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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/27996 | Seichim, or living light energy, is a form of universal energy that heals on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels – with a focus on the heart center and vibrates from feminine energy. Seichim is similar to Reiki but operates on a higher vibration and heals on a deeper level.
Seichim also spelled Sekhem, Seichem, or SKHM, is a form of energy healing introduced by Patrick Zeigler in 1984. Some claim it originates from Ancient Egypt or Atlantis. Some forms of Seichim are similar to Reiki.
In 1980 Patrick Zeigler spent the night in the Great Pyramid of Giza and had an experience he sees as an Initiation. Zeigler has explained what happened to him in different ways over the years.
Later Zeigler studied with some Sufis in the Sudan. When he returned to the USA after living 4 years in Yemen and Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer, he studied Reiki.
Implications of the different spellings
A friend of Zeigler, Christine Gerber, channeled being called Marat, who told said the energy into which he had been initiated was called Setim.
Later Zeigler meditated and heard the word SeiCH’em being told to him. He had never heard this word before and originally spelled it Seichim and Seichem. Later, after some research, he found there was a connection to the Egyptian spelling SeKHeM. Since Egyptians do not use the vowel sounds SKHM used by Zeigler.
Zeigler attuned several other people to Seichim at that time, usually people who were already Reiki Masters.
Most practitioners who use the spelling Seichim have studied it after studying Reiki. It is passed on via a method similar to that of Reiki.
These variations go by names such as Isis Seichim or Seven-facet Seichim. Such practitioners may also practice several similar systems of energy healing.
A woman named Phoenix Summerfield began to teach Seichim and Sekhem throughout the USA and Australia and made Seichim or Sekhem well known throughout the world.
Kathleen Milner also teaches a form of Seichim spelled Seichem; she claims her connection to the energy became strengthened after she received an epiphany from Buddha. From that experience, she created Tera Mai Seichem, which she claims cannot be combined with any of the other forms of Reiki or Seichim. Milner considers these systems to be ‘man-made’.
Currently, there are thousands teaching this system of healing around the world under the various spellings.
Patrick Zeigler now teaches it under the name All-Love/SKHM. He teaches it as an initiatory healing usually taught in a group workshop, very different from reiki or the reiki-related variations of Seichim.
A practitioner, Helen Belot, has claimed copyright of the spelling SEKHEM, although the word is in use by many practitioners and even is the name of a magical power in one role-playing game. She also denies that her system of Sekhem is descended from that of Patrick Zeigler, even though her contacts with him do acknowledge him as the founder of Seichim/Sekhem. She was also a student of Phoenix Summerfield, one of Zeigler’s students.
Beliefs of Seichim Practitioners
A translation of the Egyptian word Sekhem is “Power of Powers”. It also refers to one of the eight parts of the human soul – Power or Life energy.
Others believe that Seichim is the energy of the universe manifested through the feminine vibration of the Mother Goddess, which they say is that known by the Buddhists as Kuan Yin and by the Egyptians as Sekhmet. The Egyptians considered Sekhmet to be the Mother of the Gods, known as “The Great One of Healing”. Her mage-priests were the greatest of all healers and her son, Nefertem, was the God of Physicians.
In Egyptian, however, the term “Sekhem” means “tower” or “might”, which are more stereotypically masculine characteristics. This symbolizes, they say, that Seichim incorporates both yin and yang, or “perfect balance” and this balance is the key to progress and enlightenment. Some Seichim practitioners believe that it balances and realigns the yin (or female), physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually and is therefore therapeutic for female health problems such as infertility, hormonal imbalances, PMT and menstrual or menopausal problems. They say that it also re-adjusts imbalances deeper down in the psyche such as lack of self-esteem, the need for/lack of nurturing and especially self-emp
Log in here! |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28000 | Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Christian Recovery: Are you Addicted to the Addict?
If there’s one thing we know for sure when it comes to Christians in addiction, it’s that their lives don’t glorify God. In fact, so much about their lives are opposite of what’s described as godly in the Bible. For example, the Scriptures about the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) talk about having love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The addict doesn’t enjoy any of these fruits. In many cases, the loved ones of the addict aren’t enjoying them either.
When Christians continually choose alcohol or their drug of choice over God and the well-being of their loved ones, they are allowing Satan to operate as their master, thereby engaging the works of the flesh. Galatians 5:19-21 presents a list of these very negative behaviors, and makes it clear that “that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
While the life of an addict is crazy and filled with chaos, the loved ones usually find themselves in the center of the insanity right along with them. In most cases, family and friends get so caught up trying to save the addict, their behavior turns sinful because a ‘messianic complex’ doesn’t make room for God.
The following are the top 10 ways to tell if you or someone you know is addicted to the addict:
1. You are obsessed with all aspects of the addict’s life.
2. You believe you have the solution for the problem, and when one solution doesn’t work, you look for another.
3. You live in fear. Fear of what the addict will do or won’t do.
4. You lie to yourself. You know the addict is lying to you, but you accept the lies, thus lying to yourself.
5. Your life is unbalanced. It’s up and down according to the actions and behaviors of the addict.
6. You isolate, thus becoming like the addict. You stop living YOUR life.
7. You are in the midst of a cycle. You keep doing what has proven not to work.
8. You carry the addicts’ burdens for them, thereby saving them from suffering their own consequences.
9. The addict is living the life they choose. You are living your live based on those choices.
10. You are unable to properly function in your job, your family, your ministry and in other relationships.
The Solid Rock Road Christian recovery program is not only a resource for Christians seeking freedom from addictions, it is also a resource for the loved ones of addicts who become enmeshed in the problem. To learn more about how the recovery team can help, visit the website at www.thesolidrockroad.com. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
You can also find our RECOVERY BOOK on Amazon.com "Follow The Solid Rock Road: Pathway to Radical Recovery."
1 comment:
1. Sober Living Austin |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28003 | Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Truest statement of the week
This month the House and Senate passed the reconciled version of the 2019 Pentagon budget on to the White House. On TV and establishment media they call it a defense budget, but that’s branding too. The second world war which ended in 1945 killed 60 or 65 million people, after the first world war claimed 30 million only a generation earlier. This sort of gave war bad name. So in 1948 they changed the name of the US Department of War to the US Department of Defense. With the stroke of a pen, wealthy merchants of death as they were widely known, the war contractors, all became patriotic defense contractors. The US Secretary of War became the US Secretary of Defense, and the US war budget, by far the world’s largest, became the defense budget. And so it’s been for seven decades.
Early this month, the House and Senate passed the reconciled version of the US war budget to the president for signatgure. It’s the earliest in the budget cycle Congress has done a military budget since 1996 or 1997, when a Democrat in the White House and Democrats in Congress were anxious to assure Republicans that they were all on the same side.
They call this year’s atrocity the John McCain National Defense Authorization Act, worth a record $716 billion. This total doesn’t include the budget of the Afghan war, which lives somewhere else, or the budgets of several other known programs, and there are secret budgets for more or less secret programs as well. Nobody really doubts that actual US military spending has hovered around a trillion a year for several years now.
So how did the resistance perform? In the Senate the vote was 87 to 10, three not voting. Only 8 Democrats resisted. Among them Liz Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand. Dick Durbin of Illinois also voted against the Pentagon bill. This is purest theater, because Durbin since 2005 has been Democratic Whip in the Senate, the man responsible for lining up the votes of his fellow senators. If this meant anything to him, why did only 7 other Democrats vote with their supposed leader?
In the House the vote was 351 to 66, with 139 Democrats voting yes, 49 voting no, and 5 not voting. So the resistance was really the assistance, voting almost 2 to 1 to continue spending as much on US wars around the world as the next nine or ten countries put together.
-- Bruce A. Dixon, "When The Resistance Is Really The Assistance" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).
Truest statement of the week II
Let’s begin in the realm of the fanciful.
To accomplish this, bad actors in the intel community could step up use of surveillance tools as a weapon to look for dirt on Trump before his inauguration. They could rely on dubious political opposition research to secretly argue for wiretaps, plant one or more spies in the Trump campaign, then leak to the press a mix of true and false stories to create a sense of chaos.
-- Sharyl Attkisson, "What would the intelligence community's 'insurance policy' against Trump look like?" (THE HILL).
A note to our readers
Hey --
Tuesday night. And we're done.
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen, Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.
And what did we come up with?
Another truest for Bruce A. Dixon.
And Sharyl Attkisson gets a truest.
The ongoing Iraq War is not that complicated.
Ava and C.I. examine another angle of INSATIABLE.
A public menace.
Ava and C.I. again explain why it's CRAPAPEDIA.
And we're all thankful for that.
Continued book coverage in the community.
It's easy to be blinded by nostalgia.
What we listened to while writing this edition.
A press release from Senator Hirono.
Editorial: The basics
America is an oil company with an Army ... ask our victims in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, ... and all our future victims US conscience-challenged citizens don't give a crap about.
America is an oil company with an army?
It's a basic statement. But we get so much distraction and disinformation daily that we often miss the basics.
As Joni Mitchell sings, "In every culture in decline, the watchful ones among the slaves, know all that is genuine will be scorned and conned and cast away" ("Dog Eat Dog"). Culture in decline, empire in decline. In other falling empires, how long before the people caught on? Did they believe the lies until the empire fell?
US troops have been in Iraq since March 2003. They remain in Iraq.
No, it is not about democracy.
Yes, this continued occupation is about oil.
TV: Another take on INSATIABLE
There are many stories about NETFLIX's new series INSATIABLE. There's the story about how it resulted in a petition calling for NETFLIX not to release it. There's the story about how it's the worst reviewed series of 2018. So many stories.
For us, the most interesting story about INSATIABLE is Alyssa Milano.
When the petition came out, noting how offensive the show was for fat shaming, the aging Twitter 'activist' doubled down and insisted that the show was amazing and it was wonderful and, if people would just wait for the series to air, well, they would see that.
a new illst
Well all 12 episodes were released last Friday and the show was judged offensive and lacking in humor, insight or anything of value. In fact, Linda Holmes (NPR) probably summed it up best:
Let me assure you: It is not satire. Insatiable is satire in the same way someone who screams profanities out a car window is a spoken-word poet. Satire requires a point of view; this has none. It generally requires some feel for humor, however dark; this has none. It requires a mastery of tone; this has none. It requires a sense that the actors are all part of the same project; this has none.
Despite receiving the sort of reviews that can be career destroying, we marveled over Alyssa's gift of self-absorbtion and her efforts to power through, offering one Tweet after another throughout the weekend.
To quote REALITY BITES, your bravado is embarrassing.
But what was even more embarrassing was all her promotional appearances last week.
She is not the star of INSATIABLE. She's not even a co-lead. She plays a minor character who appears in nine of the tweleve episodes.
A minor character, but damned if she didn't commandeer the press tour as though she were still young and dewey and that star of this show geared towards teenagers -- Joan Crawford trying to steal focus and thunder at a CACTUS FLOWER party was less obsessed.
It was almost as though even Alyssa realized her career's last shot at life ended in 2006 when CHARMED was cancelled.
CHARMED. As the reviews for INSATIABLE started rolling in -- one bad review after another, Alyssa had to do something, anything, to grab attention yet again. So suddenly, there she was on the Saturday news cycle, insisting yet again how wronged she was that THE CW had ignored her in starting the reboot of CHARMED.
Can't we get real on her ass? And while we're at it, on Holly Marie Combs' ass too?
Those women who keep whining that they should have been involved?
Who the hell are they?
Two self-obsessed actress who can't find meaningful work. Yes, Holly can act and, no, Alyssa cannot act -- but that's not really the issue, is it?
Constance M. Burge.
For any tired of listening to Holly and Alyssa whine about how unfair THE CW has been to them-them-always-them, those are words to toss back at them.
Despite both actress pretending they created CHARMED, Constance M. Burge created the show. She's the woman they never name. She's the woman that they couldn't stand by. Constance is the woman forced out of the show by the harasser and sleaze Brad Kern. She created the show and Holly and Alyssa couldn't stand by her back then. After she was forced out, Holly and Alyssa ended up as producers for four years. Yet somehow they never noticed Brad Kern harassing women on the set of the show. They took their checks but failed to do their job as producers which is to ensure a safe work environment.
They really are deluded.
They were two actresses for hire. They weren't owed a damn thing. When Drew Barrymore was developing CHARLIE'S ANGELS as a film project, she didn't owe anything to Farrah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith or Kate Jackson. Where do Alyssa and Holly get off thinking they're owed anything? They were paid -- well paid -- for acting on CHARMED. They cashed their checks. They did not create the series, that was Constance Burge.
Why would you ask two middle-aged actresses for input in a reboot of CHARMED?
Holly's really good about climbing on the cross and whining about 'ageism.' Where was that concern during the last four years of CHARMED when she was a producer? What regular character -- middle aged character -- did producers Holly and Alyssa add to the show?
Answer: None.
More to the point, it's 2018 and the White, White ways of Alyssa Milano did not result in diverse casting on CHARMED.
Dorian Gregory was the only African-American among the regular cast and producers Alyssa and Hope both were okay when he was written off after season seven. Not only were they okay with it, they felt no pressure to add anyone of color. No boyfriend who lasted more than one episode on the show as ever a man of color. When casting new female regular characters they went with the likes of Kaley Cucoco. Four four seasons, Holly and Alyssa were given a production credit on each episode but they never did anything with it. No diverse cast was created and no safe work environment was created.
But, oh, how the two actresses whine that CHARMED is being rebooted without their involvement or input. Again, Constance M. Burge created the show, not Holly, not Alyssa.
Again, we have to quote REALITY BITES, your bravado is amazing.
INSATIABLE is a hideous show that's been rightly panned by every critics. But for us, the take away really is that a desperate woman who has never studied her craft and still performs like a child actress really will do anything to be in front of the public -- even for a few minutes more.
David Brock is a public danger
THE HUNTING OF A PRESIDENT. Anybody remember that? We were appalled by what was done to Bill Clinton. Mostly, we were appalled – and still are – by the fact that there was an organized plan to take down a sitting president. An organized plan – aka a conspiracy.
Though the BBC can report on the efforts – the conspiracy -- to take down FDR, the American press has largely played dumb all these years. (It is playing, right?) One exception? NPR.
It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz. In 1933, Senator Henry D. Hatfield, a Republican from West Virginia, wrote a letter to a friend complaining about President Franklin Roosevelt.
SALLY DENTON: (Reading) This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty. The ordinary American is thus reduced to the status of a robot. The president has not merely signed the death warrant of capitalism but has ordained the mutilation of the Constitution, unless the friends of liberty, regardless of party, band themselves together to regain their lost freedom.
RAZ: When Sally Denton came across that letter, it sounded amazingly contemporary. So she dug further and came across a whole series of attacks and even plots against FDR. She's written about it in a new book called "The Plots Against the President," and the story begins just weeks before Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933. It was one of the darkest moments of the Depression and many people in America were calling for a dictator to get the country back on track.
DENTON: Unemployment is skyrocketing. The country is rocking precariously economically in all ways. And it's hard for us today to realize that in 1933 the country was reeling. There were suggestions that capitalism was not working, that democracy was not working. Various intellectuals, and I mean not crackpots, were really considering the possibility of fascism, of communism, of socialism, of Nazism. The whole country was in play.
RAZ: We often hear about the times just before President Kennedy was killed and how he was really vilified by his opponents. And some people suggest that that is what led to his assassination, that climate. You describe an almost similar climate in the early 1930s, 1933, that surrounded Roosevelt. Talk about some of the people who were sort of vitriolically opposed to him and what they said about him.
DENTON: As I was writing this book, sometimes I felt like I could close my eyes and just transpose, you know, modern day vitriol to what was happening. There was a sense that Roosevelt was radically changing the relationship between the government and the governed, and there was great fear about that in many quarters, both the right and the left.
So you had these enemies like Father Coughlin on the right who was concerned that he was becoming a communist, a tool of Jewish monied interests, then Huey Long on the left who felt that he wasn't going far enough to redistribute the wealth. And then you had, you know, right wing reactionary veteran's organizations. You had Wall Street interests.
RAZ: It's interesting because there was really genuinely a conspiracy at a certain point to overthrow the Roosevelt administration, to replace it with a kind of a crypto-fascist movement, and this was - the people behind it were mostly financiers, bankers, part of a group called The American Liberty League. Who were they?
DENTON: Well, they were some of the wealthiest people in America. I think the handful of people that were really behind the Liberty League controlled assets worth more than $40 billion.
RAZ: They thought he was a socialist or even worse.
DENTON: They thought he was a socialist, I don't know. A lot of times, it was unclear whether or not they were able to even distinguish between what a socialist was or a communist or - there was just this sense that he was upsetting the status quo.
RAZ: These bankers were behind something that became known as the Wall Street Putsch. What was their plan?
DENTON: They thought that they could convince Roosevelt - because he was of their class, the patrician class, they thought that they could convince Roosevelt to relinquish power to basically a fascist, military-type government. It was a cockamamie concept. And the fact that it even got as far as it did is pretty shocking.
RAZ: How far did it get?
DENTON: It got far enough so that they had at least $3 million invested and claimed to have up to $300 million at the ready. They appealed to a general, a retired general, to lead it. And had he been a different kind of person, it might have gone a lot further. But he saw it as treason and reported it to Congress.
That was a conspiracy. It was also the t-word. We don’t like to toss the word around lightly. It’s a serious term and, if found guilty of treason, you can be put to death. The organized efforts to take down Bill Clinton strike us the same way.
Which brings us today. Zack Haller has linked to a document by MEDIA MATTERS. This is a document which, whether they realized it or not, documents an organized conspiracy to take down Donald Trump.
Let’s clarify terms here. Reporters pursuing a story? Not a conspiracy. That’s true of, for example, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward pursuing the Watergate story. Yes, Richard Nixon felt like it was they’re-out-to-get-me. But the reality is that they were covering a story and investigating it. Yes, it could damage him. But that’s too damn bad. His actions were being investigated. His actions. What he elected to do. As for what happens, the chips fall where they may.
Reporters investigating a lead are not committing treason even if the results could oust a president.
Most of the time.
See, we’re coming back to what was done to Bill Clinton. Anyone acting independently or on behalf of their news organization has nothing to worry about.
But there was ‘reporter’ (piece of human filth) David Brock.
He was not a reporter. He was part of a conspiracy working to unseat Bill Clinton. He was a well known liar (who should rot in hell for the way he lied about Anita Hill). He should have been prosecuted along with the other media ‘elves’ who were part of a conspiracy to take down Bill Clinton.
Instead, he's been allowed to bring his trashy ways over to the left.
And we’ve been the worse for it -- and day after day, he makes us even worse.
He was supposedly going to teach us how to fight.
We didn’t need the ridiculous David Brock to know how to fight.
All he’s taught is destructive deception. He’s taught how to lie and how to cheat. He plays dirty because he’s nothing but s**t. He oozes around the left and we all get a little more disgusting and a little more dirty just by interacting with him.
That document Zach Haller’s linked to?
It’s a plan to destroy a sitting president.
Now there is no reason for anyone – pro or anti-war – to support someone’s war. There’s no reason to support someone’s EPA policy or whatever.
But there’s a world of difference between that and what the document outlines.
It is a plan for every day to destroy a sitting president, every day to create an outrage. It is a plan for those who are on the George Soros payroll – THE NATION, MOTHER JONES, etc – to gin up outrage day after damn day.
The document declares of one section (American Bridge): “American Bridge is the Democratic epicenter of opposition research and rapid response in presidential and Senate elections. In the Trump era, there must be no ‘off years.’ American Bridge will sustain a nonstop campaign against Trump, his administration, and Republicans who enable him.”
"A nonstop campaign against" a sitting president.
Getting why we're bothered? Getting why David Brock's actions cause us to raise our eyebrows?
This isn't journalism.
It is a conspiracy and it is prosectuable.
Why we call it CRAPAPEDIA (Ava and C.I.)
We call it CRAPAPEDIA for many reasons. These include its sexist origins which found it trashing female artists for sexual affairs but acting as if multiple partners was just great when it came to men. A woman could have four known affairs and it was slut shaming time at CRAPAPEDIA when it started.
Because some of us called it out -- and one female artist made it known she was about to sue -- CRAPAPEDIA backed off of that s**t.
But so much s**t still exists.
That's Natalie Cole. The late Natalie Cole.
When she died (December 31, 2015), her obits were about her 70s pop hits and a Bruce Springsteen's hit in the late 80s, "Unforgettable" with her late father Nat King Cole and maybe "Miss You."
The problem with that was that it ignored Natalie's real career. The idiots who wrote her up did so based on CRAPAPEDIA.
Even today, years later, that's still what you'll find.
You won't find any mention of "Dangerous" as a successful single.
But it was. It made it to number sixteen on BILLBOARD's R&B charts. That's a hit single.
It's not a hit single in the White, White, White world of CRAPAPEDIA. But that's the world, please remember that called Michelle Phillips, Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell and so many other women sluts because they weren't virgins. That wasn't all that long ago.
Maybe CRAPAPEDIA can move past their White, White, White world?
If they did, they'd realize that the woman called the new Aretha Franklin the seventies was always going to be more successful on the R&B charts. Despite the myth that 1987's EVERLASTING was 'the' comeback for Natlie Cole, 1985's DANGEROUS was the comeback.
CRAPAPEDIA doesn't note "Dangerous" in the webpage for the album of the same name -- not that it reached number 16, not even that it was a single. In fact, they only note one single:
Though the song "A Little Bit of Heaven" only reached number 81 on the Billboard Hot 100,[3] it was used as a recurring love theme for Eden Capwell and Cruz Castillo on the television soap opera Santa Barbara.[4][5]
Only reached number 81?
Well the whole world never revolved around pop music. And on the soul charts, Natalie Cole took "A Little Bit of Heaven" much higher.
A Little Bit Of Heaven
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #28 on 9.14.1985
It and "Dangerous" are among her hits -- regardless of what pop radio chose to play.
In a better world, an obituary writer for USA TODAY, THE NEW YORK TIMES, VOX or what have you would know better than to treat CRAPAPEDIA as a definitive source -- especially when
writing an obituary for an artist of color. But apparently we have to remind people yet again that
we call it -- and have called it since this site started -- CRAPAPEDIA and do so for good reason.
Natalie Cole charted 33 singles on BILLBOARD's R&B, Hip-Hop, Soul, Urban chart (the name has constantly changed) -- 26 times she made it into the top forty -- six of those times, she made it to number one.
Our Love
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #1 on 1.21.1978
1 of 33
I've Got Love On My Mind
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #1 on 2.26.1977
2 of 33
This Will Be
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #1 on 10.4.1975
3 of 33
Miss You Like Crazy
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #1 on 6.3.1989
4 of 33
Sophisticated Lady (She's A Different Lady)
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #1 on 6.19.1976
5 of 33
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #1 on 2.14.1976
6 of 33
Jump Start
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #2 on 8.22.1987
7 of 33
I Live For Your Love
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #4 on 12.26.1987
8 of 33
Annie Mae
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #6 on 6.24.1978
9 of 33
I Do
Natalie Cole (Duet With Freddie Jackson)
Peaked at #7 on 9.16.1989
10 of 33
Gimme Some Time
Natalie Cole And Peabo Bryson
Peaked at #8 on 1.19.1980
11 of 33
Pink Cadillac
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #9 on 4.23.1988
12 of 33
Stand By
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #9 on 5.5.1979
13 of 33
Party Lights
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #9 on 8.6.1977
14 of 33
Over You
Ray Parker Jr. With Natalie Cole
Peaked at #10 on 2.13.1988
15 of 33
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #10 on 8.24.1991
16 of 33
Mr. Melody
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #10 on 10.23.1976
17 of 33
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #16 on 6.15.1985
18 of 33
What You Won't Do For Love
Natalie Cole And Peabo Bryson
Peaked at #16 on 3.29.1980
19 of 33
Someone That I Used To Love
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #21 on 7.19.1980
20 of 33
A Little Bit Of Heaven
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #28 on 9.14.1985
21 of 33
When I Fall In Love
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #31 on 8.27.1988
22 of 33
Nothin' But A Fool
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #34 on 11.7.1981
23 of 33
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #34 on 7.21.1979
24 of 33
You Were Right Girl
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #35 on 9.5.1981
25 of 33
Hold On
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #38 on 11.8.1980
26 of 33
Too Much Mister
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #45 on 9.3.1983
27 of 33
As A Matter Of Fact
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #52 on 11.4.1989
28 of 33
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #53 on 10.7.1978
29 of 33
Your Lonely Heart
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #59 on 11.10.1979
30 of 33
Take A Look
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #68 on 7.31.1993
31 of 33
Day Dreaming
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #77 on 10.21.2006
32 of 33
Say You Love Me
Natalie Cole
Peaked at #82 on 9.11.1999
33 of 33
Creative Commons License
Poll1 { display:none; } |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28005 | HMM Summary Page: TIGR00691
FunctionRelA/SpoT family protein
Trusted Cutoff499.20
Domain Trusted Cutoff499.20
Noise Cutoff337.65
Domain Noise Cutoff337.65
Isology Typesubfamily
HMM Length687
Mainrole CategoryCellular processes
Subrole CategoryAdaptations to atypical conditions
Gene Ontology TermGO:0003824: catalytic activity molecular_function
GO:0015968: stringent response biological_process
GO:0015969: guanosine tetraphosphate metabolic process biological_process
AuthorHaft DH, Loftus BJ
Entry DateJan 13 2000 2:41PM
Last ModifiedFeb 14 2011 3:27PM
CommentThe functions of E. coli RelA and SpoT differ somewhat. RelA (EC produces pppGpp (or ppGpp) from ATP and GTP (or GDP). SpoT (EC degrades ppGpp, but may also act as a secondary ppGpp synthetase. The two proteins are strongly similar. In many species, a single homolog to SpoT and RelA appears reponsible for both ppGpp synthesis and ppGpp degradation. (p)ppGpp is a regulatory metabolite of the stringent response, but appears also to be involved in antibiotic biosynthesis in some species.
ReferencesA2 hmmalign DR ECOCYC; EG10835; relA DR ECOCYC; EG10966; spoT |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28016 | Gemini Man film review
A film that looks like Skyrim but featuring Will Smith
I’ve never had a problem tearing apart a film put together through laziness, in fact, its quite cathartic in a sense. But, with Gemini Man, I’ve found that I can’t dig too much into it due to the apparent effort that went into this film, which helps its “watch-ability”.
Gemini Man revolves around Henry Brogan, the top-hired assassin who, after trying to retire, is pulled into a game of cat and mouse when the U.S government hires a clone of himself to kill him.
Will Smith brings a natural charisma to any project and in this film, he gives more of an actual character piece by trying to play both his 50-year old present self and his 27-year old clone with the help of motion-capture effects. It helps the film that Smith is trying so hard not to phone it in, which helps the viewing experience be more impactful. The issue comes with the rest of the movie.
Director Ang Lee has many interesting shots in this film however they don’t flow together. In the first ten minutes, there’s a panoramic shot of the train demonstrating how fast it’s going, then it cuts from a widescreen perspective to full screen without any transition. Now, this is a small critic and I congratulate Lee’s attempt to have interesting shots as opposed to just phoning it in with regular quick cuts. It’s when scenes have no connection to each other and are stitched together without any reason that it becomes distracting to the audience. It leaves it feeling like a video game cut scene.
Speaking of video games, the other huge issue is the motion-capture effects of young Will Smith. When the setting is dark, it does look semi-realistic. When the scenes actually visible and they’re just talking? It looks like a 2000’s call of duty model imported next to the actors. Even the actors seem uncomfortable when they just stand around lifeless whenever the clone is around, having the entire film being distracting for the audience and not caring about the story.
In the end, the premise isn’t that original, yet it comes off as though everyone cared in the film and they were trying. The issue of the visual effects and the Frankenstein editing job, however, leave the film very forgettable with the only memorable part being how bad CGI Will smith looks in day-light. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28055 | Collapse all
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28057 | The Cost of the New Disney Canon II
Just to extend my earlier remarks, let me make the following point.
It doesn't require nefarious plotting to wind up with resurgent inflationism.
True, inflationists have long been known to massage Star Wars material to fit their vision, but there can easily be events that don't require that in the new canon. Authors and literary types are seldom ones to perform calculations of some idea or other.
Consider the fate of EU world Gholondreine-β, a waterworld which the Emperor punished by having all of its water transported off the surface and shipped to Coruscant. The duration is not known precisely, but presumably took much less than the 20 or so years which bracket "Emperor" and "shortly before the Battle of Endor" in the article.
That sounds like a good, awesome sci-fi punishment in one's head. But if you actually consider the logistics of it, it is completely absurd.
The volume of Earth's oceans is about 1.4 billion cubic kilometers . . . sure, Gholondreine could've been a much smaller planet with very little water (comparatively) actually making it a waterworld, but that's not the impression.
That's 1.4E18 cubic meters, or 1,400,000,000,000,000,000 (1.4 quintillion) cubic meters. The Death Star is about 120km in diameter, giving it a volume of about 9E14 cubic meters, or 900,000,000,000,000 cubic meters.
Do the math. That's the volumetric equivalent of about 1550 Death Stars.
By weight, you're looking at having to transport 1,400,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1.4 sextillion, or 1.4E21) kilograms to orbit, assuming 1000 kg/m^3 for water. .Even just getting it up to 200 kilometers . . . much less transporting it via hyperspace to Coruscant . . . is going to result in planet-killing levels of energy being expended.
That is to say, they wouldn't have to worry about transporting the water after awhile . . . any inefficiencies in their process of boosting the water to orbit would start to render the planet's water gaseous partway through the procedure. Hell, there'd be plenty of opportunity for inefficiencies before you're even to the boost stage to start screwing things up.
And that's the sort of thing I fear we can expect in the coming years . . . it doesn't have to be by hook or by crook.
Recall the flagrant errors of science in movies in recent years (e.g. GI Joe and the Sinking Ice Attack, as one of many examples), generally silly ideas (red matter in JJ-Trek), and so on, and I daresay that people are generally getting dumber, which is ironic in many ways. Authors are not immune to this epidemic.
Thus, I fear that it is entirely likely we'll see some utterly absurd plot point or extraneous details that the inflationists will be able to latch onto for dear life. Indeed, I'd wager JJ will give us a couple of them at least, unless JJ-Trek's absurdities were all Orci's fault.
Yes, as many argue, Star Wars is fantasy, and not "hard" science fiction. But the Lucas canon remained pretty delightfully consistent for a long while, and thus hard enough for most needs. Now that the rank of canon is truly being opened up, I think the recent news is not a cause for celebration among the anti-inflationists, whoever they may be, but may instead be a tolling of the bell.
Sorry to be a party-pooper.
No comments: |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28059 | We respect your privacy. You control everything that is shared. Your data will never be shared.
Creating a Mojo account with the same login details and import everything.
Keeping a gratitude journal suddenly got a whole lot cooler and fun!
Coming soon: buddies, progress and getting a hard bound version of your journal.
How do I import my Gratitude entries to Mojo?
Create a new account in Mojo using the same details you used in the Gratitude app. So if you used your Facebook account with Gratitude, use it with Mojo too. Then the app will find your Gratitude account and you will be prompted to import your entries.
I don't remember my login details?
For security reasons, we are unable to send login details used in the Gratitude app. If you don’t recall the method you used to login to Gratitude, you will have to figure it out through trial and error.
Create your new Mojo account using the same details you think you used to log into the Gratitude app. If it’s the same, you will be prompted to import your Gratitude entries. If you aren't asked to import, then you used different details. In that case, delete the account you just created in Mojo and try again with other details.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28067 | BrowseTracker plugin
From CodeBlocks
Revision as of 22:27, 16 December 2007 by Pecan (Talk | contribs)
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Developer(s): [[.]]
Maintainer(s): .
Version: 1
BrowseTracker is a small CodeBlocks plugin to browse back and forth to recently activated editors and recent cursor positions.
It keeps a history of recently activated editors.
It uses the Alt-Left and Alt-Right command keys to move through the editor stack in the order in which they were activated.
It uses the Alt-Up and Alt-Down keys to navigate to recently mark editor positions.
For convienence there are menu items at the bottom of the CodeBlocks View menu that allows you further control over BrowseTracker.
For each active editor, BrowseTracker memorizes lines for which the Left mouse key has been held down for 1/4 second.
The user browses to previous locations via the Alt-Up and Alt-Down keys.
The BrowseMark is toggled by hold the Left-mouse key down for 1/4 second.
A Browse mark can be cleared by Ctrl-Left mouse click.
All marks can be cleared by Ctrl-Left mouse clicking on an unmarked line.
BrowseMarks appear visually as "..." in the left editor margin.
Browse tracker saves and restores both Browse marks and Book marks across editing sessions.
Download location:
The zip file above contains all source and .cbplugin files for both MSW and Linux.
To install the plugin:
* Unzip the downloaded file.
* Close all active CodeBlocks projects
* Use the CodeBlocks installer at
MainMenu/Plugins/Manage Plugins.../Install New
* Navigate to the location you unzipped the file above.
* Double click BrowseTracker.cbplugin for MSWindows
* Double click libBrowseTracker.cbplugin for unix
You will have to restart CodeBlocks if there were pre-existing editors or projects open during the install.
If CodeBlocks whines about SDK version or Symbol mismatches, the zip file contains the .cbp project files necessary to compile the source. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28068 | Hi fellow wiki editors!
Difference between revisions of "TerraGear GUI"
From FlightGear wiki
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m (Development section added)
m (+ OS, thanks MILTSD)
Line 4: Line 4:
| developedby = Alex Park
| developedby = Alex Park
| initialrelease = March 24, 2009
| initialrelease = March 24, 2009
| os = Windows
Since March 2009 a '''GUI''' tool for '''[[TerraGear]]''' is available at [http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=30238#p30238 the forum]. This tool makes the use of commandlines redundant, through which it's easy to use for everyone not known with commandlines.
Since March 2009 a '''GUI''' tool for '''[[TerraGear]]''' is available at [http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=30238#p30238 the forum], available on Windows. This tool makes the use of commandlines redundant, through which it's easy to use for everyone not known with commandlines.
Revision as of 12:38, 21 October 2009
TerraGear GUI
Developed by Alex Park
Initial release March 24, 2009
OS Windows
Since March 2009 a GUI tool for TerraGear is available at the forum, available on Windows. This tool makes the use of commandlines redundant, through which it's easy to use for everyone not known with commandlines.
Create a TerraGearWork/ folder somewhere on your computer and create the following three folders inside that one:
• Data/: used to collect the raw unprocessed data we need to feed the tools.
• Output/: used at the very end and is where your newly processed scenery is finally stored.
• Work/: we will keep the files and folders here we will be generating with the TerraGear Tools.
Obtaining data
Elevation data
• SRTM-1: Highly accurate 1-arcsecond resolution data, for the USA.
• SRTM-3: Less accurate 3-arcsecond data, for the rest of the world.
From now on, we will assume that you are using SRTM-3 data. Unless otherwise noted, the process for SRTM-1 is identical.
Create a new folder in your TerraGearWork/Data/ folder called SRTM-30/. Now download appropriate data from ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm. You want ALL .hgt.zip files covering the area you want to create. Depending on the size of your scenery, there may be quite a few. The reason why the directories are called SRTM-30 is because genapts (a tool we will meet further on) will look for a few known, hardcoded directories in it’s working directory. SRTM-30 is one of them and this is the least confusing in that list.
Unzip all of the .hgt.zip files using your favorite software.
Land use data
The final piece of data we need to download is the land-use data. In general, this is taken from the VMAP0 dataset, but other sources can be used as well. The landuse data can be split into a number of different types:
• Landmass: separates the land from the sea. It is used as a mask for all other data. The most common used is the VMAP0 Landmass, but GSHHS can be used as well.
• Land use data: defines whether a piece of land is forest, urban, sand, lava, glacier etc. These are usually VMAP0 data, defined as polygons.
• Line data: includes railroads, streams, roads. Typically VMAP0, but also Open Street Map for roads.
• Point data: currently only used for defining towns.
By far the easiest way to get this data is to download shapefiles from the FlightGear Mapserver. This webpage provides access to a database, and allows you to download the specific shapefiles for your scenery area. Click on the Download Shapefiles link, enter in the bounding box of the scenery you want to generate, select the shapefiles you want, and click download. For your first scenery generation, you want all of the ones listed under VMap0 (with prefix v0_). Download each of them into a seperate Data/Shapefiles directory. The v0_landmass shapefiles goes into a Data/Shapefiles/v0_landmass/ directory for example and v0_urban should be downloaded into Data/Shapefiles/v0_urban/.
You can load these shapefiles into a GIS editor such as QGIS or GRASS to view and edit. This is a good idea to verify you have the correct files! There is a tutorial available written by John Holden which shows you how to create your own shapefiles. Later on, you can experiment with replacing various shapefiles with other versions (GSHHS for coastline, OSM for roads etc.).
Using the GUI
Now we can finally launch the TerraGear Toolset GUI.exe. If you click on the Tools button the list of available tools will be shown. The first tool will be needed first, then the seconds and so on. This manual follows the same steps.
The HGTchop tool uses the .hgt.zip files you have downloaded earlier on and converts it into a form that FlightGear can read. First we need to create yet another folder, this time it's Work/SRTM-30/. The processed data will be output to this folder, if you set the correct Output path.
Select the first .hgt.zip file and click the Start button. A command box will open and you will see the tool working away. It will produce numerous .arr.gz files which is quite rough data and requires more refinement with Terrafit (see below). At the moment you need to repeat this step for every file in your Data/SRTM-30/ folder.
Once completed we can move onto the next tool.
The Terrafit tool is used to process the .arr.gz files that you just created into a more refined data. The data collected so far would show flat land and requires more work, so lets use Terrafit to enhance our data.
The three boxes Min Points, Max Points and Max Error can be left blank, unless you are an advanced user. The tool currently uses the default setting for these figures which are sufficient for use in FlightGear. Now simply use the browse button to point the tool to the Work/SRTM-30/ folder where the .aar.gz files are stored. Press the Start button and Terrafit will converte all our data to the correct elevation data required, leaving .fit files in the Work/SRTM-30/ folder.
What is scenery without airport in a flight simulator? If your tile does not contain any airports, you can skip this part of the manual on continue with ogr-decode.
First create the Data/Airports/ directory. Then locate FlightGears apt.dat.gz file, which is usually in $FG_ROOT/Airports/. Copy this file to your newly created Airports/ folder. Unzip the file before you continue.
Use the upper browse button to locate your, just unzipped, apt.dat file. In the second box, use the browse button to locate your Work/ folder. If you only want to create the scenery for a specific airport you can enter the ICAO name into the relevant field. If you want to create a larger piece of scenery you can also enter min/max lat and lon co-ordinates. If you do not enter any information in any of the boxes, the tool will run through the entire apt.dat file, which can take a long time.
Click the Start button. Genapts will create two sub-directories in your Work/ directory, namely AirportArea and AirportObj. These define the definitions of the airport layout and any objects present (e.g. windsocks and beacons). Right, that’s the airports sorted out.
Now we need to decode the shapefiles into TerraGear format. This is done with the ogr-decode tool. There are several important command-line arguments to OGR decode:
• Filename of the shapefile (without the .shp extension for shape decode) you want to decode.
• Directory you want to write the data to.
• Material type to use.
Each of the shapefiles maps onto one of the material types defined in your $FG_ROOT/materials.xml files. The mapping is pretty obvious, e.g. v0_roads maps to Roads etc.
Warning: v0_landmass MUST be mapped onto the type Default.
So this is what we need to begin. A shapefiles directory in your Data/ folder. Then for each of the different shapefiles you are going to create a folder with that name in the Work/ directory. see the image below for example.
Using the Browse button, select the Work/ directory. Then select the Output/ directory we created at the start of the manual. The next two fields are for the centre of the area you have chosen. The next two fields are the outward distance from the centre in degrees. If you click on the Get Folders button it will populate the empty field with all the folders in your Work/ directory. Highlite them all, holding Shift and clicking the first and last items in the list.
Press Create Scenery to fianlly generate your scenery. This may take a long time depending on the size of the area you are creating the scenery for and the level of detail in your shapefiles. Simple and small sceneries will take a couple of minutes, where larger, more detailed areas can take over an hour! So trying new things on small areas first will save you a lot of time.
The folders and files in the Output/ directory are ready to use scenery. You can set the scenery path of FlightGear to this directory to check if the scenery is generated correctly.
GUI development
The GUI will undergo a large rebuild. Feel free to add feature requests and/or bug reports.
Requested features
• --tile-id option in fgfs-construct, to easily generate just one tile which can be used for fast scenery in-cooperation.
• A larger list or maybey a dropdown menu with the ogr-decode tool to select shapefiles and material mappings. Right now it's very hard and takes a long time to search through the list for the correct shapefiles/materials.
• Materials (in fgfs-construct) in alphabetical order.
• Ability to select multiple (non linear) folders using the Ctrl key (so not selecting everything between click and click, but just the folders I click).
• Resizable dialogs.
• A topmenu showing all the tools, so there's no need to return to the mainmenu every time you continue to the next step.
• Creating automatically all needed folders for shapefiles and the decoded ones
• Maybe error reports possible? So you get a message when a certain file isn't found, or a certain path isn't set. Right now it only appears in the console, but it's hard to read the fast scrolling text.
Bug reports
• Decoding with points width gives no output.
• Just using airport ICAO in genapts gives no output. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28069 | Lamel, Bernhard; Matematični kolokvij spetember 2012
Iz MaFiRaWiki
The world according to Poincaré: A hitchhikers' guide to CR geometry
Bernhard Lamel
Univerza na Dunaju
27. september 2012
The Riemann mapping theorem provides a basic tool for complex analysis in one variable: every simply connected domain in the plane is biholomorphically equivalent to the unit disk. Poincare (in a paper from 1907) made the observation that this kind of phenomenon is purely one dimensional. Subsequent research showed that biholomorphic invariants of simply connected pseudoconvex domains in Cn are extraordinarily "rich", i.e. there exist (in a sense too) many of them. In our talk, we will survey results about the local equivalence of boundaries of domains, which is a problem intimately linked to the global one. It has been studied intensely in the 20th century, with groundbreaking contributions by E. Cartan, S.S. Chern, J. Moser, and N. Tanaka in the strictly pseudoconvex (or, more generally, Levi-nondegenerate) case; this assumption puts a uniformity restriction on the biholomorphic geometry of the boundaries making them into Cartan geometries. After surveying the history of this "biholomorphic equivalence problem", we will discuss a particular strategy to attack it in the more general setting where the uniformity mentioned before breaks down, leading to a number of recent results.
Glej tudi
Matematični kolokviji
Osebna orodja |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28115 | Review: Cauldron (Aliens, Book 12)
Aliens: Cauldron: Adrift in Space, Terror is Born AgainCauldron (Aliens, Book 12)
by Diane Carey
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Aliens Novels: Book 12, Cauldron / 978-1-59582-113-3
I usually leave my summary recommendation until the end of my reviews, but this time I'll save time by placing it at the top: This is one of the worst books I've ever read, and it is my exceedingly strong recommendation that you not waste any of your money, or indeed any of your time on this horrendously bad novel.
After the pile of cliche and melodrama that was Carey's previous addition to the aliens series ("DNA War"), I didn't expect high art from "Cauldron", but this book greatly surpassed all my expectations that it would be awful. Although I had expected a heaping pile of cliche, melodrama, and anachronism (Carey habitually fails to comprehend that science fiction writing should have a different tone than a dime store detective novel), covered by a layer of boring "tell-don't-show" exposition and massive editing issues, it seems that I was being uncreative in my predictions and should also have anticipated that Carey would use this latest medium as a breathtakingly narcissistic diversion into her personal hobbies and interests.
"Cauldron" is largely composed of what Carey *wanted* to write about, as opposed to what she was *paid* to write about, which practically speaking boils down thus: this is a book about historic ships, and NOT a book about aliens. That someone signed off on this complete slap in the face of the aliens' readership is another crime entirely, but I have never seen such shoddy writing and complete disregard for the given subject material as Carey shows here. The "About the Author" note states that she's an enthusiast of historic ships, which you'll have already guessed long before you make it to the end note, because hardly a page goes by where she doesn't go off on a completely random tangent in order to spout factoids about ancient ships.
Allow me to elucidate: The main spaceship on which we open - and keep in mind this is supposed to be the distant future, long after humans have colonized other planets and the nuclear war has ravaged earth and most of the history books, for that matter - the main spaceship boasts a gigantic mural on its side of (and I can't believe I'm writing this) the Monitor and the Merrimac locked in battle. You know, the iron-clad ships that fought each other in the American civil war? *That* Monitor and Merrimac? If you don't remember much about the Monitor and Merrimac from school, don't despair - Carey spends several pages devoted to the history of those ships and, indeed, all American civil war era ships in general. Hey, you know those new state-of-the-art Joint Strike Fighter airplanes that American is currently developing? You know how those are being fitted out with murals of Hannibal's mighty Carthaginian war elephants? Of course not! Because that would be indescribably stupid! Oh, yeah, and the space ships of the future have 'stevedores' and 'bosuns' and probably those stupid high-pitched whistles, just because Carey enjoys using those words and describing the historical context behind them... over and over and OVER again...
A lot of "Cauldron" is written like Carey is vaguely aware that science fiction genre exists, and may have even seen a sci-fi movie once or twice in her life (NOT an aliens movie, though, obviously), but the overall concept is still completely foreign. I'm just going to make a blanket statement for all hack sci-fi writers, free of charge: In the distant space-faring future, there should NOT be references to a current "America", "Romania", or "Australia" (*especially* not in the aliens-verse, where Australia-the-continent was completely nuked, and Australia-the-government didn't survive the process). There should NOT be a Dutch-American immigrant on board with English so broken that she says things like "Dat's all dere is toot" (a direct quote, I swear, and roughly translating to "That's all there is to it," in case the context isn't clear). And while I'm the biggest Monty Python fan you can hope to find, you should NOT blatantly shoe-horn in Monty Python jokes into your sci-fi book ("What is the capital of Assyria? The correct answer is 'I don't know that', followed by a scream." I swear this is another direct quote from this novel.), and you *especially* shouldn't shoe-horn in the same joke TWICE, just in case the reader didn't notice your immense cleverness the first time around. And if you have a hobby like, oh, historic ships, or quilting, or chainsaw juggling, it shouldn't take up so much of the book that it completely obscures the main plot and indeed the actual REAL items of interest (i.e. the aliens) aren't even seen until well into the second half of the book.
The "About the Author" note also indicates that when Carey isn't mangling the aliens series, she churns out Star Trek novels by the dozens apparently and while this further confirms my theory that the sci-fi franchises I love must all be in the hands of gibbering lunatics and middle management, I will admit that I can kind-of-sort-of see some of this working for a Star Trek novel. Star Trek is a backwards-gazing science fiction universe, partly because it's a series that deals with the evolution of the human spirit over history, but mostly because TV sets are expensive and every set piece from the 'ancient' 20th century means that the week's episode made it in on-time and under-budget. A movie like "Aliens", however, is a *completely* different world and thematic style, and assuming that a successful Star Trek sci-fi writer will automatically be a good Aliens sci-fi writer is like saying that a Dragonball Z writer could churn out the plot of "Nausicaa" in a given afternoon - being in the same overall genre doesn't mean that the two have ANYTHING in common.
To bring this tirade to an end and sum it all up in a pithy one-line: Authors should not muck up established book franchises in order to indulge their personal and irrelevant hobbies.
~ Ana Mardoll
View all my reviews
Post a Comment |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28126 | From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Revision as of 08:50, 29 April 2007; view current revision
←Older revision | Newer revision→
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This article concerns the concept of fetishism in anthropology. Separate articles are devoted to sexual fetishism and the Marxist concept of commodity fetishism.
A fetish (from French fétiche; from Portuguese feitiço; from Latin facticius, "artificial" and facere, "to make") is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular a man-made object that has power over others. [1] [Apr 2007]
The concept was coined by Charles de Brosses in 1757, while comparing West African religion to the magical aspects of Ancient Egyptian religion. He and other 18th century scholars used the concept to apply evolution theory to religion. In de Brosses' theory of the evolution of religion, he proposed that fetishism is the earliest (most primitive) stage, followed by the stages of polytheism and monotheism and totemism to account for fetishism. Essentially, fetishism is attributing some kind of inherent value or powers to an object. For example, the person who sees magical or divine significance in a material object is mistakenly ascribing inherent value to some object which does not possess that value (hence Marx's commodity fetishism: belief that objects control us)
In the 19th century, Tylor and McLennan held that the concept of fetishism allowed historians of religion to shift attention from the relationship between people and God to the relationship between people and material objects. They also held that it established models of causal explanations of natural events which they considered false as a central problem in history and sociology.
Theoretically, fetishism is present in all religions, but its use in the study of religion is derived from studies of traditional West African religious beliefs, as well as Voodoo, which is derived from those beliefs.
Blood is often considered a particularly powerful fetish or ingredient in fetishes. In some parts of Africa, the hair of white people was also considered powerful.
In addition to blood, other objects and substances, such as bones, fur, claws, feathers, water from certain places, certain types of plants, and wood are common fetishes in the traditions of cultures worldwide.
Other uses of the term "fetishism"
• In the 19th century Karl Marx appropriated the term to describe commodity fetishism as an important component of capitalism. Nowadays, (commodity and capital) fetishism is a central concept of marxism
• Later Sigmund Freud appropriated the concept to describe a form of paraphilia where the object of affection is an inanimate object or a specific part of a person; see sexual fetish.
See also
Personal tools |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28168 | Lytro, a consumer level plenoptic camera.
The idea is that rather than focus the shot and then take a picture, the picture taken with a Lytro holds all the information needed to focus the image at any given point in post-processing. I think. So no more blurry shots?! Which could prove very handy as I have some lovely photos I took which looked fine at the time on the camera but turned out to be a little out of focus once I put them on the PC. Still, some new technology from Adobe .
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28173 | Waiting on Wednesday:Possess by Gretchen Mcneil + Book Trailer
Welcome to Waiting on Wednesday
Hosted by Jill by
Possess by Gretchen McNeil
Publish Date:August 23,2011
This cover is so amazing. I love it. It's so haunting and beautiful. I will not lie the cover is what attracted me to the book and of course the synopsis sounds very interesting as well. I can't wait to get my hands on this book.
What books are you waiting for???
1. This cover is so pretty and this seems like a popular pick this week! Great choice!
Here is my Waiting On Wednesday!
2. This looks amazing! I've never heard of it before. New follower, btw! :)
3. haha, this is my wow today too. I love this cover, really looking forward to it too. =)
4. The cover is gorgeous. It looks really good. Great pick!
5. Hmm, I think I prefer Buffy over Biblical, but still a great cover . . . and an intriguing concept.
Here's my WOW
6. The trailer looked pretty creepy and sounds a little too scary for me.
7. Thank you SO MUCH for choosing POSSESS as your WOW! :)
8. I WANT THIS BOOK!! Sigh. August is much too long away. Excellent pick, the cover is so gorgeous!
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28178 | How is the internal groove single roller tool used for processing?
How is the internal groove single roller tool used for processing? What elements should be considered when processing workpiece with internal groove single roller tool?
(1) after assembly, the gear ring, retaining frame and roller surface can slide freely.
(2) when returning the tool, make sure the edge is up to avoid pulling.
To make the front and rear gear rings meshed, insert the half ring of the returer between the retaining frame and the core shaft (its length is the basic size of the roller). In this way, the retaining frame drives the roller to move back along the taper of the supporting sleeve at 1:40, and then back into the groove of the supporting sleeve, so as to separate the roller from the cylinder tube and realize the tool return.
Tool and geometric parameters are selected according to the characteristics of the machining area.
• The tool with large diameter and small ratio of length to diameter should be selected if the structure of parts allows.
• The end edge of the center milling cutter of a thin – walled part should have enough centripetal angle to reduce the cutting force of the tool and cutting parts.
• When machining parts of soft materials such as aluminum and copper with roller burnishing tools. We should choose the milling cutter with a slightly larger front Angle and no more than 4 teeth. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28202 | < Bucharest Urban Climate Summer School 2019
Announcement: Panagiotis Sismanidis' presentation in the master colloquium on 15th of October
Friday, 20 September 2019 11:14
Greek Scientist Panagiotis Sismanidis from the Institue for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens will visit the Urban Climate group in October. During his stay he will do a presentation in the master colloquium on 15th of October at 4:15 pm, room IA 1/117 with the following topic:
Using Geostationary Thermal Image Data to Study the Urban Climate and its Impact on City Functions
Urban areas are warmer than their surrounding rural areas. This is known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and impacts the energy demand of buildings, the environment and the human health. UHIs exhibit strong spatial and temporal variations and their study requires temperature data that combine high spatial (100-200 m) and temporal resolution (<1-2 h). Remotely sensed thermal image data have proven a valuable tool for urban climate studies, mostly because they can cover large areas effectively and inexpensively. Using satellite thermal data, the land surface temperature (LST) is retrieved, which allows the study of the surface UHI (SUHI). However, most remote sensing platforms that provide image data with the appropriate spatial resolution (less than 1 km) lack the desirable temporal resolution, e.g. Landsat (16 days revisit time). The only satellite instruments that can provide image data that capture the LST diurnal cycle are those onboard geostationary satellites; albeit with a very coarse spatial resolution. In this talk I will discuss how to overcome this problem by enhancing the spatial resolution of such datasets, using LST downscaling and LST spatiotemporal fusion---two methods that have received considerable attention in recent years. Furthermore, I will also discuss how to get an estimate of the surface air temperature (SAT) from such data, by assimilating them into numerical weather predictions. SAT is a more suitable variable for studying the UHI effects on energy demand and human health and thus more useful for this kind of applications. To that end, I will also present two examples of how satellite-based SAT can be used in urban climate applications, the first concerning the risk of excess heat on human health and the second the energy demand. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28205 | Social Icons
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Cannot access my Azure VM (And how I solved it)
Cannot access my Azure VM (And how I solved it) I was creating a new firewall rule in one of my azure VMs and I went a tad greedy when it came to blocking IPs... I blocked ALL the traffic.
What to do?
• My first thought was to download the VM, make the change locally and upload it again... but it's 250GB.
• I tried changing the firewall rule through powershell from the azure subscription but Get-AzureWinRMUri was not working.
• Finally after asking a friend who asked a friend of his I was told it was possible to edit the registry of a windows OS disk form a different windows. Wow! That was the answer!
And, in fact, once I knew it could be done I found a detailed post about how to do it.
So I deleted my beloved VM, attached the VHD to another VM and from the registry I deleted the firewall rule that was blocking all the traffic.
Then I detached the VHD and created a new VM with it and ¡listo! we had the VM up and running and accessible.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28213 | The Flash Gordon star was running in Richmond Park when he spotted a woman giving birth on her own, so he kept her company and helped ease the baby out, and then dealt with the umbilical cord and cleaned up the newborn.
"Years ago when I was in (TV series) Z Cars, about 1963, I was running all over Richmond Park and a woman was having a baby under a tree and there was nobody around," he told BBC Radio 4's Midweek programme on Wednesday (07Oct15).
"I had been brought up with babies, kind of working class background and helping with babies and I rushed across to her, she'd got her legs open.
"She knew me in Z Cars, (she said) 'Please, I'm having a baby, I'm having a baby', (I said) 'It's alright dear, breathe deeply'... and gradually I got the baby out slowly... Yes, I delivered a baby in Richmond Park.
"The afterbirth came out, and the clots, I pressed her belly and got rid of the clots... Then I bit it loose and tied it into a knot... and then I just called for help and eventually an ambulance came... I was covered in blood, my shirt was covered in blood, I was wrapping and wiping her, 'It's all right darling,' and I was licking the baby's face."
After host Libby Purves admits her disblief, Brian adds, "It's absolutely true. I've just never talked about it. But what I'm saying is it was natural wasn't it? You would tell her to breathe deeply and push, push, push, because I'd seen my mother do all this. I was always kept in the background, because all the neighbours were kind of almost like midwives."
Brian revealed it was a baby girl. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28234 | Physicists Closer To Proving The Existence of Higgs Boson Particle
Physicists performing tests to discover the well-known Higgs boson, also known as the “God particle”, have communicated on Wednesday that they are getting very close to proving its existence. According to scientists, there are several other aspects that need to be tested in order to distinguish the found particle from a graviton.
The Higgs boson has stopped making headlines in the past years, yet scientists have continued to perform tests and analyses all this time. They have, thus, managed to prove that the particle they found last year is, indeed the Higgs boson. In their opinion, the proofs they have found so far are a strong indicative that their work has been correctly performed. Nonetheless, physicists want to eliminate all possible errors; therefore, they will continue to make tests to demolish skeptics’ counterargument, according to which, the particle is a graviton.
Ever since tests were first started in 2010, physicists have made great efforts to dismantle all the counterarguments that were brought against their work. The discovery of the particle is important for physics because it could validate the theoretical framework of the Standard Model and it could lead to other major discoveries in the technological field.
The subatomic particle was first suggested by physician Peter Higgs in 1964 in the attempt to explain why matter has mass. Decades later, the world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, was set up by a group of international scientists and the Higgs-like particle was discovered for the first time.
According to physicist Pauline Gagnon, the particle looks and acts just like a Higgs boson, but researchers want to make sure they are not making any mistakes. The particle could be easily associated with a graviton, that is, a subatomic particle, which is normally related to gravitational fields, not mass. This problem will be solved once and for all by verifying the internal spin of the particle. If there is internal spin, it means the particle is a graviton and vice versa, if there is no spin, the found particle is the long sought Higgs boson.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28237 | Bonne année!
Today at 20:44 Universal Time (56557.8638), 8h 70m Paris mean decimal time, summer officially ends and fall begins in the Northern Hemisphere. It was also on this date in 1792 the the First Republic was declared in Paris during the French Revolution. This marked the beginning of what was soon to be known as the Republican Era, which was to replace the Common Era of Anno Domini. Each year of the new era began on the autumnal equinox. The year was divided into 12 months of exactly 30 days, with five or six extra days at the end of the year treated as holidays. Instead seven-day weeks, each month was divided into three décades of ten days each. Each day was divided into ten hours, each decimal hours into 100 minutes, and each decimal minute into 100 seconds. Decimal time never caught on, although clocks were made and some used it for a while. The astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace had a decimal watch and used decimal time in his work, and to this day astronomers still use decimal time to date the observations of stars and other objects, which became the inspiration for Star Trek's stardates. The ten-day weeks were abandoned in 1802, and the rest of the calendar was abolished by Napoléon in 1806. Events during the French Revolution are still referred to by their Republican calendar dates, and lobster thermidor gets its name from the 11th month.
The Gregorian date, September 22, 2013, begins the year 222 of the Republican Era, the 1st day of the month of Vendémiaire.
MJD 56557.330 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28254 | Reza Mirkarimi
Reza Mirkarimi was born on January 27, 1967 in Tehran where he graduated from the Fine Arts University in Graphic Arts. His cinema activities began in 1987 with a series of shorts followed by two TV series for young people.
His 1999 first feature, ‘The Child and The Soldier’, has won several national and international awards including the Golden Butterfly at the 1999 Isfahan International Children and Teenagers Film Festival, Iran and the Montgolfiere d’Argent at the 2000 Festival of 3 Continents, Nantes, France, as well as the Golden Shoe at the 2001 Children and Teenagers Film Festival in Zelin, Croatia.
‘The Child and The Soldier’, was released in France in 2001.
His 2000 second feature ‘Under the Moonlight’, dealing with social and religious issues, won the 40th Critics’ Week Best Feature Award at the 2001 Cannes International Film Festival.
The film also won the Best Director’s Award as well as the Special Jury Prize at the 2001 Tokyo IFF.
A fifth feature, ‘As Simple As That’, won the 2008 Golden St George Best Film Award at the Moscow IFF.
Three of his films have been entered by Iran for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar:
‘So Close, So Far’, ‘A Cube of Sugar’ and ‘Today’.
His 2016 latest feature ‘Daughter’ won Golden George award for the Best Film, Silver George award for the Best Actor’s Performance ‘Farhad Aslani’ and Russian Film Clubs’ Federation award for the Best Film at the 38th Moscow International Film Festival, Russia 2016.
Reza Mirkarimi has also sat on several international film festival juries.
In our catalogue:
2016: Daughter, 103min, 4K, Colour, Iran
2014: Today, 87min, Full HD, Colour, Iran |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28264 | Login or e-mail Password
Guitar Chords: How To Solo Over Chords With The Minor Pentatonic Scale
Soloing over guitar chords is easy when you know how to use the minor pentatonic scale. Add spice and power to your solo's with these simple but highly effective techniques.
Views: 20.653 Created 12/02/2006
The humble minor pentatonic scale is what most guitar players start with when learning to solo. Trouble is, they don't learn to use the scale to it's best potential.
Here, I'll show you an easy way to use the pentatonic scale to solo over the three most common guitar chord types: Major, minor and dominant 7th chords.
1. Major Chords
A Major chord always has a relative minor chord. The easy way to find the 'relative' minor of any major chord on a guitar is to take the note three half-steps (3 frets) below the root note of the major chord.
For example: a C major chord - the root note is C. On a guitar, the note 3 frets below a C note is A. Therefore, A minor is the relative minor of C major.
So to solo over a C major chord, use the A minor pentatonic scale and you can't go wrong.
Another example: F major chord - three frets below the root of F, you will find D. So you use a D minor pentatonic scale over an F major chord.
Another example: G major chord - three frets below the G root note you'll find E. So... you use the E minor pentatonic to solo over a G chord.
Now, you may have noticed that I listed C, F and G major chords there. Coincidentally, They are the 1, 4 and 5 chords of the 'KEY' of C Major. This applies to all instruments, not just guitar.
More about this later...
2. Minor Chords
These are easy... just use the minor pentatonic of what ever the minor chord is. E.g. Use D minor pentatonic for a D minor chord, an E minor pentatonic for an E minor chord, an A minor pentatonic for an A minor Chord.
Now, did you notice I used D, E and A minor chords as the example? Did you also notice that these chords are the 2, 3 and 6 chords of the 'KEY' of C Major?
More about that later, too...
3. Dominant 7th Chords
For example, over G7, you could use either E minor pent (relative minor), or D min pentatonic.
4. Thinking From a 'KEY" Perspective
OK, what we have looked at is the KEY of C Major. And basically you can use just the A minor pentatonic alone for ALL the chords in C, or you can also use the D and E minor pentatonics to add some color and more conformity to the chords being used at the time.
The Key of C Major has these chords:
Ami pent can be used over them all, or just the C and Am chords.
D min pentatonic can be used over the F and Dm chords.
E minor can be used over the Em and G7 chords.
We didn't mention the 7 chord (Bmi7b5) because it's not used very much. But a good choice is the Dm pentatonic. In fact, though, you can use either of the three pentatonics from the C Major scale - Am, Dm or Em. Try them, see which you like best.
I hope you enjoyed this article.
Also, in a future article, I'll be discussing 'Pentatonic Substitution' where I'll show you how to use substitute and altered pentatonics for even more sound choices.
Short note about the author
John Bilderbeck, from http://www.free-guitar-chords.com/
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28271 | Mike Martinson
Mike Martinson
Training: Phoenix LiveView from Prototype to Production
Date: 28 April
In this training, we’ll evaluate which sorts of features are the best fit for what LiveView can offer, then build out an interactive real-time UI to get a feel for how LiveView works. We’ll then look at integrating LiveView into an existing Phoenix application, address performance considerations and failover strategies, and look at examples of how to test and monitor a LiveView feature in a real-world application.
Phoenix LiveView is a powerful new tool that combines the development efficiency of server-side rendering with the rich, interactive experiences that users have come to expect in web applications.
Building on the capabilities of Phoenix Channels and the BEAM’s strong primitives for availability and fault tolerance, LiveView lets us deliver rich user interfaces without the overhead of building a full client-side application.
Experience level
Intermediate, advanced
As a polyglot developer and functional programming enthusiast, Mike has been pitching Elixir to his friends and colleagues since 2015. Since then, he’s led multiple Elixir projects building and running real-time applications for startups. When he’s not in front of a text editor hacking on products, you can find him in the mountains in Western Canada, tearing downhill on a bike or skis.
Github: mmartinson
Twitter: @untimelyquests
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28274 | May 14, 2014 / by emptywheel
The Phone Dragnet Adopted “Selection Term” by 2013
As I laid out last week, I’m not convinced the term “specific selection term” is sufficiently narrowly defined to impose adequate limits to the “reformed” Section 215 (and NSL and PRTT) programs. Here’s how the House defined it:
That said, as I also noted, the motion to amend January’s primary order used the term to refer to the query term, which may suggest my concerns are unfounded.
I’ve looked further, and the amendment’s use of the term was not new in the phone dragnet.
In fact, the phrase used to refer to the query subject changed over the course of the dragnet. The first Primary Order authorized the search on “particular known phone numbers.” That usage continued until 2008, when Primary Order BR 08-08 introduced the term “particular known identifier.” A completely redacted footnote seems to have defined the term (and always has). Significantly, that was the first Primary Order after an August 20, 2008 opinion authorized some “specific intelligence method in the conduct of queries (term “searches”) of telephony metadata or call detail records obtained pursuant to the FISC’s orders under the BR FISA program.” I think it highly likely that opinion authorized the use of correlations between different identifiers believed to be associated with the same person.
The September 3, 2009 Primary Order — the first one resuming some normality after the problems identified in 2009 — references a description of identifier in a declaration. And the redaction provides hints that the footnote describing the term lists several things that are included (though the footnote appears to be roughly the same size as others describing identifier).
Identifier Footnote
The Primary Orders revert back to the same footnote in all the orders that have been released (the government is still withholding 3 known Primary Orders from 2009). And that continued until at least June 22, 2011, the last Primary Order covered by the ACLU and EFF FOIAs.
But then in the first Primary Order after the 2011-2012 break (and all Primary Orders since), the language changes to “selection term,” which like its predecessor has a footnote apparently explaining the term — though the footnote is twice as long. Here’s what it looks like in the April 25, 2013 Primary Order:
Selection Term Footnote
The change in language is made not just to the subject of queries. There’s a paragraph in Primary Orders approving the use of individual FISA warrant targets for querying (see this post for an explanation) that reads,
[Identifiers/selection terms] that are currently the subject of electronic surveillance authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) based on the FISC’s finding of probable cause to believe that they are used by agents of [redacted] including those used by U.S. persons, may be deemed approved for querying for the period of FISC-authorized electronic surveillance without review and approval by a designated approving official.
The change appears there too. That’s significant because it suggests a use that would be tied to targets about whom much more would be known, and in usages that would be primarily email addresses or other Internet identifiers, rather than just phone-based ones. I think that reflects a broader notion of correlation (and undermines the claim that a selection term is “unique,” as it would tie the use of an identity authorized for Internet surveillance to a telephone metadata identifier used to query the dragnet).
Finally, the timing. While the big gap in released Primary Orders prevents us from figuring out when the NSA changed from “identifier” to “selection term,” it happened during the same time period when the automated query process was approved.
This may all seem like a really minor nit to pick.
But even after the language was changed to “selection term” on Primary Orders, top intelligence officials continued to use the term “identifier” to describe the process (see the PCLOB hearing on Section 215, for example). The common usage, it seems, remains “identifier,” though there must be some legal reason the NSA and DOJ use “selection term” with the FISC.
It also means there’s some meaning for selection term the FISA Court has already bought off on. It’s a description that takes 15 lines to explain, one the government maintains is still classified.
And we’re building an entire bill off a vague 17-word definition without first learning what that 15-line description entails.
Copyright © 2018 emptywheel. All rights reserved.
Originally Posted @ |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28282 | 18 notes available for JavaScript.
Using HTML5 web storage features(localStorage and sessionStorage)
Cookies are the old friends of web developer as they allow a lot of flexiblity due to the local storage of data, but with HTML5 we get two new client side storage features. localStorage and sessionStorage are two new HTML5 features, these allow the storage of data on the client end with allowing flexiblity of storing data as long as developer(using program itself)/user doesn't clean it off or with the end of browser session.
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Selectors in JavaScript - How to access DOM
This article is about the selectors in JavaScript, you might already have seen the selectors in CSS, here we illustrate the selectors and from starting to end and what has been made of their future. These selectors are what has been used in JQuery also.
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JavaScript function and their types
This is basic tutorial about function in Javascript. Here we demonstrate the types of function and where could they be used. We are mentioning function, callback function, method and anonymous function.
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Introduction to JavaScript Objects
JavaScript is not an old torn off language for web anymore, HTML 5 has accepted it and that too as a standard, JavaScript has been evolving since its beginning and no matter what anyone say, it has ruled the client side scripting world. Here we introduce and explain a lot more about its OOP feature and its Object notation.
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Break and Continue concept in JavaScript
Break and continue are two very well known keywords since past two decades but yet these are a trouble for new programmers, so in this article we cover the break and continue statements with example. Break is used to break the block and continue is used to skip and move back to start of the block.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28300 | свежесрезанная зелень срезка Израиль каталог оптовые поставки
Вибурнум (калина) - свежая декоративная зелень Израиль
Каталог декоративной зелени
Вибурнум (калина)
Viburnum is a genus of about 150-175 species of shrubs or (in a few species) small trees in the moschatel family, Adoxaceae. Its current classification is based on molecular phylogeny. It was previously included in the family Caprifoliaceae. The member species are native throughout the temperate Northern Hemisphere, with a few species extending into tropical montane regions in South America, Russia and southeast Asia. In Africa, the genus is confined to the Atlas Mountains. The leaves are opposite, simple, and entire, toothed or lobed; cool temperate species are deciduous, while most of the warm temperate species are evergreen. Some species are densely hairy on the shoots and leaves, with star-shaped hairs.
Viburnum свежесрезанная зелень декоративная
Viburnum photo (cc) Retama
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28310 | 770-408-0477 | Alimony in Divorce – Georgia Divorce Attorneys
Alimony, also called spousal support, is designed to provide the lower income spouse with money for living expenses. This is separate from child support, and, unlike child support, is left to the discretion of the judge.
Usually, alimony is reserved for situations where one spouse has been economically dependent on the other for most of a lengthy marriage, but each decision is made based on the specific circumstances of that case. It is, however, rare to see alimony awarded in a case where the incomes of both parties are more or less equivalent.
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There is no formula for setting the amount of spousal support in the state of Georgia. It is granted upon reviewing the need of one party and the ability of the other party to pay it.
Listed in OCGA § 19-6-5(a) are the following factors to be considered by the Georgia family court judge in deciding an award of spousal support:
– the standard of living established during the marriage
– the duration of the marriage
– the age and the physical and emotional condition of both parties
– the financial resources of both parties; where applicable, the time necessary for either party to gain sufficient education or training to find appropriate employment
– the contribution of each party to the marriage, including services rendered in homemaking and child care
– the financial condition of the parties
Particularly in shorter marriages, Georgia courts tend to look at alimony as rehabilitative, meaning that it’s only paid for a specific, limited period of time in order for the recipient find a job or obtain an education for the purpose of improving employment prospects.
Modifying the conditions of alimony decided by the court is always a possibility unless otherwise mandated by an agreement to the contrary. Changing alimony requires showing of a fundamental change in circumstances.
Alimony is terminated for a number of reasons including but not limited to: either party dies, the party receiving alimony remarries or cohabits for a minimum of 90 days, or by a court order demonstrating a court order is no longer necessary.
Georgia Areas We Serve
Alpharetta Georgia Office
5755 North Point Parkway
Suite 52
Alpharetta, GA 30022
Atlanta Georgia Office
659 Auburn Avenue Northeast
Suite 117
Atlanta, GA 30312
Tamara Feliciano, Esq. on Google+! |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28330 | World Library
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IFPI Greece
Article Id: WHEBN0018459541
Reproduction Date:
Title: IFPI Greece
Author: World Heritage Encyclopedia
Language: English
Subject: Byzantine music, Greek hip hop, Greek musical instruments, Ionian School (music), Music of ancient Greece
Publisher: World Heritage Encyclopedia
IFPI Greece
Music of Greece
General topics
Specific forms
Media and performance
Music awards
Music charts
• Greek Albums Chart
• Foreign Albums Chart
• Singles Chart
Music festivals
Music media
Nationalistic and patriotic songs
National anthem "Hymn to Liberty"
Regional music
Related areas Cyprus, Pontus, Constantinople, South Italy
Regional styles
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry Greece, or simply IFPI Greece, is the Greek branch of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and is the official charts provider and recording sales certification body for Greece. Currently a Top-75 combined repertoire albums sales chart is compiled. The charts is published by IFPI Greece and sponsored by Cyta Hellas.
The domestic trade name of IFPI Greece is Ένωση Ελλήνων Παραγωγών Ηχογραφημάτων (ΕΕΠΗ)[1] (English: Association of Greek Producers of Phonograms [AGPP]).[2] However, it is generally referred to, and branded as, IFPI Greece.
IFPI Greece charts
IFPI Greece founded the first official music charts in Greece in 1989.[3] There were two top 20 albums charts, one for domestic and the other for foreign repertoire. The broadcast rights of the charts were acquired by ANT1 radio. Prior to the introduction of industry charts by IFPI Greece, unreliable charts were being published by various magazines which lacked credibility and authority over the monitoring of record sales.[3] By May 1991, the charts were discontinued after it was discovered that they were easily manipulated.[4] Executives blamed artists who made themselves appear more popular by buying hundreds of copies of their own albums in an attempt to gain more bargaining power for shows and appearances.[4] Also cited was the large number of small shops which lacked detailed sales data required as a basis toward an accurate tracking system. In response to the discontinuation, Viko Antypas, managing director of PolyGram Greece, referred to the charts as "an experiment that failed".[4]
Realizing the importance of having a national chart, which "helped bring the Greek music industry back into the public eye", IFPI sought to employ a system where albums would be tracked based upon actual sales to the public, as opposed to the number of retail shipments as was previously used.[4] It was planned for these reformed charts to be operable by early 1992,[4] however a complete overhaul of the charting method never materialized and future charts were once again based upon shipments, this time with adjusted figures via the sampling of record store inventories to form an estimation of actual consumer sales.
In March 2009 IFPI Greece announced that they would close their charts for a period of time in order to renew their charting system. There will be a shift from wholesale (manufacturer to retailer) to point of sale (retailer to consumer) sales,[5] as well as the integration of legal digital downloads. The implementation of a point of sale tracking method will solve the longstanding issue of accurate consumer sales tracking, a pending issue identified since 1991 with the first discontinuation of the charts. Inclusion of digital downloads will also prompt the revival of the singles chart, as the decrease in sales and releases of CD singles had led to the discontinuation of the physical singles chart. Nielsen Soundscan is already engaged in the monitoring of digital downloads sold in Greece, which is compiled into a chart currently published under the international charts section of Billboard.
In January 2010, IFPI Greece announced that they would start providing the Top 50 Foreign Albums chart on their website again, although the reformed charting system is not yet functional.[6] Thus the Top 50 Foreign Albums chart continues to utilize the old charting system, while it is the only chart they currently provide.[6] IFPI debuted its new chart in early October 2010. The new chart, Top 75 Combined Repertoire, is now the sole chart by IFPI Greece and lists the top 75 domestic and foreign albums in the country.
Current charts
Top 75 albums
The Top 75 Combined Repertoire chart is the official albums chart of Greece. It debuted in October 2010, replacing and combining the prior separate Greek-language and foreign album charts.
Top 200 Airplay chart
In 2011 IFPI Greece partnered up with a new radio monitoring service called Media Inspector to provide an official airplay chart. The company monitors a total of more than 200 radio stations around Greece, and compiles a combined repertoire Top 200 airplay chart, part of it being available publicly accessible at .[7] .[8]
Past charts
Top 50 Greek Albums
The Top 50 Greek Albums (Top 50 Ελληνικών Aλμπουμ) chart was the official albums chart of Greece for Greek-language repertoire. Sales of domestic repertoire are higher in Greece compared to other IFPI nations, outnumbering foreign repertoire sales.[9] The chart was discontinued in March 2009, and later replaced by the Top 75 Combined Repertoire chart.
Top 50 Foreign Albums
The Top 50 Foreign Albums (Top 50 Ξένων Aλμπουμ) chart was the official sales chart for Greece of foreign repertoire. The chart was discontinued in March 2009, and later replaced by the Top 75 Combined Repertoire chart.
Certification levels
Domestic repertoire
Years Gold Platinum
Up to 1990[10] 50,000 100,000
1990–1997[11] 30,000 60,000
1997–09/2002 25,000 50,000
09/2002–09/2006[12] 20,000 40,000
09/2006–07/2008 15,000 30,000
07/2008–present[13] 6,000 12,000
Foreign repertoire
Years Gold Platinum
1997–09/2002[14] 15,000 30,000
09/2002–09/2006 10,000 20,000
09/2006–06/2007[15] 7,500 15,000
06/2007–07/2008[16] 5,000 10,000
07/2008–present[13] 3,000 6,000
Prior to 1997, the sales thresholds for foreign repertoire were the same as domestic ones.
• Gold: 3,000
• Platinum: 6,000[13]
Prior to July 2008, the thresholds were 5,000 and 10,000 copies, respectively.
(currently inactive)
• Gold: 3,000
• Platinum: 6,000[13]
Prior to June 2007, the thresholds were 7,500 and 15,000 copies, respectively.
Charts of Cyprus
The music industry of Cyprus closely mirrors that of Greece. Virtually all Greek and most of the foreign music releases are provided by the record companies in Greece. Certifications for sales of albums in Cyprus are different than that of Greece, with albums being certified Gold with sales (instead of shipments) of 3,000 copies and Platinum with sales of 6,000. (1,500 for Gold singles/DVDs and 3,000 for Platinum)
Repercussions of recording piracy
Piracy is not a new phenomenon in the Greek music market. In the early 1980s, cassette reproduction in-home and in-store accounted for eight out of every ten in the market, however by the early 1990s that number dwindled to two out of every ten as a result of public awareness campaigns and the prosecution of key producers.[17]
More recently Agence France-Presse noted that "CD and DVD piracy is extremely widespread in Greece, with many Greeks preferring to purchase discs from peddlers touring cafes and restaurants rather than from licensed shops, which they see as overpriced."[18] In its July 2006 piracy report, the IFPI found that Greece, along with Italy and Spain, had alarmingly high piracy rates compared to other EU member states. Pirated product was identified to account for 50% of all music sales in Greece and the IFPI blamed "an overlenient judicial system and ineffectual policing was hampering the fight against piracy."[19] Furthermore, the IFPI calculates a loss of profit of about 150 million euros per year as of 2006.[18] In 2008, Kathimerini newspaper noted that sales of bootlegs is thought to have cost Greece almost €1 billion in lost taxes over a nine-year period.[20]
Another repercussion of the rampant piracy throughout Greece is the marked deterioration in the sales certification thresholds of IFPI Greece. At a conference held in Athens in 2005, Chairman and CEO of IFPI John Kennedy stated:
"Along with Spain, Greece is our biggest piracy problem country in Western Europe. It joins countries like Estonia, Czech Republic and Slovakia, all with piracy levels above 45%. In fact with a piracy rate of around 50%, Greece is one of the very few Western European countries where illegal music copies almost outnumber legal sales."[21]
The sharpest decline came with the current sales levels established in September 2008 where the gold and platinum levels for Greek repertoire were reduced by 60%, from 30,000 to 12,000 units for platinum status, and from 15,000 to 6,000 units for gold status. As a result, Greece ranks amongst the lowest of EU states with regards to legal music recording sales.[21]
More recently, following the Greek debt crisis, a trend has been established for even prominent artists to release their albums as covermounts with national Greek newspapers, usually Real News. This facilitates a guaranteed a return for the record companies and artists in the face of otherwise low legal sales. Albums distributed in this way are not eligible for certification by IFPI Greece, so most go on to release them separately to boost sales and possibly to be certified if they gain enough sales.
2005 version of the "Piracy kills music" logo
Anti-piracy campaigns
IFPI Greece runs an anti-piracy campaign with the help of the recording industry. Beginning in 2002,[22] During IFPI Greece's first annual "Arion Music Awards", its "Piracy Kills Music" campaign was launched, aimed at raising awareness among consumers. Campaign logos would appear on almost every album release, inserted into music videos broadcasts, and public service announcements were designed as magazine and newspaper ads. The slogan was also heard regularly in radio spots of major radio stations.
From 2002 to 2004, the slogan appeared as a logo featuring an open, red-colored hand print in the background. In 2005, the logo was updated with a differently stylized straight red-colored hand containing a black disc in its palm, with the "Piracy Kills Music" slogan appearing as caption below it. In 2007, IFPI Greece changed its anti-piracy slogan to "Let Music Live" which would appear as a caption to a colorful musical note. This anti-piracy tactic of imprinting CDs and music videos appears to be fading as fewer labels have chosen to continue this practice since 2009.
Award ceremonies
Arion Music Awards (2002–2007)
The Arion Music Awards were the official industry awards organized by Greece's charting authority, IFPI Greece. The awards are named after the Ancient Greek poet Mega Channel in their first five years before moving to ANT1 channel later. In the first years, the awards were praised by industry and viewers alike,[24] helping to demonstrate to audiences the industry behind the music and by raising awareness on issues of piracy and counterfeit CDs.[25] They also effectively balanced the majority of genres present in the local market. The awards have been put on hiatus since 2007 for various reasons ranging from falling TV ratings, low artist attendance, and to a general crisis in Greek discography attributed to falling sales and heavy piracy. MAD Video Music Awards presented by music television station MAD TV, which primarily awards music videos, is currently the only mainstream music award in Greece.
World Music Awards
The World Music Awards is an annual international awards ceremony since 1989 that honours recording artists from all over the world based on global sales figures provided by the IFPI. As the IFPI has significant roles and operations in Greece, it qualifies for its regional awards in the best selling artist category. The regional awards, as with many of their other awards, are not necessarily awarded annually, rather only when it is believed that an artist has sold an extraordinary amount of records for their country. "World's Best Selling Greek Artist" is therefore the title bestowed upon Greek artists, and to this date it has been awarded two times since 2002.
The first award was given in 2002 to Despina Vandi for her album Gia which reached 5× platinum status, followed by Yiannis Kotsiras in 2003 for his album Live.
See also
1. ^ Ελληνική Ένωση (in Greek). Retrieved 2009-11-08.
2. ^ "Local ISRC Agencies". Retrieved 2009-11-08.
3. ^ a b Carr, John (1989-10-07). "Greek Top 20 Charts Debut" 101 (40).
4. ^ a b c d e Carr, John (November 11, 1991). "Greek Music Biz Seeks New Chart".
5. ^ ΓΚΟΥΒΑΣ, ΜΑΡΙΟΣ (May 10, 2009). "IFPI TOP-30" (in Greek). Retrieved 2009-11-05.
6. ^ a b Staff. "Dear friends, The new reformed IFPI Charts are not yet available through our website. Until then you can access our International Chart from here. IFPI Greece". Retrieved 2010-01-25.
7. ^ "Media Inspector". Retrieved 2011-03-18.
8. ^ "". Retrieved 2011-03-18.
9. ^ Staff (January 9, 2007). "CD Sales Again On The Rise".
10. ^ Sikka, Iota (2008-08-08). "Η αγορά των cd κλυδωνίζεται" (in Greek).
11. ^ Dragoumanos, Petros (1998-04-26). "Aπ� τις 33 στρ ές στα CD (1997)" (in Greek).
12. ^ Sykka, Iota (2003-01-10). "Artists reach lower for gold and platinum".
13. ^ a b c d "International Certification Award levels". September 2009. Retrieved 2009-11-04.
14. ^ Develegas, Cosmas (May 24, 1997). Greek acts boost local market.
15. ^ "Certification Award Levels". IFPI. Retrieved 2012-08-13.
17. ^ Carr, John (April 6, 1991). "Major Label 'Gods' Cooperate to Overcome Common Problems".
18. ^ a b
19. ^ Cendrowicz, Leo (April 9, 2007). "Europe clamps down on music piracy".
20. ^ Staff (2008-02-23). "Illegal CD traders face clampdown by officers".
21. ^ a b Kennedy, John (2005-05-26). "Giving music a chance: promoting new markets and fighting piracy". IFPI. Retrieved 2009-11-05.
22. ^ "Enforcement Bulletin - Issue 18".
23. ^ Paraventes, Maria (May 4, 2002). Arion Awards Enjoy Double Success.
24. ^ Paravantes, Maria (May 10, 2003). Greek Execs Applaud Arion Awards.
25. ^ Paraventes, Maria (March 16, 2002). Greek Awards To Raise Piracy Issues.
External links
• Official website
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28355 | Tag: merry christmas
Merry Christmas
Yesterday Ottawa received a dose of freezing rain. I drove a fair bit during the ice storm of 1998 but the rain of yesterday was much more slippery than 1998. When I drove home I used 4 wheel drive and travelled under 10 km an hour and still turned nearly 270 degrees instead of 90 …
Continue reading |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28408 | Part 80
Part 80
They burned it down.
Before sunset,” Pascha warned me, like a mosquito tickling my ear. “We must get through before sunset.
“Yes, I know!” I shouted back, gripping the crown of the tree as the branches rocked and swayed as though they were caught in a howling gale. Red leaves swarmed around me in a flurry as I gritted my teeth, my fingernails scraping at bark as I tried to keep my grasp. Adamina was dragging the forest about, making the sea of trees lurch and slam together with a series of noisy crashes as the earth contorted beneath them. Something very big was going on, but I wasn’t privy to any of it considering all I could see was the back of her. My spot at the top of the great tree was likely the very safest place to be at the moment, yet I would have very much liked to get down and stop having my stomach try and push its way back up my throat.
The Treewitch’s weakness, as Pascha described it to me, was that she had a core of some sort, a center, where some of her original body remained. This was- and it had not taken me long at all to guess- the twisted tree inside the trunk, which trapped the thing I had spoken to.
It’s buried itself deep inside, where no sunlight can reach it,” he’d explained to me. “And I expect that it’s like you once were, afraid of the light.
“I wasn’t afraid-”
Don’t be petty- I meant, the light hurts it. If expose the creature for long enough, it should perish.”
“So all we’ve got to do is give it sunlight, and it’ll die? Isn’t that sort of the opposite of the way trees work?”
Astute observation. It’s an undead tree, Gabi, it obviously doesn’t follow the ordinary rules.
A tree-strigoi, I mused, rather unnerved by the prospect. But it made sense in its own nonsensical way. There were still, however, some issues that needed to be resolved, namely:
“How are we going to get sunlight to go inside the trunk of a tree?”
Find a way to break it open.”
“Easy for you to say! Can your all-seeing eyes spot any axes or saws around here?”
You’re too weak to do it regardless. You’ll need help.
I pressed my lips together and tried not to bristle. Kezia needed us to work quickly.
“Help from whom?”
From somebody strong, of course. Didn’t you come up here with the help of a golem? Get it to do the chopping and sawing you need.” I thought I heard a note of perplexity when he next spoke, for I was making a face. “What’s the matter? It helped you before, didn’t it? I think it’s still crawling around on the trunk somewhere, but the branches are blocking my view.
“I don’t know that we can count on that golem to do anything,” I’d said, rather lowly. “I’m not sure it’s our ally anymore.”
Well, I hate to break it to you, but it’s about the only chance you have of getting your beloved back and escaping this forest.”
Of course it was.
A particularly loud shake reminded me of my current predicament, as new twigs stabbed into my back and arms and scraped along my thighs. I braced my legs against a sturdy branch and grimaced as the world rocked. Red leaves swirled up against the white of the cloudy sky.
“What is she doing?!” I shouted up towards the sun.
Before sunset, Gabi,” was Pascha’s unhelpful reply. I thought I heard an edge to his ethereal voice that hadn’t been there before. “Once the sun sets, I won’t be able to help you anymore.
The shaking died down, as Adamina eased up on whatever she was doing, and I caught my breath a moment, glad the cold air was numbing the sting of my scratches.
“What happens to you after sunset?”
I move onwards. I won’t be able to see or speak to you again until the sun is high in the sky tomorrow.”
“Move onwards…” A thought occurred to me. “Ah, but does that mean I’ll be able to speak to Kazimir?”
Pascha took a moment to respond, and when he did, his voice was guarded. “I don’t know. I cannot speak to him any longer. Nor Zakhar.
I pressed my lips together.
“How long until sunset?”
A few hours. Twilight comes soon.
I tested the strength of a thin branch with my hand, waving it at an invisible Pascha. “I don’t suppose you could go and put a flea in the ear of Muma Balaur’s dragon to fly over here and do the work for us?”
Hm. I hadn’t thought of that…
But I doubt it’ll work. I think that dragon may be too fat to fly.
I huffed from within my crackly nest, but again the thought of Kezia vanishing into the great tree kept me from whining further. If Taavi was my only option, then I had to find him quick as I could, though the thought made my insides clench… Below the canopy was nothing but fear.
Well, fear, and Kezia.
“I’m going to climb back down,” I told the sky. “Pray I don’t fall.”
Good luck,” said Pascha. “I will only be able to see you as far as the light reaches.
I pushed at the lower branch with my feet again, hesitated, and then swung myself downwards with a noisy rustle.
It took only a few moments of cautious climbing for Pascha’s light to fade to twinkles between the leaves, flashing bright gold between the red, and a few more for it to disappear into the dim glow of light filtered through leaves. The canopy was a scratchy mess of twigs and bark, and more than a few times my bare feet scraped and slid down a branch that wasn’t quite as strong as I had hoped. Quite a few were hanging broken, either from Adamina’s recent adventure or from Taavi, when he had thrust me up the first time. The core of the exposed wood was bright, snowy white.
It didn’t take very long for me to spot more direct signs of the golem. I dropped to a lower branch and nearly went careening backwards into a yawning gap where something very large had slammed through the canopy. The broken ends of the branches bore gobs of dark earth. I brushed some with my fingers and rubbed them together; it was still cool, not warmed by the wet heat emanating from the great tree.
“Taavi!” I called out, leaning out precariously far over the tunnel he’d made. “Taavi, can you hear me?”
No answer. The ground rumbled as Adamina made another move, and I quickly pulled myself away, back towards the center of the tree, where the branches split from the trunk. The wood felt wetter and softer here, and smelled sickly-sweet, but at least it didn’t sway quite so much.
“Taavi!” I shouted again, reaching out to grab the next branch, and then yelped when my hand closed around something soft. An arm! A white arm, sticking out from between the gaps of the braided trunk as though it belonged amidst the branches. I snatched my hand back, clenching and unclenching my fingers, but the arm didn’t move. And now I saw it wasn’t the only one- there were several, sticking out near the base of the canopy, as though waiting to bear fruit.
No doubt they belonged to fadua. I swallowed, and clambered back, giving them a wide berth. In the corner of my eye I saw fingers twitch, and snapped my gaze over to them, but the hovering hand, palm-up, didn’t move.
A noisy creak of wood and a loud crunching sound alerted me to more pressing matters, and I scrambled to hold on as the bough beneath my feet started to bend.
“Curse you and your trees, Adamina, you muddy sow,” I hissed, scrambling for better purchase as the tree shook, sharp splinters digging into my palms. “May it rain and make your stupid head too sloppy to-”
I stopped speaking when something cold and heavy settled against the back of my neck. A great dark mass swung itself up beside me, peering at me with two hollow eyes.
“Ta- Taavi!” I choked out, as his hand tightened around my neck. The huge golem was covered in leaves and broken branches, almost perfectly camouflaged up within the canopy. His grip on me was not bruising, but also not light enough for me to squirm away. I kept still.
The golem stared at me in silence for a long moment, then raised his other mittenlike hand to point upwards.
“What? Go up…? No, I can’t, I’ve got to-”
I squeaked as his grip tightened, and tried not to squirm. “Kezia! Taavi, they took Kezia, you’ve got to help me open up the trunk so we can get to her-”
My throat closed as he squeezed harder, and I found myself shaking, unable to fight him in the slightest from my precarious perch on the branches. Was this- was he furious because Kezia had taken his free will for a moment? Or did he just hate me in particular? I had no inkling as to what was happening in that big head- and now I couldn’t breathe!
Without warning Taavi yanked me forward, towards his big, spiky chest, wrenching me out of the branches. The skin of my palms burned as I brought them up to his arm, but he let go of my neck the next moment, giving me a chance to gasp as he tucked me under his arm like so much baggage. With a noisy crunch, he shoved us downwards into open air. I hadn’t the breath to even scream.
It didn’t matter. Next I knew, we’d slammed against the trunk, Taavi catching hold of it easily like some oversized ape. He climbed down a ways one-handed while I hung limp in his grasp, my head too rattled to think very much.
After a silent minute or so of climbing, Taavi paused near a particularly large gap in the trunk, setting his big feet in firmly to brace himself. He looked down at me in a way that I thought was expectant.
I coughed to clear my sore throat.
“Taavi- I expect you understand me- if we open up the tree to let sunlight inside, Kezia can be saved and we’ll all be free. You’re strong enough to do that, aren’t you? I think- if you go up and split the crown somehow- so long as a little light from the sky gets in, we could at least-”
The golem shifted, bending forward while I was mid-word to push me out from under his arm and into the gap. I grabbed onto the damp wood, bracing myself against his shoving.
“Hey-! Stop that! What are you-”
Taavi planted his hand against my chest and shoved, and with a cry I fell backwards- into the darkness of the great tree.
I flailed and thrashed in the sudden blackness, and my fingers caught on to wet, rotten wood, digging in and slowing my descent. I kicked my legs forward and brought my toes into the rotten muck as well and managed to stop myself from falling, though it was a precarious hold, and my heart was thundering with fear. I didn’t know how far we’d gone down the trunk, but it definitely hadn’t been far enough for a fall to the bottom not to seriously injure me.
I heard a loud hissing sound, and squinted upwards, my eyes adjusting to the dim, reddish light- white shapes were crawling slowly down the insides of the trunk- fadua! Then something loomed forward and blocked my view- it was Taavi, trying to wedge his massive bulk through the gap he’d pushed me into. Only his arm and shoulder were through, his huge hand groping blindly, and the hissing fadua were converging on him like white ants.
With a noisy crunch, Taavi pushed his big head into the tree, slightly misshapen from the impact. He looked at me, clinging desperately to the rotten wood, then swiveled to face the encroaching group of fadua. There were at least seven or eight of them, and I could spot more white specks approaching from farther up.
My tongue was thick in my mouth. I wanted to say something to him, but what? What was he doing? Had he been trying to kill me? But why follow me in here- to finish the job? Or was he trying to help us?
The golem was squirming, his body squelching as he tried to narrow himself enough to squeeze in side, his hand sinking into the rotten wood as he sought purchase. The first of the fadua reached him and buried her teeth into his earthen arm. Taavi did not react.
“Hsst! Gabi!”
I nearly lost my grip; the soft voice was coming from beneath me. I tried to look down underneath my elbow, but there was only formless red mist below me.
“Down here…”
The voice sounded familiar, and it wasn’t Kezia’s… I had my suspicions as to who it came from, but I didn’t hesitate very long before gingerly trying to move downwards, now from within the great tree, sinking my toes and fingers into the black muck of rot. Above me, I heard more thumps and crunches; when I chanced a glance upwards, Taavi was shaking off the fadua, and a white body flashed past me as it flew downwards. I flinched at the thud as it hit the ground.
Taavi had managed to shrink his other shoulder enough to squash it inside, and now he shoved with both hands, squirming as his clay flesh seeped upwards and narrowed his thick waist. The fadua were still after him, leaving great crescent-shaped bites in his arms as they swallowed his earth. Aside from the groan of splitting wood, the whole altercation was eerily silent.
I had told Taavi what he needed to do; I could do nothing else to make him obey me. Now my thoughts were all with Kezia, who surely lay in the mist below. Steeling myself, I began another careful descent, and soon Taavi and the fadua were only muffled shapes and noises in the mist above me.
I listened hard for that little voice, but it did not call out to me again. The air was growing thicker here- I swallowed, remembering the poison that had assailed us before- but my head was not heavy like it had been. I could breathe.
Down, down, I went, the splitting of the dark wood beneath my grip a reminder that I would probably not be able to climb back up the same way; down until my toes brushed something soft that slithered.
I let go, my feet landing on white, writing roots, and turned around.
Before me lay the broken body of a fallen fadua- I shoved it away, light and boneless as a puppet. Beyond that, the twisted tree, shut tight- and another body, lying prone on the ground.
I ran to her and knelt, ripping away the white roots that had begun to cover her. She was lying on her stomach, facedown, and made no move when I shook her. When I rolled her over, her eyes were closed, though her chest moved, and her arm-
Her left arm, the injured one, was bound fast to the ground. Roots dug out through her split, purpling skin and into the earth. I choked at the sight, tugging vainly at her, stopping when she gave a soft moan, the skin between her eyebrows creasing.
“Kezia! My dear- are you awake?”
She didn’t respond, and I found I was glad for it; the pain must have been excruciating. It made me cringe to look at it- her arm was swollen, the skin yellow, black, and red, peppered with tiny sprouts. A tiny branch protruded from the pad of her thumb, showing its first reddish bud, and I snarled and twisted it off, crushing it in my hand.
“Let her go, Treewitch!” I shouted at the twisted little tree. The roots crept up against my thighs; I tore them away. “Let her go! You’ve lost- you won’t have her!”
There was no answer, and I squeezed Kezia tight in my arms, angry tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. God! Was this my lot now, to have hope and happiness eternally snatched from my grasp? Perhaps I deserved it, but Kezia…!
I tilted my head back and screamed, “Taavi! Taavi, break open the trunk! She’s dying!”
There was no sign that the golem had heard, wherever he was above me, and I held Kezia even tighter as a dark thought occurred to me. I didn’t know if he would listen to me now- but I could make it so he had no choice, if I rearranged the letters in his forehead. I had seen Vasilisa do it once, if I could climb up there somehow and do it again, he would be my slave-
I kissed Kezia’s forehead, and held her face close to mine. Impossible.
It was my fault, anyhow. I should have gotten here faster, not wasted time dallying with Pascha because I was frightened. Light wouldn’t save her in any case. My gut churned as I looked down at the roots that bound her to the earth. They had grown thick, in the short time we’d been separated. I slipped my fingers around one and tugged, only to find its grasp on the earth unyielding, and there were several more beyond this one. And what if I got her out of the earth, what then? Her flesh was mangled and broken almost beyond recognition!
I cursed softly under my breath. What I had discussed with Vasilisa before, very long before, it seemed, was now my only chance at saving her life- her arm, she would have to lose her arm. Gooseflesh rippled up and down my arms at the thought. But I could do it… given the right tools. I glanced around with a frantic eye: of course, there was nothing sharp here, only moldering wood and the limp body of a fadua. I didn’t think the fadua even had bones.
We should have cut it off right away- we shouldn’t have listened to her feeble excuses- she was frightened then, of course. But I was more frightened now. I kissed her cheek and laid her back down on the ground, gently, hissing curses at the squirming white rootlets. Then I stood, walked the few short steps over to the twisted tree, and kicked the base of it.
“Come out! I know you’re in there!”
I waited a moment, toes smarting, before the wood creaked softly, and a narrow crack formed near the level of my eyes.
You got her attention.”
The sound of the voice made me shudder; the way the rotten walls around us seemed to flex inwards slightly did not help. Still, I tried to keep my stance resolute.
“Good! By ‘her,’ I hope you mean you! Come out of there, you coward!”
The wood creaked, split a little further; I saw the red gleam of an eye.
“What are you going to do?”
“Just come out! Show yourself!” I insisted. What was I going to do? How was I supposed to know! I had lost my mind. I didn’t care anymore.
“I can’t come out,” said the thing inside the tree. “I can’t.”
“Then I’ll make you come out,” I snarled, and set my fingers to the crack, trying to prise it open like a clam. The wood snapped shut, pinching my fingers, and I snatched them back with a curse.
Don’t,” hissed a voice, one that sounded like it had come from the walls.
“Go on! Do your worst!” I dug my toes scornfully into the roots on the ground. “I’ve died before! I’ll die again! Perhaps God gave me Kezia and a new chance at life to repent for my sins- but I’d rather squander it spitting in your eye, I think, Treewitch!”
A pause, and then a creak- the crack was opening up in the twisted tree again, wider now, and with a start, I realized I could see two red eyes, glaring back at me.
“You’ve done something wrong.”
I bit back a laugh. “Yes! Of course! Many things. Is this Hell?” I glanced down at Kezia’s body; it was.
You ran away,” whispered the creature, her voice thicker, different.
Somehow it made sense that this thing knew my deepest, darkest secret.
“Yes! I ran away. I abandoned him.”
You didn’t love him, did you!
Now I did laugh, clutching at my chest, my head spinning.
“Could I ever love? A thing like me?”
And you ran when you shouldn’t have.
“Yes! I ran away, I didn’t trust that he would-”
You saw something you shouldn’t have.
“Yes, I-”
I hesitated. That last part didn’t seem quite right.
“No, I…”
You did!” The voice was snarling. “You saw what he did, and you should never have been there! And you disobeyed him, didn’t you! And you loved to hurt him, didn’t you! And you deserved what you got, didn’t you!
“I…” My mouth was hanging open, agog, as the red eyes glared into mine from inside the tree.
They burned it down,” it hissed. “They tore her out of your arms and threw her on the fire. They cut out your tongue, but not before they made you recant everything your mother taught you! They nailed your skin to the tree, so that when you walked around it your entrails spilled out!
I was stumbling back, back, the roots twining around my toes.
“What- who are you?”
“Don’t ask who I we are!”
“But you’re-” -the Treewitch, aren’t you? It was on my tongue, but I couldn’t speak; the twisted little tree was shuddering, bending, the crack splitting wider, and for the first time I saw the whole face of the thing trapped inside it.
A girl- just a girl, with colorless skin and colorless hair and red eyes, a long bruised neck, bright red lips, a long white scar visible across her bare belly.
“They chopped me up,” she hissed. “He chopped me up, I mean.”
Shhh,” said another voice, or maybe it was the wind- but there was no wind in here.
“Didn’t they tell you, too, Gabi, that the world is just?” she said, catching my eyes. “If we died, doesn’t that mean we did something wrong?”
Shhh. Shhhhh.
The wood shuddered, and began to close around the red-eyed girl; with a cry, she stuck her arm out, her hand reaching towards me.
“Please! Please! Don’t-”
The wood closed tight around her arm, and I winced and shut my eyes at the awful sound. When I opened them again, she was withdrawing her bloody arm back inside. The wood closed, sealed tight, locking her out of sight.
Don’t disturb us so, Gabi.
I jumped. The voice had come from beside me, and when I looked, the fadua that had fallen down was sitting upright, staring at me with its hollow eyes.
That voice, at least, I recognized. I shifted closer to where Kezia lay, gripping my own forearms, rattled.
“It is I,” agreed the fadua, which looked exactly like Crina- but then, they all did. “I had my attention on the battle with Muma Balaur, but you have been causing a commotion.”
She shifted her empty gaze towards Kezia, tilting her head, and I hastened to block her view with my legs, as though that might help.
“Then-” I licked my dry lips. “Who was I just speaking to, if not you?”
“It was I,” said the Treewitch. “I am here-and-there.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, licked my lips again.
“Why don’t you let Kezia go?”
“I cannot stop what’s been started.”
“Oh, but you don’t mind starting it, do you?”
A faint smile graced her lips. “It is the nature of a forest to grow.”
“Ah, in that case, it is the nature of me to want to chop it into kindling.”
That wiped off her grin. I pressed onwards, the tail-end of an idea emerging in my brain.
“What was all that nonsense ‘you’ were babbling about a moment ago? That death and dying-”
“Trees don’t feel vengeful,” she replied, cutting me off, and catching me quite off-guard.
“Well, I could grant you that…”
“Nor do they sorrow. Nor rage. Nor do they hold, at their core, a single will to impose upon their bodies- each twig and root grows where it will. Trees are not like humans.”
I bit the sharp response forming on my tongue. She seemed to be working her way towards a point- she was looking at the twisted tree now, her face unreadable.
“And humans are not like the other animals,” she continued. “So many thousands of small creatures died where my roots meet the soil, yet they cling to it. Only your kind believe that death happens for a reason.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” I asked, feeling an odd prickle on the back of my neck when she turned her face back towards me.
“I’ve gathered all that up,” she said, softly. “I didn’t know I was doing it, at first, but it all soaked into my roots and into my wood and leaves and core. And one day, many people were killed around me. Heretics.” She smiled at me, as I swallowed. “And I woke up.”
The words stumbled out of me, unbidden. “In the autumn…”
“And my leaves were red. And all around me…” She swept her hands out, indicating the span of the rotten trunk. “They were crying out, where their blood had been spilled onto the wet earth, about how they had been killed, and how it could have come to pass, and I thought, ah…” She placed one hand upon her heart, or where her heart would have been. “That is the meaning I sought, for these blank places in the earth, where once the trees grew thick, where men have chopped them down, dragged out the stumps. And for the first time, I grieved.”
I glanced over at the twisted tree, locked tight and silent. “I see your grief did not last very long.”
“On the contrary, Gabi.” She was smiling again, and I found that I hated that. “I hope that you will let me have yours, too. I can feel it. Let me hold it, keep it safe for you…”
She was reaching towards me, and I skipped back, nearly tripping over Kezia. Hastily I crouched down over her still form, putting my arms over her to glare at the Treewitch.
“Then what about her? Why do you want her- she’s had nothing to grieve over yet, in her short life!”
“Do you think so?” asked the Treewitch, raising her eyebrows over her nonexistent eyes. “I am surprised, to hear that from someone who claims to love her.”
Every muscle in my body tensed up with anger. “What- what do you know about either of us, you rotting stump! All you’ve done is lie and mislead us- you can’t be trusted! And I’ll be damned if I die and help you! You may as well raise Baba Yaga back from the dead for that!”
She tilted her head, and was quiet for a very, very long time, and my throat contracted.
“You can’t, err, do that, can you?”
“Hmm?” She tilted her head the other way. “I’m afraid I may have to take my attention elsewhere for a-”
The ground shuddered, and there was a particularly loud crack, and the Treewitch said, “Hm,” and collapsed on the ground.
“Wha- oi!” I pulled Kezia up against my chest, looking around for some sort of trick, but all was still. The fadua’s body lay unmoving. I pulled some roots up and threw them on her, to no effect- it seemed that she had really gone and left.
“Damn!” I muttered, squeezing Kezia like a doll, and then something hit me on the head.
A piece of something landed on the ground beside me, and I leaned over to look at it: it seemed to be a small chip of wood. As this dawned on me, more bounced off my head and shoulders, making me flinch. I looked up, raising one arm to shield myself from the onslaught, which only seemed to be getting heavier. The reddish mist was swirling in an agitated way, moving upwards as though it was being drawn by some invisible force, and a trickle of colder air filled my nostrils.
The body of the fadua beside me abruptly got up, and I yelped, but it was not moving towards me- rather, it began crawling up the side of the trunk, as more twigs and bits of wood battered down on me. I followed its progress, squinting against the dust clouding the air. The red mist was growing more and more transparent as it swirled upwards, and I could see much farther than before- up and up, to where the sides of the great trunk closed in like a cathedral, and a dark shape was lodged at the very top.
The shape moved, and I realized it was a golem, so high up I could just barely make out his limbs pressed against the walls. White fadua were swarming all around him, scrambling over each other to bite at him, and he flicked in and out of sight beneath their mass. Then he must have done something to shake them off, for I saw many of them suddenly go flying and catch themselves against the trunk.
A little bit of clay landed on the earth beside me with a splat.
Tavi’s huge limbs moved, bracing harder against the inside of the trunk high above, where it narrowed into the canopy, and I heard the wood creaking and splintering in protest- and then, and then, a thin shaft of yellow light sprang down, and hit me on the nose.
“Pascha!” I cried, crossing my eyes to try and look at the light, which was making the dust glitter as it expanded.
You actually did it, you mad fool! I can’t believe it!”
“I did! What on earth does that mean!” I snapped. “Hurry and kill the thing- look at the state of Kezia!”
I can’t see her yet,” replied Pascha, and indeed there was only a thin rectangle of light upon the ground. “I need more room… a little wider…”
“Hurry!” I shouted, even though there was no way he could- again I tilted my head back to squint up at Taavi. So the clay bastard had understood me after all! He could have been more obvious about it- but how could I complain? He had come up with a rather clever way of going about it, splitting the tree from within…
Taavi strained his big arms and legs, pushing the crack wider with a whine of protest from the wood, and the line of light trickled closer to the twisted tree.
But then the fadua caught up with him again, scrambling all over his big body, and Pascha cried, “Gabi-” just as the crack snapped shut.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28433 | Four Uzbek children undergo heart surgery in France with support of Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva’s Foundation
11 May 2019
Four Uzbek children undergo heart surgery in France with support of Lola Karimova-Tillyaevas Foundation
IMG_9502Five Uzbek children with severe forms of congenital heart disease were sent to France for surgery and intensive cardiac care, funded by the You Are Not Alone Foundation.
Four of these children, aged between three months and nine years, from Uzbekistan’s Namangan, Fergana and Tashkent regions, were operated on by a group of leading French cardiac surgeons, led by Professor Olivier Baron, at the paediatric clinic of Nantes. Following the surgical procedures, which lasted an average of seven hours each, the children received postoperative therapy for three weeks.
The fifth child underwent a full examination and comprehensive treatment in the cardiology department at the Nantes paediatric clinic.
The children are now almost fully recovered and returned to Tashkent earlier this week.
During their treatment in France, the children were accompanied by their mothers. To facilitate the parents’ communication with French health workers, we also provided them with a translator so that medical experts could keep parents constantly updated on their child’s progress. Due to the complexity of their condition, the children were kept under medical supervision by the Foundation’s health worker during the Tashkent-Paris flight.
Since 2015, with the financial backing of the Sen Yolg’iz Emassan – You are not alone foundation, leading French doctors have performed over 110 complex heart operations on children from mercy homes (orphanages) and low-income Uzbek families, 20 of which were in France. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28434 | Saturday, December 13, 2014
'This Is Not a Christmas Play' at the Top Secret Comedy Club, 11th December 2014
This is Not a Christmas Play feels like the Christmas special of a sitcom that ran out of ideas a couple of series ago. Worse, someone forgot to pipe in the canned laughter. Were this television we could change the channel, in a theatre, we're trapped in our seats.
The gossamer-thin plot revolves around flatmates Tim (Jordan Kouame) and David (Matthew Leigh). Tim is a slobbish, goofy, unemployed layabout and David is a persnickety, fastidious jobsworth. As odd couples go, they come across as a Poundland Peep Show. Anyway, it's Christmas Eve and David is having his ex-girlfriend around for dinner because reasons and wants Tim out of the house. Polite bickering ensues. This is interrupted by the arrival of Mary (Alice Coles) and Clive (James Unsworth), two burglars who're casing the house under a series of disguises. What follows is a series of unlikely misunderstandings and cases of mistaken identity that should, in theory, result in hilarity. In theory.
There are few things more painful than an unfunny comedy. Uncomfortable embarrassment writhes in your belly as punchlines are greeted with stony silence. It's not like the audience doesn't want to laugh either, we cling to the semi-successful jokes like a drowning man clings to a piece of wreckage. But when the absolute height of humour include lines like: "I can't deliver a baby! I can't even deliver post!" you're in desperate territory.
I should emphasise that I don't blame the cast for this. They're struggling as best they can to get through this material, a dramatic process that appears akin to being trapped in quicksand. By far the best thing here is Jordan Kouame, who puts an heroic effort into wringing every possible drop of humour from this material. Kouame becomes Sisyphus, painstakingly heaving Robert Wallis and Liam Fleming's boulder of a script up Mount Comedy but being periodically steamrolled flat like a Looney Tunes cartoon when it rolls back down.
Matthew Leigh's David is also not entirely devoid of charm. With his high-strung intensity he's a little like Leonard Rossiter's Rigsby, scurrying to and fro on the set and balling his fists in exasperation at his useless flatmate. Coles and Unsworth are similarly blameless, but they're still stuck playing sketches rather than actual characters.
Jordan Kouame as Tim and Matthew Leigh's David
The bare bones of the plot are solid enough: two old friends on bad terms realising each other's qualities in the face of an external threat. Unfortunately this key relationship is very shakily established. Tim comes across as an unsympathetic freeloader who's taking advantage of his friend's goodwill and we come to understand David as a delusional doormat. There's no reason why we should want these two to remain friends, which drains pathos from the conclusion.
That said, none of the above would matter a jot if This is Not a Christmas Play was funny. As it stands there are long sequences that function as gag deserts; where the audience treks, tongue parched and feet blistering, through silent, numb tedium. These aren't sequences in which the jokes fail to land, rather, they're sequences where there are no jokes at all. It's excruciating to be part of an audience that's obviously not enjoying itself, trapped in the doldrums of a dead silence punctuated only by muffled coughs.
After about an hour of loosely plotted, unfunny monotony things eventually just stop. It's less an ending and more like the last few pages of the script fell behind the sofa and no-one bothered to retrieve them. Eventually someone (I think maybe the stage manager) starts clapping. We join in, but this is the applause of relief rather than the applause of praise.
This Is Not a Christmas Play is at the Top Secret Comedy Club until 4 January, Tickets £12 available here.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28443 | Competition: The NY Open,The Blue Belt Curse & Anxiety
9:49 AM Moo 3 Comments
This year I decided to compete again, making this my first tournament at Blue belt and my first tournament in America. It was nice being able to understand the referees and announcements! This competition started with a huge weight cut for me, not really a cut, but a conscious decision to eat much better than I was and to get down to middle or medium for IBJJF. After about 3 months, hours of training, supplements, recovery aids, no cupcakes, limited gluten and a whole lot of scale accountability I was finally down 23 pounds.
I competed in the largest tournament I've ever been involved in: The IBJJF New York Open.This tournament was different in many ways. 1st- I felt so prepared it was ridiculous. I trained more than I ever had before, developed a game plan and felt solid. 2nd- I didn't feel the pressure to impress anyone but myself. For the first time I was truly battling my doubts, my insecurities and anything that told me I was incapable and 3rd- The second I stepped off the mat I felt like I absolutely was meant to be there.
When we arrived at the venue I felt good, I was on weight (in fact 9 pounds under). I paced around the stadium for a while feeling all of the nervous energy. It's truly a unique experience to project all of the emotions the athletes give off. You can actually feel the anxiety, the tension, the hopes, it's truly amazing.
My match was pushed back and finally in the late afternoon I stepped into the bullpen behind Dillon Danis and Paolo Miyao. It's a surreal experience knowing you're about to share a mat with a living legend and it's even more surreal to look up and see all of the eyes on you. I'm no stranger to attention or competition, after many years of rugby you think I'd be used to the pressure. This was a whole new beast.I have had competition anxiety for as long as I can remember, so much so that I actually hired a sports psychologist during my rugby days to deal with the constant hives and panic attacks. He asked me what made me feel most in my element and what comforted me. I told him poetry and he suggested I carry a piece with me to read before each event. That poem was always "Invictus" a piece that both my grandfather and my idol (Nelson Mandela) loved. It was the poem he used to inspire the Springbok South African rugby team, leading them to victory. A piece so dear to me that I have it forever tattooed on my ribs.
Competing at a higher level taught me there is nothing I cannot deal with. I stepped on the mat and my opponent vanished. All I saw was the self doubt I had been carrying around for the last five years, all I heard was the voice that said "you're getting older, you're not as fast or athletic as you used to be" and I pushed them both out of my mind. I replaced every single insecurity with a reason why I deserved to be there and the reason why I deserved to win. The negative voices were drowned out by the support of my coaches, my boyfriend and team mates.The match was honestly a blur, but when I stood up, tied my belt and my hand was raised I knew I'd conquered much more than a jiu jitsu match. I faced every single doubt that told me I wasn't good enough and won.
The next day I competed in no gi, going up 2 weight classes to Super heavy. I felt the voice creeping in again: "they have the weight advantage," "you don't train no gi," "why did you sign up?" I immediately began repeating:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
I heard one person laugh and say "look she's praying cause she's about to get destroyed." I didn't care. I was in my zone. I won my first match by ankle lock and lost in the finals to a competitor who forced me to work harder than I ever had before. I can't remember ever being prouder than I was on that day and I can't remember a time where I worked harder to prove to myself what I already should have known, what my boyfriend tells me on a constant basis, what my team mates are and encourage me to be: I'm a warrior and if I can beat my toughest opponent (myself) I can do pretty much anything. I cannot wait to step out there and prove it to myself again.
1. What an asshole (the heckler)! Sorry that you had to put up with assholes while you were trying to focus on your match!
1. Yeah, total asshole. It was surprising, but in the end I think it ultimately motivated me. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28449 | No place for paper toys
After thousands of years of war for sameness, petrification of human consciousness has overcome the biological limits of humans in the creation of world of objects. They have finally become objects themselves, sculptures with petrified consciousness. In the extremely violent surrounding of sameness, almost all forms of life have been extinguished or marginalized.
This is the story of a paper toy who dared to stand up against the sameness and intended to occupy it’s space in their world of object.
Annual exhibition of HDLU members, 2013.
Baranja Animation Festival (BAF!), Croatia
Animateka, Ljubljana, Slovenia
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28478 | You agreed to make a shopping tour with sexy Mistress Jenny. You both enter a store as she fill her cart with expensive products. She wants to get your credit card to the limit and so she goes on. Then finally you are allowed to pay everything for her. As reward you are allowed to have a short look at her toes. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28482 | Saturday, June 20, 2015
We cooked with Blue Apron this week and someone is "unimpressed."
Chances are if you're reading this blog, you've heard of Blue Apron. It's everywhere. If you haven't heard of it you can click here, but it's basically a meal-kit delivery service. ( similar is "Plated" or "Hello Fresh") They send you meals based on your family size and dietary preference (vegetation, pescetarian etc.) in pre-proportioned ingredients with step-by-step directions so you cook it yourself at home. And they deliver weekly right to your doorstep. I had signed up on numerous other blogs for the "two free meals" deal but was on the waiting list because they weren't delivering in Texas yet. So when I got an email a few weeks ago that they were coming to this area, I signed up immediately. We aren't too "adventerous" recipe-wise, and tend to get stuck in a rut of making the same things over and over again so I thought this would be fun.
I was going to try to surprise John and set up my delivery for a Saturday thinking we could cook together Saturday and Sunday night. Well come Saturday, I was watching the clock and tracking the package like a psycho and it never came. So when it wasn't here at a certain point and dinner plans started to come into conversation, I had to tell him about it. Surprise ruined. Strike 1. I was totally thinking that it wasn't coming ever, and I was going to have to call and have that awkward conversation and ask for a refund and all that not-fun-stuff. Then later that night when I went to take Ted out for the last time, (about 10pm) there it was. Whoever dropped it off didn't even knock. If I hadn't been taking Ted out it would have sat there all night and been spoiled by morning. Strike 2. (you see where this is going right?) It does come in a "refrigerated box" so it was fine, but the fact that it was on a Fedex truck for over 12 hours made me a little nervous.
The 3 meals we received were:
1. Salmon Burgers with Creme Fraiche, Aurugula & Potato Salad.
2. Arepas de Carne Molida with Avocado & Pickled Jalapeño.
3. Chicken Piccata with Fresh Linguine Pasta & Garlic Chives.
Instead of boring you with the step-by-step details of the cooking process, etc. I decided to let John tell you how he felt about it. I interviewed him this morning over coffee, and he took it very, very seriously. (warning- foul language)
What were your thoughts on using Blue Apron this week? J- "No. Too broad of question."
Ok, what did you like about it? if anything? J- "I thought that the food was pretty good. Used some pretty fresh ingrediants and they gave you everything you needed to make the meal...didn't have to go to the store, that's a big one for me." (he never goes to the store lol)
Anything you particularly disliked about it? J- "It made a lot of dishes. If you mess something up, you're done. Especially with the portion sizes. If you drop a spice on the floor, your f*cked. You lose it. And I think it would have been better if they would have done something you could throw in the oven. If you're not good with a frying pan, you're screwed. Baking is for dummies."
What did you think about the packaging?J- "Not impressed. It came in the box with the foil and all that, and it was actually kind of warm by the time that we got it. It wasn't super cold by any means. I thought that was a bit cheap."
What was your favorite meal? J- "The Chicken Piccata. I mean we could pull that one off by ourself though, you know?"
Favorite ingrediant? J- "Out of the whole thing? The capers." (we already had capers lol)
Do you think they were fairly healthy meals? J- "No. Because I think they were just so small. That's like saying a lean cuisine is healthy. You have to eat 6 lean cuisines to feel full."
Did you think the cooking itself was easy enough for normal people to pull off? J- "For normal people? Absolutely not! We are semi-decent at cooking and I thought that was pretty difficult. Do you agree? I mean, that salmon thing? No. Full f*cking process and not that easy. No, no, no."
Was it better than what I normally cook? J- "No. Not really. I mean, yeah, yes and no. It had some cool unique flavors but would I prefer to eat what we normally eat."
But do you think it's a fun activity to do with someone else? J- "Yeah cooking together with someone else can be fun. With your spouse, but..I mean yeah, I guess cooking with your spouse is good. I mean we have our normal routine though with how we cook, like I handle certain things and you handle certain things, so trying new things is hard because no one knows what they should be doing."
Do you think it would be cool to buy for someone as a gift? Like for newlyweds? J- "No! Newlyweds? Absolutely not! They would have to clean 800 dishes! F*cking annulment!"
Do you wish it included dessert? J- "No. are you kidding me? Do you know how long that would have taken? Four days to make bread pudding with banana crumble or something. Making creme brulee with a torch or something. No."
Did you learn any cool new skills though? J- "With cooking? No, I didnt learn anything."
What do you think the best part about it was? J- "We got to try some unique flavors that we wouldn't normally. Like it forces you to have to try new things. If you go to a restaurant you always order the same things. Like a salmon burger? I would never order that at a restaurant."
And the worst part part about it? J- "I would say the worst part's a nice meal with good quality ingredients, but a lot of room for error. Like it's cool to learn how to cook, but you kind of want someone to tell you "yeah you flip that now" and the card doesn't do that. I know it's not supposed to be perfect but...not impressed."
Did it bring you out of your comfort zone though? J- "A little bit."
Would you use it, or another food delivery service again? J- "No. What I would do is look up more recipes and try to figure out how to combine things that you buy at the store, like if you bought a jar of capers, make a few meals with capers. I mean we do a good job with that anyways, but try to venture out a little bit more and try new things. I'd be willing to try more complex recipes."
So I take it you're not impressed overall. Is that correct? J- "I am unimpressed yeah, I thought that thing was kind of bullsh*t."
Any other thoughts? J- "No leftovers."
So there you have it, haha. I agree with a few of his points, but I am the kind of person who thinks everything is great so I can also add some good points.
True, there were no leftovers. Which it's my opinion that if you're going to spend time cooking something good, double the recipe so you can have it the next day too. And the portions were on the smaller side, for him especially. It was a lot of effort for not a lot of food in the end. But they were pretty, and a lot more "gourmet" than anything I usually do. I definitely learned a thing or two, technique-wise. But some things were harder and didn't turn out so great. Like the second meal, the "tostadas" as I called them. Our pans aren't non-stick, so that didn't work out too well. They just burned, so we had to toss them out and use tortillas that we already had. And it was only 8 oz. of beef, so it was hardly enough. But the toppings really made all the difference. I think that was my favorite part of this, the addition of all the fresh ingredients. It reminded me that a little lemon or lime can make anything better. And sometimes a vegetable doesn't need to be dressed up much. A little arugula salad with just olive oil, salt & pepper on the side is quick and easy. But, on the contrary, all of that fresh produce at once doesn't last long. I prefer to pick things like that up as I need them. Once we went to use the chives on the third day, they had gone bad. (..Strike 10) I felt rushed to use it all fast, and cooking extensive meals three days in a row was a little much. Especially for week nights.
But most importantly, it really doesn't work for our budget. The 2-person meal plan is normally $59.95 a week, and with the promo I got it for $39.95. We try to keep it around $100 per week on groceries, (key word is try lol) so personally, I could stretch $60 a bit further than this.
And maybe it's just me, (I feel like I say that a lot) but it was not at all as easy and glamorous as everyone makes it look. I mean, just in the last week I've seen it here and here. And I didn't look anywhere near as good as this! Maybe it's just us, (here I go again) but we also try to cook quick. We are efficient. And I think maybe that was our problem too. When we don't know what we're cooking already, we make a way bigger mess because we are scrambling trying to keep all the parts moving. Pulling out a new pan for every little thing, knives everywhere and a cutting board for each individual herb. Haha. We really did have the sink full of dishes by the end. It's pretty funny now. But that isn't necessarily Blue Apron's fault.
Needless to say...we aren't continuing with their services. But I am going to search for some new recipes to use capers in ;)
1. I would hate it for the mere fact that you don't get any leftovers. If I slave over the stove, I make extra so we can eat it for lunch the following day. Sorry it was a letdown!
1. Oh I know, completely agree. Even better if it lasts for two more meals lol.
2. Sometimes the meal delivery plans seem so appealing but I just don't think it would be worth the money in the end. We like left overs and what if we hated the meal? I loved reading both of your reviews- I'm pretty sure my hubs wouldn't be on board as it sounds like he thinks a lot like yours, ha!
1. I know, it's taking such a risk! I don't really care for spicy things so I was really worried we were going to get something I couldn't eat. I think most guys would be in agreeance that it kind of sucked lol. Plus, they don't really care about presentation or vegetable servings or things like that. I could see myself liking it better if I was like, single and lived alone. But that is depressing sounding haha.
3. Haha his interview was so entertaining, my favorite was ""No! Newlyweds? Absolutely not! They would have to clean 800 dishes! F*cking annulment!". I've looked into these different things so often but I always just end up cooking on my own, so much easier.
1. Lol I'm never sure how to portray him on here, because he is soo hilarious, but he's also totally innapropriate and super opinionated haha. But yeah, I wouldn't even bother! I really thought I was going to be writing a good review about it, but it just wasn't that great. Plus, I went to the grocery store yesterday, and kept thinking how therapeutic it is sometimes lol.
4. Glad I read this before I ordered! I've been hesitant about these services. There's another company like Blue Apron and I can't remember the name of it now but it seems like a lot of money and work for what they actually send you. Think I'll hold off and just keep hittin' the store myself ;)
1. Yeah it is a bit more than I would like to spend. I could see it being fun if I was younger and single and living with a roommate or my sister again, maybe that would be fun. But now that I'm a "family" (I know only a family of two but still) I can't really justify it.
5. This was so interesting! To me Blue Apron sounds fun, but I can't fork over the cash.
Shae @ Current Habits
1. It was fun to try out for a week, theres no harm in trying something once ;)
6. So interesting to read your perceptions of Blue Apron. I use the service and I really like it (also because I hate going to the grocery store). I always feel like there is enough food and the meals are MUCH more adventurous than anything I would make (but I'm a very unadventurous chef haha). I think it's great you shared your review, it is super thorough and provides a different perspective than all of the sponsored content out there (:
1. Oh they were totally more adventurous than what I normally do! I felt like a real life chef doing some of those moves..but I think our problem is also that we just like what we like and we're used to our routines- the list making, shopping, cooking, lunches for the week etc. I don't mean to say it was horrible by any means, and I hope it didn't come across that way! I think I was just somewhat disappointed because all I have heard is RAVE reviews about it. But, like you said..I have only heard the "sponsored" versions lol ;)
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28484 |
Janine Melnitz quotes
[after the team finally gets their first job] WE GOT ONE!!!
[answering a customer] Ghostbusters, whaddaya want?!
[answering the door and seeing a cop there] Dropping off or picking up?
Teenage Nerd:[Venkman has just administered a static electric shock to him] HEY!! I'm getting a little TIRED of this!!!
Dr. Peter Venkman: You volunteered, didn't you?! We're paying you, aren't we?
Teenage Nerd: Yeah, but I didn't know you were going to give me electric shocks!! What are you trying to prove here, anyway?
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm studying the effect of negative reinforcement on ESP ability.
Teenage Nerd: THE EFFECT?!! I'll tell you what the effect is! IT'S PISSING ME OFF!!!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Well then maybe my theory is correct!!!
Teenage Nerd: You can KEEP the five bucks, I'VE HAD IT!!
Dr. Peter Venkman: I WILL, Mister!! (Teenage Nerd slams the door behind him on his way out.) You may as well get used to that. That's the kind of resentment your gift is gonna provoke in a lot of people.
Teenage Girl: You really think I've got it, Dr. Venkman?
Dr. Peter Venkman: You're no fluke, Jennifer.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Hey Egon, you know, this reminds me of the time that you tried to drill a hole through your head.
Dr. Egon Spengler: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Have you, or any member of your family, ever been diagnosed schizophrenic...mentally incompetent?
Alice (librarian): My uncle thought he was Saint Jerome.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'd call that a big yes.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: [about to capture their first ghost] Get her!
Dr. Peter Venkman: [later, when the ghost has scared them out of their wits] 'Get her'? That was your whole plan? 'Get her'? Tee hee.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Are you guys serious about this catching a ghost?
Dr. Egon Spengler: I'm always serious.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Egon, I'm gonna take back some of the things I said about you. (Takes out a candy bar and hands it to Egon)''ve earned it.
(Ray chuckles at both of them)
Dr. Peter Venkman: For whatever reasons, Ray, call it... fate, call it luck, call it karma, I believe everything happens for a reason. I believe that we were destined to get thrown outta this dump.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: For what purpose?
Dr. Peter Venkman: To go into business for ourselves. [Takes a swig of schnapps]
Dr. Raymond Stantz: This ecto-containment unit that Spengler and I talked about is going to take a load of bread to capitalize. Where are we going to get the money?
Dr. Peter Venkman: [Takes another swig] I don't know, Ray. I don't know.
Dr. Peter Venkman: [exiting a bank] You're not going to lose the house. Everybody has three mortgages nowadays.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: I know, but at 19%? You didn't even bargain with the guy.
Dana Barrett: That's the bedroom... But nothing ever happened in there.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What a crime...
Dr. Peter Venkman: They're usually pretty stiff.
Dana Barrett: You're more like a game show host.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I know. I'll prove myself to you.
Dana Barrett: That's not necessary.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Then you'll say, 'Pete Venkman's a guy who can get things done. I wonder what makes him tick? I wonder if he'd be interested in knowing what makes me tick.' I bet you'll be thinking about me, after I'm gone.
Dana Barrett: I bet I will. [shoves him out]
Dr. Peter Venkman: [pushes door back open] No kiss?
Dr. Peter Venkman: [chuckles] No, we're exterminators. Someone saw a ****roach up on twelfth [the twelfth floor].
Man at Elevator: That's gotta be some ****roach.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Bite your head off, man.
Dr. Ray Stantz: [entering elevator] Going up?
Man at Elevator: I'll take the next one.
(Inside the elevator.)
Dr. Ray Stantz: You it' just occurred to me that we really haven't had a successful test of this equipment.
Dr. Egon Spengler: I blame myself.
Dr. Peter Venkman: So do I.
Dr. Ray Stantz: Well, no sense worrying about it now.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back.
Dr. Ray Stantz: Yeah. Well, let's get ready. Switch me on.
(Egon turns on Ray's pack. It emits a strange sound and begins humming. Egon backs away from it.)
Dr. Peter Venkman [nervously staring down Slimer]: Come in... Ray.
Dr. Rawmond Stantz: Venkman? I saw it, I saw it, I saw it!!
Dr. Peter Venkman: It's right here, Ray. It's looking at me.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Ugly little spud, isn't he?
Dr. Peter Venkman: I think he can hear you, Ray.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Don't move, it won't hurt you.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: VENKMAN!!! Venkman!! Venkman!! Pete! Are you okay?
Dr. Peter Venkman: He slimed me.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: That's GREAT!!! ACTUAL PHYSICAL CONTACT!!! Can you move?
Dr. Egon Spengler: [over walkie-talkie] Ray, come in please.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I feel so funky!
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm a little fuzzy on the whole "good/bad" thing here. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal!
Dr. Peter Venkman: That's bad. Okay. All right, important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
Winston Zeddemore: Ah, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say.
Dana Barrett: [possessed by the Gatekeeper] Are you the Keymaster?
Dr. Peter Venkman: Not that I know of. [Door immediately slams in his face]
Dana Barrett: [possessed by the Gatekeeper] Do you want this body?
Dr. Peter Venkman: Is this a trick question?
Dana Barrett: There is no Dana... there is only Zuul.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Oh Zuulie, you little nut, now, come on....
Dana Barrett: [deep, monstrous voice] There is no Dana, only ZUUL!
Dr. Peter Venkman: What a lovely singing voice you must have.
Janine Melnitz: Would you like some coffee, Mr. Tully?
Louis Tully: [To Egon] Do I?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Yes, have some.
Louis Tully: Yes, have some!
Louis Tully: [after the Containment Unit explodes thanks to Walter Peck] This is it! This is the sign!
Janine Melnitz: Yeah, it's a sign alright. We're going out of business!
Walter Peck: Captain, I want these men arrested! They're in criminal violation of the Environmental Protection Act! And this explosion is the direct result of it!
Dr. Egon Spengler: YOUR MOTHER!!!
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Cold-riveted girders, with cores of pure selenium.
Dr. Peter Venkman: [to everyone who's not a Ghostbuster] Everyone getting this so far?
Dr. Raymond Stantz No! Nobody ever made them like this! The architect was either a certified genius or an authentic wacko!
Winston Zeddmore: Hey, wait a minute. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hold it! Now, are we actually gonna go before a federal judge, and tell him that some moldy Babylonian God is going to drop in on Central Park West, and start tearing up the city?!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Sumerian, not Babylonian.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Yeah. Big difference.
Winston Zeddmore: No offense, guys, but I've gotta get my own lawyer.
Louis Tully: I am the Keymaster!
Dana Barrett: I am the Gatekeeper!
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Everything was fine [with our system] until our power grid was shut off by dickless here.
Walter Peck: They caused an explosion!
Mayor: [To Peter] Is this true?
Dr. Peter Venkman: Yes, it's true. [slight pause] This man has no dick.
[Peck then tries to attack Dr. Venkman but is kept away by others in the room]
Dr. Peter Venkman: Well, that's what I heard!
[Note: Censored version has Venkman saying "This man is some kind of rodent, I don't know which".]
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr. Raymond Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling!
Winston Zeddmore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - MASS HYSTERIA!
Dr. Peter Venkman: If we're wrong, then nothing happens. We'll go to jail. Peacefully. Quietly. We'll enjoy it. But if we're right, and we can stop this thing... Lenny... you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Hey. Where do these stairs go?
Dr. Peter Venkman: They go up.
[Preparing to confront Gozer]
Dr. Peter Venkman: Well, whatever it is, it's gotta get by us!
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Right!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Go get her, Ray!
[Ray glares at him]
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Gozer the Gozerian? Good evening. As a duly-designated representative of the City, County and State of New York, I order you to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place of origin or to the next convenient parallel dimension.
Dr. Peter Venkman: That oughta do it, thanks very much Ray.
Gozer: Are you a god?
[Ray looks at the others, who all nod] Dr. Raymond Stantz: [hesitant]
Gozer: Then...DIEEE!!
[Gozer begins shocking the Ghostbusters with lighting]
Winston Zeddmore: Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "YES!!"
[After believing they've defeated Gozer] Winston Zeddmore: We had the tools, we had the talent!
Dr. Peter Venkman: It's Miller Time.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: [sigh of resignation] It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man.
Dr. Peter Venkman: [while seeing Stay-Puft walk towards the building and the Ghostbusters] Well, that's something you don't see every day.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something that I loved from my childhood. Something that would never ever possibly destroy us. Mr. Stay-Puft.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Nice thinking, Ray.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: We used to roast Stay-Puft Marshmallows, by the fire at Camp Waconda.
Dr. Peter Venkman [looks at Egon]: Ray has gone bye-bye, Egon. What have you got left?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Sorry, Venkman. I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Don't look directly at the trap!
Dr. Egon Spengler: I looked at the trap, Ray!
» More Quotes from
» Back to the |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28487 | Freeze Panes In Excel 2007
Freeze panes in Excel so you always know which column is which
Otherwise, if you have a long and complicated table, you may lose track.
Long Tables With Many Columns
By default, when you scroll down a table of data, the colun headings you so lovingly crafted will disappear off the screen. If you have a small table with only a few columns, it will probably be easy to remember what data is held in each column and so it doesn't matter that you can't see those column headings. On the other hand, if you have a large table that has many columns, without those headings to remind you, you may very soon forget which column is which. This is where freezing panes comes in. When you freeze panes in Excel, the headings will remain fixed in place while the data scrolls.
How To Freeze Panes
Firstly, you don't need to work on data that has been converted to a table to freeze panes, although in this example I am. Click View > Window > Freeze Panes. You get three options:
Freeze Panes In Microsoft Excel 2007
We'll look at the option to Freeze Top Row first as that's the most simple to understand. Column headings are often displayed in the top row, which is why freezing the top row is a popular option. When you choose this option, a discrete line appears beneath the top row, indicating the frozen region. When you scroll downwards, the top row will always be displayed where it currently is.
To remove the frozen panes, click the same Freeze Panes button again but this time select Unfreeze Panes. This unfreezes all rows and columns.
It may be that you have column headings that span more than one row, or a even row headings. These can all be frozen by making a carefully chosen cell active and then choosing the Freeze Panes option from the Freeze Panes menu. For example, consider the following example.
Freezing Panes In Microsoft Excel 2007
If the table of data was wider, so that you had to scroll horizontally, freezing the two leftmost columns in addition to the top row would be a good idea. Then as you scrolled right, you would still be able to see the year and financial period that the data related to, as they would be frozen in place. To freeze the top row and two leftmost columns, you must first of all make the cell active whose top left corner rests at the intersection of the bottom of the row and right edge of the column you want to freeze. It's easier to show you!
Freezing Panes In Microsoft Excel 2007 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28491 | Get a Kick-Ass Look Like Zoe Saldana's in 'Colombiana'
There’s something undeniably hot about a gorgeous woman that knows how to use a gun. Girls want to be the heroine and guys want to be with her. Zoe Saldana in "Colombiana" is no exception.
Of course, this is Hollywood and it's not like Zoe can go around looking like a schlub while she's kicking ass.
Alas, you've come to the right place. Click through to see where to find looks similar to Zoe's character, Cataleya, so that you too can turn up the heat in your closet. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28496 | Boilers That Contain Asbestos
Asbestos was often used in boilers until it's ban from use in boilers in 1984.
Several pre-1984 boiler models are still in use and as such, working on these can constitute a danger.
Click Here for more information on appliances containing asbestos.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28506 | Annoucement: New Java and Selenium batch is starting from 9th Jan 2020, Please enroll ASAP!
What are the Challenges you faced in Selenium?
Selenium Interview questions- What are the Challenges you faced in Selenium? Selenium Interview Question for Fresher and Experienced
Challenges faced using selenium automation testing, and how to solve them
1. Image or text overlapping issue
2. No facility to deal with Captcha, Bar Code
3. Doesn’t support any non web based (Like Win 32, Java Applet, Java Swing, .Net Client Server etc) applications
6. Bitmap comparison is not supported by Selenium
7. Any reporting related capabilities, you need to depend on third party tools
9. Difficult to identify dynamic objects
10. Working with frames
11. Selenium test playback is slow (IDE)
12. JavaScript sandbox, Flash, Applets, Silverlight, and HTML 5’s Canvas all present problems in Selenium
13. Dealing with pop-up windows: Selenium can sometimes fail to record common popups in web apps. The Alert interface brings with it the following commands: void dismiss(), void accept (), getText(), void sendKeys(String stringToSend). The first two basically click on the “cancel” and “OK” buttons respectively on a popup window.
14. Timeout resulting from synchronization problems: One should ideally use selenium.IsElementPresent(locator) to verify that the object is in a loop with Thread.Sleep
15. Testing Flash apps: To automate flash apps with Selenium, one can use Flex Monkium. The application source code must be compiled with the swc files generated by Flex Monkium. Then the app and the Selenium IDE are connected, and the tests can be recorded with IDE.
16. Unexpected error launching Internet Explorer. Browser zoom level should be set to 100% by default for the IE browser to overcome this error
17. Protected Mode must be set to the same valueerror occurs when trying to run Selenium WebDriver on a fresh Windows machine. This issue can be fixed by using capabilities when launching IE
18. Cross Browser Testing Issues
19. Ajax Components
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28513 | English| മലയാളം
The municipality of Neyyattinkara is the major town on the banks of Neyyar River. Neyyattinkara lies 18 km to the south of Thiruvananthapuram city on the National Highway 47 to Kanyakumari.The name Neyyattinkara in Malayalam literally means the shore (kara) of Neyyar River. Neyyar River flows from Agasthyarkoodam, the highest peak (1868m above MSL) in southern end of the Western Ghats. The taluk has a total population of 858,991 with 88.6% classified as rural. Most of the urban population lies within the municipality area which is densely occupied. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28515 | As a Windows 10 Insider, I would always latest version of Windows on VMWare Player, Workstation or VirtualBox. Recently I was trying to set up a Windows Phone 10/UWP development environment inside a VMWare virtual machine.
I tried to enable Hyper-V platform components in my Windows 10 Preview Virtual machine. It shows an error.
Hyper-V cannot be installed: A hypervisor is already running
• Unable to use Hyper-V platform inside a Windows 10 virtual machine
• When trying to enable/install Hyper-V in a Windows 10 virtual machine, you will see the above error:
Solution for this problem is to edit your VMware Virtual Machine configuration(.vmx) file in your Windows 10 Virtual machine stored location.
• Switch off/Shutdown your VMware virtual machine
• Edit the corresponding .vmx file
hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE”
vhv.enable = "TRUE"
mce.enable = "TRUE"
• Save the changes
• Start your Windows 8 VMware Virtual machine
VMware Official Knowledgebase Reference Link:
Hope that help you guys with similar problems. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28520 | June 4, 2014
What to Watch: OITNB
After a heinous winter, the last thing I want to do is spend time inside.
I'm all like, sunshine, sunshine, fresh air, sunshine. What could possibly make me want to curl up on my couch in pajama bottoms with a bowl of popcorn balancing on my bare abdomen? The return of Orange is the New Black!
I previously wrote about my love for the show (and the book) and was elated when I learned that season two was a go!
Netflix Canada graciously invited me to the premiere screening at Malaparte at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto on Monday. The evening was spent drinking signature cocktails (must learn how to make Red's Moscow Mule) and watching the first two episodes. I won't spoil anything, as there are still a few days left until the launch. However, after watching two episodes, I'm itching to find out more. What will happen to Piper and Larry? Who are these new characters? Will Red ever wear white again?
I'm a fan of television shows that portray not only strong women, but real faces, real bodies and real personalities. There is a scene in the second season when a bunch of older inmates sit together and they say, "We're invisible here, we might as well stick together." Shows like OITNB feature older women and transgender women, and in turn, remove their invisibility in popular culture by giving them a voice onscreen. The show delves into each inmate's back story, and the fear or stigma that you ever associated with them, turns to support. You choose your favourites; you root for their success.
Draw the blinds, grab your jammies; Orange is the New Black returns to Netflix on Friday June 6th.
1. Such a great show!! Can't wait for June 6th!!! :)
2. I need to watch this. I am coming over. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28524 | Monday, June 7, 2010
Blimey! Pretentious Wankers At NYT Real Estate Section Now Refer To Apartments As "Flats."
The NYT appears to have introduced a bizarre style change in its Real Estate section: it now uses the British expression "flat" to describe apartments.
Is this a jolly good idea, or some numpty's idea of a joke?
Or maybe it's all part of the NYT's fevered competition with a certain wrinkly Australian bloke who owns a British media outlet or two.
From a photo caption on page 4:
Rodrigo Garcia, a hospital administrator, rents a flat in a town house on a block acclaimed for its architecture.
From a caption on page 8:
Jordan Cooper is a founder of JumpPost, a new Web site that gives subscribers a heads-up about flats that will soon be available.
From a caption on page 9:
A flat on East 74th was smaller than the old one, but just as pricey.
Dictionaries -- American ones, that is -- refer to the real-estate usage of "flat" as "chiefly British," if they refer to it at all.
It appears that the usage of "flat" in the real-estate section began just last month -- during the last fortnight, to be exact.
It popped up a couple of times in Joyce Cohen's column, "The Hunt," in reference to a "ground-floor flat" and a "railroad flat." A May 23 headline reported that "Jessica Hecht Buys Flat In Landmark Building."
Yesterday appears to mark the first time the word "flat" (for apartment) crept into standard usage at the NYT, which tends to avoid British slang in print. But you know how it is with pretentious wankers, sometimes they can't help themselves!
Anonymous said...
My grand parents lived in middle class homes in Chicago from 1900-1980s. When I visited there in the 70s, my mother called one of the homes a "two flat" because the first and second floors were second apartments. My grandparents did not even speak English in their house regularly and certainly never learned the Queen's english.
Not snooty city + not snooty neighborhood + not snooty grandparents (clerks) = not snooty.
Just because the Queen uses some word doesn't make it uppercrust.
Anonymous said...
I have to agree with you on this one. Though it sounds fussy at first, it just seems odd for them to use British English words. If that's the case then they need to refer to hallways as corridors, sidewalks as pavement, big rigs as lorries, etc.
They should at least be consistent!
Anonymous said...
there is English and American English. No such thing as British english.
Anonymous said...
I agree with the "spot on." So odd that phrase has emerged.
It just looks stupid for American writers writing for an American publication to use British idioms or words used almost exclusively in Britain.
More words they'll have to change if they use "flats" instead of "apartments"
highway = motorway
chips = crisps
fries = chips
cell phone = mobile phone
those copy editors better get cracking!
Anonymous said...
The Times seems to love the Britain. They displayed quite prominently on their home page as well as some prime A1 space to the recent British election. I don't remember them doing the same for other countries. Or have they?
Yet oddly, their reports from Britain contain little original reporting. It's always along the lines of "the BBC reported..." or "John Smith told The Telegraph..."
JV said...
Dear NYT Picker,
Did you catch this CS campaign on FB? Can you please let your readers know...
Anonymous said...
Flats has been around for a long time. Perhaps you never read any Jack Kerouac, and you never heard of a "cold water flat"? More worrisome than the adoption of a British expression is its provenance as a term borrowed from boho hipsterism now just another condiment on the table of the real estate market.
Anonymous said...
Do you or do you not favor the real estate section as distinct and deserving of allocated funds? Because what seems to be bothering you surpasses consistent misuse and departure from guidelines, and one may infer a position taken that if actualized would do away with a few jokers here and there.
Anthony - the Indianapolis Real Estate guy said...
Funny post. I actually kind of like the British term 'flat'. Still, I get what you're saying--it does connote a certain pretense.
Anonymous said...
In Chicago you also refer to your city as a "city" instead of just a big dumb town.
Christopher Gray said...
The "Streetscapes" column has used the term <> dozens of times since its inception in 1987. Occasionally it has been in the context of a name, like "the Navarro Flats," sometimes it has been hedged by a referential explanation, but more often than not it has just been straight usage.
The term "flat" is an excellent way to distinguish a working class tenement from a multiple dwelling built for a slightly higher economic class.
It appears that, in The Mother Country, the term first indicated a dwelling unit on a single floor (hence, "flat") carved out of a multi-floor residence, like a converted mansion, and in the 1880s, when the apartment revolution swept England (in advance of the United States), made the jump.
In the United States, the term was at first customarily used as "French flat", indicating the general consensus that the middle- and upper-income multiple dwelling was of French origin.
In 1868 the Real Estate Record & Guide used the term in a tentative way: "There is also a system of building tenement houses in vogue in the city of Paris which is very highly spoken of. These houses are called ‘flats’, and it is stated that the most fastidious noblemen can dwell in them, surrounded by all the elegance that his taste and station may require."
And, an 1869 advertisement in the Brooklyn Eagle for Duffield Terrace said it had been built "in the manner of a French Flat," suggesting general familiarity with the term, albeit a slight hesitancy.
A very casual search of the commonly used digitized publications finds no earlier usage, although such is very, very likely. Although sometimes considered archaic, brief search of the Times for a single sample year - 1960 - finds multiple usage of the term without quotes, apology or explanation, in news articles, headlines and advertisements.
But the origins of the term - and its later social implications - would make an interesting study.
Christopher Gray
Anonymous said...
I like it because it is one syllable versus three for apartment.
I think it is OK for NYT to decide this is a better word and thereby contribute to its standardization in American English. Websters will pick it up if it catches on.
But your post is very entertaining. I enjoy your blog a lot. I'd talk to you if you were a crank caller. Too bad NYT won't.
Hattie said...
I always thought of a flat as being one floor of a multi-story house originally built for one family, whereas an apartment was rooms in a building called (guess what) an apartment building.
Anonymous said...
No that's really interesting what it meant 100 years ago to different neighbourhoods. it's debatable that the neighbouring concatenation can variously mark a ‘flat’ as a hole in a pension, a loft, a freaking cardboard shack & to pontinue grabbing a reader’s attn esp. one who may find apt too generic, a writer may opt for flat to attract the right target but still guys,
let’s not willingly (^+$] performative armature to
confer false hopes
about a space, dammit, unless you own the property.
Anonymous said...
you think that's pretentious? here's the times' position on "go missing":
"Go Missing: Many readers have expressed strong aversion to this expression, but I’m not really sure why. It seems to be a Britishism originally, but has become common. Yes, 'disappear' can also serve, but 'go missing' seems unobjectionable to me."
Anonymous said...
Here in the UK, newspapers and broadcasters make a point of not using any Americanisms. They're British publications and news segments. I'm surprised the New York Times wants to use Britishisms. It looks silly really.
Anonymous said...
The Times has been using "flat" for an eternity. Check the archives back to 1851. You'll see hundreds if not thousands of references. Here's just one, from 1981.
Anonymous said...
This whole debate leaves me flat. I'm retiring to my corner niche.
Anonymous said...
btw, re. "go missing": i think "is missing" or "has been missing" is more in line with american idiom. (and then of course there are always alternatives like "vanished" or "disappeared.")
FGFM said...
Didn't Carl Sandburg say something like that? Go Rangers!
PS - another funny thing about the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago is that they call submarine sandwiches "poor boys." Not sure where they stand on the pop/soda thing.
Anonymous said...
"I'm surprised the New York Times wants to use Britishisms. It looks silly really."
guess the times is the madonna of newspapers.
oh, and the times doesn't understand why "go missing" is objectionable? maybe it should include "affectation" in its list of 50 words.
"Madonna...drew snickers...when she announced the winner of the Turner prize in a distinct British accent.... But her spokeswoman, Liz Rosenberg, wrote in an email, 'She does naturally pick up on languages and sounds of people around her... It's certainly not meant as an affect... When she's back in New York for a while, she gets right into the New Yawk sound.' "
Anonymous said...
Oh hell ! Flat is just a more satisfying word to say!
N'est pas? ( a western Canadian ... ) |
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28533 | About the CAAT Plan
Unlike the situation facing other unions and their pension plans, the CAAT Plan is excluded from collective bargaining under the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act. Instead, the CAAT Pension Plan is governed an independent Board of Trustees with representatives from OPSEU Academic and Support Staff, OCASA (Administrative Staff), and Colleges Ontario. The employer and employee trustees jointly make decisions for the benefit of all plan members. Link to: CAAT Pension Plan Web Site
Part Time, Partial Load, and Sessional Faculty can participate too!
A common misconception is that you must be a member of the union to contribute to the CAAT Pension Plan. Not so. If you work as a part time, partial load, or sessional college faculty member in Ontario, the CAAT Plan refers to you as “Other Than Regular Full-Time” (OTRFT) employee. An OTRFT employee is technically defined by the Plan as someone with a fixed contract end date. As of January 1, 2014 OTRFT members can opt to join the Plan immediately upon hire. |
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Fabrizio Rossi (fabrizio.rossi***at***univaq.it)
Stefano Smriglio (stefano.smriglio***at***univaq.it)
Abstract: This paper introduces interdiction branching, a new branching method for binary integer programs that is designed to overcome the difficulties encountered in solving problems for which branching on variables is inherently weak. Unlike traditional methods, selection of the disjunction in interdiction branching takes into account the best feasible solution found so far. In particular, the method is based on computing an improving solution cover, which is a set of variables of which at least one must be nonzero in any improving solution. From an improvingsolution cover, we can obtain a branching disjunction with desirable properties. Any minimal such cover yields a disjunction in which multiple variables are fixed in each child node and for which each child node is guaranteed to contain at least one improving solution. Computing a minimal improving solution cover amounts to solving a discrete bilevel program, which is difficult in general. In practice, a solution cover, although not necessarily minimal nor improving, can be found using a heuristic that achieves a profitable trade-off between the size of the enumeration tree and the computational burden of computing the cover. An empirical study on a test suite of difficult binary knapsack and stable set problems shows that an implementation of the method dramatically reduces the size of the enumeration tree compared to branching on variables, yielding significant savings in running times.
Keywords: Integer Programming, Branching, Branch and Bound, Branch and Cut, Knapsack, Stable Set, Bilevel Programming
Category 1: Combinatorial Optimization (Branch and Cut Algorithms )
Category 2: Integer Programming (0-1 Programming )
Citation: Technical Report, COR@L Laboratory, Lehigh University.
Download: [PDF]
Entry Submitted: 09/30/2011
Entry Accepted: 09/30/2011
Entry Last Modified: 11/24/2016
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28548 | Publishers of technology books, eBooks, and videos for creative people
Building a Table Class in ActionScript 2.0
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For a recent project, I needed to display some tabular HTML data in a Flash application. Unfortunately, Flash doesn’t handle that task very well. After all, you can only ask so much of the text field’s HTML capabilities. I could have purchased an application, or I might have gotten by with a component, but I wanted to keep things small and simple. I thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to build a custom class that I’ll likely reuse and improve over time. If you’re interested in presenting tabular data in Flash (or you’re just looking for some help in getting started with the object-oriented side of ActionScript), this article is for you.
To get ActionScript to display HTML-based table data, we’re going to need the following:
• Flash’s text fields
• Flash’s drawing API
• XPath for ActionScript
Before we get started, the next section reviews some basic tenets of object-oriented programming (OOP) that you need to understand. If you’re already familiar with OOP, feel free to move ahead to the code itself.
The Basics
As a Flash designer or developer, you’re probably aware that you’re using built-in Flash objects all the time. Consider the MovieClip—a perfect example of an object. Try this. Open a new Flash document, paste the following code into the ActionScript window, and then test the movie (Control > Test Movie):
var test_mc:MovieClip = this.createEmptyMovieClip ("test", this.getNextHighestDepth());
trace(test_mc + " is a " + typeof test_mc);
This little snippet creates a variable that is of the type MovieClip and that is named test_mc. (The MovieClip itself is named test.) The this keyword refers to the root clip and is where the clip is created, which is also represented in your output window as _level0. The createEmptyMovieClip is a method that belongs to the MovieClip class, and since this, the root clip, is itself a MovieClip, we can use the method. Now we have a new object, one that is a MovieClip and that is named test_mc.
We’re going to create a class to generate table objects. The class is the "blueprint" for the table objects. We’ll construct it with variables, also known as properties, which maintain an object’s "state." For example, we can take our test_mc MovieClip and use dot syntax to append to it the property _x, positioning mc at the 200th point along the x axis:
test_mc._x = 200;
Similarly, we use functions, also known as methods, to perform an action on a particular object. Returning to our example test_mc clip, let’s use the createEmptyMovieClip method to create a new MovieClip that’s attached to our test_mc clip:
test_mc.createEmptyMovieClip("test2_mc", 2);
As you can see, objects are already built into Flash, so beginning to build our own objects isn’t such a leap. It just requires a little planning and a little practice. When we’re finished, the code to create the table object from the class will look like this:
var tb:TableViewer = new TableViewer(rootClip,rootNode);
It’s much like creating a new MovieClip. Now let’s look at how to write the code.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28555 | There is a very, very ambiguous relationship with cats, me and them. Smart lolcats and Bast are of undeniable value, yet the rest of the cattery brings out a hatred of British elegance towards all things cute. Well, this is not one of them. Moreover, this is one of the videos that others find deeply disturbing, also called one of the saddest cat videos ever seen – me, I deeply envy all the people who worked for the fifties TV program Andy’s Gang. It looks like bombshell violence trauma for kids under 12. It’s also a textbook semiotics example of you’re fucked. (via dangerous minds) |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28559 | Side Of River
Discussion in 'Creative Corner' started by ibshambat, Jan 1, 2020.
1. ibshambat
ibshambat Well-Known Member
Jul 2, 2015
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We'll run to the side of the river
In the morning at five o'clock
We'll hold each other and shiver
And run out to the rock
We'll take off our shirts together
And hold each other undressed
Around us the birds will gather
And in our love build a nest
We'll put our heads together
And watch, as the speedy stream
Is dressed in every color
And turns into a dream -
The pink cloud of the sun rising
Engulfs our minds and hearts
And makes them warm and wise and
With all of nature, smart -
The delicacy of existence
Ephemerality of life
Will penetrate with no resistance
And pierce into us like a knife -
The tenderness of our passion
And elegance of your mind
In English, in French, in Russian
Will hold us intertwined
Poems will fly around us
As music us enslaves -
Cosmic opera astounds us
And mingle with the waves -
The works of Bethoven, Chopin,
Blake, Wordsworth, Shakespeare and Keats
Will our minds and hearts open
And feed them spiritual sweets -
And fired by our desires,
Together, as in a dream,
We'll blend into the sunrise
And like the sun we will beam.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28564 | Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church Lexington, KY. Pastor Earl W Thomas
Pleasant Ridge Baptist ChurchLexington, KY. Pastor Earl W Thomas
THE SHIELD OF FAITH
Intro: THERE ISYNo salvation without FAITH! No peace without FAITH! Nothing solid or eternal accomplished by the Christian without FAITH.
Jesus said, AIf ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.@ Matt 17:20
Every Christian needs Amountain moving faith.@ In the work of the church, and in a Christians progress, there are mountains made of doubts to banish; obstacles in the way of progress to remove; indifferences of others to persuade; unbelief of some to convince; and satanic attack which hinder to squelch. In times of weakness and distress I remind myself to have Afaith in God@ because, Athe just shall live by faith.@
Every Christian ought to be familiar with the Armor mentioned in Eph 6. To be a successful Christian, we must put on this spiritual Armor because, Awe wrestle not against flesh and blood.@ In the spiritual battle we face as Christians, God has chosen our weapons: 2 Cor 10:3-4 says Athough we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: 4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)@ Meaning not of our flesh like swords and spears; but spiritual weapons that work to remove our material or physical problems.
From the helmet of salvation to the shoes of the gospel of peace, we are to be protected and armed fora conflict that depends not on human strength but on faith in the power of God. If we realize the nature of the warfare and the forces against us, it's foolish to enter the conflict with anything except our God-given weapons.
In Eph 6 the Holy Spirit reveals to us that one piece of this armor is more important than all the rest. He says, AAbove all, taking the shield of faith.@
FAITH is the Christian=s shield with which we defend ourselves against the fierce attacks of our adversary. This shield of FAITH is able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. Skepticism and doubt, voiced by an unbelieving world, are often used by Satan to shake our FAITH and cause us despair and doubt.
I.e. the claim that the bones of Jesus and his family have been found in Israel was designed to shake the faith of Christians around the world. What they found was first discovered 25 years ago. If the findings were what they claim, which they say is the most amazing discovery of modern times why would they sit on this discovery for so long before announcing it? NO way!!! The Di Vinci code drew them out. Paul warns that there will be those, AWho concerning the truth have erred…. and overthrow the faith of some.@ (2Ti 2:18)
My opinion is that if ones faith can be overthrown, it was only cerebral, not a real faith to begin with.
I want to show you some fundamental truths about FAITH in the Christian life. These must be understood if we are to survive the conflicts of life.
1. Faith is believing and trusting GodHebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” What is it we hope for? Eternal salvation, a new body, a heavenly home, rewards for service, etc, these are what the “substance,” and the
“assurance” is. Faith in them is the “evidence” that it is all true, though unseen. Faith believes what it can’t see! We possess the gift of Faith, given to us by God, which is an assurance of what can’t be proven by being touched or felt.
2. Faith is taking God at his word, realizing that it is through His Word that He reveals Himself and His plan for the ages. 1 John 5:13 AThese things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.@
Rom 15:4 AFor whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.@
Heb 11:3 AThrough faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God,..@ We accept the verification of Noah=s flood because Jesus authenticated it as real. Biblical faith isY
(1) Believing without seeing. Heb 11:1 ANow faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.@ Jn 20:29 “…blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
(2) Hearing and then believing. Romans 10:17 ASo then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.@
(3) Believing then taking action. Romans 10:13 AFor whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.@
The Bible instructs us on how to use our faithY
1. To WALK by faith. Ephesians 2:10 AFor we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we shouldwalk in them. 4:1 I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation (Gr. the calling we received from God) wherewith ye are calledY@
2. To WORK by faith. 1Th 1:3 ARemembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father;@
Are we known by others for our work of faith? I.e. Helping the elderly widows had to meet this qualification: 1Ti 5:10 AWell reported of for good works;...., if she have diligently followed every good work.@
3. To GROW in faith. Lu 17:5 AAnd the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.@ 2Co 8:7ATherefore, as ye abound in every thing, in faith, ....@ The word Aabound@ in the Greek means: Abe in excess, be superfluous; to cause to super abound or excel: have in abundance, be the better, enough and to spare, exceed.@ Now, is that the kind of faith we have?
Beloved, the more we make ourselves USE the faith we have, the more it is that we WILL GROW in that faith and our ability to turn to it in times of trouble. It was in a time of great losses that Job was forced to turn to faith in God=s plans for him. It all turned out good in the end.
II. WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND WHAT FAITH IS NOT! There are many disappointed & disillusioned Christians in the world because they have misunderstood how FAITH is to work in their lives. They enter the Christian life with a naivety about the cost of living by faith. But, in order to avoid injury and deception, by the enemy, we need to know what FAITH does not do.
1. FAITH does not shield us from physical suffering.
Some of our sufferings are from ways we have abused our own bodies, i.e. the damages from smoking, alcohol, risky behavioros We could be better to ourselves than that. Amen? Other suffering comes from those who mistreat us, hate us, or wish to cause us physical or mental harm and anguish. We can=t change that!
I.e. 2 Cor 11:24-27 AOf the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. 25 Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; 26 In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; 27 In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.@ We can’t stop what others do to us; but we can control our reactions.
2. FAITH does not shield us from loss of earthly possessions. Everything is NOT always coming up roses. The sun does not always shine brightly. Phil 3:7-9 ABut what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. 8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, 9 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:@
Hebrews 10:32 But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated (Gr. came to know the truth), ye endured a great fight of afflictions (Gr. pain and sufferings);” BUT, they suffered it with a strong faith, v 34 AFor ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.@
We aren=t going to take any of it with us when we leave here! We use it to meet our needs in this life. Job 1:21 A.. Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.@
3FAITH does not guarantee us a life of ease and luxury. Heb 11:8-10 ABy faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. 9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country,dwelling in tabernacles..@ tents, which were non-permanent shelters.
This song says it well:
And shall I fear to own His cause, Or blush to speak His Name?
Sure I must fight if I would reign; Increase my courage, Lord. I’ll bear the toil, endure the pain, Supported by Thy Word.
Thy saints in all this glorious war Shall conquer, though they die; They see the triumph from afar, By faith’s discerning eye.
When that illustrious day shall rise, And all Thy armies shine In robes of victory through the skies, The glory shall be Thine.
Why did Abraham sacrifice a home built on a permanent foundation? ”10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” He saw something better yet to come.
It is said even by Jesus, Lu 9:58 AAnd Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air [have] nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay [his] head.@ He did have a place in Nazareth until he began his ministry at age 30, after that he slept as do the homeless. Whatever he needed, he borrowed or bought, to mention a few: the lad’s lunch of 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed 5,000 plus; the donkey for his triumphful ride into Jerusalem; the borrowed upper room to observe the Passover; the coin in fishes mouth needed to pay his taxes; even his grave was borrowed, but, amen, he didn=t use it long enough to get it dirty.
4. FAITH does not shield us from grief. 1 Peter 5:8-9 ABe sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: 9 Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.@1Pe 2:19 AFor this [is] thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.@ It happens a lot to the people of God. But these are the times we are to let our faith express itself and “shine.” Don’t dwell on the negative; live in the positive affirmation that God rules over all and faith will be victorious. 1 John 5:4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” A born again Christian has a vital source of power for the darkest times. He needs to rely upon it. Jesus gave us unquestionably sound advice when He said, “Have faith in God.” Mk 11:22. Faith is a mountain mover.
1. FAITH Saves. Eph 2:8-9 AFor by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.@ Some churches list several things in order to be saved: i.e. Faith, repentance, confession, baptism, church membership and holding out faithful unto the end. That in final analysis is salvation by human effort. The truth is stated simply by the Apostle Paul, Acts 16:31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”
2. FAITH Justifies. Romans 5:1 ATherefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:@
3. FAITH Strengthens. Philippians 4:13 AI can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.@ Do you think you are a weak Christian? You are stronger than you allow yourself to know, Paul stresses, “I can DO….” Christ in us is greater than any task we face.
4FAITH Reaches out to others. In part, Acts 26:14-19 A.... I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? 15 And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. 16 But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witnessY 18 To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins,Y@
CONC: Lyrics of “Living By Faith”
1. I care not today what the morrow may bring, If shadow or sunshine or rain, The Lord I know ruleth o=er everything, And all of my worries are vain.
2. I know that He safely will carry me through, No matter what evils betide; Why should I then care though the tempest may blow, When Jesus walks close to my side.
3. Our Lord will return for His loved ones some day, Our troubles will then all be o=er; The Master so gently will lead us away, Beyond that blest heavenly shore.
Refrain: Living by faith in Jesus above, Trusting, confiding in His great love; From all harm safe in His sheltering arm, I=m living by faith and feel no alarm.
Click on the MP3 Amazing Grace icon.
Amazing Grace
Amazing Grace.mp3
MP3 audio file [20.9 MB]
Sunday School 9:30
Worship 10:30
Choir Practice 5:00
Men’s Prayer 5:15
Evening Worship 6:00
Men’s Prayer 6:15
Sermon 7:00 |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28566 | 5 Minute Chili
We need fast meals sometimes. Now that I'm often cradling Baby S in one arm, cooking is a little bit different paced. This is a fast go-to recipe. (and yes, I shop at Winco)
5 Minute Chili
1 can tomato sauce
1 can black beans
1 can corn
1 can chili
1 can petite tomatoes
1 can pinto beans
1 can green chilies
Open all cans, rinse beans, mix all together in pan until heated. Eat.
Optional (but delicious): Serve with sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese, diced sweet peppers, diced tomatoes, tortilla chips
*I don't always have each of these cans around, maybe use chick peas instead of pinto beans or 2 cans of tomatoes if you don't have sauce. It's one of those flexible recipes that are a great one to raid to cupboards for and keep on hand.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28603 |
Tracking #: 635-1845
Steve Baskauf
Campbell O. Webb
Responsible editor:
Guest Editors Semantics for Biodiversity
Submission type:
Ontology Description
Darwin-SW (DSW) is an RDF vocabulary designed to complement the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) Darwin Core Standard. DSW is based on a model derived from a community consensus about the relationships among the main Darwin Core classes. DSW creates two new classes to accommodate important aspects of its model that are not currently part of Darwin Core: a class of Individual Organisms and a class of Tokens, which are forms of evidence. DSW uses Web Ontology Language (OWL) to make assertions about the classes in its model and to define object properties that are used to link instances of those classes. A goal in the creation of DSW was to facilitate consistent markup of biodiversity data so that RDF graphs created by different providers could be easily merged. Accordingly, DSW provides a mechanism for testing whether its terms are being used in a manner consistent with its model. Two transitive object properties enable the creation of simple SPARQL queries that can be used to discover new information about linked resources whose metadata are generated by different providers. The Individual Organism class enables semantic linking of biodiversity resources to vocabularies outside of TDWG that deal with observations and ecological phenomena.
Full PDF Version:
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Solicited Reviews:
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Review #1
Anonymous submitted on 06/Oct/2014
Minor Revision
Review Comment:
This is a sound paper, based on a sound process (socially, technically) of representing the essential Darwin Core standard for biodiversity data in RDF. DwC is essence provides the Ontology, and 428 million records using it should suffice to attest for quality and relevance. This is at the very heart of improving biodiversity informatics via ontological representation. I congratulate the authors on their effort and have only minor comments; virtually all of which are contained in comments (sticky notes) made in the submitted PDF.
Overall, the manuscript is very well written (if not exactly showy), and the flow of content, tables and figures are easy to understand and pertinent. I had 1-2 minor issues with the actual RDF model; most critically the suggested need to distinguish TaxonConceptLabel (or a similar string to denote the name sec. author combination - just another string, really) from TaxonConcept (which is really more like a theory about the circumscription/boundaries of a taxon - a theory whose validity we keep on testing because the nature of taxonomic boundaries is revealed to us gradually [if ever]). "Taxon" likely needs no representation at all in DwC or DSW (or elsewhere in our virtual representations). It is too simple to be very useful.
More thorough framing and referencing would possibly increase the visibility/impact, and a bit more force at the end outlining the need to not fall behind on this RDF translation as a new standard, might also be appropriate. The core of the manuscript is not affected by this.
Review #2
By Mark Schildhauer submitted on 12/Oct/2014
Minor Revision
Review Comment:
1) Quality and relevance:
This paper describes Darwin-SW, which is an RDF/OWL ontology that formally specifies the relationships among several key classes of concepts from the widely-deployed Darwin Core standard for describing biodiversity occurrences-- that constitute evidence of some living organism(s)-- typically expertly identified to a species level-- as having "occurred" at some place at some time. The paper reads well and is highly relevant to the audience of this journal.
The authors modestly describe Darwin-SW as an RDF vocabulary that "complements" the Darwin Core standard for describing biodiversity specimens and occurrences, but the implications of Darwin-SW are potentially far broader. Not only does this effort semantically clarify the relationships among Darwin Core terms, it does so in a framework (RDF/OWL) amenable to broader exposure and linking of those types of data via LOD and the Semantic Web technologies, as opposed to the "flat-file" formats that are currently most prevalent for data exchange by this research community. This paper represents a significant step forward in advancing semantic modeling of key notions within the biodiversity sciences, and serves to introduce knowledge modelers and semantic web experts to some of the major concepts and interoperability challenges faced by the biodiversity research community. In the paper, the authors expand on the terse and ambiguous definitions provided for terms in the Darwin Core standard, by creating classes, instances, and object properties to link resources in formal RDF and OWL syntax. Their model has strong merits, and hopefully provides a good basis for expansion in other on-going efforts to develop more semantically competent descriptions of biodiversity data and the processes involved in acquiring and curating these types of data and specimens.
2) Illustration, clarity, readability:
While the paper is clear and highly readable, there are aspects that I hope the authors will consider for improving potential impact of their paper. First, many readers of the "Semantic Web Journal" may not be aware of what are "biodiversity data", so I strongly recommend that the authors provide a sentence or two of clarification in their introductory paragraph about this, so that the article is more self-contained. Planned introductory materials for this special issue on "biodiversity semantics" will clarify the scope of what is meant by "biodiversity", but we expect all authors to provide sufficient context about their topical area so that articles can be read independently as well.
I am concerned about some of the authors' choices of "labels" for their new concepts; and the lack of natural language definitions to further clarify these concepts within their OWL/RDF "dsw.rdf" vocabulary. Specifically:
Please define many of your terms using at least some clarifying natural language as well as richer semantic expressions-- in the RDF vocab itself. Candidate terms crying out for definition include: Occurrence, IndividualOrganism, Organism, Specimen, Token, Event.
* while recognizing potentially problematic edge cases, saying that IndividualOrganism is "not restricted to a single biological organism: it can be any sort of organism, clone, colony, or group of organisms that is typically observed or sampled over time" strikes me as highly problematic.
The notion of "Organism" is typically defined, in both informal (dictionaries) and formal (e.g. OBI) vocabularies, as strongly signifying "individual biological entities"; so coining a concept such as "IndividualOrganism" is both redundant --Organism is circumscribed according to some notion of individuality; and contradictory, by asserting that the concept is "not restricted to a single biological organism" (this latter being exactly what one would specifically expect IndividualOrganism refers to). I'd suggest other modeling approaches that retain requirements of "individuality" for organism, where "individuality" denotes extremely high interdependence (e.g. taxonomic homogeneity requirement seems reasonable) AND spatial contiguity of biological parts, such as with the tissues or cells that compose an individual body.
Thus, while the parts/components of an IndividualOrganism can be highly integrated and specialized as in a human body, or less so in a sponge colony, the concept should NOT pertain to a spatially distributed population of entities even of some uniform taxon, or the aggregate of "individual entities" comprising a species-- both of which concepts might qualify as "IndividualOrganisms" under the current definition. For example, I think it misleading to label all of some endemic desert pupfish individuals living in a single freshwater pool as an "IndividualOrganism". Rather, suggest defining a notion of "Organism" (dropping the "Individual" prefix since it is already implied), accompanied by a natural language description, and provide several clarifying examples.
* using the work Token to indicate what are more commonly called "Samples" or "Specimens" or other forms of "Evidence" is problematic.
The term "Token" is not nearly as commonly used to indicate various aspects of evidence for biodiversity occurrences as "samples" or "specimens" or other "material objects" or other information artifacts. And in technology, Token is commonly used in the context of access and authentication, or simply as an identifier. The need to describe types of evidence for "occurrences" or "observations of presence of some material entities" are pervasive in natural science, so the Biodiversity community might consider using well-defined concepts from ontologies being developed and used by allied disciplines, e.g. from OBI, IAO, BCO, or SIO. E.g. as in OBI, defining an "Image" (of some taxon) as being an "Information Content Entity" that is a "Generically Dependent Continuant" of some "Organism" that is a "Material Entity"-- would provide greater interoperability of annotations as the biodiversity/ecological community converges with the omics community in its explication of biodiversity phenomena at geospatial to genomic levels of inquiry.
* usage of the terms "normalize/denormalize" is unclear and/or variable in paper. Normalization in the context of RDF often refers to having canonical output graph formats but that seems not to be relevant here as various proposed representations provide different semantics, depending however on the definitions of the concepts involved. And normalization in the context of ER modeling (as in Fig. 1) refers to minimization of redundancy in data representation, and while a URI might be perceived as a ER key analogue, with an Open World Assumption, there is no automatic propagation of correction of a URI to all triples in which an earlier URI might have been asserted. I encourage authors to find simpler more clarifying terms whenever they refer to "de/normalization", especially in the Introduction, and sec. 3.1. In sec 3.1 it would appear that "simpler" or "alternative" models are the case, rather than more "normalized/denormalized" ones. Sec. 3.1 also points out the critical need to clarify, by natural language definitions as well as richer semantic structuring, what is an "Occurrence" and what is an "Event". While there argument about their proposed model is sound, it seems that, e.g. those who don't care about "Events" might simply use an aggregative or "Collection" concept to group a spatiotemporally contiguous set of "Occurrences", and get the same result. OR, one might view an Occurrence as a special type of Event-- it all depends on how these terms are defined using simpler constructs. As is, within Darwin Core, both of these terms have highly circular definitions that are problematic: An Occurrence is "The category of information pertaining to evidence of an occurrence in nature, in a collection, or in a dataset (specimen, observation, etc.)". Note the circularity of "an occurrence is....an occurrence..." It will be tremendously beneficial to use RDF/OWL to clarify and define some of these key terms that in Darwin Core have circular definitions.
* discussion in sec. 3.3.1 "Linking duplicates"-- the meaning of "Duplicates" is not very well described-- are Duplicates simply replicates of evidence for a single Occurrence, and if so, is a single Occurrence only for a single Organism? It really depends on what is an Organism and what is a Sample or Token, or Collection or Event. In all cases, having some natural language definitions (that aren't self-referential), along with several broad coverage examples, will be greatly clarifying! Also, for describing duplicates, the "Equivalence Class" structure might be of value for circumscribing a "set of specimens" that might be duplicates. It would be nice, but not necessary, for authors to describe this possibility...
* if "derived_from" is to be transitive, it must be better described as to why, as transitivity is a powerful characteristic. In the PROV-O ontology, "was_derived_from" is NOT explicitly transitive, while in the more constrained use in IAO, "derives_from" IS transitive. It depends heavily on how the term, which natural language explanation can assist greatly with clarifying, so that folks don't use it without knowing the heavy entailments. If the "derived_from" property is functional, it would seem more intuitively transitive...
The final paragraphs of discussion in sec. 3.3.2 onward are particularly useful in describing practical scenarios whereby DarwinSW provides distinct advantages over "flat vocabularies" due to processing via reasoners. Still, without strong definitions for some of the core class concepts, substantial semantic ambiguity will remain, and data interoperability will be challenging due to confusion among practitioners responsible for annotating their data with appropriate concepts. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28606 | Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Today Was Kindergarten Registration
(About to walk out the door...)
Me: Oh, I need to grab the checkbook.
Calvin: Why do you need the checkbook?
Me: So I can pay for your books.
Calvin: Oh, right! My chemistry books!
Me: ...No...You won't be learning chemistry in kindergarten.
Calvin: (pause) Oh. But the checkbook is for my math and science books, right?
Me: (I got nothing.)
Calvin: Do you know what my favorite thing is to learn?
Me: What?
Calvin: Math! And Chemistry! I just wish someone would teach me about chemistry... |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28632 | How to Receive Updates? . . .
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*Nov 24 Christmas card Stamp a Stack
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Stoughton, Wisconsin
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Well Worn Masculine Card
Do you have as much trouble as I do in finding a good card suitable for giving to a man? I don't know what you look for in a masculine card but for me the criteria for a "man" card is:
*no ribbon
*no pastel colors
*no glitter
*metal somewhere
This sample is a great masculine card. The designer paper is from a pack called "Well Worn" and the colors are perfect. I backed it with a piece of Not Quite Navy and a Cajun Craze circle. The sentiment is from a set called On Your Birthday and it was punched out using the Decorative Label Punch. My metal here is one of the retired Jumbo Brads.
I'd love to tell you this was all my inspiration - but its not. I got a card similar to this as a trade card at a recent demonstrator meeting. Often when I get trade cards I use the general idea and tweak it a lot. This one I used almost as is.
I love going to Demonstrator Meetings. We get so many great ideas for cards and other projects. If you've ever wondered about joining Stampin'UP! now is a great time to join. For the next 2 weeks (until the end of March) the Starter Kit is on sale - only $125 for over $300 worth of stuff. In fact, whether you want to be a demonstrator or not, the Kit is a good deal! Oh, almost forgot, you'll also get a FREE package of designer paper EACH MONTH with your first order of the month for the rest of 2012.
*If you are kind of interested you can read more here: on the Stampin'UP! website
And you know, if you have questions and are wondering about what it means to buy a "Starter Kit" just call. 608-220-3450. I'll answer any of your questions.
• If you decide to buy the starter Kit you've made a smart purchase with your stamping money. That could be the end of it - you have $300+ worth of stuff for only $125.
• If you decide to actually become a Demonstrator it can change your life.The extra spending money is nice and I've made so many new friends its been wonderful.
You get so much more than just the product in the Starter Kit. Which ever your reason for buying it, when you buy the Starter Kit you have access to tons of support material from Stampin'UP!
*an exclusive idea website
*monthly magazine
*training webinars
AND, you have access to an exclusive website I maintain for my downline with even more ideas and business help. What ever you're looking for - I'll help you find it. Doesn't matter if you're local or far away, the internet is an amazing tool in a business like this.
I hope you are inspired to join my team
No comments: |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28633 | Latest Forum Posts
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There's nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it; no enemy can defeat it. And who has a better story than Mr. Giblets the Turkey?
Posted by: Roy
Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to ask a few questions about Starcraft's AI to the very man responsible for creating it, Bob Fitch - a really amazing guy, and apparently the man who was resposible for writing all of the campaign scripts, so you're probably already familiar with his work :-)
The talk was very informative and even presented some new details we had no idea about in the AI modding community, and I think it's worth reading for all modders. In some parts we were writing simultaneously so it might look a little messy, but I'm hoping it won't be too much of a problem ^_^
Nekron: Did you & the AI team write campaign scripts (especially attacks) for all of the missions, or was Scenario Design mostly responsible for that?
If you did, could you tell a little bit about how that process looked like? Did you guys just wing it or was it a little more nuanced than that :P
Bob Fitch: There was no AI team. I was it. :) I coded the systems, designed the strategies, wrote the scripts, etc.
Yes, I did all the campaign work except for making the maps. Level designers would use the editor to make the maps and put units on them, and then they'd give the maps to me with some basic ideas like, "We want them to attack down this path, but sometimes go over here. Don't attack expansions. Use air units more than usual." I'd then write campaign scripts for all difficulty levels and strategies. Feel free to add follow-up questions now that you know the basic idea of how I did it.
N: Follow up question: Since I'm working on a campaign rework that encompassess all original campaigns, I do know how much work it is to go through so many missions and come up with working script ideas that are meaningfully different from each other. What is something that would actually be super interesting for me to hear is, did you try to give AIs representing a given faction (for example, Mengsk in xT5 and Mengsk in xZ10) some kind of a personality, where it'd behave in similar ways, or was it not a consideration beyond what you were told by level designers?
BF: The personalities of the different AIs were mainly in what units they built and used, and how aggressive they were in attacking or defending. It was very simple.
N: Regarding your comment about level designers wanting the AI to not attack expansions - I find it a really interesting remark to make, since there is exactly one mission that has an otherwise unused flag set through an opcode called target_expansion - if you remember by any chance, is that related?
BF: Yea, it's probably related. The designers wanted to severely limit the damage done to player expansions, while at the same time in melee I wanted to almost exclusively target expansions.
N: Some of these commands are really obscure, and never used - for example, implode, a command that specifically makes small isolated pockets of pathable terrain defended, or eval_harass, a command that can only be used to bypass enemy defenses (in the simplified way of looking for regions with no enemy strength) - if you remember, can you tell us what were some ideas for how you'd use stuff like this?
BF: I don't really remember the specifics. The term 'eval_harass' is familiar, but I really don't remember why anymore.
I know I did quite a few experiments and didn't always remove the code after deciding I didn't need the opcode yet.
You might find this interesting... I searched the code for 'harass' and found this enum of states I used in my attack routine.
And this is the comment in the code about the enum:
All ep areas begin MODE_INACTIVE. When a zone is acquired it is switched to
MODE_GUARD. From there it goes to MODE_DEFEND if it ever gets attacked. If
attacked and outnumbered then the zone is "lost" so it goes to MODE_LOST.
An adjacent MODE_GUARD zone would switch to MODE_STAGING with the MODE_LOST
zone as the target. MODE_STAGING waits for enough troops to take an enemy
zone and then attacks. The attacked zone goes to MODE_DEFEND and the staging
zone switches back to MODE_GUARD.
The MODE_HARASS_STAGE acts just like MODE_STAGING except that when it's ready
to attack it goes to MODE_HARASS_ATTACK. That mode is like MODE_DEFEND except
that it never retreats when outnumbered and never asks for additional troops.
If a harass attack ends in victory then the new zone goes to MODE_GUARD just
like any other zone.
N: We call those region states now! You can find them described by reverse engineering ( so probably less accurately than here ) on page 16 of the AI doc, under "Region States", it's amazing how different the intentions behind them were compared to what we guessed based on their behaviour lol
BF: I looked. Thanks for the link. Cool info. Almost correct too. ;)
N: AI modding requires a lot of tools that were only more or less finalized in the recent two or three years for the modding community! Did you have any AI-specific debug tools when you worked on the project, or did you just test it with cheats/by playing and only find issues that way?
BF: I programmed lots of cheats and visualization modes. I could look at what the units were thinking about doing, what they wanted to build, and where. I could see what they valued, what they wanted to attack, how much time they were spending on tasks, etc. I don't remember if those cheats are still in there, buried and hidden, or if the code gets compiled out in Release builds.
N: Starcraft AI is now considered the best AI base out there for modding (and I'm not talking about BWAPI), with it's huge flexibility, a plethora of specialised commands and the ease of adding new ones if needed, as well as multiple AI systems (defense, target selection) that are smart enough to feel smart and yet simple enough to not screw up constantly (which alot of modern RTS AIs tend to do, like Starcraft 2 or RA3) - what was it like to develop a toolkit for script-writing that's essentially uncontested 20 years later? Was it ever a major consideration, how many tools you've created for campaign development?
BF: I didn't know it was considered the best AI base/framework.
It feels great. :)
I was originally writing the StarCraft AI with the intention of having users create their own AIs that could be pit against other people's custom AIs. Time constraints caused me to scale back that plan, though I tried it again in StarCraft 2. (Although I was the AI programmer for only the first 50% of StarCraft 2. It was ultimately written/finished/released by a different programmer, and I did no AI in the expansions. I was the engineering director for Hearthstone when the expansions were being made.)
Honestly, I was just writing the SC and BW AIs on an "as needed" basis by the time I was deep into it. I'd try to make the AI smart, realize I needed a new opcode, add it as simply as I could, and repeat. The same was true for campaigns. I wrote special case opcodes for missions, like "junkyard dog" for example. That opcode was for a specific mission, though after I'd write a new opcode I would then try to find ways to reuse the code in other places.
N: I think that even if the original idea of making it possible for people to make their own custom AIs didn't work out because of time constraints, it definitely lives on now. ASC3 (which is what we call the SCAI language nowadays, based on the first working editor) is an easy to learn language that makes campaigns and custom maps insanely customizable with little effort, and can make for some truly amazing sequences and campaign scenarios if you're willing to spend time learning it. Huge thanks for all the thought you've put into the original AI.
If you wrote the language for SCAI scripting today, how different would it be?
BF: I would probably not write a language for AI these days. I'd use lua and write a library of routines that could be called to do most of the heavy lifting, that was extremely short and simple AI "scripts" could play the game with minimal changes to handle many different strategies and campaign needs.
N: Any cool anecdotes on SCAI or the dev process you can share?
BF: I'll always remember the look on Chris Metzen's face one day. I was programming the AI all day and we were in crunch mode so this was probably at the end of a 30-hour shift or something crazy. Instead of finishing and going home to sleep like a sane person, I decided I wanted to PLAY the game before I went home. (Looking back, this is also the moment I knew the game would be a hit. I had just worked 30+ hours and instead of sleeping I wanted to play it.) I started up an AI game and got going. It was an amazing game. It was back and forth. I was almost dead and then I pulled myself from the fire and started turning the tables. It was so exciting that I was cackling. I didn't realize I had let my tongue hang out of my mouth a little too, but because of that I started drooling. Before I could pull in my tongue and close my mouth and wipe my cheek, I look up and Chris Metzen is standing in my office doorway. Staring at me. Staring. Still staring. Yep… fun times.
I'm not sure what you call it, but I had an object called the "Captain" that was responsible for attacking.
Captains had fields like: current EP area (trivia: that's for Equal Potential and was coined by the pathing programmer), target EP area, owning player, mode, priority, action, delay, flags, stage, desired force strength for ground and air, current ground and air strength, total ground and air strength (counts troops that are on the way but have not arrived yet), visible enemy ground and air strength, a list of priority targets to kill on ground and in air, the group's "leader" pointer (usually a slow ground unit, choses again if killed), and the current detector unit being used to find cloaked things.
I looked up eval_harass and it's a boolean function that returns true if ready to attack, while also calculating a desired target. It returns true if the estimated AI attack power is greater than the target's estimated power at the target EP area. It only needs more vs air OR more vs ground power to return true.
N: Looking at it all I think you're just referring to what we'd call AI regions, but they're used for more than just attacking, they're also responsible for everything defense-related and many other AI functions.
The most talented programmer that works on this [Neiv] told me about some debug strings like SAI_Captain, but my understanding of attacking is that a region is picked, units congregate around the central point in the region, there is a attack list composed of units from attack_add/prep_down/etc, and after the attack is filled successfully (with some caveats, such as units that are in combat already don't count) or after 120(melee)/180(campaign) game seconds (1920/2880 frames) have passed(or less with quick_attack...), the attack launches and picks a random target that depends on script class.
Some more details come in campaigns and melee but they're usually not super well described.
BF: Above... the melee AI does try to attack close targets. The campaign AI randomly chooses a target EP area after doing a calculation of "what are all the ways I can get to there from here" thus causing the attacks to come in from different directions instead of how melee is always hitting the same frontal assault spots. Trivia: The routine that calculates the different possible attack paths I called "The cholesterol algorithm" Long story...
N: Last question (I promise) [Neiv] wanted to ask - did you ever develop the difficulty idea more, was it planned out beyond just making a couple stray commands, or did it never take off? (There are 2 or so commands that do different things based on an unused difficulty variable, easy_attack and if_dif)
BF: Difficulty levels were planned from the beginning, but mostly we accomplished difficulty levels by reducing attack force sizes and attack frequencies. There are a few extra tactical changes too, like normal AI tries to focus fire down injured units. The easy AI does not.
easy_attack is actually a "do this attack IF the difficulty setting is EASY" or more accurately i think it's "use this unit in the attack if set to easy" which let me change the units being used on easy (probably in melee, maybe not in campaigns, can't really remember)
if_dif is a boolean test, "if the difficulty is ____ then jump" and the parameters determine how it's handled, three params: comparison type (byte), diff level (byte), jump location (word)
type 0 is if diff < param then jump
else if diff > param then jump
After this Bob had to go, and we ended the interview. Thanks for your time, Bob! ^_^
Click to view video
English subtitles for the video taken as-is for those who prefer to read or otherwise can't watch the video (highlighted sections related to mapmaking/UMS):
Hey everyone, it's Grant from the StarCraft Remastered Team with a quick update.
We are excited to announce that a Public Test Realm is on the way. PTR will allow us to work with you to test out new features and server updates before they go live. For example, StarCraft currently ignores keyboard input if the mouse is held down we've talked a lot about this on the forum with you. We know that feedback from the community is asking us to change this, so one of the first updates we're going to try on PTR is our proposed answer to this problem. And we're excited for you, our community, to help us test this out.
We'll also be testing changes to our matchmaking algorithm. We are hoping this will allow players with a good connection to Korea, to be able to match more often with Korean players.
Last year we created a thread on the forum listing many of the issues we intend to prioritize and address in 2019. Your feedback on this thread has been invaluable and has helped us to prioritize our goals for the year. We've already released several items from this list, and many more are currently in the works.
I'm also happy to announce that "64-BIT" is ahead of schedule, and we're moving ever closer to being able to release an “OPT-IN” version. Later this year, 64-bit will be the only option for Mac users as I talked about at BlizzCon and at some point, in the future, that will be true for Windows as well.
We will soon be transitioning our community forums to the same forums that other Blizzard games are already using. We're excited about this change, because it offers more features and better tools to help us track and understand your feedback.
Lastly, we are all looking to an amazing year of back to back pro StarCraft competition, and we are already off to such a great start with LAST becoming the first ever KSL and ASL champion.
To wrap this up, let me say we have some very exciting things in the pipeline for the year. Some of you already know about like group matchmaking and some we're not quite ready to announce yet. But stay tuned! That's all for now. We love hearing from you, so please keep talking with us on the forums. From the whole team, thanks for watching. We're all very excited for a great year ahead for StarCraft Remastered!
Helpful links and references:
Posted by: Roy
Happy Thanksgiving 2018 from SEN! Nov 22 2018, 8:15 pm
Click to view video
You have my respect, bird. When I'm done, half of all turkeys will still be alive. I hope they remember you.
Posted by: Roy
Click to view video
Helpful links and references:
Posted by: Roy
Merry Christmas 2017! Dec 25 2017, 8:10 pm
Merry Christmas!
Quote from DevliN
Quote from NudeRaider
Quote from Devourer
Quote from O)FaRTy1billion[MM]
Quote from Excalibur
Posted by: Roy
What is a turkey? A miserable little pile of protein.
Posted by: Roy
[04:28 am]
Doodan -- :shifty:
[04:27 am]
Doodan -- also :wob:
[04:26 am]
Doodan -- This helodieaodns guy sure likes WoW
[03:31 am]
KrayZee -- MTiger156
MTiger156 shouted: Starcraft: Nude War :wob:
Sounds like an ancient Greek battle set in the Starcraft universe.
[02:00 am]
lil-Inferno -- :wob:
[01:58 am]
MTiger156 -- Starcraft: Nude War :wob:
[01:11 am]
Ultraviolet -- :wob:
[12:16 am]
lil-Inferno -- :wob:
[05:13 pm]
MTiger156 -- Nude :bash: Me
[04:52 pm]
NudeRaider -- civil war!
Please log in to shout.
Members Online: jun3hong, Roy |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28635 |
Apparently, I wasn’t blending in at all.
Then I picked up the first volumes of both Bitch Planet and Lumberjanes back in November, and suddenly I was all:
Since then, I’ve torn through the first five volumes of Lumberjanesthe first four volumes of Giant Days, Nimona, Love Is Lovethe first volume of Sagaand anything else I can get my hands on. A couple days before the expo, I read the first volume of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girlwhich I’d borrowed from the library. WTF, I thought to myself as I began to read. This is so random, I muttered aloud as I continued to read. THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED! I finally concluded.
And I am so hungry for more.
But it’s so hard to find comics featuring kick-ass female friends that are actually written and illustrated by kick-ass females.
When I read Rat Queens, for example, I was immediately smitten. But then I found out that the original artist had been charged with domestic violence and rape. And my heart broke into a trillion tiny pieces.
After the expo, my friend and I hit up Hot Grill (as you do), and then went to a local comic shop that was having signings with female comic artists in celebration of the town’s women’s empowerment week. I was tempted to ask one of the salespeople: “Can you share with me the equivalent of Rat Queens, but created by someone who doesn’t practice violence against women?”
But I am a wuss.
Still, I snatched up additional volumes of Lumberjanes, Giant Days, and Squirrel Girl.
I’ll be back, I thought to myself after I eventually tore myself away from the stacks and walked out the door.
I’ll be back. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28648 | Fungus Fight! No really, it’s for art.
On this blog there’s been some debate as to the preservation of environmental art and its merits. When does a work that is meant to decay become not-an-artwork, that is, just another rotting thing?
Curators in Venezuela are determined to never let it get that far– at least, not with traditional works of art. Paintings, tapestries and wooden objects in warm climes are prone to attack from fungi, insects, and bacteria. The curators have amassed for the 4th Cultural Heritage Conservation Forum in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.
Of the tools used to combat art decay, one is bacillus thuringiensis, pictured above. It produces toxin crystals , when ingested by offending insects, causes a swelling that leads to a fatal rupture. Yeah, it makes bugs blow up. It’s also used as a pesticide in agriculture. One website describes the effect as “dying after indigestion.” The bacterium has also been spliced into genetically modified crops, creating, of course, controversy.
Whether the use of Bt to preserve works of art is a step towards ecological balance or yet-another example of our industrial-agriculturalized society (wah wah waaaaah), it at least highlights an important factor: that no artwork, whether designed to decay or not, is impervious to ravages of little hungry needling organisms.
Thanks to Current.
Go to the Green Museum |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28650 | Cool Sculpting is a device that can remove fat without surgery or downtime. It is a revolution in aesthetic medicine. It is the only non-surgical fat reduction treatment that is FDA cleared. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital looked at the effect of cold on the skin. They found that by cooling the skin and keeping it at 68 degrees Fahrenheit, some of the fat could be destroyed, while the skin, muscle, and nerves survived. This procedure is called cryolipolysis. The procedure is billed as a nonsurgical alternative to liposuction. This eliminates stubborn fat that resists all efforts through diet and exercise. The results are proven, noticeable, and lasting—so you’ll look great from every angle.
The Cool Sculpting device evolved from this research. It is a spot removal device, rather than a weight reduction device. 20-25% of the fat in the skin is sucked into the applicator handpiece. Results are visible as early as 3 weeks, but, final results are seen in two to four months. Frequently, for optimal results (Treatment to Transformation), more than one treatment in an area is optimal.
The treatment is generally pain-free, although some patients may experience numbness, minor bruising, redness, or discomfort in the treated area, but only temporarily. You can read, use a computer, or talk on the phone while the machine does its work. Furthermore, there is little to no downtime, and most patients are able to resume normal activities the same day. One additional and amazing feature of this treatment is the very high success rate. There are very few non-responders.
Science behind cool sculpting
The idea that cold can target fat cells—without damaging the skin or surrounding tissue—was the insight behind Cryolipolysis®, the proven science on which the Cool Sculpting procedure is based.
That’s why the results are long-term. Every person is born with a certain number of fat cells; once the cells are removed from the body, they do not return therefore, the fat is gone for good!. This principle is also an important part of why Cool Sculpting is effective at reducing fat bulges. Untreated areas will have no change in fat cell distribution.
Scientific studies regarding cryolipolysis (cool sculpting):
Scientific studies about metabolic benefits of cryolipolysis:
Fat reduction vs Weight loss
The number of fat cells in our bodies typically becomes a fixed number sometime in our teenage years. Losing or gaining weight generally does not increase or decrease the number of fat cells. Instead, it changes the size of fat cells. After dieting and weight loss, fat cells get smaller but the number of fat cells stays the same.
When weight is gained, fat cells get bigger. The Cool Sculpting fat-freezing procedure actually reduces the number of fat cells in treated areas by about 20% to 25%. These fat cells are naturally processed and eliminated, so they won’t migrate to another area of your body. And there’s no change to fat cells in untreated areas. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28679 | Sunday, November 11, 2012
Pity Party
Photo Credit: Stephanie Karfelt
Did you hear that crash at the Glass Museum? Don’t worry, it wasn’t your child. It was me. I dropped my phone on a display of glass balloon animals (taking blog photos, I hope you feel a bit guilty since I did it for you). Vertigo is one heaping bowl of sucks. Miraculously nothing broke. Is there special multi-tasking insurance for clumsy people? Though blundering is not just a human condition. This week Sandy, my pet butterfly, got the tip of his wing caught in a bit of dried honey and flew off without that bit. It was the same day that I hit a rabbit driving home in the dark. Mother Nature’s disappointment in my nurturing skills is vast, a given being a part-time vegetarian who dreams about hamburgers. At any rate I decided to throw a pity party. You’re all invited and encouraged to share your tales of woe. We’ll even have pity party prizes.
My entry into the pity party hall of shame is the allergic reaction I had to…(wait for it)…allergy shots. How pathetic is that? It wasn’t a horrible anaphylactic shock reaction (thank God). I specialize in those freaky little reactions that doctors toss nonchalantly into the ‘side-effects’ category. “Does the incessant itching bother you, Mrs. Karfelt?” “Not at all. I’m wondering if I could get a prescription for one of those cones? You know the kind Vets use on dogs that won’t stop gnawing on themselves?”
My invisible poison ivy-like side-effect goes to the back of the bus when compared to Lauren Hewell’s tale of woe. The recent college graduate shared her story with The Glitter Globe. Lauren’s in the job market by the way.
So what’s your story? Have you ever been thrown out of Walmart because your child screamed that loud? Did you sign up for NaNoWriMo* and then remember that Thanksgiving is in two weeks, and you’re hosting company and the family gathering? Did you have to get in a car with an infamous stray dog known to have once eaten an entire goat? Today’s pity party day, and we’re all here to commiserate with you. Keep in mind the goal is to laugh at ourselves, and there are prizes for the best-worst story. (Follow my blog to be eligible for a prize, and leave a comment below. Feel free to suggest what you think an excellent prize would be, but be prepared to accept an Epic Slinky Dog, chocolate, or shards of broken bits from a glass balloon animal. Just kidding. They did NOT break. Really.)
Photo Credit: Stephanie Karfelt
*NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. When inspired writers take on the challenge of writing an entire novel the month before Christmas (and risk alienating their Thanksgiving company, again).
1. you are hilarious! not that I laugh at your misfortune and humiliation. . . ugh! Awkward moment at Corning Glass. It it were me I would blame one of my many fat rolls.
That resume made me scream with laughter.
Moment of shame? oh, why go there? Maybe the time my mom took all of us kids to see Return of the Jedi and the dude dressed as Yoda held out his hand and I didn't know what to do so I kissed it. oh, yeah, I really did. Cuz i thought that's what you do with a Jedi master. At like 12 years old. Still haunted.
2. Kathleen - Love. This. Getting a visual of your story coming up at every Thanksgiving since. It is good to have kindred spirits at a pity party. You know I'm pretty sure that you were following Jedi Master protocol. I absolutely love this story. You just won yourself the Panera cookie of your choice, compliments of The Glitter Globe.
Am really glad you stopped by. May the Force be with You. I'm sure it will since you have the proper respect for it.
3. Got some reverse Butterfly Effect going on. Hurricane Sandy set things up so your butterfly got stuck, which prevented it from producing enough wind gust to caution the rabbit away.
4. Ummm, let's see. How about the time I arrived at the airport with my parents, and momentarily losing track of them - ended up on the wrong side of security. (You know how you're not supposed to go back into the airport section after heading to baggage claim? Well, it sets off alarms if you try.)
As an added bonus, the old guy that said hi to me while I was freaking out (because of course neither of my parents had their phone on, and it had already been that kind of day) was my uncle, the guy that we'd come to see, and I did not recognize him at all. It'd only been 12 years...
5. Well, other than that whole goat thing... Yeah, let's just skip the story and suffice by saying: Tomorrow is my 18th wedding anniversary. Tonight I'm thankful that I have my own room and plan to spend the night soothing my woes in a gallon of rocky road. Fill in the blanks, pass the tissues, and don't touch my spoon!
6. Oh Stephanie. I love your life.
My story is one of those "I can't believe you keep doing those things" sort of story.
Flash back to 19 and the day after my boyfriend broke up with me. I was feeling a little low, so my friends who I worked with went out to lunch with me at our favorite local restaurant. That's where the joy began.
We got the crabby waitress. I told my friends she was the crabby one and we were in for it. When she came back and took our order, I wasn't paying too close of attention. She reached her hand out to me, flat, palm up, and I looked at it for a second. Then I did the only logical thing. I gave her a high five.
My friends started laughing, one of them grabbing my menu and handing it to the waitress...since that's what she wanted.
I then laughed and felt like quite the fool. My next moment of joy was when I was telling my friends how another friend gets refills. I was explaining this because my glass had been empty and Grumpy wouldn't come and refill it, no matter how often I sucked on the straw and made the empty glass sound.
She sets the glass on top of her head until the server comes by. I was explaining this with my empty glass on my head. Of course, that's when or waitress came by.
She snatched the glass of my head and stalked off. Of course, this made my friends laugh, which made it seem like it was intentional.
I have never felt like a bigger dummy...nor have I ever seen Grumpy again. She doesn't work there anymore..haven't seen her since the day I made a fool of myself ;)
7. Dang it, Kelsey, you just made me LOL with your high five of the waitress, I'm sure I woke no one...
Let's see, awkward- how about when I texted my brother about how my boss couldn't keep her cool and swore like a drunken sailor and what I thought of her behavior, only to discover I'd texted her instead. That was...interesting. I had to jump on that grenade quickly, laughed it off like it was a joke and I was on her side of it...evidently she bought it, because we've had two rounds of layoffs since and I'm still in the company.
8. Gary - Excellent theory. Sandy is on his way to Mexico now - so maybe that will straighten everything out.
9. Dear Heretic - Remind me not to fly with you. Did you get tackled? Parents. They only use their cells for outgoing. And to call and make sure you're not having too much fun.
10. DMKilgore! Oh no! That is a sad tale. Do you need chocolate? I'll bet you do. Glad you had the rocky road. And your own room. Hope your Dear Hubby throws himself on the mercy of the court and makes amends!
Call me if he doesn't. We can celebrate your anniversary in The Glitter Globe, groom or no.
11. Kelsey P&S - Let's do lunch sometime. I think I know where Grumpy went to work. Heretic's airport security, though she works part-time at the mall at Christmas.
PS - I love my life too.
PPS - Wanna go to the glass museum?
12. rholliday - Still laughing. Sorry. That is definitely a pitiful tale. Can relate, once I sent a long, detailed email to my lawyer about cramps. Yeah. Meant to send that to my BFF. Um. He called me about it too. Awkward.
Sounds like you're an excellent grenade jumper.
Sooooo...chocolate, slinky, or some leftover Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans???
13. Steph, it was awkward for sure, I just had to keep playing it off like I just thought it was funny. I can imagine your reaction on the reply from the lawyer. LOL That's classic. I'm hyper paranoid now about texting; I don't even want to keep my boss' number in my phone, even though I have to.
Would it be gluttonous to have 5 slinks? Of course, they're all paired off now, but I can't say no- Epic Slink please!!
14. Rob - Since I have dozens of Slinky Dogs scattered around the house, I don't think it would be gluttonous at all. Especially since you have five children. And you need one for yourself, so keep on keeping on. I will mail him, after Thanksgiving. Will let you know when he's on his way!
Comment here, I'm listening. It's my superpower. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28682 | Official Superhero Merchandise
Star Trek: VoyagerStardate 50074.3: The investigation of a possible wormhole reveals signs of visitors from the Alpha Quadrant on a primitive planet. Chakotay and Paris make an incognito visit to a location where sensors have detected a replicator in use, only to find a village of humanoids who seem obsessed with charging money for any goods or services, no matter how insignificant. At the heart of this culture lie two Ferengi, stranded in the Delta Quadrant since they were trapped by the Barzan Wormhole discovered by the Enterprise seven years earlier. The Ferengi have come to this society as gods bearing wisdom – the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition – but their true motive is to exploit the native population for their own gain. Janeway sets a plan into motion which involves Neelix masquerading as an envoy from the Grand Nagus. But if his disguise fails to fool the Ferengi, he may find that these profit-mongerers will do anything to keep their grasp on godhood.
Order the DVDsteleplay by Joe Menosky
story by George A. Brozak
directed by Cliff Bole
music by Dennis McCarthy
Guest Cast: Dan Shor (Arridor), Leslie Jordan (Koll), Michael Ensign (Bard), Rob LaBelle (Kafar), Alan Altshuld (Sandalmaker), John Walter Davis (Merchant)
Notes: Arridor and Koll have been stuck in the Delta Quadrant for a long time – ever since the unstable Barzan Wormhole stranded them there in The Price, an episode of the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation
LogBook entry by Paul Campbell with notes by Earl Green
Merchoid - 100% Awesome official Videogame Merchandise |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28688 | Math Center PHOTO Overload!!!!
Recently, I had a few followers ask about what my room and math centers look like. I LOVE answering these types of questions. However, this is also really hard to do when I have so many things going on at once. So, I am going to answer this question by sharing several photos accompanied with brief {if I can keep them brief} descriptions.
A few things you must know about my centers before reading on:
1. These centers are all chosen based on the preferences of the students.
2. Each of these centers rotate on a regular basis (ex. by skill, weekly, or daily).
3. These centers are designed to compliment the varying levels of my Bubble Pages.
My centers are all prepared in advance and placed on this shelf. Then, I instruct my "Center Managers" to put them in their proper places when it is time to begin math centers or collect them when we are done. My Center Managers also do some of my prep work in the afternoons to ready them for the following day.
I have a black couch in my classroom that we call the "Blogging Couch". You can only sit on the couch if you are blogging. At the beginning of the year, my students used my Math Journal prompts to write in their journals. After Christmas, we began using KidBlog to do the same prompts.
At this center, students answer a prompt that directly targets the skill or topic that we are currently covering. I have really loved seeing my students grow in both their mathematical understanding and their ability to express in writing what they are doing mathematically.
This is one of two weekly math centers that my students complete at the front carpet. I try to find interactive activities or games that target the skill we are currently working on.
I have recently began creating interactive printables for my Weekly Math centers. My kids really seem to enjoy them. Plus they are quick and effective ways for the kids to have additional practice on the current skill.
Also on the front carpet, is the second Weekly Math center. At this center, students will also practice the skill of that particular day or week.
Again, I try to keep them interactive and quick, yet effective.
My Word Problem center is by far the most difficult center and usually requires the help of one of my high school helpers. I use two products here to make this function effectively. The first product I use is The Teacher Studio's Common Core Word Problems Bundle. This bundle has provided me with a new problem each day for this center and addresses fractions, mixed operations, multistep problems, and measurement. I have them sequenced to provide students with repeated practice in each area. I also use Runde's Room's Building Better Math Responses. It uses a color coded system (shown on the bulletin board) that my students use to work their way through each problem.
My kids really enjoy color coding each problem. It also helps to ensure that they make a plan and organize their work.
My Math Computation center is geared for my lower students who just need repeated practice with basic computation of whole numbers, fractions, and decimals. I generally use printables or task cards at this center just to keep things simple for both myself and the kids.
I've blogged about my I Can Games center before, but I can't leave it out of my photo collection! My kids LOVE this center. I allow them to pick the problems that they want to complete from the jar. In order to satisfy their bubble page requirement, they must do them in increments of five.
I've also blogged about my Choice Board center but can't leave it out either! This center is for my higher students, however my lower students really enjoy it and benefit from it as well. Students choose various activities to complete based on their Bubble Page requirement. My higher kids must complete more of these activities. These are incredibly well written and stimulate student thinking.
1 comment: |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28708 | Phillip Trelford's Array
POKE 36879,255
Calendar Types
Welcome to the 2015 F# Advent Calendar and one of 2 posts for December 3rd. For last year’s advent calendar I tried to follow the seasonal theme and produced an article on generating snowflakes. This year I thought I’d be more literal and look at producing calendar types using F#’s Type Provider mechanism resurrecting a project from 2014, FSharp.Date.
FSharp.Date is a simple F# Type Provider, inspired by VB.Net’s date literal feature,that lets you define dates and time values in F# by pressing dot and selecting only valid values:
2015 December 3rd
Further inspired by the advent calendar theme I’ve added a new feature that lets you visualize the calendar month as a tooltip in your editor:
2015 December Calendar
The source is available on BitBucket or you can download the package from Nuget.
But wait there’s more…
On This Day
That got me thinking, what if you could provide topical information on a particular day direct to the editor, and then I found the BBC news site On This Day.
The web site contains a set of both historically significant and quirky stories from the same day in the past.
First I needed a way of finding an article and scraping the news items from the page.
Thankfully the BBC pages use a uniform URL taking the month and day making it easy to get a specific page:
let getPage (month,day) =
let date = System.DateTime(2005,month,day)
let monthName = date.ToString("MMMM").ToLower()
let url = sprintf ""
monthName date.Day
use client = new System.Net.WebClient()
The page’s HTML is not well formed so I resorted to a regular expression to parse the news items:
let getNewsItems html =
let pattern = """<a href="([^"]*)"><span class="h1">(.*?)</span></a><br>(.*?)<br clear="ALL">"""
let matches = Regex.Matches(html, pattern, RegexOptions.Singleline)
let newsItems = [for m in matches -> [for i in 1..m.Groups.Count-1 -> m.Groups.[i].Value]]
[for newsItem in newsItems do
match newsItem with
| [link;title;description] ->
yield "" + link, title.Trim(), description.Trim().Replace("\n","").Replace("\r","")
| _ -> ()
Which returns a list of news items for the specified month and day:
> (12,3)|> getPage |> getNewsItems;;
val it : (string * string * string) list =
"1984: Hundreds die in Bhopal chemical accident",
"A dense cloud of lethal gas escapes from a chemical factory in the central Indian city of Bhopal, killing hundreds of people.");
"1992: Bomb explosions in Manchester",
"Emergency services are dealing with casualties at the scene of two bomb blasts in the centre of Manchester.");
"1989: Malta summit ends Cold War",
"The leaders of the two world superpowers declare an end to the Cold War after two days of storm-lashed talks at the Malta summit.");
"1965: White jury convicts Ku Klux Klansmen",
"For the first time an all-white jury convicts members of the KKK over the murder of a white civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo.");
"1971: Pakistan intensifies air raids on India",
"India declares a state of emergency as airports are hit during a Pakistani attack on the country.");
"1988: Egg industry fury over salmonella claim",
"Claims by a health minister that eggs contain salmonella are branded alarmist and incorrect.")]
Now to create a type provider.
Creating your own Type Provider
If you’re new to writing your own type provider I’d recommend starting with Michael Newton’s Type Providers From the Ground Up post.
First off we need to reference two F# files from the FSharp.TypeProviders.StarterPack.
Rather than make a static copy I used Paket, a handy .Net dependency management tool, to reference the files directly from GitHub.
This required a simple paket.dependencies file:
github fsprojects/FSharp.TypeProviders.StarterPack src/ProvidedTypes.fsi
github fsprojects/FSharp.TypeProviders.StarterPack src/ProvidedTypes.fs
and a paket.references file:
With that in place all that’s left to do is run > paket install.
Defining the Type Provider
To create a type provider you need a type with the TypeProvider attribute that inherits from TypeProviderFromNamespaces. For this example I only need a single type OnThisDay which provides the news items via a set of static properties:
type OnThisDayProvider (config:TypeProviderConfig) as this =
inherit TypeProviderForNamespaces ()
let getProperties newsItems =
[for (url, title, description) in newsItems ->
let property =
ProvidedProperty(title, typeof<string>, IsStatic=true,
GetterCode=fun _ -> <@@ url @@>)
let ns = "FsAdvent"
let asm = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()
let today = System.DateTime.Now
let providedType = ProvidedTypeDefinition(asm, ns, "OnThisDay", Some typeof<obj>)
do providedType.AddXmlDoc(today.ToLongDateString())
do providedType.AddMembersDelayed(fun () ->
(today.Month,today.Day) |> getPage |> getNewsItems |> getProperties
do this.AddNamespace(ns, [providedType])
Once it’s built you can reference the type provider and get a list of topical news items for the day directly in your editor:
The selected property returns the URL as the value, which you can easily launch with your default browser using Process.Start:
OnThisDay.``1995: Rogue trader jailed for six years``
|> System.Diagnostics.Process.Start
If you fancy a play the source code is available on GitHub:
Happy holidays!
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28736 | Support Watertown News!
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28740 | Are Sports Drinks Dangerous For Your Health?
Everyone believes that sports drinks are the best thing to imbibe if you're in the middle of a very active day, a good run, or a tough workout. After all, they see the barrels of Gatorade and Powerade consumed by the athletes on TV, so these drinks have to be good right?
Would you believe that sports drinks can actually be dangerous for your health? By drinking sports drinks, you may actually be doing your body harm…
Sports Drinks and Their Downsides
Sports drinks are found everywhere - even in soda fountains in fast food restaurants around the country. This should actually be the first sign that they're not all that they're cracked up to be - and you should realize that the drinks are nowhere near as healthy or athlete-friendly as the general public believes.
Why is this?
If you've ever read the list of ingredients in Gatorade and Powerade, you'd be amazed by how unappealing the drink can sound:
For this reason, it's recommended that you stay away from energy drinks as much as possible!
When It IS Appropriate to Have a Sports Drink
There are some times when having a sports drink is the right thing to do, and that is in the middle of a very long, very intense workout. If you are training with heavy weights for more than 60 minutes, you may want to drink a small amount of sports drink to replenish the energy that you have burned.
Your body can only hold about 500 calories of energy at any one time, so burning through your energy stores can leave you exhausted. If you're running low on power, drink an energy drink that contains no more than 6 to 8 percent sugar, and has less than 100 milligrams of sodium per 8 ounces of drink.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28741 | Monday, January 11, 2016
Test Prep Frustrations
On most days of the week I pull my fifth grade reading group for guided reading- we sit down with a book, read it and talk about it. We often examine open-ended questions like how the characters changed, or what they learned. There is independent writing about the text but it is often tied together with a discussion. I even sneak grammar questions in, but since it is all around one fairly motivating text these tasks seem easily swallowed. The group is lively and I really enjoy working with them- and I believe the feeling is mutual.
Except on Fridays.
On Fridays we have test prep instead of straight guided reading. We work on a passage like one they will see on the May SOL test and answer the multiple choice questions. It isn't quite as enjoyable. This past Friday I found myself fighting back tears right along with them. One fifth grade student even crawled under the table and announced, "This is why I HATE Fridays! I hate test prep!" I don't blame her. I hate it too.
Their ability to discuss a book seems to stop cold when they are presented with four answer choices. They freeze. One is often stumped by vocabulary she hasn't learned in the year she has been in the country, and another could write an essay on why each of the four answer choices are correct- and the logic is usually just close enough that it is hard to reason with.*
We wade through each question as I silently attempt to identify what test prep skills are missing so I can sneak them into my guided reading group during the week.
I want these students to pass. They work so hard every day that they deserve to pass the end of year test. Let me re-phrase that- they deserve to have the knowledge and ability to pass the test. I want them to be able to sit down with that beast of a test in May and confidently answer the questions because we have prepared them for it all year. I'm their teacher- it's my job to give them that skill, isn't it? I don't want to throw up my hands and scream the test is unfair, and I don't want to give excuses for why these three may not pass. I want every moment of our blood, sweat, and tears throughout the year to pay off.
Yet on Fridays I often sit back and wonder what we are doing. If we can discuss a text during the week, find deeper meaning, identify vocabulary based on context clues, and analyze the author's message, then why are Friday's so tough? Are we learning how to be meaningful readers the rest of the week and Fridays we are only focused on passing an arbitrary test? Or do Fridays serve to keep me honest- bringing me back to earth about my students' progress? They do help me identify the holes in my student's learning so I know what to teach during the week. Yet they also can disillusion all four of us if we aren't careful.
For awhile as an educator I screamed about the uselessness of the standardized tests. Yet my voice became hoarse and no one listened. These days I'm more focused on the students in front of me- if this is how we are going to play the game then I want to give them the best opportunity to do so. What skills do they need in order to succeed with these current educational expectations? What needs to happen differently?
Friday afternoons haunt me into the weekend as I find myself replaying their frustration in my mind. We spend the week enjoying reading and then end the week with thirty minutes of biting pencils, sighing loudly, and desperately trying to solve the mystery of how to answer standardized test questions. I have no answers, or no thoughtful conclusions to this. Just a sense of frustration and failure as a teacher.
*I was one of these test takers. I know what it is like to read four choices and be able to argue each choice, to the point you lose the ability to identify the 'best' choice. Best in whose standards?
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28748 | Advantages and Applications of Microwaves
Microwaves are the electromagnetic or radio waves having higher frequencies of order GHz. Microwaves Technology have many Applications in our daily life. Microwaves have many advantages over general radio waves. General Radio waves have low frequencies while Microwaves are Waves having frequencies laying in SHF i.e. Super High Frequency Band. Due to higher frequencies, Microwaves have advantages like larger bandwidth and higher data rates. Some of the Advantages of Microwaves are described below.
Related: What Is Interlaced Scanning And Its Advantages
Advantages of Microwaves
Large Bandwidth: The Bandwidth of Microwaves is larger than the common low frequency radio waves. Thus more information can be transmitted using Microwaves. It is very good advantage, because of this, Microwaves are used for Point to Point Communications.
Better Directivity: At Microwave Frequencies, there are better directive properties. This is due to the relation that As Frequency Increases, Wavelength decreases and as Wavelength decreases Directivity Increases and Beam width decreases. So it is easier to design and fabricate high gain antenna in Microwaves.
Small Size Antenna: Microwaves allows to decrease the size of antenna. The antenna size can be smaller as the size of antenna is inversely proportional to the transmitted frequency. Thus in Microwaves, we have waves of much higher frequencies and hence the higher the frequency, the smaller the size of antenna.
Low Power Consumption:The power required to transmit a high frequency signal is lesser than the power required in transmission of low frequency signals. As Microwaves have high frequency thus requires very less power.
Effect Of Fading: The effect of fading is minimized by using Line Of Sight propagation technique at Microwave Frequencies. While at low frequency signals, the layers around the earth causes fading of the signal.
Related: Advantages & Applications Of Microcontroller
Applications of Microwaves
There are many Industrial, Scientific, Medical and Domestic Applications of Microwaves. The great example of Application of Microwaves is 'Microwave Oven' which we uses in our daily life. Following are the other main application areas of Microwaves:
Communication:Microwave is used in broadcasting and telecommunication transmissions. As described above, they have shorter wavelengths and allows to use smaller antennas. The cellular networks like GSM, also uses Microwave frequencies of range 1.8 to 1.9 GHz for communication. Microwaves are also used for transmitting and receiving a signal from earth to satellite and from satellite to earth. Military or Army also makes use of Microwaves in their communication system. They uses X or Ku band for their communication.
Related: Advantages Of Digital Communication Over Analog
Remote Sensing: Most of you may be familiar with this Application. The most common application of Microwave is its use in RADAR and SONAR. RADAR is used to illuminate an object by using a transmitter and receiver to detect its position and velocity. Radiometry is also one of the Remote Sensing Applications.
Heating: You all are familiar with this application. We uses Microwave Oven to bake and cook food. It is very convenient electronic machine which performs the heating task very cleanly and in a very less time. If you Want to know How Does a Microwave Works? then you may wonder that is based on the vibration of electrons present in the Food Particles. That is why Microwave Oven heats the food uniformly without heating the container.
Medical Science: Microwave's heating properties are also used in Medical Science. Microwave also have Medical Applications such as it is used in diagnosis and various therapies. There are also some other applications of heating property of microwave such as Drying, Precooking and Moisture Leveling.
1. it is very good short information about microwaves
thank you
1. You are welcome Dear. Feel free to share this with your friends and colleagues.
2. very useful info. thanks a lot
3. Very clear info..abt microwaves..thank you
4. Very brief information about Microwaves, bravooo
5. Very helpful brief information about Microwaves
6. very useful and helpfull
thank you
7. Thanks for reducing my assignment time. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28750 | Chinese Lanterns
Chinese Lanterns is another phrase that is sometimes used to refer to Wish Lanterns.
Chinese lantern is originally an American term to describe a Wish Lantern, used in light of the fact that The Kongming Lantern was the first hot air balloon, named after the great sage and military strategist of the Three Kingdoms Era of Chinese history Zhuge Liang.
Chinese lanterns are reported to date as far back as the 3rd Century B.C. however, making it likely that the invention of flying lantern is falsely attributed to Zhuge Liang however, which is in line with the traditional Chinese historical practice of attributing great discoveries to important miltary and historical figures, rather than their actual inventors. It is possible that the accrediting of the discovery to Kong Ming has something to do with resemblence that Wish Lanterns bear to the hat he is often seen to wear in paintings.
Lanterns have always been an important and widely used part of Chinese culture, as one of the most popular folk crafts for Chinese people. Whilst China is most famous for its traditions of using hanging or floating lanterns, both as illumination for practical purposes, and for celebrations and festivals, flying lanterns are also used in the celebration of important events, most notably Chinese New Year.
For more information on the history of Wish Lanterns, see our Thai Lantern page |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28759 |
Code Honor
Second's Duty Before Challenge Sent.
Duty Of Challengee And Second After Challenge Sent.
The Degrees Of Insult, And How Compromised
The Person Insulted, Before Challenge Sent
The Party Receiving A Note Before Challenge.
Who Should Be On The Ground.
Duty Of Principals And Seconds On The Ground.
Duty Of Challenger And His Second Before Fighting.
Arms, And Manner Of Loading And Presenting Them.
Second's Duty Before Challenge Sent.
1. Whenever you are applied to by a friend to act as his second, before you agree to do so, state distinctly to your principal that you will be governed only by your own judgment,--that he will not be consulted after you are in full possession of the facts, unless it becomes necessary to make or accept the amende honorable, or send a challenge. You are supposed to be cool and collected, and your friend's feelings are more or less irritated.
2. Use every effort to soothe and tranquilize your principal; do not see things in the same aggravated light in which he views them; extenuate the conduct of his adversary whenever you see clearly an opportunity to do so, without doing violence to your friend's irritated mind. Endeavor to persuade him that there must have been some misunderstanding in the matter. Check him if he uses opprobious epithet towards his adversary, and never permit improper or insulting words in the note you carry.
3. To the note you carry in writing to the party complained of, you are entitled to a written answer, which will be directed to your principal and will be delivered to you by his adversary's friend. If this be not written in the style of a gentleman, refuse to receive it, and assign your reason for such refusal. If there be a question made as to the character of the note, require the second presenting it to you, who considers it respectful, to endorse upon it these words: "I consider the note of my friend respectful, and would not have been the bearer of it, if I believed otherwise."
4. If the party called on, refuses to receive the note you bear, you are entitled to demand a reason for such refusal. If he refuses to give you any reason, and persists in such refusal, he treats, not only your friend, but yourself, with indignity, and you must then make yourself the actor, by sending a respectful note, requiring a proper explanation of the course he has pursued towards you and your friend; and if he still adheres to his determination, you are to challenge or post him.
5. If the person to whom you deliver the note of your friend, declines meeting him on the ground of inequality, you are bound to tender yourself in his stead, by a note directed to him from yourself; and if he refuses to meet you, you are to post him.
6. In all cases of the substitution of the second for the principal, the seconds should interpose and adjust the matter, if the party substituting avows he does not make the quarrel of his principal his own. The true reason for substitution, is the supposed insult of imputing to you the like inequality which if charged upon your friend, and when the contrary is declared, there should be no fight, for individuals may well differ in their estimate of an individual's character and standing in society. In case of substitution and a satisfactory arrangement, you are then to inform your friend of all the facts, whose duty it will be to post in person.
7. If the party, to whom you present a note, employ a son, father or brother, as a second, you may decline acting with either on the ground of consanguinity.
8. If a minor wishes you to take a note to an adult, decline doing so, on the ground of his minority. But if the adult complained of, had made a companion of the minor in society, you may bear the note.
9. When an accommodation is tendered, never require too much; and if the party offering the amende honorable, wishes to give a reason for his conduct in the matter, do not, unless offensive to your friend, refuse to receive it; by so doing you may heal the breach more effectually.
10. If a stranger wishes you to bear a note for him, be well satisfied before you do so, that he is on an equality with you; and in presenting the note state to the party the relationship you stand towards him, and what you know and believe about him; for strangers are entitled to redress for wrongs, as well as others, and the rules of honor and hospitality should protect him.
Next: The Party Receiving a Note Before Challenge.
Previous: The Person Insulted, Before Challenge Sent
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28766 | Gaudete (Robert Hugill)
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• CPDL #32678:
Edition notes: Original Composition by Robert Hugill
General Information
Title: Gaudete
Composer: Robert Hugill
Source of text: Philippians 4 vv. 4-6, Psalm 85 v 2, 5, 1 (Latin Vulgate Psalm 84)
Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: SATB
Genre: SacredMotetIntroit for Advent III
Language: Latin
Instruments: A cappella
First published: 2003
Description: A setting of verses from Philippians 4 and Psalm 84 which form the Introit for the Third Sunday in Advent.
External websites:
Original text and translations
Latin.png Latin text
Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico gaudete. Modestia vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus: Dominus prope est.
Benedixisti Domine terram tuam: avertisti captivitatem Jacob.
English.png English translation
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.
Lord, thou hast blessed thy land; thou hast turned away the captivity of Jacob. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28780 | Books Available through the Fellowship or Amazon
We stock most of these titles. Contact us or stop by our shop after practice.
No Fear Zen: Discovering Balance in an Unbalanced World
by Richard Collins, 2015
Mushotoku Mind Book Cover
Mushotoku Mind: The Heart of the Heart Sutra
by Taisen Deshimaru
revised and edited by Richard Collins, 2012
The Way of True Zen
by Taisen Deshimaru, 2002
(Contact the ZFB or one of our affiliates.
This title is difficult to find on Amazon,
but we have it in stock.)
The Zen Way to the Martial Arts
by Taisen Deshimaru, 1992 reprint
by Taisen Deshimaru
edited by Philippe Coupey, 1996
Kusen: Oral Teaching Numbers 1 & 2
by Robert Livingston Roshi
(Contact the ZFB or one of our affiliates
for these publications.)
In the Belly of the Dragon by Coupey - Book Cover
In the Belly of the Dragon, Volume 1
A Zen Monk's Commentary on the Shinjinmei by Master Sosan
by Rei Ryu Philippe Coupey
preface by Richard Collins, 2005
Zen: Simply Sitting
By Philippe Coupey, 2006
Living and Dying in Zazen: Five Zen Masters of Modern Japan
By Arthur Braverman, 2003
Dharma Brothers
By Arthur Braverman, 2010
Online Reading
by Kodo Sawaki Roshi
Dharma Names
by Koun Franz
Lay Ordination lectures (Dropbox pdf)
by Katagiri Roshi |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28782 | Monthly Archive:: October 2015
(Some) Carbs Make You Fat!
This might seem obvious to a lot of people now—but 20 years ago this concept was revolutionary: carbs—not fat—cause people to store fat. There are a zillion websites and medical journals that explain this better than I can, but here’s the basic breakdown: Calories ...Read More |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28787 | 24TH Days of Open Systems
Croatian Linux Users’ Conference
31 MAY 2017 - 02 JUNE 2017
FER, Zagreb, Croatia
Intro to Xamarin.Android on Linux
Xamarin.Android is one of the Xamarin platform products, together with Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Mac, products that enable .net, so C# and F# developers to write software targeting Android, iOS and MacOSX with a common codebase and shared (reused) cross platform code. For management code reuse means slimmer resources - manpower and/or timelines - thus cost reduction. This talk will give short introduction to Xamarin.Android development, tools, IDE Xamarin.Studio and Android concepts applied through C# instead of Java.
Miljenko Cvjetko
Xplat .net/Mono - C# developer working with .net stack on Linux since 2006, with mobile (Xamarin.Andriod) since beta private preview when it used to be called Monodroid (Mono for Android) 2010-Q3 and iOS - Xamarin.iOS since 2012-Q3. Today still working with C#/.net/mono on Linux, Android and other non-Windows systems, but paid by Microsoft.
Conference partners
Gold sponsors |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28795 | Philip Anselmo revealed how he learned of late Pantera bandmate Vinnie Paul’s death during a rock and horror convention panel. Speaking at Spooky Empire in Florida, Anselmo also pleaded with the audience to be good to each other while they’re still alive.
Vinnie Paul died on June 22 due to complications from heart disease. Vinnie and Phil never made amends during their lifetime, as a bitter feud between the two festered following the end of Pantera and the 2004 death of Dimebag Darrell. Vinnie Paul told us in 2016 he never planned to speak with Anselmo ever again, and he never did.
"I was busy rehabbing my back and I had had a great day grinding downstairs, hitting the bag and shit like that," Anselmo begins. "And then I got the news about Vince and it was just deflating, man. Despite all of our differences, just know this: the bitterness was so fucking harsh because it came from a place of love. You understand me on that? We loved each other so much that when things go awry in a band, it's like tripling down on negativity, man."
Anselmo continues, “It’s a pain I wouldn't wish on anyone. So, you all do me a favor, man — love each other while you can. Put all the squabbling and all the fucking fighting and all the division… I'm sick of this shit. Honestly, I'm tired of it. Be kind to each other. Everybody's cool, man, fuck. Just chill out.“
Phil went on to praise Vinnie Paul’s professionalism, describing when himself, Dimebag and Rex Brown were all “drunk,” Vinnie would be running the show. “He had his shit together. He'd be driving, he'd be settling gigs, and we would be drunk. "Thank goodness for Vince, man.”
Vinnie Pauls’ Best Songs: Pantera & Beyond |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28814 | Wizards Unite Training: Horcruxes
WBSTL PM tom riddles diary horcrux basilisk fang e1551054350167
Wizards Unite Training Camp
Your go-to place to get ready for the game
Today We’ll be covering: Horcruxes
tom diary destroyed horcrux
Horcruxes in Wizards Unite
There are few magical artifacts better known to Harry Potter fans than the Horcrux.
Since we know that finding artifacts will be part of the game, it is reasonable to think Horcruxes will be among them. Now there are many ways in which this could be introduced into the game.
• It could be something as simple as a ‘Save Game point’ which would allow us to make a ‘copy’ of the game at that exact point and save it for later use.
• Or part of a task we must complete in order to destroy a certain Dark Wizard (or Witch) to stop The Calamity.
• Perhaps it could be something for us to create in order to strengthen our team, or make sure we are harder to kill.
• Or maybe a safety net if Wizards Unite duelling becomes a reality.
Horcrux Origin
Herpo the Foul, one of the better known dark wizards of old, wasn’t only infamous for breeding the first Basilisk. He was also the creator of the first Horcrux.
There is very little information available surrounding this artifact’s origin because its mere existence is considered too horrifying. The knowledge of Horcruxes, and the magic behind them, are kept secret from the wizarding world. In fact, very few witches and wizards are even aware of its existence or nature.
Forbidden Knowledge
Even Hogwarts, a place created to educate young witches and wizards, banned the study of Horcruxes. Apparently Albus Dumbledore himself had a hand in it, believing the knowledge of such a dark artifact so dangerous it shouldn’t even be part of the school’s Restricted Section. The subject is, in fact, considered so widely as evil, that academies heavily focused on the Dark Arts, such as Durmstrang, will not touch upon it.
There are a few books that mention Horcruxes. All of these books revolve around the Dark Arts, and even there the information offered is little more than the mention of its existence. Magick Moste Evile, one of the most famous books on the Dark Arts, mentions Horcruxes as magic so evil it should not be spoken of.
There is one book, however, that does go into further detail. Secrets of the Darkest Art is the only book daring enough to offer detailed information on the method and consequences of creating a Horcrux. And even that information is extremely limited, since at the time of its publishing the only wizard known to have created a Horcrux was Herpo the Foul.
In all of wizarding history there have only been two instances of a wizard creating a Horcrux. Herpo invented them and created a single Horcrux before the magic was banned. Tom Riddle, later known as Lord Voldemort, is the only other wizard who dared use the magic. And he is also the only one to have created more than one Horcrux.
Creating a Horcrux
The creation of a Horcrux is not really complex magic. There are only two steps to it:
1. The person who wishes to create a Horcrux must first deliberately commit murder. This act is one of supreme evil, and thus damages the soul.
2. Then a simple spell will cast out the damaged part of the soul and incase it in an object.
The object chosen to become a Horcrux could be anything, although an inanimate object is recommended, due to its durability.
Once the Horcrux is made, it creates a link between the soul still inside the wizard and that encased in the object. Should the wizard die with the Horcrux still intact, this would tether him to the world of the living in a non-corporeal form. There are, however, certain methods for such a wizard to regain a body, rendering him almost immortal.
However, every time a Horcrux is created, a part of the soul is ripped from the body. So there is a theoretical maximum number of Horcruxes that can be made before the soul is completely spent.
“Well, you split your soul, you see, and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one’s body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged. But of course, existence in such a form…”
Horace Slughorn, Pottermore
Destroying a Horcrux
For a Horcrux to be destroyed, the object housing it must be damaged beyond repair, magical or otherwise. But Horcruxes are powerful items, so the task is not easy.
In Harry Potter’s Unauthorised Biography we learn that all of Voldemort’s Horcruxes were, in fact, destroyed using specially powerful objects or magic.
It is understandably unknown whether the creator of the Horcrux can sense when one is destroyed. There is little to no information on what happened to Herpo the Foul’s Horcrux. In Voldemort’s case, by they time Harry began destroying the Horcruxes, Voldemort’s soul was too damaged and unstable to register anything.
Voldemort’s Horcruxes
Tom Riddle was the first known wizard to have created a Horcrux after Herpo the Foul. And the only one to ever create more than one from the same soul.
He was still a teenager at Hogwarts when he created the first one, after the murder of Myrtle Warren in 1943. At that point he put the damaged part of his soul into his diary, which retained his appearance and personality at the time of creation.
But Tom Riddle seeked immortality to a greater point. He believed the creation of a Horcrux made a wizard stronger, his magic more powerful. So he decided to create a total of six Horcruxes which would split his soul into seven pieces, a number that held great meaning to him.
A death for immortality
First he hid the damaged part of his soul within his diary. Then he sought out and killed his paternal family and created a second Horcrux out of a family heirloom from his maternal side of the family: The Gaunt Ring.
Then he sought out objects he deemed especially powerful. Objects that once belonged to the founders of Hogwarts. He hid a piece of his soul inside Salazar Slytherin’s locket, another in Helga Hufflepuff cup and a third one in Rowena Ravenclaw’s Diadem.
By then the part of his soul still inside his body had become too broken and unstable, to the point where he unwittingly created a Horcrux and placed it inside Harry Potter on the night he attempted to kill him. The damage to his soul, the new piece ripped away and the protective magic Lily placed upon Harry when she died destroyed Voldemort’s body and left him weak, tattered to the world of the living but unable to regain corporeal form.
Years later, Voldemort created what he believed was his sixth Horcrux when he killed Bertha Jorkins. This piece he placed within Nagini.
The Seven Horcruxes
• Tom Riddle’s Diary
• Marvolo Gaunt’s Ring
• Salazar Slytherin’s Locket
• Helga Hufflepuff’s Cup
• Rowena Ravenclaw’s Diadem
• Harry Potter
• Nagini
Voldemorts horcruxes
What destroyed them
• A Basilisk fang (the diary and the cup)
• Godric Griffindor’s sword (the locket and nagini)
• Fiendfyre (the diadem)
• The Killing Curse (the piece inside Harry Potter)
So let’s get our wands out and start practicing. And check out our welcome page for all things WU.
We want to be ready when Wizards Unite AR Game finally arrives!
And above all, stay alert!
Accio Wizards Unite
Related Wizards Unite Posts
crimes of grindelwald 2
Wizards Unite Characters: Gellert Grindelwald
Apparate To Wizards Unite: Character ProfilesThe place where you can learn the good, the bad and the ugly about the magical world’s most prominent figures.Today’s profile: Gellert GrindelwaldEarly LifeDurmstrang InstituteThe Deathly HallowsHis expulsionGrindelwald and DumbledoreThe Lone JourneyThe Elder WandThe Rise of GrindelwaldAcross the pondDumbledore: Grindelwald’s FallThe Final DuelA Bigger Foe Wizards Unite: Character Profiles The […]
1. Sounds reasonable, but my guess is that only few great dark wizards will have the ability to create a horcrux, so they won’t show often in wizards unite.
1. Right, they don’t happen often, but I did come up with two possible scenarios for them to be part of the game.
One, it could be part of the mission to stop the Calamity, which could very easily be a plot to expose the wizarding world like Grindelwald attempted. Someone capable of starting the Calamity would want to take precautions were they to be found out. A Horcrux would be a good plan B, and a way for us to go through an adventure like the trio did.
Another possibility would be that Horcrux might be created by accident because of the Calamity. Everything magical is acting in such an unusual way that perhaps any act of murder would create a Horcrux on its own, and then that Horcrux would go on to influence everyone around them, much like the Locket did to Ron.
This, of course, is all speculation because Niantic hates us all and won’t give us any real info on gameplay 🙁
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28818 | Owning Makes More Sense
When comparing the cost of owning a home to renting, there is more to consider than the difference between a mortgage payment and the rent currently being paid. The mortgage payment very well could be lower than the rent, but when you consider the other benefits, owning could be much lower cost than renting.31066694-250.jpg
A portion of each mortgage payment is reducing the principal balance and building equity for the owner. Similarly, the home appreciates and also adds to the equity increase over time.
There are additional expenses for owning a home that renters don’t have, like repairs and possibly, a homeowner’s association. To get a clear picture, look at the following example of a $300,000 home with a 3.5% down payment on a 4.5%, 30-year mortgage.
net cost of housing.jpg
With normal amortization and 3% annual appreciation, the $10,500 down payment in this example turns into $112,00 in equity in seven years. Check out your own numbers using the Rent vs. Own or call me at (316) 337-5154. Owning a home makes sense and can be one of the best investments a person will ever make.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28849 | Combining AJAX and WCF 2.0
The WCF "Orcas" release (the WCF from .NET Framework 3.5 aka WCF 2.0) makes it so much easier to use your WCF service in conjunction with ASP.NET AJAX (formerly known as ‘Atlas’).
Before Orcas you would build a AJAX enabled (web) service by adding the [ScriptService] attribute to the service class.
public class MyService
// Implementation details
The ScriptServiceAttribute enables you to reference a JavaScript proxy from your client-side JS by including
Notice the /js that is appended at the end. That bit is the work of the ScriptService attribute. You do not have to add the script element manually, but get that automatically when you add a service reference to the ScriptManager control in your page.
Before anything will work all .asmx requests in an AJAX-enabled website are redirected to a different handler:
<add verb="*" path="*.asmx" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, …"/>
<add verb="*" path="*_AppService.axd" validate="false" type=""/>
<add verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, …" validate="false"/>
This replacement .asmx handler will return JSON data instead of the usual SOAP enveloppes, allowing for easy usage from the JavaScript code.
Here is a bit of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) data:
{ "Name" : "Alex", "Age" : 35 }
Did you know that this is actually just a JavaScript fragment? Take a look at this:
var person = { "Name" : "Alex", "Age" : 35 };
So, when you send some JSON data over the wire, it is very easy to start working with that data.
This is quite a bit of work, right?
In Orcas we get support for JSON, URL parameters and non-SOAP XML. It also has Atlas-specific conventions such as the JavaScript proxy.
Support for calling WCF service from the client stack
Visual Studio 2008 has WCF AJAX support, meaning that the ScriptManager understands these types of services and new templates like the AJAX-enabled WCF service. The latter will automaticaly create the correct configuration and corresponding skeleton code.
Enabling a WCF service for AJAX is a decision you can make at deployment time. So, you can call into any regular WCF service from AJAX without making any changes to your implementation. You do need to make some changes, which vary based on your hosting scenario.
Let’s assume you have an IIS hosted WCF service. You need to edit the ServiceHost directive in the .svc file and specify a different ServiceHostFactory implementation, like so:
<%@ ServiceHost Service="CoolestWCFService" Factory="WebScriptServiceHostFactory" %>
Here WebScript actually means AJAX-enabled.
When you host the WCF service yourself, you should edit your configuration file to enable JSON support.
<serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" />
<service name="AjaxService">
<endpoint address="" behaviorConfiguration="AjaxBehavior"
binding="webHttpBinding" contract="IAjaxService" />
<behavior name="AjaxBehavior">
<enableWebScript />
Note how you only need to add an endpoint behavior for enabling WebScript. This makes WCF do the same thing as ASMX web services: it can generate a JavaScript proxy when you visit the URL http://…/CoolestWCFService.svc/js. BTW, the WebScriptServiceHost automatically adds this behavior to any endpoint that has a WebMessageEncodingBindingElement in its Binding element list, but does not have the WebHttp behavior defined. If you are interested in a little more on hosting, check here (a bit dated, but still pretty much ok).
So, why would you switch to WCF services instead of ASMX services?
1. The separation of contract and binding:
Because the service contract and the binding are separated it will line you up better for future versions of encoding or . You will only need to change the configuration file to hook up e.g. some JSON version 2 (which might become reality to fix the recent security vulnerabilities in JSON v1). Or, you can add an application layer to expose the same service simultaneously as an AJAX and a SOAP service.
2. The cool features of WCF:
How are you going to protect your ASMX service from Denial of Service (DoS) attacks? In WCF you can protect your service with quotas, throttles and timeouts. There are more manageability options, such as logging, tracing and a whole bunch of performance counters. Think about the extra hosting options (e.g. self-hosted) for WCF services.
Also, Workflow Services in .NET 3.5 allow you to put a workflow inside a service which is behind an AJAX-enabled page. Compared to ASMX you could get performance gains as much as 4 times for large messages (rough estimate and preliminary results). And you get to use the HTTP programming model, such as POX and returning binary data.
3. The DataContract data model:
Going forward from .NET 3.0 the DataContract way of serializing is the preferred way. In 3.5 you may have noticed that Linq to SQL and ADO.NET Entities have built-in support for DataContract as well. The generated types for both Linq to SQL and ADO.NET Entities are [DataContract] types. Also, Linq to XML will have its XNode and derived types serialize to strings, so there is no problem to send them over the wire and use these in JavaScript. Furthermore, the DataContract is an opt-in model, so your type never gets serialized by accident. This is especially important, since you are sending the information to the browser client. The future directions of "Orcas+1" also indicate neat stuff to happen with the workflow data model and transformations (see this entry for a little more detail).
4. The future: There has been no investment in new features for ASMX since .NET 2.0 or in Orcas. Will there be for the future?
Finally, here are some characteristics of the WCF AJAX architecture:
• Operation names are in the URL. There are no SOAP actions. A special operation dispatcher makes this happen.
• Parameters in URLs, because no message body is available for GET requests. Again, a special formatter will take care of that.
• JSON parameters in URLs (Atlas-specific) allows for complex types to be passed from the client to the service.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28877 | How To: Boot Your Galaxy S9 or S9+ into Safe Mode
Boot Your Galaxy S9 or S9+ into Safe Mode
No smartphone is immune to software issues, even one as advanced as the Galaxy S9 and S9+. Bugs can be caused by a multitude of issues, such as third-party apps that just refuse to play well with your device's OS. Thankfully, there's a simple way for you to check if your S9's bugs are due to uncooperative apps.
Like almost all Android devices, the S9 and s9+ can be booted into safe mode, which gives you the ability to troubleshoot your device for issues like random reboots, crashes, overheating, and more. Safe mode disables all third-party applications, so if bugs or other issues disappear while in this mode, you'll know definitively that one of the apps you've installed is the culprit.
Booting into Safe Mode
To boot your S9 or S9+ into Safe mode, start by pressing and holding the power button until the power menu appears on your screen. From there, long press the "Power Off" button until it turns into a "Safe Mode" button. Simply tap on "Safe Mode" once it appears and your device will automatically reboot to safe mode.
Now that your device is in safe mode, you'll notice a "Safe Mode" badge on the lower-left corner of the screen. You'll also notice that all third-party apps have been grayed out to denote their disabled status. At this point, you can do your troubleshooting, and if you can pin down the problematic app, you can uninstall it from Settings –> Apps.
Exiting Safe Mode
Once you're done troubleshooting your device, you're free to exit out of safe mode. To do so, simply press and hold the power button until the power menu appears, then tap on "Restart." When your S9 finishes rebooting, you'll be out of safe mode — simple as that!
Cover image and screenshots by Amboy Manalo/Gadget Hacks
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28884 | How can I setup a SMTP server?
I would like to setup a local SMTP server to test if the notifications work correcly on my instance. How can I do that?
0 votes
2 answers
Hi Manon!
There is an easy way to setup a local smtp server by using this project: It binds a dummy SMTP server that listens on whichever port you want (it means that those mails won't be really sent) and on which you can setup Nuxeo to send outgoing mails: when the server sends a mail, it shows up into the list of received emails.
To get this up and running, you only need to adjust your $NUXEO_HOME/bin/nuxeo.conf file to reflect this setup.
# Mail settings (for notifications)
mail.transport.port=25000 # Adjust with FakeSMTP configuration. Avoid port 25 that is generally used by other applications.
To start the software, just launch the command:
java -jar fakeSMTP.jar
If you are on Windows, you can check this software that seems to do the same job:
2 votes
Hi Manon,
we are using It's an easy to use mailserver with a docker container. It has a nice API which allows us to run integration tests.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28887 | Skip to content
I typically start talking to students about molecular genetics by pointing out that while we share 98% of our genome with chimps, we share around 60% with bananas. So what's the significance of either of those numbers? What I'm getting at, in part, is that all living things share DNA & that what makes us different, to a great extent, is not that 2% or that 40% but how those genes are regulated & put to work. When I teach undergrads, I lecture on this stuff & we set up lab activities to help reinforce these principles & connect the dots. But when I teach grad students, my purpose is more to help guide them in learning how to learn what they need or want to know. So by & large, they do the presentations of the material & we (the whole class) help clarify things that remain obscure & connect the dots between the material. I challenge each of them to keep their presentations dynamic, to take on the challenge of being a teacher to their peers, to break out of the mold of just summarizing articles & walking thru bullet sheets of those summaries. I have been thrilled to see them rise to the challenge by bringing hands-on activities into our classroom. I am fond of how David Sloan Wilson discusses presents science as a roll-up-your sleeves practice that anyone can do in his book Evolution for Everyone. We talk a lot of theory, but whether you're an undergrad, grad student, professor, lay person, or whatever, it's always easier to build up from what you already know & can touch with your hands than to fathom theory in the abstract.
This week's readings included somewhat intensive readings in genetic principles (see summaries here & here), so our presenters helped us connect the dots by teaching us how to extract DNA from strawberries. I am not sure how much DNA we share with strawberries, but it can't be that different from bananas.
This can all be found online, including proper measurements (here, for instance). First, a mixture is made of dish soap & salt. The dish soap will dissolve the walls & organelles of the eukaryotic cells. The salt will break down the bonds of the polypeptide chains.
Waiting for the chemistry explosion
Emma & Becca waiting for the chemicals to explode
The strawberries are pulzerized in a plastic bag then the dishsoap/salt solution is added to do its work. The strawberry solution is then strained thru cheesecloth into a waiting receptacle.
Sieving the squished strawberries
Elizabeth strains the squished strawberry solution
Cold alcohol is slowly poured on top of the strawberry solution.
Pouring the cold ethanol on top
Elise carefully pouring in the alcohol (& wishing I would go away with the camera)
The strawberry DNA precipitates up to the alcohol & congeals between the layers of strawberry solution & alcohol.
Looking for DNA
Emma looking for the DNA to congeal
And there it is (looking, as the students pointed out, like snot)!
Strawberry DNA!
Strawberry DNA!
What does all this mean for anthropology? It means that the principles & methods underlying life &, thus, the human experience are graspable--literally! Using our holistic & interdisciplinary approach, we have the tools to take the necessary steps to address the questions that interest & compel us, not matter how fuzzy or messy or technically intimidating they may at first seem to be. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28902 | Tag Archives: starbucks name fails
What’s in a name?
People often spell my name wrong. This is usually through no fault of their own but rather because of an impulsive decision I made as a young girl. One of those passionate and spontaneous moments of childhood that only happen in childhood because sometimes when you’re nine you know yourself better than when you’re on the cusp of 39.
For those of you who don’t know, or never noticed, I spell my name with two L’s. I changed it in the third grade because every parent in the early 80’s in western Ohio thought April was just a super terrific name and, as a result, there were what felt like hundreds of us in my small elementary school. Technically at least seven. Most importantly, three alone just in my class. Tired of being April B., I decided to set fire to the old me and emerge from the ashes as Aprill.
Aprill! Yes! Because Aprill is so much more exotic than plain old boring April. April was a month. Aprill was a force of nature. Aprill could do anything. Wear her jeans pegged! Rollerblade without a helmet! Know all the lyrics to a Tupac song! (And not the radio edit version!) With a name like that I was destined for big things. Like becoming the first supermodel doctor archaeologist who wrote novels on the weekend.
Granted, not everyone was on board with this change. My teacher repeatedly marked my grade down on all my spelling tests because I spelled my name “wrong.” Nevertheless, I persisted. Unfortunately so did she, which is why I got a C in spelling that year, but I think I made my point.
Because eventually everyone did forget that April B. ever existed. Soon I was known as Aprill, that girl who puked on the playground that one time! (It was hotdog day. It wasn’t pretty).
And thus things remained until last week when I went to Starbucks, where I discovered I hadn’t been nearly ambitious enough with my name change all those years ago. Because right there, on my cup, staring back at me in black and white, was the most beautifully unnecessary way yet to spell my name.
APERAL. I mean. What?
I’ll admit I laughed at first. Even shared it on social media to get some laughs and also show everyone that I am a very important writer who writes very writerly-like at Starbucks with all the other important writerly writers of our generation.
But, and I’m not proud of this, but it got me thinking. What if that was my name? What if I was Aperal? And if I was, who was this Aperal?
I mean, sure, Aperal looks like a cross between the name of prescription drug with horrible side effects and a fancy drink women in their mid-40’s order at two in the afternoon. But you have to admit it’s memorable.
I’ll tell you one thing, Aperal is probably not the kind of person who only wins arguments in the shower. Oh no, Aperal would win them right then and there and while completely dry.
When someone asks Aperal what she does for a living, she wouldn’t go “oh, I’m kind of a writer.” Oh no. She’d say “I’m an award-winning columnist.” And then she’d probably do something really cool like chug an entire martini and throw the glass into the fireplace (because Aperal is the kind of person who is always casually hanging out by fireplaces).
And Aperal would definitely have the nerve to get a pixie haircut and dye it platinum blonde like Aprill has been wanting to do for years.
Aperal probably doesn’t have insomnia either. Nope. You’d never catch her slowly eating an entire block of cheese dipped in guacamole by the glow of the refrigerator light because she hasn’t got a good night’s sleep in three weeks and nothing matters anymore.
Aperal can probably get into her sports bra without pulling a muscle and knocking over a lamp.
Aperal could send a text without agonizing over its content until she got a reply.
I bet Aperal even knows how to French braid. Like some kind of hair wizard.
And when Aperal’s kids misbehave in public, Aperal would get them in line by turning into a stern but lovable Mary Poppins as the entire playground looked on in awe, as opposed to growling at them and whipping out her Darth Vader voice, terrifying everyone within hearing distance.
Sigh. It does sound nice. Completely reinventing myself again. To become that better version of myself that is hiding underneath all the ketchup stains and undereye bags.
In the end though, Aprill, for all her faults and pretentiously referring to herself in the third person, isn’t that bad. And Aperal, for as amazing as she sounds, wasn’t the one who built this life from the ground up. A life full of mistakes but one I’m happy to call my own.
Besides, wasn’t it someone famous (Aperal would probably know) who said “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”?
So, I think I’ll stick with remaining Aprill for now.
But I’m keeping Aperal in my back pocket. Just in case I’m ever casually hanging out by a fireplace. |
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28907 | I am having trouble reading data from an MCP3424 chip, specifically the one from this website:
I have a pressure transducer that connects to the MCP3424 chip. The chip is then connected to a NodeMCU 1.0. Schematics are attached.
The pressure transducer comes from here:
It is run into a 9-pin VGA adapter
I am new to this kind of stuff, and I do not know what code is needed on the NodeMCU to read the data coming in from the pressure transducer via the MCP3424 chip. My code currently contains code from here:
My code is set to upload the error message I am getting from the MCP3424 to a spreadsheet so I can read the error. The error I get is "i2c". I am not sure what that means. I have tried contacting the author of the code but I have not received a response in a few weeks. I simply want to read the pressure I am getting from the pressure transducer from the MCP3424 chip.
Some useful information about the MCP3424 chip can be found here:
If anyone can provide any guidance, code, or helpful advice, that would be extremely appreciated.
Link to my post on the arduino forum, which includes my code, is here:
Thank you.
• 1
my bet is on a wrong I2C address. run the I2C scanner sketch and adjust any hard-coded value on the sensor demo sketch once you identify the module. If it doesn't show up un the scanner, try adjusting the wires. – dandavis Jan 8 '19 at 22:03
• I ran the i2c scanner and all I get is a bunch of unknown errors at every address...what does this mean about the board? – TyB Jan 9 '19 at 0:40
• It means it's hooked up to the MCU wrong, you forgot the I2C pullups (sometimes they can be ignored, sometimes not) or it doesn't have enough voltage/current. It's possible the module or board is defective, but that's a lot rarer than user error. – dandavis Jan 9 '19 at 3:31
Your Answer
Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28918 | Dear Dr. Shalini Sharma
Dear Dr. Shalini Sharma,
Your article ‘Hindutva and historical revisionism’ has been described as an “excellent piece” by Dr. Priyamvada Gopal, Reader in Anglophone and Related Literature at Cambridge University. Journalist and historian, Andrew Whitehead, praised it as an “important article.” I presume it must have been to warrant publication in the esteemed web-based journal History Workshop Online. Not being a historian of South Asia (or of any other area), I do not expect my comments to matter much within historical circles, among which your work is presumably regarded as being of a high quality and deserving of respect. I hope that readers (or you) will not take issue with the quibbles I want to raise about your article in the vain hope of offering a response to some of your claims. This is especially so as you refer to Prof. S.N. Balagangadhara, a major intellectual in the study of the cultural differences between India and the West, who has developed his own research programme devoted to it, and who has significantly influenced my own work.
PG on SS
You identify a rise in the phenomenon of historical revisionism, which you say has been growing since the Ayodhya incidents of 1992, with calls for a Hindu-centred approach to Indian history. You don’t explain on what grounds those who make such calls do so and why you think they are not justified, although it is implicit in your article that such calls can never be justified.
You claim that Prof. S.N. Balagangadhara sits at the centre of all the resurgence in nationalist revisionism. You say that this is because (a) he has the ear of PM Modi and (b) because he was invited to talk at the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR). Instead of providing a link to the available YouTube version of that talk or its extended paper version (also available on you only give a link to the late Praful Bidwai’s blog on that event. The title of Praful Bidwai’s blog article is significant: “How the Sangh Parivar is taking over education and culture institutions”. That blog also happens not to provide the relevant links to Balagangadhara’s talk. Why doesn’t either of you provide a link to the talk that constitutes a central plank in your respective hypotheses?
Having the ear of somebody can mean that one has the attention of that person, even favourable attention. If your account is reliable, then Balagangadhara has Modi’s favourable attention. You do not say how this favourable attention translates into Balagangadhara being at the centre of all the resurgence in nationalist revisionism. So the burden rests on the talk that Balagangadhara gave at the ICHR. That must represent the vital clue as to how Balagangadhara might sit at the centre of all historical revisionism.
It is not completely clear whether you have heard Balagangadhara’s talk or if you have read the extended paper version. You could easily have done so given that both are freely available online. I presume the topic of the talk, “What do Indians Need, A History or the Past?” would have been of interest to you given your interest in Indian history (and any revisionism applied to it). However, I think readers may not be blamed for reaching the conclusion that you have probably not heard or read the lecture. If you had read it, you could not possibly make the claims you do in your article. For example, in the written version of his talk, Balagangadhara says that:
The ideologues of the Sangh Parivar might do what centuries of colonialism tried but could not accomplish: destroy the Indian culture and her traditions irreplaceably and irrevocably. They might do that while truly believing that they are ‘saving’ the Indian culture and her traditions.
Whatever the Sangh Parivar ideologues might be attempting to do, it can hardly be claimed that Balagangadhara’s claim here is consistent with their ideology. Any reader would rightly conclude that Balagangadhara is critical of their actions, which would be destructive, as he says, of Indian culture and traditions. Your (and Bidwai’s) hypothesis, however, requires Balagangadhara’s and the Parivar’s projects to be working in the same direction of historical revisionism. In so far as your hypothesis of revisionism depends on Balagangadhara’s role in that project your claims require further explanation or additional hypotheses to hold water.
Let us take another one of your statements. You say that, “At the heart of Balagangadhara’s revisionism lies an appropriation of post-colonial theory which should ring alarm bells.” Appropriation is generally taken to mean that one takes or treats something as one’s own and, sometimes, it has the connotation of doing so without permission. Given that the taking-without-permission interpretation would lead to a blind alley in academic contexts where the exchange of ideas is presumed to be the norm, I am prepared to discard that as your intended meaning. Further, since one cannot own a theory, probably you intend to say that Balagangadhara is instead using postcolonial theory, although it seems fairly obvious that you have some sort of illicit use in mind. Since there are many theorists described as post-colonial we might take the ones that Balagangadhara does discuss.
If Edward Said is a post-colonial theorist, then, at best, we can say that Balagangadhara accepts only some of Said’s insights, while showing how they may be better understood to explain how we think of and study India today. Balagangadhara goes further. He provides arguments why Said fell short by making inconsistent claims or shows that Said makes claims that cannot be supported. Rather than describing Balagangadhara’s discussion of Said as an ‘appropriation’, I would have used the term ‘critique’. Perhaps there is a particular convention among historians, of which I remain ignorant, that makes it more appropriate to use the term ‘appropriation’.
It may be that you have not read Balagangadhara’s account of Said’s Orientalism, which is published, among other places, in his book Reconceptualizing India Studies. Had you read the book, you might also have come across Balagangadhara’s discussion of Homi Bhabha, another post-colonial theorist. It could hardly be said that Balagangadhara ‘appropriates’ (in the sense of treating as his own) Bhabha’s notion of mimicry as resistance. In fact, Balagangadhara criticises Bhabha’s acceptance of the mimic as exemplary by describing the mimic as a coward because he cannot make his resistance explicit. Balagangadhara says that such a mimic-resister is someone who bears out the coloniser’s description of the colonised as an inauthentic being. If Said appears useful after modification, Bhabha appears to merit discarding. Bernard Cohn, upon whom you also rely, is not someone discussed to any major extent by Balagangadhara in the writing I am aware of. But then you do not make clear how if at all Balagangadhara ‘appropriates’ Cohn. In any event, I found what you want to say with respect to Cohn completely opaque. No doubt this reflects my own inability to penetrate the deep insights of post-colonialism and not on any lack on your part.
You say, “Balagangadhara reads Indian history through the optic of ‘orientalism’, particularly in the way in which it is freighted with Christianity.” This statement is a further indication that you may not have read or understood Balagangadhara’s claims. From one interpretation of what you say, reading Indian history through the “optic” or “eyes” of Orientalism would make one an Orientalist. But since he does not read Indian history through the optic of Orientalism, Balagangadhara cannot be an Orientalist. This is probably not what you meant to say anyway (you do say later that: “Balagangadhara argues that orientalism shaped and determined the colonial knowledge of and within India”; see below on this). Probably then you mean something like, “Balagangadhara considers that our current view of India’s past is conditioned by Orientalism, which is dependent on Christianity”. If that is that you meant, then I find it difficult to understand what your problem with that claim is. A number of writers, including Edward Said, Ronald Inden, Nicholas Dirks, and so on. consider that our current view of India’s past is conditioned by Orientalism. Although he does not address the issue in any detail or depth in his book Orientalism, Edward Said himself considered that earlier layers of Orientalism were conditioned by Christianity.
But let us go deeper into the claims you make: “Balagangadhara argues that orientalism shaped and determined the colonial knowledge of and within India.” The hyperlink is to the book Rethinking Religion in India, which carries chapters by various authors, including those working within the framework of Balagangadhara’s research programme, as well as by Balagangadhara himself. Presumably, you are signposting to Balagangadhara’s chapter in that book, which presents an abbreviated version of his hypothesis about religion in India. In your own statement, you seem to be fusing Balagangadhara’s claims about Orientalism with his claims about colonialism. Balagangadhara, Said and others would agree that Orientalism both precedes and postdates formal colonialism. Orientalism is therefore the discourse according to which descriptions of the Orient get arranged in such a way that they become compatible and consistent with Western culture. This is why Balagangadhara can claim that Orientalism is not an objective description of the Orient (although it appears to be that), but rather that studying it tells us about the Western culture that gave rise to it. Colonialism is a process distinct from Orientalism. Balagangadhara separates out the aspect of colonialism that is an educational project, tied to the way in which the coloniser’s account of the culture of the colonised is transmitted to the latter. Among the outcomes of this process is the engendering of colonial consciousness in the colonised, which prevents access to the experience of the colonised to himself.
Perhaps your sentence that follows immediately is also of interest: “Indeed, any attempt to know India from a social science or humanities perspective is to pursue, unwittingly, a Christian agenda.” One of the definitions of ‘agenda’ is ‘the underlying intentions or motives of a particular person or group’; another is ‘an underlying often ideological plan or program’. If these definitions reflect your intended meaning, then your statement would not be a correct description of Balagangadhara’s work because he does not say that those doing social science and humanities are following some Christian agenda. Neither do you provide any specific clues as to why it is plausible to claim that Balagangadhara says so. However, he can, I believe, be interpreted as saying that doing the currently dominant social sciences and humanities is to repeat Christian theological ideas about human beings that have become the common sense of Western culture. To the extent that they depend on such ideas, social sciences and humanities are not sciences at all but purvey secularised Christian themes. Similar claims are made in the field of comparative religion by other writers (e.g. some writers in the Rethinking Religion volume that you hyperlink). In other fields, such as law or political theory, there are writers (Harold Berman, John Witte, Marcello Pera) who also make cognate claims. These writers enable us to conclude that any claims that these fields are scientific must fail because they import (or to use your terminology, they are ‘freighted with’) theological themes and concepts. Prominent scientists such as Feynman have also made the claim about social sciences not quite being sciences. Balagangadhara also points to the basically unscientific nature of research in the social sciences. This not because of some “agenda” or the other but because of the problematic knowledge claims being made within the social sciences.
AW on SS (2)
You go on to say that, “It has the effect of producing an ‘unbroken line of continuity’ with the orientalist writings about the ’religions’ in India.’” This sentence follows from the one just discussed. The quoted sections are from Balagangadhara’s chapter in the Rethinking Religion book and are made within discussion about the existence of religions in India. Balagangadhara’s actual sentence is as follows:
In fact, this is also the status of the field today: the writings in the humanities and social sciences maintain an unbroken line of continuity with the orientalist writings on these ‘religions’ in India.
Perhaps it is better to consider that sentence with the one by you that immediately follows:
“Generations of Indian intellectuals only regard Hinduism as a religion simply because they have been infused with something called ‘colonial consciousness’, a condition ‘generated through violence, reproduced through asymmetries in power and sustained by an ideology – the ideology of a Christian theological framework’.”
Firstly, you have incorrectly reproduced the quoted section alleged to be from Balagangadhara in this sentence (‘generated through violence, reproduced through asymmetries in power and sustained by an ideology – the ideology of a Christian theological framework’). The words “ideology of a Christian theological framework” do not appear anywhere in Balagangadhara’s chapter in the Rethinking Religion book to which the hyperlink is provided, but the following words do appear in his chapter in that book: “generated through violence, reproduced through asymmetries in power and sustained by an ideology”. If one assumes that no other writing of Balagangadhara’s is meant to be the source (none other is referenced or hyperlinked after all), the alleged quotation is incorrect and misleading.
Secondly, Balagangadhara does not say that Hinduism is regarded as a religion because of colonial consciousness. Since Balagangadhara denies there is religion in India, for him the question is not whether Hinduism is a religion but whether religion exists in India at all. He is also able to show how, nevertheless, it was necessary that those from the Western culture saw religion in India. Although Hinduism is claimed to be one of the religions that exists in India, Balagangadhara denies that such a thing exists except in Western universities. Balagangadhara further says that the reason why Indian intellectuals think there exists something called Hinduism is because of colonial consciousness. Again, you do not appear to have understood one of Balagangadhara’s central claims.
As noted, you have not explained how differences on history between the Sangh Parivar ideologues and Balagangadhara can be reconciled in such a way as to enable your hypothesis to get off the ground. Balagangadhara’s claims about religion and Hinduism are fatal for your hypothesis regarding Balagangadhara’s central role in Hindutva revisionism. Given that one must accept the existence of Hinduism to subscribe to Hindutva ideology, it is impossible to ascribe that ideology and consequent revisionism to Balagangadhara.
You turn your attention to me: “In the UK too, Hindu nationalism has found its voice, in the work of Prakash Shah.” I presume you do not appreciate the effect that such a claim has in Britain and that you do not intend to make defamatory allegations. It is an invitation to fellow scholars and to others to disregard my work and dissociate themselves from me. While various types of nationalism – whether it is multiple forms of European nationalism, Zionism, or the Islamic umma – tend to be treated with a degree of scepticism and even disapprobation, the kind of stigma that the tag of Hindu nationalism brings with it has no parallel. The label is enough to discredit a scholar and irreparably damage him in the eyes of others, leading to a refusal to publish his work, to disallow favourable reviews of his work to be published, to reject applications to have his research funded, and to curtail chances of obtaining employment. Another post-colonial scholar, Prof. Gurminder K. Bhambra (now of Sussex University), has previously tried to use the Hindu-nationalist accusation against me, and hers is not the only such attempt.
You may be forgiven for not being familiar with much of my writing. That should ordinarily have been a reason for circumspection but that consideration does not hold you back. You have probably not read my chapter “The Indian Dimension of An-Na’im’s Islam and the Secular State” (In: Marie-Claire Foblets and Jean-Yves Carlier (eds.): Islam and Europe: Crises are challenges. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2010, pp. 153-166, SSRN version available here). At the end of that chapter, in the last line, I write that “Nationalism is a European inheritance that Indians would do better to forego.” This is not a ringing endorsement of nationalism of any kind. The problem it poses for you is how you would reconcile the thought I express with your own claims about me. In attempting to do so, you might examine my work more thoroughly to understand just what views I hold of Hindu nationalism.
You go on to say:
Like Balagangadhara, Shah asserts that accounts of Aryan invasion and the caste system are ‘ways of constructing “knowledge” about Indian society that have their roots in Christian, theologically driven assessments of Indian culture and traditions.
In the paper of mine that you hyperlink to, my claims regarding the Aryan invasion debate rely on the writing of Belgian scholar, Marianne Keppens, who also works in the framework of Balagangadhara’s research programme. She would probably find amusing, though not surprising, that her work is being linked to Hindutva. Let me group your claim above to a couple of others where you raise the caste system issue:
The main focus for Balagangadhara, Shah and others, is the idea of a caste system. This, they argue, like Hinduism, is a construction of colonialism, foisted upon authentic Indians by outsiders.
Whilst caste does exist, Hindutva revisionists argue that the caste system, like Hinduism, does not.
It is completely unclear why Balagangadhara’s, Dunkin Jalki’s (who you regard as a “Hindutva apologist”) or my claims about the caste system would turn us into Hindutva revisionists. In a recent co-edited book, The Western Foundations of the Caste System, we make the claim that the caste system does not exist. No Hindutva ideologue I am familiar with has made this claim. If you know of one you might do me the favour of pointing it out. Even then, such a thinker would have to go against the main thrust of a century and more of Hindu revivalist writing, which accepts that a caste system exists. In a recent article, Christophe Jaffrelot says that the varna system was endorsed by a series of Hindu revivalists including “Deendayal Upadhyaya, the Sangh Parivar’s influential ideologue”. If they did endorse this system, how is their endorsement similar in any way to what Balagangadhara and those of us who work within his research programme argue? In fact, if Hindu nationalists accept the existence of the caste system, those of us who work within Balagangadhara’s research programme argue the opposite: that it does not exist. One often finds Hindutva ideologues and activists taking an anti-caste stand, which indicates that they accept something of the description of India as having a caste system. We do not accept the caste system as describing India. Had you understood this, you might have found the difference interesting to explore not least because it goes against your assumptions about the consistency between the claims of Hindu nationalists and Balagangadhara’s research programme. Meanwhile, I suppose you don’t realise the ground you share in common with Hindu nationalists: you agree that India has Hinduism and the caste system.
Although your point about Hinduism has been dealt with above, in the Rethinking Religion book to which you provide a hyperlink, Balagangadhara is not the only contributor who says that Hinduism does not exist. In the same book, Timothy Fitzgerald says the following (at p. 122): “The idea that such imagined entities as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism can be harmlessly lined up as equal members of the same genus religion, which is loaded with Christocentric history, is itself part of modern ideology, as I argued in detail in my book The Ideology of Religious Studies…” Does Fitzgerald claiming that we have imagined entities such as Hinduism because of Christocentric history make him a Hindu nationalist or Hindutva revisionist? So why should it transform Balagangadhara into one? In the same book the editors provide (at p. 11) a quote from Frits Staal who says: “Vedic, Brahmanical, Hindu, Buddhist, . . . In Asia, such groupings are not only uninteresting and uninformative, but tinged with the unreal.” Same again?
There is something very peculiar about the way in which you write, although I am certain that you do not consciously intend the implication that I am drawing from it. You appear to be deeply uncomfortable dealing fairly and squarely with ideas of those of Indian origin (Balagangadhara, Jalki, myself). As the quote from Fitzgerald demonstrates, any resemblance between what those Indian origin writers say and what those from other backgrounds say is not addressed or accounted for in your article. You do not explain how they turn out not to be Hindu nationalists (at least they are excluded from mention as such) but the Indian origin writers who may claim something similar are turned into Hindu nationalists because of those claims. I am sure it would be untrue to accuse you of being a racist, but then what should we describe what you do as?
Let me deal finally with your point about the defenders of low-caste Dalits.
In fact, Hindutva revisionism goes one step further, accusing the defenders of low-caste Dalits of being responsible for sectarianism. Shah has argued that not only did Ambedkar advocate that the only way to destroy the caste system was to destroy Hinduism, and that Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, the founder of the ‘Self-Respect Movement’, made his followers murder high-caste Brahmans, but also that both men wanted the British to remain in India.
What you say here misrepresents what I have actually said. I do not say that Periyar made his followers murder high-caste Brahmins. In fact, I say the following (at p. 158 of my hyperlinked article), which is derived from various published and clearly cited sources, primarily Nicholas Dirks’ major work, Castes of Mind:
Although Dirks (2001: 255-274) does not read the evidence in that way, his account of the thoughts and actions of both his representative anti-caste figures, Periyar and Ambedkar, supports the contention that, indeed, they had thoroughly imbibed the Protestant accounts of the caste system, so much so that they both routinely attacked Hinduism, Brahmanism and Brahmins; both also burned copies of the dharmashastra text, Manusmriti. In Periyar’s case, it also amounted to physical attacks as his followers “beat priests and idols with shoes” (261), while “on more than one occasion he implied that Brahmans should be murdered” (262). Such attacks have carried on in post-independence India by adherents of Periyar’s ideology (Seshadri). Ambedkar was meanwhile adamant that destroying caste required destroying the religion, Hinduism (Dirks 267). As noted, Ambedkar subscribed to the European Enlightenment values of liberty, equality and fraternity (Roy 48, 51), while neither he nor Periyar wanted the British to leave India (Shourie Worshipping False Gods, Ambedkar 237n).
Let us leave aside your fairly obvious distortion of what I had written. I assume that you had also read that the main source that I cite in the above passage (as you provide a hyperlink to it for your readers to check) is Nicholas Dirks. You take no issue with Dirks for his claims, but with me! Racism?
So, as you might agree, your article contains some of the following problems: instances of misquoting, misrepresentation and distortion of the work of others; a lack of understanding of some basic claims made in Balagangadhara’s work and within his research programme; a lack of understanding of some well known features of the work of Hindutva ideologues; a failure to read the work of the scholars that you wish to critique; reaching conclusions that could not be derived from the alleged evidence for them; making claims that cannot be substantiated and which are against the weight of the evidence; attempting to criticise scholars of being Hindu nationalists, Hindutva revisionists or Hindutva apologists because they say certain things whereas other, non-Indian scholars, who make similar claims are not so labelled. Apart from these admittedly minor problems with your article, I am sure that those who describe it as “excellent” or “important”, and those who agreed to have it published, deserve plaudits for recognising a work of such significance.
I very much look forward to reading your future work, which promises to be equally reliable and a significant marker in the field.
Yours in friendship,
This entry was posted in caste, caste system, Christianity, colonial conciousness, Dunkin Jalki, Edward Said, Gurminder Bhambra, Hindus, India, Orientalism, post-colonialism, S.N. Balagangadhara, Shalini Sharma, Western culture and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
1 Response to Dear Dr. Shalini Sharma
1. dwc says:
You are somewhat vague about where Balu differs from Edward Said.
(a) Balu adds a qualifier to Edward’s thesis: Descriptions of European Experience of India (Balu) vs Descriptions of Europeans (Said). This qualifier has enormous consequences.
(b) Said says current Social sciences provide an alternative to Orientalism. Balu claims that current social sciences continue Orientalism by taking Orientalism and its descriptions as verdical. So, there are two paths for current social sciences: the facts of Orientalism have become explananda (here is where we can situate the questions like origins of the caste system, origin of Hinduism, etc); or these facts have become heuristics for other theories.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28923 | Talking Science
Ask A Biologist Podcast, Vol 055
Guest: Krulwich, Robert
Dr Biology sits down with well known science correspondent, Robert Krulwich, for a fun conversation about communicating science. The two talk about media, old and new, and maybe some that may not have been developed.
Topic Timecode
Visible and invisible ideas.
Radio as a story-telling medium. [difference between television and radio]
The duet between the radio voice and the listening.
Difference between radio and television?
Multitasking in the modern age.
Radio and television - then and now.
The beginning of Radio Lab.
Who and how to people listen to RadioLab?
Who is listening to the new medium?
Are there new communication mediums that are being developed?
Are you secretly a scientist at heart? The importance of asking questions
The art of asking questions - treat an interview like a date.
Where do you get your ideas?
Worst and best part of being a science journalist.
Three questions begin - when did you know you wanted to be a science reporter?
What would you be or do if you could not be a science journalist?
Advice for a young communicator that wants to be a journalist?
Tips on interviewing and telling stories about science.
Write to other successful people whose work you like.
The amazing adventures or misadventures of some biologists.
Dr. Biology: This is Ask A Biologist, a program about the living world, and I'm Dr. Biology. Some things in biology and any kind of science can seem complicated. Let's face it. Some of the stuff is hard to understand, even for scientists. So, how do you take a complicated science subject and talk about it so everyone can understand? Not everyone can do this.
My guest today has been able to take many complicated science and other topics and explain them both on radio and television. Robert Krulwich is a science reporter who has been telling the story of science on programs like Nova, Frontline and NOW with Bill Moyers. You can also hear him on the NPR radio show, Radio Lab, which he co‑hosts with Jad Abumrad. He has a long list of awards that he has won for his work including two Emmys. Not bad.
He's visiting Arizona State University as part of the Darwinfest. And it just seemed like a good idea to talk to him about how he is able to talk about science in a way that anyone can understand and have fun while doing it. Welcome to the show Robert Krulwich.
Robert Krulwich: Thank you.
Dr. Biology: Now, I did a little research on you and the quote I like from you is "I like talking about invisible ideas and trying to find a way to explain what you've learned so people can grasp it." So, just what are invisible ideas?
Robert: A visible idea would be "Oh my God, that building is on fire. [sound] Watch the fire burn or that's a tsunami here it comes and whoosh. That's a visible idea or look how sad or look how handsome or look how beautiful that movie star is or that president of the United States is, whatever.
An invisible idea would be one which you can't see. So Darwin's ideas. You can look out the window at trees and the sky and flowers and stuff, but they don't tell you anything just by being there. The idea is something you have to think up or think out or find and if you are in a visual medium, like television, there are a lot of things that you want to say, but you have to put something on the screen. That's the question. So what do I put on the screen? That's the question.
Dr. Biology: You brought up the idea of television and we are doing basically radio here and you do both...
Robert: Yeah.
Dr. Biology: ... radio and television. And as much as people love television because it gives both that visual plus the auditory. You hear the voice, you see the pictures. There is something about radio that I find really intriguing and I think it is back with the storytelling.
Robert: It is. I think it's actually, the fancy word here would be granular. That is, here's the thing. If you want to look at the TV so what do you do? You walk into a room and there is a box, usually 10, 11 or 12 feet from wherever it is you are standing or sitting. And between you and that box there could be a sister. There could be a mother. There could be a cat. There could be a noise from outside. There are a whole lot of things that you could notice because the box is just a piece of furniture in the room. And an awful lot of distraction can take place. Also what do you do with the box? You stare at it. And so whatever is coming out of that box has to reach out and grab you across that distance and across or beside all those distractions.
Now, think about the radio. In the radio, if I say to you "OK, let's think of a little house on the top of a mountain." On TV, I would have to put a house of my choice on top of a mountain of my design and someone would have to look across the room and decide if they could see the house and agree if it was the kind of house they thought about. So, there's 10 percent of the people saying "Ah, that's not a house. What kind of a mountain is that?" and so forth. So, there's an argument there right away.
If you are listening to me, I am already between your ears and you don't understand this, but you start to paint with me. You paint the mountain. You paint the house and together we've now got essentially a duet. I'll say stuff. You'll paint stuff. And because we are doing it together you are unwittingly my co‑author and, therefore, I could take you to more places on the radio than I can on TV because you are painting us there.
Dr. Biology: Now, I will put you on the spot. You prefer radio over TV?
Robert: Oh, it really depends. They are both fun. If you have ever been in a high school musical and you want to be at the front of the stage, and singing the big song on TV, it's much more focused. There you are and you can use your face, your body and there are cameras around and lights. You're the center of attention. That's fun. On the radio side, if you've ever closed your eyes on a dark night and had your Mom and Dad tell you a really cool story by campfire or something, that's the radio version where essentially you cuddle the story. And people can be in both moods. The same person can want to dance and sing and be the star and then later in the day want to close their eyes and join someone else's late night story. So, it really depends on the mood and frankly on the story.
Dr. Biology: Right and another thing that came about especially with this generation where they like to multitask.
Robert: Right.
Dr. Biology: Now, whether they are doing it well or not doesn't matter. I've heard a lot of people talk about, especially the young college students, they like the idea that they can be listening to something. They could be working on their homework. They could be texting on the computer and they can do all these things. In the past, if you were listening to the radio, you might miss something, but now we have radio coupled to the Web. So now, you can actually download these shows. So, for example, with your show that you have called Radio Lab...
Robert: Right.
Dr. Biology: ... I was just up in my office. I could listen to you. I could actually download the MP3, listen to the show at my leisure. If I miss something, I can replay it.
Robert: Yeah.
Dr. Biology: That's really wonderful.
Robert: God! It's so different from what it was ten years ago. So, there are a whole lot of people who went into this business and the business was you think very hard and you work very hard and then you come up once on some network schedule and you say "Here I am. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, goodbye, forever" because that would just disappear. There was no way to get it back. The only person who would have the performance was usually you and then after awhile you would throw it out or sometimes the museum would come by and say "Could we have that?" or sometimes if it were a fancy organization the whole [inaudible 06:41] would go into a museum or something. But, essentially, you were in the air ‑ ephemeral is the fancy word. You were in the air and gone.
Now, you are more like a book. You're parked somewhere. Anybody who wants to can pull it down, as you just said, if you miss something ‑ and Radio Lab is a total accident. When we began thinking about that ‑ it was just me and a friend ‑ we were designing something that was highly produced, very complicated, high styled. There weren't a lot of them. They maybe made 10, 11, 12 a year. That's it. I didn't know what that could be. There was no season of anything except maybe the Sopranos towards the back end that is so short. But then, it turned out that we had made something that happened to fit.
If you are on a treadmill or you are in car or you are cooking or you are painting or working in a lab or something and you are doing something a little bit mindless and you want to listen and get swept away, then all that production is very cool particularly if you can put it between your ears and listen to it all.
So, we were making something for an audience that we didn't know existed and then the audience just arrived. I remember very precisely what happened. The radio station that helped us do this, asked us to perform it somewhere, just to see who would show up because they didn't have money to take ratings.
So, we asked the Apple Store in New Your City would they just host us and there're 150 seats in the upstairs balcony. We made one mention of it on the local radio station and then we went to the event and at these events, Chad, the guy I work with, he can play the radio on a laptop computer and we can basically improvise all kinds of stuff and he can tap a key and it's raining. He can tap another key and a dog is barking. He can tap another key and a sailor is singing and whatever I need to do, he can do.
So, it's sort of like a performing radio kind of gig. We went up there and I figured it, there would be maybe half filled and there were like 300 people. There were all the fire department had to move some of them downstairs. A few months later, we asked people to come by for a screening. We wanted to ask people to listen to something. We rented a 225 seat theater and 1000 people came and all of a sudden we though "Oh, Wait a second" this feels like a garage band, like it's your first hit. The people, the way they looked at us. I said, wow, these aren't normal looks, these are like "I'm going to eat you up" kind of looks.
It's a really deep surprise to be in a generally sad time where people are driving around desperately trying to find out who to talk to and how to talk... We just walked through a door and suddenly happened to be in the exact seat where we couldn't have dreamed about this and we are a little bit amazed. You know?
Particularly since these podcasts become available to anyone who has a computer and who speaks English. That's all you really have to do. And that isn't just fifteen to thirty year olds in the United States as it turns out.
It's an enormous number of kids along the Pacific seaboard of China and in northern Vietnam. Its suburban kids in Buenos Aires. It's kids in Herat in Afghanistan. The mail we're getting is from kids everywhere and I had no idea, not a clue that this was in the wind.
Dr. Biology: I would have had a little hint only because we've been doing 'Ask a Biologist' for now, over ten years. Because we're on the web, we're international, so we do get questions from all around the world and it does amaze me and the one thing they have to be able to do is to read and write English.
Robert: That's right.
Dr. Biology: We'll we're talking about this media and the change and when I work with students now, the definition of old is anyone over eighteen. You and I are unfortunately are going to be considered old under that definition.
Robert: Oh yeah.
I had a thing the other day. I walked out into a stage in Chicago. I said "how many people in this audience" ‑ there must have been 800 or 1200 people there ‑ I said, "How many people were born before 1960?"
No one. Not a one. "How many in 1962?" It was 1967 when I got the first clap from the darkness. I said, "What are you doing here?" He says "my daughter's twenty‑year‑old birthday. I have no idea who you are" and that's the strange part of this. It is very, very, very ‑ to me, it's a little disappointing a lot of people dream of getting these young audiences. But, I don't quite understand where my people are.
It turns out that the business of plugging into a computer and downloading something is not normal for people over fifty. So, there are going to be fewer of them for a while and it is tribal. There are tribes of listeners.
So, I can be on All Things Considered, or Morning Edition. I can go on the evening news with Charles Gibson and I don't think there's anybody, anybody who's in the NPR audience who's watching the 6:30 evening news on ABC. It's like going from Venus to Mars.
Dr. Biology: Well, it's part of this idea of how communication is changing and the different media formats. One of the questions I had was ‑ we're playing in this world that we think is, not necessarily cutting edge, but it's really moving out there. But is there other communication media that we're not playing with. So we're not reaching that audience. Or the younger generation is already doing?
Robert: When I started, I was born in 1947 so there were a lot of people born in my year and the year after the year just after that because it was right after World War II. When I turned eighteen, nineteen and twenty, there were a lot of people who were starting businesses.
My first one which was Pacifica Radio was started by people of my age. My second one Rolling Stone magazine was started by people of my age. My third one National Public Review was started by people of my age.
I didn't work for an adult. I didn't work for a person with a tie until I was thirty years old ‑ Dan Rather, CBS ‑ and I felt the difference. But, by that time, I had worked with my own friends more or less for eight years and I suspect that is exactly what's about to happen. Because the technologies have become so omnipresent, everybody has computers, everybody has friends and everybody has friends who are cool and good at something they're not.
I think what's about to happen is that new vortexes of people, emphatically on the younger side I suspect, will begin creating product for each other and this whole thing of "Oh my gosh, what's going to happen to the New York Times" and "What's going to happen to NBC" and "What's going to happen to Time Magazine" is what's going to happen to the inventions and creations of the 1930s and the 1890s is I don't know ‑ but I suspect they will be, not eliminated, but they will be their new competitors will be things that are just now being thought of by people thought of by people who are still probably in high school or in college.
Dr. Biology: Right. Well, we see some of that creeping in with these blogs, for example. We talk about this all the time. What this show is about, typically, is I have a scientist sitting across from me or a couple scientists and we talk about all the cool things they're doing. But, this show isn't about turning everybody into a scientist. And one of the questions or one of the things I try to work with is the idea of understanding and enjoying science. Now, watching you and listening to you, I get the idea you really enjoy science. As a matter of fact, I'm wondering, are you really secretly a scientist at heart?
Robert: No, I'm really secretly a slow processing kind of dumb person at heart who feels if I get a chance to sit long enough at the material that I'll figure it out and who is willing to say dumb stuff to the people who know things and is willing to whisper it to other people who are trying to figure it out. [whispering] "Do you understand what he just said"? Kind of thing.
There's a sort of political part of this too. I feel in a democracy, there is a presumption that the crazy people like your silly first cousin who doesn't ever care or think about anything. Your strange mother who gets all mad at stuff that is probably something she's practically making up. It's a little odd.
Dr. Biology: You've met my mother?
Robert: That you can say, let's get rid of kings and philosopher kings and let's replace the way of organizing society by a mob of slightly nutty people and they will somehow all together do something wise. Maybe not on time every time, but they'll do wise. That's the principle of democracy and that somehow ordinary folks, collected together as silly, dumb and irritating as the individuals may be, in a pile there is a wisdom there somehow. And I think that one of the things that I try to model in the work that I do is I say, "Look. Everybody doesn't have to be a genius, and you don't have to bow down to all these people with pedigrees."
You are allowed to ask them questions, and you're allowed to think a little bit about what they've just said. You're allowed to be proud and have a mind of your own. And don't be too scared by the fact that it's the Wizard of Oz thing, that if people come behind big curtains and are loud and things.
There are people, of course, who are smarter than you. But, you're smart enough to sit there at the table of you and ask real questions. That's kind of what I think I'm doing.
Dr. Biology: There is an art and a science to asking questions.
Robert: Yes.
Dr. Biology: As a reporter, have you found yourself in this position...? Well, you will. You're juggling. The way I see it is you're listening to the person that's talking. You're trying to figure out what they're saying. Based on what they're saying, you're trying to make up a question. Then at the right time, you need to ask the question. Is that pretty much the way...?
Robert: But, isn't that like a date?
Dr. Biology: [laughs] OK. So, is that how you approach it? Like a date?
Robert: Yeah. Yeah. I think partly you're trying to be sexy and make an impression, but not too much because you really are trying to figure out do you like her or don't you like her? Partly it's the fun of exploring. The truth is that if you're really going to fall in love with somebody, you're going to want to fall in love with them not just physically. That will happen, but it will happen early and then you'll have to balk after that.
This is not even generalized. This is your best friends as well as your girlfriends and boyfriends. These are the people who keep being interesting to you. So, you've got to be interesting to them, and you've got to keep the conversation going. Sometimes that just happens, and sometimes over a dinner nobody's saying anything. You think, "Should I say something?"
I think this form of talking for a living is an extension of the date in some ways. But, of course, there's a purpose. So, it's a didactic date. [laughs] I'm not only going to meet you, but I want to find something out about the world through you.
Dr. Biology: Right. So, when you're out hunting for your dates, in other words, where do you get your ideas?
Robert: That's really weird. I'm married to a reporter who's always quite sure that this one that she has this morning is the last one she'll ever get. She gets scared, as she finishes each story, that this is the end of her career. I don't know why. I've never had that problem in any of the areas that I've covered.
But, it must have been something about our family. My sister and I can walk down the street, and we can just see thing after thing. She can out‑curious me. "Why do we never see a dead pigeon?" "I don't know." That kind of thing. We just can somehow operate that way. It's a real blessing.
I've been scared about whether I make my deadline. I've been scared about whether I have the energy. I've been scared about whether I have the brainpower to process something, but I've never been scared about the next question. There seems to be a long bus line of questions waiting for their turn to me.
Dr. Biology: But I bet you there are some things that you don't like about your job. Can you name one?
Robert: Well, I have three jobs.
Dr. Biology: Three?
Robert: That's the thing that I don't like, that I have three jobs.
Dr. Biology: OK. You have too much.
Robert: Too much.
Dr. Biology: Too much. OK. Well, I'm with you there. What's the best part?
Robert: Oh, I think the best part is I wake up every morning and pretty much get to spend the day thinking about something that I chose to think about. The three jobs that I have at ABC News, at NPR, and at Radio Lab are all self‑assigned jobs.
So, I come into ABC and say, "How about this?" And they say yes or no. I come into NPR and say, "How about this?" They say yes or no. And I go into Radio Lab and say, "Shall we do this?" And we say yes or no. So, I really get to spend almost every day of my life doing something that I want to do. That's amazing!
Dr. Biology: It is.
Robert: I must have been like an incredibly fabulous giraffe or something in my last life to pull this off. I don't know what happened, but it's amazing. And the other thing that's kind of cool is that in the business of doing it, I have ‑ in TV particularly but in radio as well; it's a very collaborative medium; so you have to work with other people ‑ I have to work with artists. And because I'm sort of ranging around thinking about how to do things, I work with dancers. I work with theater people, and I work with scientists. I work with engineers, photographers, cameramen, and whomever.
I have met so many amazing people along the way that you develop a body of work. But, you also develop of body of affection with just the people you've bumped into. Sometimes these days, I don't really know which is the greater achievement, and I've really fallen in thrall or in love or in rapture or in envy with so many different people at this point.
Dr. Biology: It's a wonderful way to go out and meet people, I find.
Robert: Oh, my gosh! Yeah.
Dr. Biology: On this show we do three questions for the scientist, and I've modified them slightly. This is what you do: you steal from the best or some of the best. This is James Lipton, and he always does this "Inside the Actors Studio."
Robert: Yes.
Dr. Biology: So, we'll start off with when did you first know you wanted to be a science reporter? Was there like a spark?
Robert: Yeah. I was assigned a story by Diane Sawyer, which was about a lady who was doing some very heroic work about a disease. The disease was called Huntington's Chorea ‑ I'd never heard of it. And the problem with Huntington's Chorea is it's caused by a single mistake in your gene. I didn't know what a gene was or anything. I started the story and I thought, "Whoa! This is so interesting."
As I walked around ‑ I was at the time being an economics reporter ‑ I thought, "Wow! The people who I'm talking to ‑ these would be called later, I learned, bench scientists: people who actually went into a lab and tried to figure stuff out ‑ are over the moon at the moment.
They are so happy to be alive right now because there were genome projects going at the time, and machines were being invented to turn those genome projects into kind of scurrying, fast‑moving genome projects. And people were learning so much so fast that a world was opening up to them. And that excitement, their excitement...
This is what a reporter does. You put your hand on different pulses. And the pulse of these scientists was racing so fast that I thought, "I think I'd better stay here because this is really interesting."
Dr. Biology: I'm glad you have because I've enjoyed so much of your work. But guess what? I'm going to take it all away. You can't be a reporter. No kind of science or any other kind of reporting or communication. You're going to have to step out of that skin. What would you be or what would you do?
Robert: Hmm.
Dr. Biology: The sky's the limit. I'm going to let you really have fun.
Robert: I guess I'd be a teacher probably. I don't think I want to be President of the United States, and I don't think I want to be Johnny Depp; that's taken. So, if I could be anything at all, I'd probably be Tony Bennett or Louie Armstrong. But, if I can't be them, I'd be a teacher.
Dr. Biology: What advice would you have for a young communicator out there, the one that thinks that they want to be the next to you or the next Brian Lamb? Or we'll stay more in the science world, someone that really wants to communicate science. What should they do?
Robert: I think what they should do is they should do it. Because it's not like you have to now wake up and say, "OK, I'm going to send letters to NBC and hope for a letter back saying, "Yes, you can pour coffee for the assistant who pours coffee for the lady who gives papers to the man who gives pencils to Tom Brokaw." I mean, that's an option.
But, if you just do it, if you just go with your friends or whatever and just say, "OK, so what do I know about..." and you start telling stories. This is the first time I can think of, really, where the entire world is available to anybody.
So, that's silly because you'll be mostly ignored, but you will be mostly ignored. Someone might bop by and accidents do happen, so I would say do it. And then, if you find that there's a certain kind of joy opening up in you and you'll really find your liking it, then do it more and find out who else does it and make friends with the other doers.
Any time you see somebody who is doing it, that is, telling stories on the radio or the TV or the web or whatever outlet you happen to be operating in, you've got to find someone who is doing it and if they know more than you do seduce them somehow.
Dr. Biology: Yeah, take them out to lunch.
Robert: Take them out to lunch and see if you can't get them to do it with you. So, I would say that more than anything.
Dr. Biology: We have students that submit audition tapes to ‑ and this is showing my age; I say audition tapes, but they're not tapes any more ‑ to Ask A Biologist to be on the show. They're a co‑host. Part of the thing about doing these auditions is telling a story. I thought, maybe, you could give some tips on how do you start out on this journey in telling a story.
Robert: Well, you're already on the journey, probably. If you're answering an ad like that, if you want to be on the radio telling a story, that means you must have told stories to your friends on the school bus, to your friends late at night. You must be one of those kids who either tells them well or who writes them well.
So, if you're already that, then give yourself a pat on the back and say, OK so I'm on first base. Now, how do I get to second base? The second base question is you just have to do it a little more purposefully and a little bit more regularly and a little bit more determinedly, but it's just a difference of degree.
It's like if you're in the high school play and you're dreaming about Broadway, you should go to a Broadway play. It's sort of uncannily like the high school play only better in every way.
Well, the storytelling business is just like storytelling but better in every way. So, what you have to do is get better, but you don't have to learn something completely new that you haven't already sort of imagined before. You're already in the game. You just have to learn to play it better. So, it's like being a natural athlete. You like going out. You like moving your body. You like running, da da da. You already know the rules of the game, but you have to get better.
So, if you were Ted Williams or Tiger Woods or whatever, you just practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. If you were Mozart, you'd just practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.
So, if you want to be a storyteller, you just practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, same, same, same.
Dr. Biology: Do you need to do it with a recorder, or can you just practice without doing that?
Robert: It depends. If you're writing it down, no, you wouldn't need a recorder. You just need a pencil. But, yes, you have to do it and then it makes sense to share it because the story is a communication. So, if you're just telling them to yourself, there are people who have done that; artists who painted for themselves, right? Writers like Proust who wrote mainly for themselves and then kind of get a big splat at the end of the day, but for people who want to make a living at it, yeah, you've got to tell somebody who you're doing.
And since it's a story, you tell your story to somebody. So, you just find an audience. Luckily, the web is there, but so are other people. The other thing I guess you do is you start listening and watching and reading a little bit differently. Instead of going and watching TV, you look and see, well, who made that thing? And you find out their address, and you look up the names.
Then, when you write them, if you choose to, you won't write, "Gee, I really love your show. Signed Johnny." You'll write, "Gee, Mr. Bill Simmons, I noticed you wrote Episode 14 of Arrested Development. I thought it was incredible, particularly the part where hmm said to hmm and this went to that. I want to direct something like that, too. Would there be any chance that you...?"
You can't write a fan letter. You have to write a colleague letter.
Dr. Biology: Right, right.
Robert: Different kind of thing. A self‑appointed colleague, the "I want to be you" letter. The "I want to be you" letter that succeeds. The "I want to be you" letter that's homework because I want to be you because I saw your performance, your writing, your article, heard your story, saw you on TV when you mmm da mmm ba dum de dum, and I wanted to know how you did that. That's a real letter.
Dr. Biology: Right, and that goes back to even the writing skills, the things you're learning in English class actually could be used.
Robert: Right.
Dr. Biology: I do have one last question here because you sat in this symposium yesterday. We had these mild‑mannered ‑ this is a classic, you know ‑ mild‑mannered Clark Kent. Well, these are mild‑mannered entomologists, the people that go out and collect bugs, and some people that were really into collecting plants and fish.
Almost everyone of them, if you just saw them on the street or sat down with them, you would think that they live a rather bland life, is what somebody might say. They told some of the most amazing stories.
Robert: Yes, they did. Yes, they did.
Dr. Biology: Were you surprised?
Robert: Yeah. I thought it was, you know, kind of like a Hollywood movie kind of thing. And then the water came roaring down the... I was... I... I was gasping for breath. I popped the berry in my mouth and suddenly I was hallucinating and I fell over and collapsed. You know, this is pretty cool stuff.
Dr. Biology: It is. I was just amazed, and this is just the thing about scientists. For some reason, we don't get that out there, that really cool part, do we?
Robert: Well, sometimes in the movies, in the Harrison Ford movies.
Dr. Biology: Right, but the scientists themselves don't seem to do it, when in reality they did a wonderful job.
Robert: They did.
Dr. Biology: I was just completely taken aback. I thought, wow. This was stupendous. Well, Robert, thank you for visiting with us today.
Robert: Thank you. It was very, very much fun.
Dr. Biology: You've been listening to Ask A Biologist, and my guest has been Emmy award winning science and technology reporter, Robert Krulwich. Hey, if you want to listen to a little bit more of his work, go check out Radio Lab. You can get that on the web. You can even download the shows and listen to them any time you want.
For those of you who are interested in hearing those fantastic stories from the mild‑mannered biologist, in case you didn't know it, on Ask A Biologist, the website, we have not only the audio shows that you can listen to, but we have content logs so you know what's in them.
So, if you're a teacher, you can find out what's in a 30 minute show without even having to listen to it, and we have full transcripts. Well, in the content log we'll make sure we have links to the recordings by these biologists, so you can listen in on these fantastic stories and learn about the adventures and misadventures of some really cool biologists.
The Ask A Biologist Podcast is produced on the campus of Arizona State University and is recorded in the Grassroots Studio housed in the School of Life Sciences, which is a Division of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Remember, even though our program is not broadcast live, you can still send us your questions about biology using our companion website. The address is, or you can just Google the words, "Ask a Biologist." I'm Dr. Biology.
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Showing Collections: 1 - 1 of 1
George F. Pierrot Collection
Identifier: RH-A-3566
Scope and Contents This collection contains a copy of the World Letters, a geography education textbook consisting of correspondence from George F. Pierrot, a well-known Detroit-based TV personality and frequent speaker at the Detroit Institute of Art. Beginning in Northern Ireland and ending in Punjab, India, the correspondence in question served to provide some geographical information about various localities in Europe, Africa, and Asia, in 1937, in the form of a travel narrative written by George Pierrot to...
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• Names: Watervliet High School (Watervliet. Mich.) X |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28949 | According to Wikipedia:
What are the repercussions to using reverse thrust while airborne?
• 8
$\begingroup$ The wonderful Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde could use its reverse thrusters in flight to make 10000 fpm descents without overspeeding (I must've mentioned the Concorde in almost every one of my posts on Aviation SE XD) $\endgroup$ – shortstheory Mar 2 '14 at 12:26
The problems are two-fold:
1. The airspeed is much higher in flight than when landing, so the thrust reverser doors would have to be much stronger, and therefore heavier to withstand the additional forces, along with the relative wind making them harder to close.
2. What happens when it gets stuck in the deployed position? Now you have to shut down a perfectly good engine and have additional drag on the airplane while in flight.
3. (Bonus) It isn't really needed on most airplanes with spoilers, flaps, etc. that accomplish the same thing.
The reversers on many jets significantly disrupt the air flow around the wing and are generally too powerful for use in flight.
There was a crash, Lauda Air Flight 004, that was caused by uncommanded reverser deployment in flight. Granted, it was asymmetric deployment, but the report cites loss of lift from reverser deployment (itself, not loss of speed due to it's prolonged operation), which would occur for symmetric deployment too.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28950 | This is a hypothetical scenario, but I'm interested to know if there are any regulations/guidance for what ATC should do in this situation.
The hypothetical nightmare scenario:
• The runway is blocked by a crashed airliner and can't be cleared quickly.
• The airliner is full of injured passengers who will take time to move.
• The next aeroplane in line to land has an engine failure and is gliding to the runway (so can't go around).
• You're in a hilly/built-up area so other options for landing are limited.
Clearly, you can't have one aircraft landing on top of a crashed aircraft, so what should ATC do?
Some of the options I can come up with (in roughly ascending order of how crazy they sound):
• Switch him to a different runway e.g. LHR has two parallel runways (but if he's close to the airport making the sudden move across to another runway might be dangerous without power?)
• Empty a taxiway (but you'd probably struggle to empty it fast enough at a busy airport?)
• Point him towards a grassy bit of the airport
• Allow him to land, but aim to land before or after the crashed aircraft (crash is probably at start or end of runway, so might just work)
• Wish him good luck and tell him to find somewhere else to land (you know that's possibly going to result in him crashing, but at least he won't crash into the already crashed aircraft).
So is there any advice for the controller and if so what is it?
Note the source of this question was listening to a recording of the ATC when BA38 crashed at LHR. The controller asks the next aircraft to go around - it made me wonder what would happen if they had said no!
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$\begingroup$ Welcome to aviation.SE! There's nothing wrong with hypothetical questions but there's unlikely to be a good, specific answer to this one. As the FAA's ATC orders say, "Because of the infinite variety of possible emergency situations, specific procedures cannot be prescribed. [...] select and pursue a course of action which appears to be most appropriate under the circumstances". $\endgroup$ – Pondlife May 31 '17 at 12:29
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$\begingroup$ @Pondlife thanks - I guess "no, they don't give any advice" is still a valid answer. $\endgroup$ – stripybadger May 31 '17 at 12:43
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$\begingroup$ Related: May an emergency aircraft land on a closed runway? $\endgroup$ – fooot May 31 '17 at 16:11
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$\begingroup$ You ask "what should ATC do?", but really the question should be "what should the pilot do?" It's the pilot who makes the ultimate decision (example). ATC's job is to ensure aircraft separation through communication. $\endgroup$ – 200_success May 31 '17 at 18:00
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$\begingroup$ @Ben That said, you're right about the best option being to avoid the scenario in the first place. An airplane crashing into the runway followed by the airplane behind it losing all engines on short final is incredibly unlikely. If the engine failure has already occurred, ATC generally won't be landing other aircraft in front of the emergency aircraft on the runway that they're directing it to. That way, there's no worry about the aircraft in front of the emergency aircraft not being able to vacate the runway in time for the emergency landing. $\endgroup$ – reirab May 31 '17 at 21:53
What's the procedure? The procedure is, be creative to save as many lives as possible!
Really. The procedure is to determine a course of action which will likely result in the best outcome for everyone, utilizing all resources and given all constraints. Period. It is as simple as that.
There are infinitely many scenarios, and one cannot be trained for everything. However, pilots and controllers are trained to remain calm. When we look at the accident report years later, reading the document, we can easily say "if the pilots had done that, people would have been saved...". The important thing is that the people who were responsible at the time had to remain calm enough to look at the big picture instead of focusing on a particular problem, otherwise they can easily overlook a solution.
During training, it is common to throw multiple failures / emergencies together. The purpose is not to train the trainee to react to this exact combination of failure, since that is rather unlikely. Rather, the purpose is to simulate a stressful environment, under which one has to make sound and logical decisions.
• $\begingroup$ The airport may be able to deploy an aircraft arresting barrier to stop the incoming flight short on the runway. These are commonly available at joint civil/military fields but there's no reason a major airfield couldn't have one for emergencies.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_13/runway_story.html $\endgroup$ – Arluin Jun 1 '17 at 19:51
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$\begingroup$ If I had to completely guess, landing over the obstacle and driving off the end, or landing before, hitting the breaks hard, and driving off the side of the runway seem like options that might help a little. $\endgroup$ – mbrig Jun 2 '17 at 2:27
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$\begingroup$ I guess the name of the procedure is JSS, which stands for Just Survive Somehow $\endgroup$ – TheCluelessGuy Jun 2 '17 at 9:20
No, there is no standard procedure for handling a scenario like the one you describe. It is up to the pilot in command, in cooperation with air traffic control, to decide what to do.
There are generally very few specific procedured defined for handling emergency situations. Handling unusual situations is exactly why there are pilots and air traffic controllers at all. We come up with solutions to problems that no one has ever seen before, or even thought about - it's what we get paid to do. If there was a rule for how to handle every single hypothetical scenario, we would be long gone, replaced by computers. But that is not possible - at least for now.
An example of how the title situation was handled in real life.
UA497 took off from the KMSY (New Orleans International) 2011-04-04 7000 ft runway and 4 minutes after wanted to return. The Longer runway (10104 ft) was closed at the time for lengthy repairs with equipment on the runway.
Pilots wanted the longer runway but it couldn't be cleared in time. They eventually landed on the 7000 foot runway, and veered a bit off to the side and were stuck for some hours. http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/MSY/APD/AIRPORT+DIAGRAM/pdf
Overview of aftermath (plane ran off side of runway and took time to clear) http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/04/louisiana.emergency.landing/
"United Airlines pilot, control tower conversation: 8 minutes and 44 seconds of steely calm" http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2011/04/united_airlines_pilot_airport.html
It's a hypothetical scenario, perhaps, but one that has actually been considered and legislated for in at least one case.
If you're flying to Easter Island, you're not allowed to commit to it until any previous traffic has landed.
As with so many things in aviation, it's a lot easier to get out of this sort of mess when the system prevents you from getting into it in the first place :)
• $\begingroup$ well, that's nice in theory but in the hypothetical case presented here it's either land, ditch, or crash. Wonder what'd the verdict be if a tower controller tells an out of fuel airliner gliding in on Easter Island to divert to the nearest other airport (which is hours away...) because the runway is blocked... $\endgroup$ – jwenting Aug 9 '17 at 5:51
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$\begingroup$ @jwenting: At which point there would certainly be an investigation because ATC won't allow anybody past the midpoint (where Easter Island is now closest) until after the runway is vacated. $\endgroup$ – Joshua Apr 8 '18 at 4:48
Like was said, there is no standard for a scenario like that. The pilot in command will take the decision.
If there is another runway or taxiway available to land, the ATC will send the aircraft there.
If none: We start praying and looking for a place to land. After choosing one, we communicate to the ATC in order to send the rescue.
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$\begingroup$ This should be a comment. It does not provide any new information to be considered an answer. $\endgroup$ – Jimy Jun 1 '17 at 12:24
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$\begingroup$ "We start praying and looking for a place to land": You should start with the second option imho. $\endgroup$ – mins Jun 1 '17 at 17:01
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$\begingroup$ @mins Procedure agrees with you. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. $\endgroup$ – anaximander Jun 2 '17 at 9:25
There is a simple rule that allows pilots to do whatever is necessary in an emergency. So what happens in such a case is that the pilot declares an emergency , tries to figure out (together with the ATC) what to do but finally decides on his own what the best possible solution is.
He is allowed to disregard even ATC commands in an emergency (although he is still held responsible for his actions!).
So even though ATC can advice, they're "not the one in charge".
The pilot would most probably land on the blocked runway and turn sideways into the green to not collide with the other airplane.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/28959 | torturedtoaster (torturedtoaster) wrote in bad_service,
Planned Parenthood
So maybe I am missing something about the way Planned Parenthood operates, but this irritated me a lot. If I am missing a piece of this puzzle, I would like to know it!!
Recently, I moved from city A to city B. As I don't have insurance, I went to Planned Parenthood in city A for my birth control needs while I lived around there. Now i live about an hour's drive away from that health center. Right after I moved, I made a call to a Planned Parenthood line and asked that my info be sent from health center in city A to health center in city B. Whoever I was on the line with told me it was done. That was Monday, during business hours (around 2 o'clock).
Directly after that call, I called the birth control supply line for health center B and left my info on their answering machine. They say you should allow 2 days for them to process the refill. On Thursday, I went into health center B to pick up my refills. There is a girl and a guy behind the counter. The girl looks through the files and such and says they don't have any of my info. What?? She says she'll call health center A to get them. So I go to sit down and wait.. and wait.. and wait... finally, after being snapped at when I asked about the status of my issue, they say they got the info, but they don't carry my kind of birth control. I mention that I asked for my file to be sent from A to B on monday, and the guy says "they were on the verge of sending it today." (whaa??)
The guy is really rude and snappy when he asks me what I want to do- do I want him to write a prescription? I ask if there is another planned parenthood nearby that has my birth control. He turns to the girl and asks her if health center C carries my brand. She shrugs and he says he'll write a prescription. He kind of intimidated me so I decided not to fight it (dumb, I know, but he was talking to me like he was the bad cop in an interrogation).
I waited some more for the doctor on duty to sign off on it and went to CVS.. I ended up with the generic version of my birth control because I couldn't afford to pay $110 for it there.
Okay, guys, am I missing something ? Does anyone know if there is a reason they would wait 3 days to send my info after telling me it's done? And I can't help but wonder who goes through the recordings on the supply line-- someone must have heard my recording for my refills and known that health center B didn't even have my file OR carry my birth control. I guess they just ignore it when things like that come up.
What a waste of time. I actually think I'll be going back to health center A from now on. The drive is worth it to get to people who have some idea of what they are doing.
Tags: *medical/pharmacy, question
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/29023 | I use Mac OSX 10.9.5. A year ago, I downloaded 2.75a, and today, I downloaded version 2.77a. I downloaded both via .zip file from blender.org and dragged each into the Applications folder of my Mac.
In 2.75a, I had done some painstaking remapping to accommodate my Magic Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard, in addition to a pretty shiny custom theme. I didn't want to redo these settings.
How could I transfer my old settings into the new version? Apparently due to my method of download, "Copy Previous Settings" did not show on the splash screen. I searched "Copy Previous Settings" in the new version via the spacebar, and it returned an error: "Users/aubrie/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.76 does not exist". From this, I figured how to copy my old preferences.
You can always use the new Blender Cloud Sync addon. It requires a Blender ID (free) and the addon (free). It allows you to upload your preferences to the cloud, and download them anywhere in Blender.
Addon Gif (Image from cloud.blender.org)
• $\begingroup$ "This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post. - From Review – batFINGER 10 hours ago." This is what I did. So what's the problem? $\endgroup$ – cigar_matt Jun 19 '18 at 19:11
• $\begingroup$ In case this helps others: When I switched from 2.79b to 2.80, my old method didn't work, so I used this cloud sync add-on and it worked great. I had to download the add-on (directly from the .zip file, no need to unzip) to both 2.79b and 2.80, sign in within Blender (using this other add-on: blender.stackexchange.com/questions/141746/…), upload settings in 2.79b, then download the settings to 2.80. $\endgroup$ – Aubrie Aug 4 '19 at 19:33
1. Find Users/yourname/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.75/config/userpref.blend
2. Right click and select Copy "userpref.blend"
3. Navigate to Users/yourname/Library/Application Support/Blender/2.77/config/
4. Right click and select Paste Item
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$\begingroup$ Aubrie, are you sure about that destination? Unless I'm reading it wrong, you're copying the "userpref.blend" file right back into the same location you copied it from. Also, since I think your answer applies to Windows machines, too, it might be more general just to do a search of the drive containing the operating system for the file "userpref.blend", rather than trying to navigate to the specific location. On some windows machines, the "userpref.blend" file is in a hidden folder, which cannot be navigated to by "ordinary" means. $\endgroup$ – brasshat Jul 3 '16 at 1:19
• $\begingroup$ @brasshat You're totally right. I committed a typo. Step 3 should have said 2.77, not 2.75. Fixed it now. Good idea about conducting a normal search. That might get messy if someone has multiple previous versions of Blender installed. $\endgroup$ – Aubrie Jul 3 '16 at 1:31
• $\begingroup$ Aubrie, I do have multiple previous versions of Blender installed, and when I just tested it for the answer, It did find the previous userpref.blend files for each one. But expanding the search results just a bit, it showed the folder containing each of the separate userpref.blend files, so it was easy to figure out which went with 2.75, and which went with 2.71. $\endgroup$ – brasshat Jul 3 '16 at 22:48
• $\begingroup$ @brasshat That's good to know! I should clarify that in my original questing, I didn't know to search for "userpref.blend". Navigating to specific folders was how I learned that "userpref.blend" is the thing I needed. $\endgroup$ – Aubrie Jul 5 '16 at 22:49
• $\begingroup$ I dragged both Scripts and Addons from the 2.78 to the 2.79 folder and it worked great. $\endgroup$ – MicroMachine Jul 12 '18 at 4:37
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/29026 | When Ubuntu removed the Unity desktop in favor of Gnome, the way you interacted with the Network-Manager applet in the top-right side corner has changed.
Basic networking configuration is done through Gnome Settings in the Network section, however this quickly seems very limited and confusing at first if you want to be able to do more advanced setups like VLANs, bonding interfaces etc...
The Gnome Settings App
Profile selection in the Gnome Panel
So what if you want to have your profiles at hand with specific configurations, like: a Manual profile with static IPs for your homelab? Or select a profile when you are in a datacenter and want to have VLANs be attached to your laptop when connecting directly to a server or switch for troubleshooting?
Fortunately there's the good old Network Manager Editor called "Advanced Networking" in the applications drawer.
Here you can configure all the profiles you want.
The key difference to make them actually appear as an available option in the drop-down menu in the Gnome Notification area is to specify the physical device.
Editing of a Profile
Now the profile will be available for selection both in the Gnome Settings Network section, and in the drop-down menu in the top-right corner of the Panel. |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/29030 | Tag Archives: cryptojacking
Microsoft Annual Security Report: Phishing Attacks Jump 250%
Phishing is Way Up!
Diverse Attack Methods
Infect & Collect: How to Defend Yourself from Cryptojacking
The popularity of cryptocurrency is exploding but many consumers still lack even a basic understanding of cryptocurrencies which has resulted in a rise in illicit cryptocurrency mining activities.
The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), an organization within the Department of Homeland Security, recently released Security Tip (ST18-002), which highlights key cryptocurrency insights.
What is Cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency is digital money you use as a medium of exchange just like a dollar. Cryptocurrencies however do not need a central bank to verify a transaction. Rather, cryptocurrencies use encryption and the blockchain to verify transactions.
Cryptocurrency is earned through cryptomining, a process where individuals use cryptomining software to solve complex mathematical problems to validate transactions. Each of these solved equations verifies a transaction and earns that “miner” with a reward paid out in the cryptocurrency. Continue reading Infect & Collect: How to Defend Yourself from Cryptojacking |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/29036 | Monday, October 7, 2013
Judith Curry doesn't know her inside from her outside
Sou | 3:35 PM Go to the first of 9 comments. Add a comment
Judith Curry is a science-denying blogger who is, by day, a climate scientist. Today on her blog, she copies and pastes huge slabs from a couple of interesting blog posts and twists them about to suit her own agenda, writing (archived here):
The IPCC has a very bad case of confusing the probability inside their argument with the probability of the question as a whole (e.g. 20th century attribution, 21st century projections, climate sensitivity). Dangerous anthropogenic global warming is one possible scenario of the future; there are many other possible scenarios that the IPCC completely ignores (heck, we cant predict solar variations, volcanic eruptions, and natural internal variability so we might as well ignore them).
But Judith Curry doesn't know her inside from her outside. And if she's read the AR5 reports, she's telling fibs. If she hasn't then what business does she have making that claim?
The blog article Judith quotes from is on a blog called LessWrong and has the title: Confidence levels inside and outside an argument. The argument draws on examples from political polling, the Large Hadron Collider and creationism, not climate science. Here is a segment, so you can see what Judith is on about (my bold italics):
More than one in a billion times a political scientist writes a model, (th)ey will get completely confused and write something with no relation to reality. More than one in a billion times a programmer writes a program to crunch political statistics, there will be a bug that completely invalidates the results. More than one in a billion times a staffer at a website publishes the results of a political calculation online, (th)ey will accidentally switch which candidate goes with which chance of winning.
... This is not a fully general argument against giving very high levels of confidence: very complex situations and situations with many exclusive possible outcomes (like the lottery example) may still make it to the 1/10^20 level, albeit probably not the 1/10^4478296. But in other sorts of cases, giving a very high level of confidence requires a check that you're not confusing the probability inside one argument with the probability of the question as a whole.
Judith Curry is Wrong No. 1
So far so good. I see no basis for disagreeing with that article from LessWrong. Thing is, Judith Curry does this sort of thing all the time in reverse. Instead of overstating confidence she understates it and often by a very wide margin. She does it in her very article on the subject (archived here). Judith Curry pretends that climate science is not presented in context (it is), that unknowns and uncertainties are not described (they are), that probabilities are not quantified (they are), that assumptions and constraints are not listed (they are). So while Judith writes "The IPCC has a very bad case of confusing the probability inside their argument with the probability of the question as a whole" - she's dead wrong.
For one thing, the IPCC uses a number of different models. It is not a single model that is used for projections. Therefore, while any single model may have a "bug" that completely invalidates the results, the chances of multiple models all having the same "bug" is much smaller. The chance that a staffer will accidentally switch an equation relating to total solar irradiance with one relating to CO2 forcing becomes much less. And when the model outputs are considered against what is known about the behaviour of the earth system, the chance of internal "bugs" causing "all the models to be wrong" becomes even less.
For another thing, I've not read anywhere in the IPCC documents that the chances of any one thing happening have a probability of 999,999,999 in a billion. I don't know of any science, let alone climate science, where that sort of probability would be assigned - at least not without 999,999,999 provisos and caveats :)
Judith Curry is Wrong No. 2
Not only is Judith wrong about applying that argument to the CMIP5 models, her "many other possible scenarios that the IPCC completely ignores...solar variations, volcanic eruptions, and natural internal variability" is wrong. This is from page TS-46 of the IPCC AR5 Technical Summary in the section on model projections (my bold italics):
There is low confidence in projections of natural forcingMajor volcanic eruptions cause a negative radiative forcing up to several W m–2, with a typical lifetime of one year, but the possible occurrence and timing of future eruptions is unknown. Except for the 11-year solar cycle, changes in the total solar irradiance are uncertain. Except where explicitly indicated, future volcanic eruptions and changes in total solar irradiance additional to a repeating 11 year solar cycle are not included in the projections of near- and long-term climate assessed. {8, 11.3.1}
So the IPCC report did not ignore other possible scenarios. It just didn't see fit to model things like a major volcanic eruption next year, or five, ten, twenty five or 89 years from now. What would be the point? It's addressed the amount of negative radiative forcing such an eruption would bring and Judith can do her own estimate if she wants to bet there will be one.
As for changes in total solar irradiance, this is from page TS-21 of the IPCC Technical Summary (my bold italics and para):
Solar and volcanic forcings are the two dominant natural contributors to global climate change during the industrial era. Satellite observations of total solar irradiance (TSI) changes since 1978 show quasi-periodic cyclical variation with a period of roughly 11 years. Longer-term forcing is typically estimated by comparison of solar minima (during which variability is least). This gives a RF change of –0.04 [–0.08 to 0.00] W m–2 between the most recent (2008) minimum and the 1986 minimum. There is some diversity in the estimated trends of the composites of various satellite data, however. Secular trends of TSI before the start of satellite observations rely on a number of indirect proxies. The best estimate of RF from TSI changes over the industrial era is 0.05 [0.00 to 0.10] W m–2 (medium confidence), which includes greater RF up to around 1980 and then a small downward trend. This RF estimate is substantially smaller than the AR4 estimate due to the addition of the latest solar cycle and inconsistencies in how solar RF was estimated in earlier IPCC assessments. The recent solar minimum appears to have been unusually low and long-lasting and several projections indicate lower TSI for the forthcoming decades. However, current abilities to project solar irradiance are extremely limited so that there is very low confidence concerning future solar forcing.
Nonetheless, there is a high confidence that 21st century solar forcing will be much smaller than the projected increased forcing due to GHGs. {5.2.1, 8.4; FAQ 5.1}.
Now what other "possible scenarios" does Judith want to factor in for the future? Geo-engineering? The IPCC has addressed that one. What else? A pandemic wiping out half the human race? While there may be more than an infinitesmal chance of that occurring, what is the point of factoring in such an event?
Judith may think she is queen of uncertainty but if she does know the first thing about it, she hides her knowledge well.
Judith is queen of obfuscation and science denial. That's all -1!
Judith Curry Plays Politics with Uncertainty
The next slab that Judith Curry quotes relates to the value of scientific authority. It's from another blog article on the LessWrong blog. Ironically, Judith commits the very sin discussed in the article itself. The article is about how to convey scientific probability to a lay audience. Something that Judith Curry does her best *not* to do. Judith copied a huge amount of the article but for some reason left off the last sentence, which is:
In fact, it seems to me that to prevent public misunderstanding, maybe scientists should go around saying "We are not INFINITELY certain" rather than "We are not certain". For the latter case, in ordinary discourse, suggests you know some specific reason for doubt.
Judith writes about "communicating uncertainty" and "playing politics with uncertainty" - she is a fine one to talk! She writes:
I found both of these essays to provide substantial insights into reasoning about climate uncertainty, confidence levels, communicating uncertainty to the public, and playing politics with uncertainty and confidence levels.
Judith makes a habit of playing politics with uncertainty. That's what her blog is for. It's not to communicate uncertainty in a scientific sense. You only have to look at this article and half a dozen of her other articles to see that her aim is to pretend "we are not certain" means "scientists don't know nuffin'".
Judith blogs to confuse her readers who are less knowledgeable about scientific probability. To try to persuade them that "there are many other possible scenarios" while not acknowledging that those "other possible scenarios" are much less likely and/or have already been quantified or addressed.
All Judith ever promotes is the "we are not certain" part, while waving her Italian flag - and implying that certainty expressed in all aspects of climate science is much less than it really is.
Here's a link to an archived copy of Judith's blog post again.
That's all - 2!
1. > anywhere in the IPCC documents that the chances of any one thing happening have a probability of 999,999,999 in a billion
This is the key reason Curry is wrong. LW is talking about very high levels of certainty; IPCC gets nowhere near that level.
1. True, that is probably the key reason. But Judith also errs in:
a) pretending that the IPCC reports don't address things like solar irradiance and volcanoes. Contrary to what Judith claims, the reports have blg slabs of text in multiple sections of the reports addressing climate forcings and feedbacks other than greenhouse gases. Not just volcanoes and TSI, too.
b) understating the confidence in the science in general.
2. A question I have been asking myself recently is - who is more dishonest: Watts or Curry?
1. The answer to that is fairly obvious in my mind.
Anthony is not terribly bright. His blog is for the lowest common denominator denier. As well as that he's been up front that he rejects science not on any scientific grounds, but because he became aware that addressing climate change might have implications for taxation. He wouldn't understand most of his articles whether from David Archibald, Bob Tisdale, Willis Eschenbach or a press release about a paper in Nature or PNAS.
Judith, I suspect, started out thinking she might appeal to the more educated lukewarmer rather than the 8% Dismissives who frequent WUWT. However, reading the comments to her blog, her audience overlaps a lot with WUWT. Which isn't surprising given the quality of her blog posts (low quality, science-sparse, ideology rich).
2. Neither comes close to Monckton or McIntyre. Watts and Curry are at least believers in most of what they say. Monckton and McIntyre don't even care, and know exactly what they're doing. Interestingly, neither of them is a US American. Monckton and McIntyre are calculating and mercenary, Watts and Curry are naive, shallow and attention-loving. I put it down to different education systems myself.
3. Did you perhaps mean Judith doesn't know her arse from her elbow?
4. "I don't know of any science, let alone climate science, where that sort of probability would be assigned"
Particle physics would come the closest, I think, operating on 5-sigma (~1-in-1.75 million) for announcing discoveries. I have read of some projects where they amped that up to 6-sigma (~1-in-500 million) for some results anticipated to generate some controversy.
"at least not without 999,999,999 provisos and caveats"
"I got 999,999,999 problems, but a caveat aint one". - JayZ
5. Love your work, Sou, which is new to me after a long period ex-internet.
The key to enjoying the Climate Etc comments, I find, is to scroll through until you see a bunch of smiley faces. This will be a post from "A Fan of MORE Discourse", who has been trying to talk some sort of sense into them for well over a year now. I personally think that this is an heroic achievement.
He seems to me to be a lot smarter than anyone else in the Forum, including JC, and delights in explaining to them that they are constantly going into the trenches to support, inter alia, the Saudi royal family, Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Communist Partty (via sovereign wealth-fund investments in Wall St.)
I highly recommend his posted comments as highly effective and, often, damned funny.
6. I have been thinking this over for a while, and I guess my concern isn't over the IPCC estimates. I realize the models are just models, and these models happen to be extremely complex. I also got the feeling the senior IPCC members (the ones with the power to decide) either lack consensus on work flows or just lack comprehensive understanding of what it takes to develop and run properly an Integrated Assessment Model as they had to do to generate the CMIP5 runs. It's an Herculean task. So of course the results are going to be a little iffy. On the other hand they are the best result for now. So I'm not that worried about the results as such. What I'm more worried about is what do these guys want to do with the results. I see a lot of really weird prescriptions and solutions. Suddenly everybody is an expert in solar power, offshore wind and small floating nuclear plants. The idea that whole nations will gamble on what I perceive to be zany solutions scares the dickens out of me.
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/29038 | An Appeal for the K12 IVC Listserv
Take a step back with me, and consider the history of videoconference listservs, and the current state of listservs for videoconferencing.
Bottom line: Get on the K12 IVC Listserv! Here’s why…
Listserv History
For the last decade or so, we’ve had several great listservs to use to discuss videoconferencing, share ideas with each other, advertise videoconferences to each other, and share research surveys.
• Collaboration Collage or “edvidconf”, the oldest listserv for videoconferencing
• The K12 IVC Listserv, started by NIERTEC
• Megaconference Listserv, mostly higher education
• Megaconference Jr. Listserv, mostly Internet2 sites
• TWICE listserv, mostly Michigan sites
When I did my own dissertation research survey in the spring of 2008, these were the numbers on each listserv:
• Collaboration Collage: 2,300 subscribers
• K12 IVC listserv: 300 subscribers
• TWICE: 290 subscribers
• Megaconference Jr.: 30 subscribers
You can see from this list, that the largest number of subscribers were on the Collaboration Collage listserv. When I first got started with videoconferencing in 1999-2000, I remember how much I learned on that listserv.
• People discussed technical issues
• Ideas were shared for providing support
• People advertised content provider programs and collaborations
• I remember Dan Gross’ particularly long and detailed posts to the listserv. I learned so much from those messages!
In September 2010, the Collaboration Collage listserv closed down. I don’t know if anyone else feels the loss, but I feel so sad that we may have lost contact with those 2300 people!
The K12 IVC Listserv
This listserv was born out of the 2002 K12 National Symposium of Interactive Videoconferencing. From that symposium, a listserv was created, along with a literature review, and a website with case studies. Since funding was cut for the Regional Educational Technology research organizations, these resources have all gone offline.
Thankfully CILC offered to take over this listserv and so it still exists. You can sign up here. Here’s why you should be on it:
• It’s the last remaining place to post live real-time posted (unmoderated) announcements for K12 videoconferencing nationally and internationally.
• It’s the last email place to discuss any issues or ask questions.
• It’s the easiest one stop place for graduate students to ask research questions about videoconferencing. We all want research on videoconferencing, but we need to make it easy for research to be done!
• Content providers need a place to send announcements about their programs.
But… are listservs dead?
You might be thinking that listservs are a thing of the past. It’s true that some functions of the videoconferencing listservs are no longer occurring on a listserv:
But, what about these functions:
• How do we get research surveys on videoconferencing out to a large audience? How does a graduate student access the K12 videoconferencing community for research?
• How do content providers advertise their programs to a wide audience? What if they want to advertise beyond just the “new” advertising that comes from and Established providers have their own email lists, but what about the new providers?
• Can you think of others?
The K12 IVC Listserv
So, don’t you agree?! People interested in videoconferencing need to be on the K12 IVC Listserv! I am super grateful that CILC has hosted it and left it unmoderated. We need access to each other! This listserv seems to be the main way to do that.
What do YOU think? Are listservs dead? How should researchers and content providers get access to K12 videoconferencing educators??
Leave a Reply
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/29040 | What is TTF Format And How To Open It Online?
Screen Shot 2015-01-13 at 11.05.20 am
What is TTF?
TrueType Font files are typeface files that have the TTF file extension. A typeface or a font as it is generally called allows you to see different characters, letters, numbers, and symbols on your system when viewing a document in a word processor, when viewing a web page in your browser, and when naming files and folders on your system.
TrueType Fonts were developed by Apple for their desktop operating system. Apple later licensed it to Microsoft allowing Windows to take advantage of this new font rendering technology. Before TrueType Fonts were developed by Apple, the different characters and letters that appeared on a computer were bitmap images. The biggest drawback of these bitmap fonts was that the characters did not render smoothly at higher resolutions. TrueType Fonts are vectors and operating systems have a built-in rasterizer that translate these vectors to bitmap images for displaying. The font could scale to any screen size and rendered just as well on printers making characters appear super smooth.
How do I open a TTF file online?
Jumpshare has an excellent font viewer for TTF files. Upload the file to Jumpshare and click to open it. You will be able to input any text, change the size of the font, and apply bold, italic, and underline to it if the font supports it.
Jumpshare button |
global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/29056 | Monday, January 03, 2005
If you read the Linux Journal you might have already seen it. It's the Google Labs Aptitude Test and it's started appearing everywhere. It's meant to be a first screening test for people wanting to join Google. You can try it, it's only four pages long. Get your own copy from Google's site. The people at Mathworld (wolfram) have actually put together a nice page with answers to some of the test's problems. It's interesting to know that Sergey Brin, president of technology at Google, was himself an intern at Wolfram Research before cofounding Google.
Anonymous said...
Sorry for offtopic
Anonymous said...
Very nicce!
Anonymous said...
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/29075 |
Then, I read this in the New York Times, and my stomach turned:
A more accurate description than “100 percent natural whole-grain oats,” “plump raisins,” “sweet cranberries” and “crisp fresh apples” would be “oats, sugar, sweetened dried fruit, cream and 11 weird ingredients you would never keep in your kitchen.” …
Here is the nutritional information on the McDonald’s website for their oatmeal. The oatmeal has salt? Really? Why?
Here is the depressing list of ingredients for McDonald’s oatmeal:
Diced Apples
Cranberry Raisin Blend
Light Cream
McDonald’s had a great opportunity to offer something exceptionally healthy, and out of character, and sell it at a good price. Instead, they actively chose to overcharge for oatmeal and add all sorts of nefarious chemicals to make some sort of evil concoction that the unaware will think is actually good for them.
This sort of unhealthy feint by McDonald’s is precisely the sort of behavior that makes people cynical. We hope for one thing, expect another, and in the end, we are brutalized by industry commerce for foolishly believing that goodness ever existed, at a fair price, in the first place.
1. Starbucks blew it, and McDonald’s had no way of getting it right. How to get it right? Ingredient : steel-cut oats. Everything else can be added by the end user, whether it is real fruit (dried and sweetened as Craisins are) or otherwise. Offer pumps of extra virgin olive oil and shakers of salt alternatives like Mrs. Dash.
1. Yes, it isn’t that hard, Gordon! Why add unnatural stuff to a pure and natural food? People want convenient oatmeal, not chemical oatmeal. Give them a cup and plain oatmeal, and let them add their own stuff just as you suggest!
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global_01_local_0_shard_00002368_processed.jsonl/29081 | Bootstrapped, Episode 58
In this episode, we discuss Andrey’s PhillyPopecation, Release Notes Conference, how we do sales at UserScape, why you should never offer unlimited/site licenses, Jet Brains pricing, SaaS pricing for on-premise products, Ian’s Last Of Us update, video game violence, “shooting feel” in a game, we talk AGAIN about having dogs, dead fish.
Graciously sponsored by: Release Notes Conference. Offer code: bootstrapped for $100 off.
Discuss this episode on the forums >>
Bootstrapped, Episode 57
Discuss this episode in the forums >> |
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