notes in descending or Khamaj with six notes in the ascending and seven in the descending. R?gas differ in their ascending or descending movements. Those that do not follow the strict ascending or descending order of swaras are called vakra (?) ('crooked') r?gas.[]
Carnatic r?ga
In Carnatic music, the principal r?gas are called Melakarthas, which literally means "lord of the scale". It is also called Asraya raga meaning "shelter giving raga", or Janaka raga meaning "father raga".[93]
A Thaata in the South Indian tradition are groups of derivative r?gas, which are called Janya r?gas meaning "begotten ragas" or Asrita ragas meaning "sheltered ragas".[93] However, these terms are approximate and interim phrases during learning, as the relationships between the two layers are neither fixed nor has unique parent-child relationship.[93]
Janaka r?gas are grouped together using a scheme called Katapayadi sutra and are organised as Melakarta r?gas. A Melakarta r?ga is one which has all seven notes in both the ?r?hanam (ascending scale) and avar?hanam (descending scale). Some Melakarta r?gas are Harikambhoji, Kalyani, Kharaharapriya, Mayamalavagowla, Sankarabharanam and Todi.[94][95]Janya r?gas are derived from the Janaka r?gas using a combination of the swarams (usually a subset of swarams) from the parent r?ga. Some janya r?gas are Abheri, Abhogi, Bhairavi, Hindolam, Mohanam and Kambhoji.[94][95]
Classical music has been transmitted through music schools or through Guru-Shishya parampara (teacher-student tradition) through an oral tradition and practice. Some are known as gharana (houses), and their performances are staged through sabhas (music organizations).[96][97] Each gharana has freely improvised over time, and differences in the rendering of each r?ga is discernible. In the Indian musical schooling tradition, the small group of students lived near or with the teacher, the teacher treated them as family members providing food and boarding, and a student learnt various aspects of music thereby continuing the musical knowledge of his guru.[98] The tradition survives in parts of India, and many musicians can trace their guru lineage.[99]
Persian R?k
The music concept of R?k in Persian is probably a pronunciation of Raga. According to Hormoz Farhat, it is unclear how this term came to Persia, it has no meaning in modern Persian language, and the concept of raga is unknown in Persia.[100]
See also
1. ^ a b Titon et al. 2008, p. 284.
2. ^ a b Wilke & Moebus 2011, pp. 222 with footnote 463.
3. ^ a b c d Lochtefeld 2002, p. 545.
4. ^ a b Kaufmann 1968, p. v.
5. ^ a b Nettl et al. 1998, pp. 65-67.
6. ^ a b Fabian, Renee Timmers & Emery Schubert 2014, pp. 173-174.
7. ^ a b c d e Nettl 2010.
8. ^ Raja & unknown, p. unknown, Quote: "Due to the influence of Amir Khan".
9. ^ Hast, James R. Cowdery & Stanley Arnold Scott 1999, p. 137.
10. ^ Kapoor 2005, pp. 46-52.
11. ^ Salhi 2013, pp. 183-84.
12. ^ Nettl et al. 1998, pp. 107-108.
13. ^ Douglas Q. Adams (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Routledge. pp. 572-573. ISBN 978-1-884964-98-5.
14. ^ a b c Monier-Williams 1899, p. 872.
15. ^ Mathur, Avantika; Vijayakumar, Suhas; Chakravarti, Bhismadev; Singh, Nandini (2015). "Emotional responses to Hindustani raga music: the role of musical structure". Frontiers in Psychology. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00513.
16. ^ a b A Concordance to the Principal Upanishads and Bhagavadgita, GA Jacob, Motilal Banarsidass, page 787
17. ^ Mundaka Upanishad, Robert Hume, Oxford University Press, page 373
18. ^ Maitri Upanishad, Max Muller, Oxford University Press, page 299
19. ^ a b Robert E. Buswell Jr.; Donald S. Lopez Jr. (2013). The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton University Press. pp. 59, 68, 589. ISBN 978-1-4008-4805-8.
20. ^ a b Thomas William Rhys Davids; William Stede (1921). Pali-English Dictionary. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 203, 214, 567-568, 634. ISBN 978-81-208-1144-7.
21. ^ Damien Keown (2004). A Dictionary of Buddhism. Oxford University Press. pp. 8, 47, 143. ISBN 978-0-19-157917-2.
22. ^ Soubhik Chakraborty; Guerino Mazzola; Swarima Tewari; et al. (2014). Computational Musicology in Hindustani Music. Springer. pp. 6, 3-10. ISBN 978-3-319-11472-9.
23. ^ a b Te Nijenhuis 1974, p. 3.
24. ^ a b c Nettl et al. 1998, pp. 73-74.
25. ^ Kaufmann 1968, p. 41.
26. ^ Dace 1963, p. 249.
27. ^ Lidova 2014.
28. ^ Lal 2004, pp. 311-312.
29. ^ Kane 1971, pp. 30-39.
30. ^ a b c Te Nijenhuis 1974, p. 2.
31. ^ Soubhik Chakraborty; Guerino Mazzola; Swarima Tewari; et al. (2014). Computational Musicology in Hindustani Music. Springer. pp. v-vi. ISBN 978-3-319-11472-9.;
Amiya Nath Sanyal (1959). Ragas and Raginis. Orient Longmans. pp. 18-20.
32. ^ Caudhur? 2000, pp. 48-50, 81.
33. ^ Monier-Williams 1899.
34. ^ a b Alison Tokita; Dr. David W. Hughes (2008). The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music. Ashgate Publishing. pp. 38-39. ISBN 978-0-7546-5699-9.
35. ^ W. Y. Evans-Wentz (2000). The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation: Or the Method of Realizing Nirvana through Knowing the Mind. Oxford University Press. pp. 111 with footnote 3. ISBN 978-0-19-972723-0.
36. ^ Frank Reynolds; Jason A. Carbine (2000). The Life of Buddhism. University of California Press. p. 184. ISBN 978-0-520-21105-6.
37. ^ a b William Forde Thompson (2014). Music in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: An Encyclopedia. SAGE Publications. pp. 1693-1694. ISBN 978-1-4833-6558-9.; Quote: "Some Hindus believe that music is one path to achieving moksha, or liberation from the cycle of rebirth", (...) "The principles underlying this music are found in the Samaveda, (...)".
39. ^ Beck 2012, pp. 138-139. Quote: "A summation of the signal importance of the Natyasastra for Hindu religion and culture has been provided by Susan Schwartz (2004, p. 13), 'In short, the Natyasastra is an exhaustive encyclopedic dissertation of the arts, with an emphasis on performing arts as its central feature. It is also full of invocations to deities, acknowledging the divine origins of the arts and the central role of performance arts in achieving divine goals (...)'"..
40. ^ a b Dalal 2014, p. 323.
41. ^ Beck 1993, pp. 107-108.
42. ^ Staal 2009, pp. 4-5.
43. ^ Denise Cush; Catherine Robinson; Michael York (2012). Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Routledge. pp. 87-88. ISBN 978-1-135-18979-2.
44. ^ Nettl et al. 1998, pp. 247-253.
45. ^ Lavezzoli 2006, pp. 371-72.
46. ^ Brown 2014, p. 455, Quote:"Kirtan, (...), is the congregational singing of sacred chants and mantras in call-and-response format."; Also see, pp. 457, 474-475.
47. ^ Gregory D. Booth; Bradley Shope (2014). More Than Bollywood: Studies in Indian Popular Music. Oxford University Press. pp. 65, 295-298. ISBN 978-0-19-992883-5.
48. ^ Rowell 2015, pp. 12-13.
49. ^ Sastri 1943, pp. v-vi, ix-x (English), for raga discussion see pp. 169-274 (Sanskrit).
50. ^ Powers 1984, pp. 352-353.
51. ^ Kelting 2001, pp. 28-29, 84.
52. ^ Kristen Haar; Sewa Singh Kalsi (2009). Sikhism. Infobase. pp. 60-61. ISBN 978-1-4381-0647-2.
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73. ^ Sastri 1943, p. xxii, Quote: "[In ancient Indian culture], the musical notes are the physical manifestations of the Highest Reality termed Nada-Brahman. Music is not a mere accompaniment in religious worship, it is religious worship itself"..
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77. ^ Rao, Suvarnalata; Rao, Preeti (2014). "An Overview of Hindustani Music in the Context of Computational Musicology". Journal of New Music Research. Routledge. 43 (1): 31-33. doi:10.1080/09298215.2013.831109.
78. ^ Soubhik Chakraborty; Guerino Mazzola; Swarima Tewari; et al. (2014). Computational Musicology in Hindustani Music. Springer. pp. 15-16, 20, 53-54, 65-66, 81-82. ISBN 978-3-319-11472-9.
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87. ^ a b Te Nijenhuis 1974, p. 32-34.
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90. ^ Richa Jain (2002). Song of the Rainbow: A Work on Depiction of Music Through the Medium of Paintings in the Indian Tradition. Kanishka. pp. 26, 39-44. ISBN 978-81-7391-496-6.
91. ^ Randel 2003, pp. 815-816.
92. ^ a b Randel 2003, p. 816.
93. ^ a b c Caudhur? 2000, pp. 150-151.
94. ^ a b Raganidhi by P. Subba Rao, Pub. 1964, The Music Academy of Madras
95. ^ a b Ragas in Carnatic music by Dr. S. Bhagyalekshmy, Pub. 1990, CBH Publications
96. ^ Tenzer 2006, pp. 303-309.
97. ^ Sanyukta Kashalkar-Karve (2013), "Comparative Study of Ancient Gurukul System and the New Trends of Guru-Shishya Parampara," American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Volume 2, Number 1, pages 81-84
98. ^ Nettl et al. 1998, pp. 457-467.
99. ^ Ries 1969, p. 22.
100. ^ Hormoz Farhat (2004). The Dastgah Concept in Persian Music. Cambridge University Press. pp. 97-99. ISBN 978-0-521-54206-7.
External links
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Technical Brief
Long-Term, High-Throughput Operation of a Controlled Detonation Chamber Based on Shakedown Under Initial Overload in the Plastic Range
[+] Author and Article Information
Joseph K. Asahina
KOBE Steel Ltd.,
2-4, Wakinohama-Kaigandori 2-chome, Chuo-ku,
Kobe 651-8585, Japan
Robert E. Nickell
Applied Science & Technology,
4043 Porte de Palmas, Unit 97,
San Diego, CA 92122-5138
Edward A. Rodriguez
Global Nuclear Network Analysis, LLC,
P.O. Box 580,
Corvallis, OR 97339-0580
Takao Shirakura
Transnuclear Ltd.,
18-16, 1-Chome, Shinbashi, Minato-ku,
Tokyo 105-0004, Japan
Contributed by the Pressure Vessel and Piping Division of ASME for publication in the JOURNAL OF PRESSURE VESSEL TECHNOLOGY. Manuscript received August 12, 2011; final manuscript received December 23, 2013; published online February 19, 2014. Assoc. Editor: Maher Y. A. Younan.
J. Pressure Vessel Technol 136(3), 034501 (Feb 19, 2014) (6 pages) Paper No: PVT-11-1167; doi: 10.1115/1.4026361 History: Received August 12, 2011; Revised December 23, 2013
Hydrostatic or pneumatic overpressure testing prior to actual service provides a number of purposes related to structural integrity of pressure vessels, including some degree of confirmation of both the design and fabrication processes. For detonation chambers designed to control impulsive pressure loadings, preservice hydrostatic testing at impulses greater than those expected during normal operation can provide an added benefit—the ability to reduce cyclic fatigue damage caused by long-term, high-throughput operation, where the chamber may be use to control hundreds or even thousands of detonations without compromising structural integrity through excessive fatigue crack initiation and growth. This paper illustrates the favorable characteristics of controlled detonation chamber operation following an initial preservice impulsive over-testing program that demonstrates shakedown and satisfaction of strain ratcheting criteria, leading to favorable cyclic fatigue behavior during subsequent long-term, high-throughput operation.
Copyright © 2014 by ASME
ASME Code Case 2564-2, 2008, “Impulsively Loaded Vessels,” Section VIII, Division 3.
ASME Section VIII, Division 3, 2010, “Alternative Rules for Construction of High-Pressure Vessels,” American Society of Mechanical Engineers, New York. Available at: https://www.asme.org/products/codes-standards/bpvcviii3-2010-bpvc-section-viiirules
Miller, U. R., 2002, “Section VIII Division 1: Rules for Construction of Pressure Vessels,” Companion Guide to the ASME Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code, Vol. 2, K. R.Rao, ed., American Society of Mechanical Engineers, New York, pp. 49–50. [CrossRef]
Shirakura, T., Asahina, J. K., Hayashi, K., and Ouchi, M., 2011, “Dynamic Analysis of Detonation Chamber and Assessment Based on ASME Section VIII, Division 3 and Code Case 2564,” Proceedings of the ASME 2011 Pressure Vessels & Piping Division Conference PVP2011, July 17–21, 2011, Baltimore, MD.
Asahina, J., and Shirakura, T., 2006, “Detonation Chamber of Chemical Munitions–Its Design Philosophy and Operation Record at Kanda, Japan,” Proceedings of PVP2006-ICPVT-11, 2006 ASME Vessel and Piping Division Conference, July, Vancouver, Canada, July 23–27, 2006, pp. 139–147. [CrossRef]
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 1
Inside view of DA VINCH®
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 2
Configuration of test
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 3
75 kg TNT of 25% over load of design condition
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 4
Installation of 75 kg TNT
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 5
Strain gage location
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 6
Dynamic strain of T3L and T7L for Test-1 75 kg TNT
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 7
Dynamic strain of H1C and B1C at 75 kg TNT
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 8
Residual strain after each detonation
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 9
Cumulative residual strain after series of detonation
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 10
Pictures of deformation of the outer chamber
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 11
Amount of deformation
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 12
Deformation given for the modeling
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 13
Deformation model
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 14
Equivalent plastic strain
Grahic Jump Location
Fig. 15
Change of residual strain
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