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In earlier postings we have seen how Russians depict John the Baptist, more commonly called “John the Forerunner” in Eastern Orthodoxy.
Today we will take a look at a later Greek icon of John:
(Courtesy of
(Courtesy of
The title inscription at the top reads:
Ο ΑΓΙΟΣ ΙѠ ο προδρομος
The initial “O” is the word “the” (used with masculine nouns). In old Greek it is pronounced “HO” here, but in modern Greek pronunciation it is just pronounced “O.”
The Second word ΑΓΙΟΣ similarly has an added “h” in old pronunciation, making it HAGIOS. In modern Greek it is pronounced more like A-yos. In both cases it means literally “Holy,” and is the word used for a saint.
The two letters ΙѠ have a curved line above them on the icon to show that they are an abbreviation. Here they abbreviate Ἰωάνης, Ioanes, the Greek form of the name “John.”
Then comes the word ho again (meaning “the”), which when put together with the last word gives:
ο προδρομος = Ho Prodromos
Ho Prodromos means “The Foreunner”; and so we have the whole inscription, translated:
“[The] Holy John the Forerunner”
In Greek the definite article the (ho here) is often used where in English it would be left out; that is why the first “the” above is in brackets).
If you are familiar with the iconography of John in Russia, there is little different in Greek icons other than painting style and inscription language. You may recall that the two most common scroll inscriptions for icons of John are:
1. “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
2. “I saw and witnessed concerning him, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
If you know that the Greek word metanoia means “repentance” (more literally “to change one’s mind”), then you will have little difficulty deciding which inscription is depicted in this Greek icon.
The scroll John holds in this icon reads:
εῖτε, ἤγγι
κε[ν] γὰρ ἡ
α τῶν οὐ
It is taken from Matthew 3:2, which, when the divided words on the scroll are joined, reads:
Μετανοεῖτε, ἤγγικεν γὰρ ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.
Metanoeite, engiken gar he basileia ton ouranon.
“Repent-you, neared for the Kingdom of the Heavens”
or in King James English,
So we see there is nothing unusual about this image. The cross staff he holds in his hand is common in Western European paintings of John, but is not common in Russian depictions.
The tree at left in this example seems merely ornamental, but it is a vestigial reminder of the tree often seen with an axe at its base in many icons of John, a reflection of John’s words in Matthew 3:10 (and Luke 3:9):
So whether you encounter John the Baptist as Predtecha in Russian icons or Prodromos in Greek icons, it is the same “Forerunner” title, and you should have no trouble recognizing John and, in most cases, in deciphering his scroll inscriptions.
As I often repeat, icons are very repetitive, so a little learning goes a long way.
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Federal Republic of Poland
Rzeczpospolita Polska Federalna A few years ago I had an enthralling discussion with an historian, a proponent of a federal model of national administration. In time, I have come round to this view of thinking. Obviously, the federal system does not work for all countries and states but there is much to be said for this system in the case of Poland.
Why a Federal Poland?
Poland desperately suffers from chronic centralisation. Poland’s current provinces lack the political clout to force through decisions that might have a direct influence on the situation within that area. The divisions put forward here are based on the historical regions of Poland which have been superimposed on the current provinces. The larger województwa or prowincje most importantly divide the population of the country into five roughly equal parts in terms of population. The future federal divisions would look something like this:
Pomorze (The Province of Pomerania)
Herb województwa pomorskiego Area: 65,397 km2
Population: 5,313,876
The new Province of Pomerania would include województwo zachodniopomorskie (West Pomeranian Province), pomorskie (Pomeranian Province) which is a logical step, but additionally it would be expanded by warmińsko-mazurskie (Warmian-Masurian Province) in order to bring money to this area.
(The Province of Greater Poland)
Herb województwa wielkopolskiegoArea: 61,780 km2
Population: 6,449,345
The new Province of Greater Poland would include most of the historical Wielkopolska covered by województwo wielkopolskie (Province of Greater Poland), lubuskie (Lubusz Province) and kujawsko-pomorskie (Kuyavian-Pomeranian Province).
Mazowsze (The Province of Mazovia)
Herb województwa mazowieckiegoArea: 73,996 km2
Population: 8,937,946
The new Province of Mazovia could be controversial bringing together województwo mazowieckie (Mazovian Province) and województwo łódzkie (Łódź Province). It would also include województwo podlaskie (Podlasie Province).
(The Province of Silesia)
Herb województwa śląskiegoArea: 41,654 km2
Population: 8,658,881
The new Province of Silesia is not problematic from a historical point of view incorporating województwo dolnośląskie (Lower Silesian Province), śląskie (Silesian Province) and opolskie (Opole Province), however, local rivalries may make life difficult to begin with.
(The Province of Lesser Poland)
Herb województwa małopolskiegoArea: 69,857 km2
Population: 8,832,967
The new Province of Małopolska would incorporate województwo małopolskie (Province of Lesser Poland), świętokrzyskie (Świętokrzyskie Province), podkarpackie (Subcarpathian Province) and lubelskie (Lublin Province).
Equal Opportunities
The largest province in terms of area and population would be Mazowsze which includes Podlasie (in order to rejuvenate the area). The smallest province would be Silesia in terms of size and Pomorze in terms of population. The most important element in these new divisions would be the fact that poorer regions would be ‘tagged onto’ richer areas, for example, Podlasie joining Warsaw and Łódź, Warmia & Mazury would be attached to Pomorze and the Podkarpackie (Subcarpathian) and Lublin areas would adjoin Kraków.
Local Politics
Perhaps decentralisation would pull Polish politicians away from ‘big table’ politics and push them towards working directly with local authorities whose mandate would be fundamentally local. Poland has for many years suffered from fractious and fractured politics which have created a divisive political environment not conducive to cooperation and ironically, the spirit of solidarity.
13 Responses to Federal Republic of Poland
1. Ewa says:
What an interesting idea! I’ve just come from the launch of a new book about the past and future Krakow (where I live) and the debate was all about what needs to be done now to create a Krakow for the 21st century. All the ideas were top down – at no point did any of the luminaries talk about working with the inhabitants to shape the future. I found it quite sad. Anything that helps local government to be truly local would be a great thing.
2. darthsida says:
Just an addendum:
A small step in the right direction, south of heaven.
Then we take Manhattan. Then we take Berlin.
3. Raf Uzar says:
Thanks! A debate is most certainly needed.
Nice one! 🙂
4. Jim says:
Haven’t I been saying this for years? Next step, Euroregions; Silesia has more in common with Ostrava and the Czech filth belt than with Warsaw, and places like Zgorzelec/Görllitz would undergo an economic regeneration they both need… if they can overcome their historical antagonisms.
5. Raf Uzar says:
Historical antagonisms always seem to be the problem. Your idealism is fine but I think if this kind of concept is to have any success we have to stay clear of the Euro-region rhetoric so as not to scare off the Joe Bloggs/Jan Kowalskis of this Euro-sceptical world. A federal Poland does not necessarily have to be a step towards a federal Europe.
6. martiga says:
And then of course there is The Province of Greater Britain 😉
7. Raf Uzar says:
Even though the idea of a United Europe is great, I am, more than ever, set against it because of the negativity that the United Europe debate seems to encourage.
8. pawel_b says:
hmm.. that’s an interesting idea. I am wondering what the people would say about that, e.g. if a referendum was conducted. I am afraid, most would be against any changes.. because this would be a HUGE change.. but we need it, right?
9. Raf Uzar says:
Most people would probably be against it, yes. But that’s why democracies don’t always work…
10. Pajacyk says:
aj don Łont to be in my Province! don’like my Nej… neighbours.
and specially Mr. Szafiak izn’t good for me…
a want go to Khasakstan! witk Borat!
and blame Canada!
11. Raf Uzar says:
Who’s Mr Szafiak?
12. Beirut al-Salam says:
I think this is a good idea. I think a federal Poland is a step in the right direction where decentralization is concerned and would encourage more bottom up rather than Soviet-style top down governance. What I will say is that I find the idea antithetical to the EU. All evidence and all operating conceptions of Europe as a federation are opposed to bottom up structure and prefer more centralized decision making and about the most absurd of subjects. People aren’t necessarily opposed to Europe. They’re opposed to a bureaucratic class with no skin in the game running the show. Furthermore, I think that the notion of a federal Europe has been discredited by the numerous crises that have occurred since you made this post. The euro crisis (no common currency), the migrant crisis (no Schengen zone), the Ukrainian crisis (no common foreign policy or interests and too many different and opposed geopolitical forces), the lack of energy solidarity (Germany continues to make deals with Russia that threaten Poland), hegemonic German ambition (no partnership), the linear voting vs. square root voting (no collaboration), etc, etc. The project is dead and realists and analysts already know this (e.g., George Friedman), and don’t ask IF the EU will collapse or shrink, but when. A more sensible conception for Poland and the region is a union of the Intermarium variety. Such a union need not be formalized as such, but could be manifested in a series of treaties that bolster a de facto union based on common regional and geopolitical interests. The entire band of countries from Finland to Croatia rests on a geopolitical fault line between the two tectonic plates that are Germany and Russia. It has always been bad news for the region whenever these countries become too powerful and are not balanced by, say, a powerful Poland which is something Poland does have the potential to become in the region. The federal model above must work to enhance regional prosperity, decentralization of power where local issues are concerned and as a way to empower regions to operate independently in regional matters. Decentralization should also reduce the cronyism that is rampant in Warsaw. By keeping things as local as possible, accountability increases as does skin in the game. The principle of subsidiary ought to be respected. To bind the regions to each other and with the federal government also requires skin in the game. Also, while the Church can be problematic, it is a necessary component of every society for maintaining moral norms (the government should not be experimenting with them and no other authority makes sense; the merger of church and state as in the Protestant countries was a disaster; the Church has always maintained a distinction between Church and State, though not a separation which it regards as, shall we say, an imperfect though in some cases a tolerable state of affairs provided certain provisions are in place). Furthermore, the vacuum created by the ouster of religious authority has universally produced disaster in history (horror vacui). It can only be replaced with something better and nothing better exists. The role of the Church should not be overbearing (and certainly not of the provincial Polish priest prince variety, but likewise not the clownish modernist variety either). Socialism must go as must crony capitalism, both are rotten. The regions above can compete to give impetus to growth, but only within properly set parameters that lead to a better good for these regions and the entire country.
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Add to Brochure
What are the barriers for introducing preventative measures?
August 28, 2014
Healthcare workers have a number of hazards that they are unavoidably exposed to during their working day. This is often combined with time pressures, tiredness or other factors that can mean members of staff aren't as careful as they should be when performing procedures. However, employers are responsible for ensuring that each hazard carries the minimum amount of risk.
As a healthcare organisation or hospital, it's impossible to control what each member of staff is doing and ensure they abide by the necessary protocols. However, having the correct and appropriate preventative measures in place will make sure the employer is legally and morally covered, as well as reducing the risk of workers suffering a traumatic event.
When organisations are trying to introduce preventative measures across an entire hospital or other medical setting, which can often include ten-of-thousands of healthcare workers, there are a number of barriers that can get in the way of these measures being successful.
Insufficient training
Whenever an organisation is introducing a new protocol, process or preventative measure, it's important that each member of staff receives the appropriate level of training. Research has shown that proper training will reduce the number of needlestick injuries suffered in a hospital, so failing to provide it can lead to confusion and errors being made. When people are working closely in groups, as many healthcare workers do, inappropriate training can lead to bad practice becoming widespread across an organisation as new or inexperienced staff can adopt negative habits.
Staff members not understanding measures
Preventative measures can often fall at the first hurdle if all healthcare workers aren't aware of why they are being put in place. The introduction of new processes can often mean staff have to spend more time on something, or at least complete training sessions. This can receive a negative response, especially among more experienced workers, as many simply want to get on with their job. However, this backlash can be controlled if the organisation makes it clear why the new preventative measures have been introduced.
In the case of needlestick injuries, older members of staff may be unsure about why new measures are needed as they may have been doing their job without any incident for decades. This can be avoided by ensuring that proper information is given about the dangers and health implications of sharps injuries for both patients, themselves and other workers.
Underreporting of needlestick injuries
It is a widespread fact that the number of needlestick injuries reported may not reflect the true number of events, as many healthcare workers do not follow the appropriate procedure when suffering an injury. Not only does this mean that is it difficult for organisations to identify what departments and staff members are most at risk, but it can also affect healthcare workers' opinion of incidents.
The underreporting of needlestick injuries can mean that staff consider them to be a very rare event, meaning they don't obey the proper protocol or preventative measures. This can be avoided through comprehensive explanation of how inaccurate statistics often are, and stressing how easily someone can injure themselves with a medical sharp.
Related Legislation and Guidelines:
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Getting to Know the Cloud: What are IaaS, SaaS and PaaS?
The cloud is host to thousands of applications and services that add on to an existing business network. The cloud is quickly becoming more popular, because it allows businesses to have enterprise services at a much lower cost than hosting these services internally. With cloud networking, several acronyms have popped up such as IaaS, SaaS and PaaS. Before you jump into the cloud, here is an explanation of the three main services providers offer.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
IaaS offers businesses virtual hardware. It offers any type of virtualized computing power that the internal network needs. Need extra hard drive storage? IaaS offers virtualized storage. Need extra IP addresses, load balancers or network connections? IaaS can handle these requests at a fraction of the price to companies that don’t have the funds to buy the equipment outright.
IaaS is also beneficial for companies running out of real estate space. Server rooms and networking equipment take up a lot of office space. With IaaS, the company can leave the space requirements to the cloud provider while still adding equipment to the network.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS is probably the most popular and common cloud service on the Internet. Many people use SaaS and don’t even realize they are using it. SaaS provides companies with the servers and computing power to run software in the cloud. Users connect to that software using their browsers, so the company doesn’t need to worry about supporting multiple executables for multiple operating systems. The browser supports the application’s functionality.
The advantage for businesses is that the software runs in the cloud and remains available from any location. The business doesn’t need extra servers or hardware to run SaaS applications. The added benefit is for employees who travel. SaaS supports mobile devices, so employees who travel can open important business applications from anywhere in the world using a mobile device.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
PaaS is a type of service mostly beneficial to software developers. PaaS offers businesses a way to add environments to a network such as a data center, web farm or operating systems. Developers are given access to specific tools used to develop against these platforms. If your company supports multiple operating systems and customized coding, PaaS is beneficial for testing, coding, staging and production deployment.
PaaS is also beneficial if you need data processing power. SQL servers are generally expensive, especially if you need to support thousands of requests per day. PaaS gives businesses access to data centers that the business would otherwise not be able to afford. With big data, companies can generate high-level reports within seconds, which a single SQL server generally cannot accomplish.
These three services are the foundation of cloud services. Cloud services aren’t just for the business, any individual can take advantage of these services. Because you only pay for the resources you use, these services are generally much cheaper than purchasing hardware. Virtualization can turn the small business into an IT powerhouse with scalability for large, long-term growth. With hosted solutions businesses can focus on conducting their business while benefitting from the latest technology.
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Carbon Ring Storage for 1,000x Memory Increase
Attach a couple of cobalt molecules to a ring of carbon and you have the dream memory material.
There's a challenge facing electronics engineers attempting to build magnetic memory that can store data for more than 10 years or so. The density at which this data is stored depends on the size of the magnetic grains used for this process. Engineers have known for some time that they just can't continue to make these grains indefinitely smaller.
But today, Ruijuan Xiao at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, in Dresden, Germany, and a few buddies have worked out how to solve the problem. And get this: their fix doesn't just tweak the density of magnetic data storage. They reckon that they can get an improvement of three orders of magnitude.
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1,078,971 Pages
As a verb, clutch means to grab something tightly. As a noun, the clutch is an important part of a transmission that controls what gear ratios are being used.
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Elementary Nurse
During the year, your child will be sent to the nurse in case of illness or accident. You, or the person you name, will be notified if your child must be sent home and it will be up to you to get medical attention. If the emergency is so great that the child must be taken immediately from school for medical attention, you will be notified as soon as possible.School Health
For the protection of all the students, the following rules have been set forth and will be adhered to at all times. A child will be sent home if he/she has any of the following symptoms:
1. Fever 100 degrees or above
2. Suspected contagious illness
3. Vomiting
4. Diarrhea
5. Suspected contagious rash
6. Feels too badly to remain at school
If your child has any of the above symptoms prior to coming to school, please keep the child at home. A child must be free of fever for 24 hours before returning to school. Medicating your child with Acetaminophen, Tylenol, Ibuprofen, or Motrin does not constitute being fever-free. A child with a suspected conjunctivitis (pink-eye) should be kept at home and will have to be evaluated by a doctor before returning to school. If the doctor confirms the child has conjunctivitis, the child will have to be on an antibiotic eye drop for 24 hours before returning to school. We can allow your child to rest at school, but only until arrangements can be made for them to go home.
If your child has been diagnosed with any chronic health condition, please inform the nurse. This includes: asthma, seizures, migraines, anaphylaxis (severe allergic reaction), diabetes, heart or lung abnormalities, arthritis, ADHD/ADD, or any disease of concern. Please keep all medical information updated throughout the school year and notify the school if any of your emergency contact numbers change.
To enter school: State Law requires new entrants to provide an immunization record or a signed exemption. These are the required immunizations:
Children enrolled in pre-kindergarten or early childhood programs shall have the following immunizations (at the ages indicated) against: DTaP (dipheria, pertussis, tetanus), IPV (polio), HIB (haemophilus influenza type b), MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A, PCV (Pneumococcal), and Varicella.
Students in kindergarten through twelfth grade shall have the following vaccines, according to the schedule listed.
1. Diptheria/ Pertussis/ Tetanus (DTaP): Students are required to have four doses- one of which must have been received on or after the fourth birthday. Students seven years of age or older are required to have at least three doses, provided at least one dose was received on or after the fourth birthday.
2. Tetanus (Tdap) Booster: For students in seventh grade, one dose of the Tdap is required if at least five years have passed since the last dose of a tetanus-containing vaccine. For students in grades 8-12, one dose received 10 years after the last DTP/DTaP/Tdap dose is required. If a medical contraindication to pertussis exists, Td is acceptable in place of Tdap.
3. Polio (IPV): Students are required to have three doses, one of which must have been received on or after the fourth birthday.
4. Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR): Students are required to have two doses with the first dose received on or after the first birthday and the second dose required upon entry into kindergarten.
5. Hepatitis B (Hep B): Students are required to have three doses.
6. Varicella (chicken pox): All students are required to have two doses with the first dose received on or after the first birthday or have on file a written statement from a parent/guardian or physician showing date of illness.
7. Meningococcal Vaccine (MCV): Students in 7th-12th grade are required to have one dose of the quadrivalent meningococcal conjugate vaccine received on or after the student’s 11th
8. Hepatitis A (Hep A): Kindergarten-8th grade students are required to have two doses with the first dose received on or after the first birthday.
For more information, refer to the Texas Department of State Health Services website,
The Texas Dept. of Health has decreed that all new students entering the school system must have their shots up to date or on schedule within 30 days of entering school.
Immunizations may be obtained from one of the following:
Your physician
Matagorda County Health Department,
1100 Avenue G, Bay City, 979-245-8421
101 N. Avenue F, Bay City, 979-245-2008
All 4 year old and kindergarten students are screened annually, as well as any 1st time entrants. Annual screens are also done in grades 1, 3, 5, & 7 or anytime it's requested by a teacher or a parent.
According to Texas Law Family Code 21.914, authorized employees of the school may administer medication to a student provided:
A signed written request to administer the medication from the parent, legal guardian, or other person
having legal control of the student is sent to school with the medication.
All medication must be in the original container and properly labeled with the name of the drug.
All prescription medication must also be labeled with above information including student's name,
doctor's name, dosage and times to be given and dated.
Students are to check in all medication into the office so that they can be properly dispensed during school hours.
All students in grades 5 and 8 will receive the spinal screening. If for religious reasons, you wish to not have your child screened, you need to submit an affidavit of religious exemption to the nurse's office.
What are head lice?
The head louse is a very small insect (parasite) about the size of a pin that lives on the human head by sucking blood. The eggs (nits) are tiny tan or gray specks securely glued to the hair shaft (usually close to the scalp). They live about a month and reproduce rapidly with the life cycle of one week from nit to louse and another week from louse to producing nits. A female may lay as many as 100 eggs in her lifetime.
Who gets head lice?
Lice are no respecters of persons. Anyone can get them. Personal cleanliness is not necessarily a factor in having head lice. They exist primarily with young school-age children. Girls can get them more often than boys.
How are lice spread?
Head lice do not fly, hop, or jump and do not live on animals or anything other than humans. They are transmitted from person to person by direct contact and by contact with personal items (combs, brushes, hats, headgear, etc), clothing, and bedding (including pillows). Places a person can get head lice are: day care centers, babysitters' houses, relatives' houses, dance/gym class, movie theaters, public transportation sources (planes, buses), share lockers, slumber parties, church activities and any place that there is contact with another's head.
What are the symptoms?
Usually the person will have itching and scratching. However, confirmation of lice is made by careful examination to identify the live louse and/or nits.
What is the treatment for head lice?
Medicated shampoos, creams, or gels kill lice but these are to be used along with several steps of cleaning to assure their elimination. Please read and understand the instructions on treatment. These medications are not recommended for children under age 2. People should not use the pediculicides unless they have lice. If you have questions, ask your pharmacist. All the nits (eggs) must be removed to complete the treatment process.
How do you get rid of lice?
The best cure is prevention. People, including children, should not share personal items (combs, brushes, hats, etc.) or bedding. These items should be washed frequently. Floors, carpets, furniture, etc., should be vacuumed frequently. Parents should inspect their children's heads, hair, and scalp frequently.
How concerned should I be?
There is no reason to panic. Unfortunately this is a fairly common problem. It is a nuisance and inconvenience, but lice do not cause disease or other health problems. A lice infestation concern is made worse when parents and teachers overreact creating unkindness and mistreatment among children. Handling the problem responsibly according to accepted guidelines is the best response to a lice infestation.
What is Staphylococcus aureus or Staph?
Staphylococcus aureus, often referred to as "staph," are bacteria commonly carried on the skin or in the nose of healthy people. Sometimes, it can cause an infection that can look like pimples or boils. Skin infections caused by Staph may be red, swollen, painful, or have pus or other drainage. Some Staph bacteria are resistant to certain antibiotics, making it harder to treat. This is called Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA). The information on this page applies to both Staph and MRSA.
Who gets a Staph infection:
• Prolonged contact with items and surfaces that have Staph on them
• Openings in their skin such as cuts scrapes or lesions
• Crowded living conditions
• Poor hygiene
How serious are Staph infections?
How are Staph infections treated?
Treatment for a Staph skin infection may include taking an antibiotic or having a doctor a doctor drain the infection. If you are given an antibiotic, be sure and take all of the doses, even if the infection is getting better, unless your doctor tells you to stop taking it. Do not share antibiotics with other people or save them to use later. Take antibiotics only under the care of a physician.
How can I prevent Staph or MRSA skin infections:
Practice good hygiene:
• Avoid contact with other peoples wounds or bandages
• Avoid sharing personal items such as towels or razors
Need more information?
If you have any questions about your condition, please contact your doctor. More information on Staphylococcus aureusand MRSA can be found at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Website: www.cdc.gov
Links & Resources
Texas Department of Health
Centers for Disease Control
National Association of School Nurses
American Cancer Society
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DC-DC Current Consumption vs. Power Consumption
From Tables 4.5 ("Current Consumption 3.3V without DC/DC"), 4.6 ("Current Consumption 3.3V with DC-DC"), and 4.7 ("Current Consumption 1.85V without DC/DC") of the EFM32PG1 datasheet, it seems that the current consumption is less when using a 3.3V supply and the internal DC DC converter, than when using a much smaller 1.85V supply and disabling the internal DC DC converter. This makes no sense to me - is it a datasheet error?
This observation regarding the datasheet current consumption specifications is common, but the specs are indeed correct. Often, the missing key consideration is that though these tables depict current consumption, actual power consumption (dissipation) is a function of both the current consumed and the applied voltage.
For example, the current consumption values in the "1.85V w/out DC-DC" table, when multiplied by 1.85V, yield lower power consumption than the smaller values in the "3.3V with DC-DC" table multiplied by a larger 3.3V supply. Power consumption is even higher in the 3.3V system that does not use the DC-DC.
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Monday, March 9, 2015
The Deception of Central Banking - A Parable
Let's say a guy is about to counterfeit millions of dollars and spend it in his town (he's been empowered by secret government commission) with the goal of producing a perceived economic boom. To have the greatest effect, would he be better off publicly announcing his intention to counterfeit with the proviso that if prices go up too much he will stop, or would he be better off spending the counterfeit money in secret?
If he announces his intentions, banks and businesses in the town will immediately begin to factor his future spending into their prices and inventory decisions. His promise to stop counterfeiting if prices go up too much will also be taken into account. Knowing that an indefinite counterfeiting operation will ultimately force prices higher, they will conclude that it is unlikely he will counterfeit indefinitely and will regard the increased spending as temporary. As he buys more of their goods, they will experience an improved bottom line in the near term, but they will not be incentivized to expand their operations or hoard inventory in the hopes that prices will just keep going up and up as he spends and spends. The boom is unlikely to ever materialize.
On the other hand, if he secretly counterfeits and begins spending the money, businesses will notice that they are selling more and more. Even if they raise their prices a little they will see their sales increase and conclude it is part of a new trend. As prices go up everywhere, they will realize they can purchase more inventory and just wait for prices to go up further. Banks will be flush with deposits and able to make loans on more generous terms. Businesses will expand their operations. The town will believe they are experiencing a boom.
Notice that for his counterfeiting to result in a perceived boom, he had to trick everyone into thinking that the increased spending volume is real and would continue indefinitely. It needed to appear that the increased deposits in the bank reflected the real desire of individuals to save more money for longer periods so that businessmen would be fooled into pursuing longer term projects that consume massive amounts of capital. Conversely, when the businesses anticipated the end of counterfeiting, the whole effect of his actions was relatively inconsequential. As Ludwig Von Mises wrote in his economic treatise Human Action:
Unless the businesses believed they could continually gain from the trend, they will not act to expand their business. In this way, the example shows that even if the man had kept counterfeiting, he would have had to accelerate his pace of counterfeiting to keep the boom going (increasing the gains of the gains) and eventually he would have destroyed the town's monetary system. Von Mises wrote:
Von Mises's principles relate to recent events. In the housing bubble leading up to the 2008 crisis, it was believed that home prices would rise indefinitely. Credit expansion supported by central bank rate policy, fractional reserve banking, and the federal government's underwriting of mortgages through GSE's caused a massive boom in real estate prices. More credit begat home price increases and house price increases begat more credit.
Since that bubble burst in the 2008 crisis, global central banks such as the Federal Reserve, ECB, and Bank of Japan have embarked on an effort seemingly to create another phony credit boom. But this time, they have maintained a policy of publicly announcing their so-called "quantitative easing" efforts in advance. They have generally pledged to buy their government's bonds (with fake money) of a certain magnitude for a certain period of time with the goal of increasing consumer prices along with the proviso that if prices rise too quickly then they will stop and potentially even go in reverse, i.e., remove money from the monetary system. As we would expect based on the above, despite their best efforts, these central banks have been unable to create the kind of phony boom they so desperately crave.
Central banking requires that government bureaucrats act in a way to distort the entire economic system by introducing counterfeit credit into the monetary system in such a way that businessmen are continually fooled into acting in a way that mimics the behavior of businessmen operating in an actual economic boom. The fact that central banking requires deception does not imply that we should advocate deception. On the contrary, the point is that central banking, by its nature, requires massive deception and is a symptom of its evil and impracticality.
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National Water Quality Month on August, 2017: Who tests drinking water?
August, 2017 is National Water Quality Month 2017. Wear the brown with pride. Great new T Shirt for you to show that wastewater IS water.
Who tests drinking water?
There are several companies that perform water tests for a fee. Many of them will mail you a kit with instructions and vials that you can fill and return for testing.
As for the local water, your local water company is mandated to perform tests that meet national guidelines for water safety. Water quality changes by region.
One factor that can affect the content of water is the pipes in your house. Old houses usually have iron pipes that can leach trace metals into your water supply, but even newer copper plumbing can leach lead into your water supply because they are soldered with lead.
A reverse osmosis system can be installed that will help to remove most contaminants.
Lastly, if you suspect lead poisoning (or heavy ingestion) contact your Pediatrician. There are many tests that he/she can run to determine any problems.
Amazon Gold Box
August is the ONLY calender month without a MAJOR holiday: Why has it never been claimed for any
August is the ONLY calender month without a MAJOR holiday: Why has it never been claimed for any national gala?
The following events are observed calendar month-long in August:
American Adventures Month
American History Essay Contest
National Catfish Month
Black Business Month
Cataract Awareness Month
Children's Eye Health and Safety Month
Children's Vision and Learning Month
Get Ready for Kindergarten Month
Happiness Happens Month
Harvest Month
Motorsports Awareness Month
National Immunization Awareness Month
National Inventor's Month
National Panini Month
National Water Quality Month
National Win with Civility Month
Neurosurgery Outreach Month
Peach Month
Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness Month
What Will Be Your Legacy Month
How can water pollution effect on the ecosystem?
How can water pollution effect on the ecosystem?
Water pollution affects plants and organisms living in these bodies of water; and, in almost all cases the effect is damaging either to individual species and populations, but also to the natural biological communities.
6 Major Effects of Water Pollution
The effects of water pollution are numerous (as seen above). Some water pollution effects are recognized immediately, whereas others don’t show up for months or years. Additional effects of water pollution include:
Additional information at:
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Norton I.
Joshua Abraham Norton
Emperor norton.jpg
Emperor of the United States
Assumed office:
September 17, 1859 - January 8, 1880
Predecessor Office established
Successor Office abolished
Protector of Mexico
Assumed office:
Unknown, 1859 - January 8, 1880
Personal Information
Father John Norton (Suggested)
Mother Sarah Norden (Suggested)
Born February 4, 1819, London, England or c. 1814
Signature Signature of Emperor Norton.png
Emperor Joshua Abraham Norton I (c. 1819 - January 8, 1880) also known as Emperor Norton I and Emperor Joshua I, was self declared Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. Emperor Norton was born in England in about 1815, and later moved to San Francisco in 1849 from South Africa.
As Emperor
Emperor Norton featured on the face of the 50& bill.
On September 17, 1859, Emperor Norton declared himself Emperor of these United States by this decleration.
At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last 9 years and 10 months past of S. F., Cal., declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U. S.; and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall, of this city, on the 1st day of Feb. next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity. NORTON I, Emperor of the United States. During his reign, he had issued his own money in the form of bills which were accepted by the local stores where he regularly visited. The people of the area humored Emperor Norton's belief by referring to him as His Imperial Majesty. He had also proposed that a bridge should be built linking San Francisco to Oakland, which eventually was built. Now there is a proposition that the bridge be named after him. Emperor Norton would often make Imperial Inspections of the sidewalks, cable cars, and dining establishments. Many restaurants in the area had his seal of approval. Plays and musical preformances would often reserve balcony seats for him and his two dogs.
Impact on Micronationalism
Emperor Norton on the obverse side of the 10 Valora coin.
The notion that one could leave a state and create his own country, without interfering with the government or having bloodshed, had no doubt been influenced by Emperor Norton. Today, there are many micronations who have Emperor Norton I Day (Emperor Joshua I Day in Delo-Cavers Empire) commemorating the Emperor on January 8, the day of his death. These include the Republic of Molossia, the Kingdom of TorHavn, Corvina, and the Empire of Deloraine-Cavers, among others. The countries of Molossia,Delo-Cavers, and the Kingdom of Bolcar also have Emperor Norton on their bills and coins. There is also the Norton Park in Molossia named after the Emperor.
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Back to Cat Breeds
The Sphynx
The Champion Purrer
Sphynx Cat
The so called hairless Sphynx, also known as the Canadian Hairless Cat. The gene of hairlessness has appeared as a spontaneous mutation several times during the past century, in well documented occurrences in Europe, Australia and America. The most famous early hairless cats are probably the two cats owned by a New Mexico resident that have come to be known as the "Hairless Mexican". Most sources agree that the first breeding program for hairless cats was initiated in Canada in 1966, when a domestic shorthaired cat produced a hairless kitten. These early cats were at first called "The Canadian Hairless", "Moonstone Cats" and "Canadian Sphynx" - with time, "Sphynx" became the official name.
The Sphynx cats that we have today descend from a couple of domestic shorthair farm cats that produced a hairless kitten. The hairless kitten named "Epidermis" was put into a successful breeding program in Oregon. The Sphynx cat became a recognized breed in the mid 1970's.
Breeding programs in the United States and the Netherlands were based on this original line but have also continued to include hairless cats that appeared spontaneously among domestic cats. The Cat Fanciers Association (CFA) accepted this unusual looking breed for registration and competition in the Miscellaneous Class in February 1998.
The Sphynx breed was developed with the help of the Devon Rex, the Devon Rex sometimes occur with sparse fur.
To most people, hairlessness is a denial of everything that cats are about, and it is true to say that, although a curiosity the Sphynx has won a growing band of admirers (myself included!).
It is interesting, however, that the history of the Mexican Aztecs contains stories of a breed of hairless cats which in winter developed a slight growth of hair on the back and along the ridge of the tail. Some modern Sphynxes have the same characteristics.
The hairlessness, so called, because in fact the mature Sphynx has a very short downy coat which can be felt or seen only with difficulty, but no true eyebrows or whiskers - which is caused by a recessive gene. The mutation changed not only the hair length but also the body type, so that the Sphynx does not merely look like a domestic cat without hair. It looks like an entirely different species. in cats with normal coats, the hair regulates body temperature, and the Sphynx's lack of hair causes it to sweat and also makes it warm to the touch.
The Sphynx has a long fine and muscular body, barrel-chested, with long slim legs and small dainty paws. The tail is long, thin and hard. the neck is is long and supports a head which is slightly longer than it is wide. The ears appear disproportionately large, wide at the base and round-tipped. The eyes are deep-set and slanted. The skin should have the texture of chamois and may be covered with a very short down. On the ears, muzzle, tail, feet and testicles, there will be short, tightly packed soft hair. The skin is very wrinkled in kittens and adults should retain as many wrinkles as possible, especially on the head. These wrinkles provide much needed insulation. The lack of a thick insulating coat makes the Sphynx very warm to the touch. Although these cats do not have hair that needs to be combed, they do secrete an oil from their skin and require frequent bathing.
Sphynxes are said to be champion purrers, is very people-orientated and affectionate. They love attention! They will greet their owner when they come home and are very talkative. They are highly intelligent, playful, cuddly, often described as being "part dog, part child, part monkey, and part cat" - They like to snuggle next to you to sleep and they want to be under the covers. They have fun playing with appropriate cat toys and table tennis balls, most of all, they really love affection from their owner. Some owners have described the Sphynx as a "clown cat" - with it twisting and turning in mid-air and other antics it certainly can be a very humorous cat at times.
Sphynxes are essentially indoor cats as they have so little protection from adverse weather, and they do not like resting on cold surfaces. Their body temperature is a degree or two above the average for normal cats and they have voracious appetites to compensate for the heat loss.
Sphynxes have a characteristic pose, when standing, of raising one foreleg.
Kittens are born with a covering of fine down which they lose as they mature. Coat colours and patterns can sometimes be seen faintly in the adult down and on the underlying skin. They come in all colour variations.
The Sphynx cat requires weekly maintenance. Trim their nails as needed, your vet can instruct you on how to trim the nails. The Sphynx needs a bath once a week, use only products labeled "for cats only". Cats are very sensitive, so it is very important to use products that are made specifically for cats. it is important to dry them with a towel after a bath, and not allow them to chill. The ears need to be cleaned once a week. The proper cleaner can be purchased from your vet or a good quality petstore. Use Q-tips to clean and clean only the area that you can see. If you have not done this before, your vet will show you the area of the ear to clean and the proper method.
Remember the Sphynx is an indoor cat only. Their skin is very sensitive due to the lack of hair and they can sunburn easily. If possible, make a place in front of a window where the sunshine comes in. They will likely try to get into open washers or dryers, especially ones that are warm and cosy. Try to keep the washer and dryer doors closed and always double-check before starting a wash or dry cycle.
The Sphynx and allergies, contrary to what some people believe, Sphynxes are not hypo allergenic. These cats still produce the protein to which allergic people react and shed it in their saliva and dander. The lack of hair may help to reduce the reaction in some people, but others are just as allergic to Sphynxes as to other cats.
Sphynx owners should receive detailed guidance from the breeder of their cat and follow their advice with great care.
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Sunday, September 29, 2013
How to probe public attitudes?
We are almost always interested in knowing how the public thinks and feels about various issues -- global warming, race relations, the fairness of rising income inequalities, and the acceptability of same-sex marriage, for example. The public is composed of millions of individuals, and the population can be segmented in a variety of relevant ways -- gender, age, race, region, political affiliation, and many other cleavages. So we might want to know how teenagers think about alcohol, and how these attitudes have changed over time, or how attitudes towards the equality of women have evolved since 1960.
What research tools are available to us to investigate public opinion? And how reliable are these tools?
The most immediate answer to this question is survey research. We can formulate a set of survey questions, select a population of respondents, and tabulate the distribution of responses. And if we do this on several occasions over time, we can make some inferences about changes in attitudes over time. There are innumerable examples of these kinds of studies, from the GSS to the euro barometer to the Pugh organization's frequent polling data. And we seem to learn some important things from studies like these concerning the distribution of attitudes across time and space. Spaniards are less concerned about fair trade produce than Swedes, young people have become more accepting of single-sex marriage, people over 65 are more sympathetic to Tea Party values than people in their thirties.
Another research approach takes a more qualitative approach. Researchers sometimes use open-ended interviews and focus groups to learn more directly how various groups and individuals think about certain topics. We may learn more from such studies than we can learn from a mass survey -- for example, the interviewer may gain a better understanding of the reasoning that individuals use to reach their beliefs. A survey question may ask whether a consumer is willing to pay 10% more for fair trade bananas, whereas a series of interviews may determine that the "no's" break into a group who don't have the discretionary money and another group who oppose fair trade pricing on ideological grounds.
There are more indirect methods for studying public opinion as well. We might examine the comments that are submitted to newspapers on topics of interest and try to quantify over time the "temperature" of those comments -- more intolerant, more angry, more reflective. Likewise, we might attempt to quantify the streams of social media -- Twitter, Facebook, tumblr -- with an eye towards testing the attitudes and emotions of various segments of the public. Consider he vitriol that exploded on twitter following the selection of Miss New York as Miss America a few weeks ago.
Attitudes towards race in America are especially interesting to me. How have Americans changed in the ways they think about race? Have Americans become less racially intolerant since the civil rights movement decade? Survey data seems to give a qualified "yes" to this question. Answers to survey questions that explicitly probe the individual's level of racial antagonism seem to support the notion that on average, antagonism has declined. But scholars in race studies such as Tyrone Forman and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argue that the survey results are misleading (link). They use a methodology of extended interviews, along with a rigorous way of interpreting the results, which suggests that there is a widening divergence between the responses American college students give to surveys probing their racial attitudes and the values and beliefs that are revealed through extensive open-ended interviews.
In consonance with this new structure, various analysts have pointed out that a new racial ideology has emerged that, in contrast to the Jim Crow racism or the ideology of the color line (Johnson, 1943, 1946; Myrdal, 1944), avoids direct racial discourse but effectively safeguards racial privilege (Bobo et al., 1997; Bonilla-Silva and Lewis, 1999; Essed, 1996; Jackman, 1994; Kovel, 1984). That ideology also shapes the very nature and style of contemporary racial dis-cussions. In fact, in the post civil rights era, overt discussions of racial issues have become so taboo that it has become extremely difficult to assess racial attitudes and behavior using conventional research strategies (Myers, 1993; Van Dijk, 1984, 1987, 1997). Although we agree with those who suggest that there has been a normative change in terms of what is appropriate racial discourse and even racial etiquette (Schuman et al., 1988), we disagree with their interpret-ation of its meaning. Whereas they suggest that there is a ‘mixture of progress and resistance, certainty and ambivalence, striking movement and mere surface change' (p. 212), we believe (1) that there has been a rearticulation of the domi-nant racial themes (less overt expression of racial resentment about issues anchored in the Jim Crow era such as strict racial segregation in schools, neigh-borhoods, and social life in general, and more resentment on new issues such as affirmative action, government intervention, and welfare) and (2) that a new way of talking about racial issues in public venues – a new racetalk – has emerged. Nonetheless, the new racial ideology continues to help in the reproduction of White supremacy. (52)
They argue that a new "racetalk" has emerged that makes explicitly racist utterances socially unacceptable; but that the underlying attitudes have not changed as much. And this implies that survey research is likely to misrepresent the degree of change in attitudes that has occurred.
Here is a good example of the kind of analysis Forman and Bonilla-Silva provide for transcripts from the open-ended interviews:
The final case is Eric, a student at a large midwestern university , an example of the students who openly expressed serious reservations about interracial mar-riages (category 6). It is significant to point out that even the three students who stated that they would not enter into these relationships, claimed that there was nothing wrong with interracial relationships per se. Below is the exchange between Eric and our interviewer on this matter.
Eric: Uh . . . (sighs) I would say that I agree with that, I guess. I mean . . . I would say that I really don't have much of a problem with it but when you, ya know, If I were to ask if I had a daughter or something like that, or even one of my sisters, um . . . were to going to get married to a minority or a Black, I . . . I would probably . . . it would probably bother me a little bit just because of what you said . . . Like the children and how it would . . . might do to our family as it is. Um . . . so I mean, just being honest, I guess that's the way I feel about that. Int.: What would, specifically , if you can, is it . . . would it be the children? And, if it's the children, what would be the problem with, um . . . uh . . . adjustment, or Eric: For the children, yeah, I think it would just be . . . I guess, through my experience when I was younger and growing up and just . . . ya know, those kids were different. Ya know, they were, as a kid, I guess you don't think much about why kids are dif-ferent or anything, you just kind of see that they are different and treat them differ-ently . Ya know, because you're not smart enough to think about it, I guess. And the, the other thing is . . . I don't know how it might cause problems within our family if it happened within our family, ya know, just . . . from people's different opinions on some-thing like that. I just don't think it would be a healthy thing for my family. I really can't talk about other people. Int.: But would you feel comfortable with it pretty much? Eric: Yeah. Yeah, that's the way I think, especially , um . . . ya know, grandparents of things like that. Um, right or wrong, I think that's what would happen. (Interview # 248: 10)
Eric used the apparent admission semantic move (“I would say that I agree with that”) in his reply but could not camouflage very well his true feelings (“If I were to ask if I had a daughter or something like that, or even one of my sisters, um . . . were [sic] to going to get married to a minority or a Black, I . . . I would probably . . . it would probably bother me a little bit”). Interestingly , Eric claimed in the interview that he had been romantically interested in an Asian-Indian woman his first year in college. However, that interest “never turned out to be a real big [deal]” (Interview # 248: 9). Despite Eric's fleeting attraction to a person of color, his life was racially segregated: no minority friends and no meaningful interaction with any Black person.
This is an important argument within race studies. But it also serves as an important caution about uncritical reliance on survey research as an indicator of public attitudes and thinking.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
What is reduction?
Screen Shot 2013-09-25 at 10.23.31 AM
The topics of methodological individualism and microfoundationalism unavoidably cross with the idea of reductionism -- the notion that higher level entities and structures need somehow to be "reduced" to facts or properties having to do with lower level structures. In the social sciences, this amounts to something along these lines: the properties and dynamics of social entities need to be explained by the properties and interactions of the individuals who constitute them. Social facts need to reduce to a set of individual-level facts and laws. Similar positions arise in psychology ("psychological properties and dynamics need to reduce to facts about the activities and properties of the central nervous system") and biology ("complex biological systems like genes and cells need to reduce to the biochemistry of the interacting systems of molecules that make them up").
Reductionism has a bad flavor within much of philosophy, but it is worth dwelling on the concept a bit more fully.
Why would the strategy of reduction be appealing within a scientific research tradition? Here is one reason: there is evident explanatory gain that results from showing how the complex properties and functionings of a higher-level entity are the result of the properties and interactions of its lower level constituents. This kind of demonstration serves to explain the upper level system's properties in terms of the entities that make it up. This is the rationale for Peter Hedstrom's metaphor of "dissecting the social" (Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology); in his words,
Aggregate or macro-level patterns usually say surprisingly little about why we observe particular aggregate patterns, and our explanations must therefore focus on the micro-level processes that brought them about. (kl 141)
The explanatory strategy illustrated by Thomas Schelling in Micromotives and Macrobehavior proceeds in a similar fashion. Schelling wants to show how a complex social phenomenon (say, residential segregation) can be the result of a set of preferences and beliefs of the independent individuals who make up the relevant population. And this is also the approach that is taken by researchers who develop agent-based models (link).
Why is the appeal to reduction sometimes frustrating to other scientists and philosophers? Because it often seems to be a way of changing the subject away from our original scientific interest. We started out, let's say, with an interest in motion perception, looking at the perceiver as an information-processing system, and the reductionist keeps insisting that we turn our attention to the organization of a set of nerve cells. But we weren't interested in nerve cells; we were interested in the computational systems associated with motion perception.
Another reason to be frustrated with "methodological reductionism" is the conviction that mid-level entities have stable properties of their own. So it isn't necessary to reduce those properties to their underlying constituents; rather, we can investigate those properties in their own terms, and then make use of this knowledge to explain other things at that level.
Finally, it is often the case that it is simply impossible to reconstruct with any useful precision the micro-level processes that give rise to a given higher-level structure. The mathematical properties of complex systems come in here: even relatively simple physical systems, governed by deterministic mechanical laws, exhibit behavior that cannot be calculated on the basis of information about the starting conditions of the system. A solar system with a massive star at the center and a handful of relatively low-mass planets produces a regular set of elliptical orbits. But a three-body gravitational system creates computational challenges that make it impossible to predict the future state of the system; even small errors of measurement or intruding forces can significantly shift the evolution of the system. (Here is an interesting animation of a three-body gravitational system; the image at the top is a screenshot.)
We might capture part of this set of ideas by noting that we can distinguish broadly between vertical and lateral explanatory strategies. Reduction is a vertical strategy. The discovery of the causal powers of a mid-level entity and use of those properties to explain the behavior of other mid-level entities and processes is a lateral or horizontal strategy. It remains within a given level of structure rather than moving up and down over two or more levels.
William Wimsatt is a philosopher of biology whose writings about reduction have illuminated the topic significantly. His article "Reductionism and its heuristics: Making methodological reductionism honest" is particularly useful (link). Wimsatt distinguishes among three varieties of reductionism in the philosophy of science: inter-level reductive explanations, same-level reductive theory succession, and eliminative reduction (448). He finds that eliminative reduction is a non-starter; virtually no scientists see value in attempting to eliminate references to the higher-level domain in favor of a lower-level domain. Inter-level reduction is essentially what was described above. And theory-succession reduction is a mapping from one theory to the next of the ontologies that they depend upon. Here is his description of "successional reduction":
Successional reductions commonly relate theories or models of entities which are either at the same compositional level or they relate theories that aren't level-specific.... They are relationships between theoretical structures where one theory or model is transformed into another ... to localize similarities and differences between them. (449)
I suppose an example of this kind of reduction is the mapping of the quantum theory of the atom onto the classical theory of the atom.
Here is Wimsatt's description of inter-level reductive explanation:
Inter-level reductions explain phenomena (entities, relations, causal regularities) at one level via operations of often qualitatively different mechanisms at lower levels. (450)
Here is an example he offers of the "reduction" of Mendel's factors in biology:
Mendel's factors are successively localized through mechanistic accounts (1) on chromosomes by the Boveri–Sutton hypothesis (Darden, 1991), (2) relative to other genes in the chromosomes by linkage mapping (Wimsatt, 1992), (3) to bands in the physical chromosomes by deletion mapping (Carlson, 1967), and finally (4) to specific sites in chromosomal DNA thru various methods using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) to amplify the number of copies of targeted segments of DNA to identify and localize them (Waters, 1994).
What I find useful about Wimsatt's approach is the fact that he succeeds in de-dramatizing this issue. He puts aside the comprehensive and general claims that have sometimes been made on behalf of "methodological reductionism" in the past, and considers specific instances in biology where scientists have found it very useful to investigate the vertical relations that exist between higher-level and lower-level structures. This takes reductionism out of the domain of a general philosophical principle and into that of a particular research heuristic.
Friday, September 20, 2013
Large predictions in history
To what extent is it possible to predict the course of large-scale history -- the rise and fall of empires, the occurrence of revolution, the crises of capitalism, or the ultimate failure of twentieth-century Communism? One possible basis for predictions is the availability of theories of underlying processes. To arrive at a supportable prediction about a state of affairs, we might possess a theory of the dynamics of the situation, the mechanisms and processes that interact to bring about subsequent states, and we might be able to model the future effects of those mechanisms and processes. A biologist's projection of the spread of a disease through an isolated population of birds is an example. Or, second, predictions might derive from the discovery of robust trends of change in a given system, along with an argument about how these trends will aggregate in the future. For example, we might observe that the population density is rising in water-poor southern Utah, and we might predict that there will be severe water shortages in the region in a few decades. However, neither approach is promising when it comes to large historical change.
One issue needs to be addressed early on: the issue of determinate versus probabilistic predictions. A determinate prediction is one for which we have some basis for thinking that the outcome is necessary or inevitable: if you put the Volvo in the five million pound laboratory press, it will crush. This isn't a philosophically demanding concept of inevitability; it is simply a reflection of the fact that the Volvo has a known physical structure; it has an approximately known crushing value; and this value is orders of magnitude lower than five million pounds. So it is a practical impossibility that the Volvo will survive uncrushed. A probabilistic prediction, on the other hand, identifies a range of possible outcomes and assigns approximate probabilities to each outcome. Sticking with our test press example -- we might subject a steel bridge cable rated at 90,000 pounds of stress to a force of 120,000. We might predict that there is a probability of failure of the cable (40%) and non-failure (60%); the probability of failure rises as the level of stress is increased. But there is a range of values where the probabilities of the two possible outcomes are each meaningfully high, while there are extreme values where one option or the other is impossible.
In general, I believe that large-scale predictions about the course of history are highly questionable. There are several important reasons for this.
For these and other reasons, it is difficult to have any substantial confidence in predictions of the large course of change that a society, cluster of institutions, or population will experience. And this is a reason in turn to be skeptical about the spate of recent books about the planet's future. One such example is Martin Jacques' provocative book about China's future dominance of the globe, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order: Second EditionThe Economist paraphrases his central claims this way (link):
He begins by citing the latest study by Goldman Sachs, which projects that China's economy will be bigger than America's by 2027, and nearly twice as large by 2050 (though individual Chinese will still be poorer than Americans). Economic power being the foundation of the political, military and cultural kind, Mr Jacques describes a world under a Pax Sinica. The renminbi will displace the dollar as the world's reserve currency; Shanghai will overshadow New York and London as the centre of finance; European countries will become quaint relics of a glorious past, rather like Athens and Rome today; global citizens will use Mandarin as much as, if not more than, English; the thoughts of Confucius will become as familiar as those of Plato; and so on.
This is certainly one possible future. But it is only one of many scenarios through which China's future may evolve, and it overlooks the many contingencies and strategies that may lead to very different outcomes.
(I go into more detail on this question in "Explaining Large-Scale Historical Change"; link.)
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Response to Little by Tuukka Kaidesoja
[Tuukka Kaidesoja accepted my invitation to write a response to my discussion (link) of his recent article in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, “Overcoming the Biases of Microfoundations: Social Mechanisms and Collective Agents”. Currently Kaidesoja works as a post-doctoral researcher at the Finnish Academy Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland.He is the author of Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology. Thanks, Tuukka!]
Daniel Little defends “the theoretical possibility of attributing causal powers to meso-level social entities and structures.” I agree that meso-level social entities like groups and organizations have causal powers that are not ontologically reducible to the causal powers of their components or the aggregates of the latter. In addition, Little argues for “the idea of an actor-centered sociology, according to which the substance of social phenomena is entirely made up of the actions, interactions, and states of mind of socially constituted individual actors.” Though I like the idea of actor-centered sociology, I have problems with the view that “the substance of social phenomena is entirely made up of the actions, interactions, and states of mind of socially constituted individual actors.”
The latter view can also be stated in terms of the ontological microfoundations of social facts insofar as these microfoundations are thought to consist of socially constituted individuals, their actions and interactions. Thus, in Little’s view, the ontologically microfoundational level in social research is always the individual-level even though it is not required that “our explanations proceed through the microfoundational level.” This is because there are good sociological explanations that refer to causal relations at the meso-level and do not specify the microfoundations of these relations. In addition, Little argues that sociological theories cannot be reduced to theories about individuals. This view presupposes a concept of theory-reduction that is used in philosophy of mind by Jerry Fodor and others. I will come back to this later.
Now, I believe that the ontologically microfoundational role of the individual-level can be questioned from two directions. Firstly, it can be argued that, in addition to human individuals, artifacts and technologies built and used by people belong to the microfoundations of the causal powers of many social entities. On this view, then, organizations are not just “structured groups of individuals” but structured groups of human individuals and the artifacts (e.g. strategy papers, organizational charts, written codes of conduct, archives, computers, soft-ware programs, data bases, mobile phones and so on) that are used by individuals in their social interactions. One reason for including artifacts (with causal powers and affordances of their own) as proper parts of some social entities (e.g. organizations) is that human members of these entities need them in order to coordinate their interactions as well as to make collective decisions and, perhaps more controversially, to create and maintain collective (or transactive) memories.
Secondly, I believe that there are interesting sub-individual cognitive capacities and processes that are potentially important in understanding of some social phenomena. For example, the phenomenon of contextual priming in social cognition (i.e. a cognitive process in which the presence of certain events and people automatically activates our internal knowledge of and affects towards them that are relevant in responding to the situation) as well as unconscious imitation of behavior of strangers may well be important factors in explaining some social phenomena. I think that it would be misleading to say that cognitive processes of this kind belong to the individual-level due to the fact they take place at the subconscious level of cognitive processing.
I think that both of these points question the view that the individual-level should be considered as the ontologically microfoundational in the context of social research. My intention is not, however, to deny the importance of human individuals and their actions and interactions to any plausible social ontology.
Finally, I want to indicate that, in addition to the concept of theory-reduction used in the context of philosophy of mind, there is a different concept of “mechanistic reductive explanation” developed by Mario Bunge, William Wimsatt and others. When combined with causal powers theory, this concept is interesting since it enables one to argue not only that social entities have (weakly) emergent causal powers that are ontologically irreducible to the causal powers of their parts (and their aggregates), but also that these causal powers, their emergence and endurance, may well be mechanistically explainable in terms of the causal powers, relations and interactions of the components of social entities (e.g. human individuals and their artifacts). It should be emphasized that this view does not entail that social scientific theories that refer to social entities with emergent causal powers should be conceptually reducible to (or deductively derivable from) the theories that refer to the components of these entities. Rather, it is compatible with the view that theories about human beings, artifacts and social entities are continually developed at different levels of organization; conceptually adjusted to each other; and sometimes connected via mechanistic reductive explanations. This kind of perspective to ontological emergence and mechanistic reductive explanations allows, too, that the outcomes of macro-level social events and processes can be legitimately explained by referring to the interactions of the meso-level social entities (with emergent causal powers).
Thanks for the great blog!
Sunday, September 15, 2013
The global city -- Saskia Sassen
London financial district
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Culture change within an organization
It is often said that culture change within an organization or workplace is difficult -- perhaps the most difficult part of trying to reform an organization. What do we mean by this? And why is this so difficult?
All is well if these assumptions about the organization are widely shared by workers and managers. If, on the other hand, there is a high level of cynicism and disaffection among workers or a high level of self-serving among managers, it is likely that the performance of both workers and managers will deviate from the organization's expectations of how they will behave. A culture of shirking, self serving, and "easy riding" will undermine the effectiveness of the organization. The problem of culture change is the problem of changing those assumptions and habits on the part of workers and managers.
Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology is Paul Rabinow's ethnography of Cerbus, the laboratory where the genetic research tool PCR was invented. The study provides a good example of how studies of professional workplaces can shed light on the outcomes of innovation and effectiveness that we want to achieve.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Meso causes and microfoundations
In earlier posts I've paid attention to the need for microfoundations and the legitimacy of meso-level causation. And I noted that there seems to be a prima facie tension between the two views in the philosophy of social science. I believe the two are compatible if we understand the microfoundations thesis as a claim about social ontology and not about explanation, and if we interpret it in a weak rather than a strong way. Others have also found this tension to be of interest. The September issue of The Philosophy of the Social Sciences" provides a very interesting set of articles on this set of issues.
Particularly interesting is a contribution by Tuukka Kaidesoja, "Overcoming the Biases of Microfoundations: Social Mechanisms and Collective Agents" (link). Here are the four claims advanced in the article:
1. The mechanism approach to social explanation does not presuppose a commitment to the individual-level microfoundationalism.
2. The microfoundationalist requirement that explanatory social mechanisms should always consists of interacting individuals has given rise to problematic methodological biases in social research.
3. It is possible to specify a number of plausible candidates for social macro-mechanisms where interacting collective agents (e.g. formal organizations) form the core actors.
4. The distributed cognition perspective combined with organization studies could provide us with explanatory understanding of the emergent cognitive capacities of collective agents. (abstract)
I agree with many of Kaidesoja's criticisms of what he calls individual-level microfoundationalism (IMF). I also agree with his preference for the weak "rationalist" conception of emergence (along the lines of Mario Bunge) rather than the strong conception associated with Niklas Luhman (link). However, I want to continue to maintain that there is a different version of microfoundationalism that is not vulnerable to the criticisms he offers -- what I call the "weak" version of microfoundations. (This is explicated in several earlier posts; link.) On this approach, claims about higher-level entities need to be plausibly compatible with there being microfoundations at the individual level (an ontological principle), but I deny that we always need to provide those microfoundations when offering a social explanation (an explanatory principle). And in fact, Kaidesoja seems to adopt a very similar position:
By contrast, in many explanatory studies on large-scale macro-phenomena, it is sufficient that we have a general understanding how the collective agents of this kind function (e.g., how collective-decisions are typically made in the organizations that are the components of the relevant macro-mechanism) and empirically grounded reasons to believe that the macro-phenomenon of interest was causally generated by the interactions of this kind of collective agents with emergent powers.... Of course, it is always possible to zoom in to a particular collective agent and study the underlying mechanisms of its emergent causal powers, but this type of research requires the uses of different methods and data from the explanatory studies on large-scale macro- phenomena. (316)
So it is the in-principle availability of lower-level analyses that is important, not the actual provision of those accounts. Or in other words, K is offering a set of arguments designed to establish the explanatory sufficiency of at least some meso- and macro-level causal accounts (horizontal) rather than requiring that explanations should be vertical (rising from lower levels to higher levels). This is what I want to refer to as "relative explanatory autonomy of the meso-level."
Kaidesoja's position is a realist one; he couches his analysis of causation in terms of the idea of causal powers. Here is Kaidesoja's description of the idea of causal powers:
In general terms, causal powers of complex entities include their dispositions, abilities, tendencies, liabilities, capacities, and capabilities to generate specific type of effects in suitable conditions. Each particular entity (or powerful particular) possesses its powers by virtue of its nature, which in turn can typically be explicated in terms of the intrinsic relational structure of the entity. (302)
This position provides an answer to one of the questions recently posed here: are causal powers and causal mechanisms compatible? I think they are, and Kaidesoja appears to as well.
One important nuance concerns the kinds of higher-level social structures that Kaidesoja offers as examples. They all involve collective actors, thus assimilating social causal power to intentional action. But the category of macro social factor that possess causal powers is broader than this. There are credible examples of social powers that do not depend on any kind of intentionality. Most of the examples offered by Charles Perrow, for example, of organizations with causal powers depend on features of operation of the organization, not its functioning as a quasi-intentional agent.
Also interesting in the article is Kaidesoja's gloss on the idea of distributed cognition. I'm not receptive to the idea of collective social actors is a strongly intentionalist sense (link), but K makes use of the idea of distributed cognition in a sense that seems unobjectionable to people who think that social entities ultimately depend on individual actors. K's interpretation doesn't imply commitment to collective thoughts or intentions. Here is a clear statement of the idea:
An important implication of the above perspectives is that they enable one to ascribe emergent cognitive capacities to social groups and to study the underlying mechanisms of these capacities empirically (e.g., Hutchins 1995; Theiner and O’Connor 2010). This nevertheless requires that we reconsider our received concept of cognition that ties all cognitive capacities to individual organisms (e.g., human beings), since groups obviously lack system-level consciousness or brains as distinct from those of their individual members. (317)
Now, drawing on organization studies (e.g., Scott and Davis 2003), I suggest that formal organizations (in short, organizations) can be understood as social groups that are designed to accomplish some (more or less clearly specified) goal or goals, and whose activities are planned, administrated, and managed by their members (or some subgroup of their members such as managers). Examples of organizations include schools, business firms, universities, hospitals, political parties, and governments. (318)
This is a conception of "cognition" that doesn't imply anything like "collective minds" or group intentions, and seems unobjectionable from an ontological point of view.
This is a very nice piece of work in the philosophy of social science, and it suggests that it will be worthwhile to spend time reading Kaidesoja's recent book, Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology (Ontological Explorations), as well.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Social mechanisms and meso-level causes
new model
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Ian Hacking on chance as worldview
Ian Hacking was one of the more innovative and adventurous philosophers to take up the philosophy of science as their field of inquiry. The Taming of Chance (1990) is a genuinely fascinating treatment of the subject of the emergence of the idea of populations of events rather than discrete individuals. Together with The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference (1975; 2nd ed. 2006), the two books represent a very original contribution to an important aspect of modern ways of thinking: the ways in which the human sciences and the public came to think differently about the nature of social and biological reality.
Hacking's contributions to the history of statistical and probabilistic thinking are particularly valuable for the light they shed light on a crucial moment during which fundamental change in the largest gauge intellectual framework took place -- the shift away from deterministic causation to the idea that phenomena present themselves with a distribution of characteristics.
Determinism was eroded during the nineteenth century and a space was cleared for autonomous laws of chance. The idea of human nature was displaced by a model of normal people with laws of dispersion. These two transformations were parallel and fed into each other. Chance made the world seem less capricious: it was legitimated because it brought order out of chaos. The greater the level of indeterminism in our conception of the world and of people, the higher the expected level of control. (TC, vii)
Hacking compares his approach to the emergence of probabilistic thinking to that of Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge: as a genealogy of a new intellectual framework. (A mark of Hacking's originality as an analytic philosopher is exactly his readiness to find sources of inspiration in Foucault.) His effort is to capture and document the series of shifts in conceptual system and language through which scientists, philosophers, and ordinary people talked about such things as suicide, criminality, and disease.
This book is a piece of philosophical analysis. Philosophical analysis is the investigation of concepts. Concepts are words in their sites. Their sites are sentences and institutions. I regret that I have said too little about institutions, and too much about sentences and how they are arranged. (7)
But the crucial point that Hacking is making is that the concepts and assertions that he studies are drawn from a scientific culture that was in a period of flux; so this kind of philosophical, conceptual, and linguistic analysis can document the shifting of a framework of ideas and ways of thinking.
One important aspect of Hacking's arguments in both books is the point that the emergence of probability and statistics was not solely a development of a field of mathematics; it was a new intellectual creation that involved parsing the social and natural worlds in ways that were very different from medieval and modern frameworks. It involved a shift from thinking of events in the world as being causally determined to thinking of them as emerging from a set of probabilistic laws or regularities. It is at bottom a question of metaphysics not mathematics (4).
Hacking also establishes a point about social constructivism that is fundamental to other parts of his work as well (including The Social Construction of What?): the idea that the act of conceptualizing and measuring is also often the act of constituting a particular slice of human reality. The definitions of mental disorder included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition: DSM-5 do not merely describe mental realities; they serve to constitute delineations of populations of people with disorders. Prior to these stipulations, we can make the case that the disorder did not exist. (Human beings were troubled in various ways; but they were not "paranoid schizophrenics" until a set of symptoms and behaviors were parsed in such a way by the profession of psychiatry.) Hacking's account of the emergence of official statistics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries emphasizes that this kind of social construction was equally in play in the decision to classify certain deaths as "suicide".
Hacking refers to the object of his study as the emergence of a new "style of reasoning," explicitly paired with the ideas of paradigm, research programme, and themata (6). Here he tips his hat to A. C. Crombie. What he seems to mean by this is a congeries of assumptions about nature and society, system of conceptualization, modes of observation and measurement, and rough expectations about outcomes. (These ideas are sketched in the first chapter of The Taming of Chance.)
One part of the emergence of the new way of thinking derived from the consequences of the counting and measurement that came to be a part of government activity by the eighteenth century. Population size, trade data, mortality rates, disease rates ... all of these topics came in for extensive state scrutiny and investigation. And these sources of quantitative data permitted the formulation of new questions: were city dwellers more or less prone to suicide? Did Protestants or Catholics have higher birth rates? Hacking notes that Leibniz played an important role in trying to make sense of new statistical knowledge about one's society:
Leibniz had a lively interest in statistical questions of all sorts, and pursued an active correspondence on issues of disease, death and population. (18)
And Leibniz believed that these questions were crucial to the health of the modern state; in fact, he offered a "white paper" to this effect to Prince Frederick of Prussia in 1700.
It was found that at least some statistical information about human processes -- birth, death, disease -- might reveal statistical laws; so the individual events might reflect chance, but they were subsumed under stable and enduring statistical laws like life tables. Hacking refers to a kind of "statistical fatalism" (126), which maintained that the apparent contingency of individual events conformed to an underlying causal necessity in the aggregate.
By 1830 innumerable regularities about crime and suicide seemed visible to the naked eye. There were 'invariable' laws about their relative frequency by month, by method, by sex, by region, by nation. No one would have imagined such statistical stabilities had it not been for an avalanche of printed and public tables. (73)
This is a remarkable work of scholarship -- Hacking has pulled together a very detailed collation of the efforts at statistical measurement of national populations and the scientific reflections that these elicited. It crosses over histories of public data collection, epidemiology, theories of suicide, and mathematical representations of new concepts of the statistics of populations. The scholarship by itself is daunting. But even more important is Hacking's ability to place these developments into an intellectual and philosophical context. The book is a tour-de-force.
(Here is an earlier post on Hacking's appreciation of Thomas Kuhn; link.)
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The Bible and Science
In the past few blogs, we have raised questions about how God is involved in our personal lives and in our world. One way to resolve our questions is to examine what the Bible and science teaches us about God’s involvement in our natural world. For example, the Bible tells us God feeds the birds (Matthew 6:26). The problem is that everyone knows God does not literally feed the birds. If he did, there would be no debate about his existence because we would see him at that task. The Bible says God is involved when a sparrow falls to the ground (Matthew 10:29). Does that mean God personally gave that sparrow a disease or caused a hawk to kill it? The Bible tells us that God causes the sun to rise (Matthew 5:45). However, we know the law of gravitation and the fact the earth is in orbit around the sun produces that effect. In the same verse in Matthew, the Bible tells us God causes rain. However, we know atmospheric laws govern when it rains and when it does not. So if God is not the direct cause of these natural events, how is God involved and why does the Bible tell us God is the cause?
Natural Disasters
The first reaction of most people when faced with a natural disaster, such as an earthquake, flood, tornado, hurricane, or volcano, is to question why God allowed it to occur. The unspoken assumption is that God controls all the natural processes on our world and these processes produce the disasters we regularly experience. Since God controls these processes, he is responsible for the effect that is produced. The fallacy of blaming God for natural disasters is illustrated by the fact that we do not blame God when someone is injured or killed because of gravitation as when someone falls from a height. Why do we blame God for one tragedy but not the other? Part of the reason is that the law of gravitation is constant whereas the occurrences of natural disasters such as tornadoes and earthquakes are highly variable. The seemingly arbitrary nature of weather and earthquakes lead us to believe they are caused by an intelligent agent but that belief, as science has taught us, is incorrect. It simply does not make sense logically that God should be blamed for injury or death produced by a tornado and not for injury or death as a result of gravitation. Gravitation, earthquakes, and storms are all natural phenomena and any suffering caused by these events is simply a consequence of a material existence.
Like natural disasters, diseases are a function of our material existence. Science has shown us biological systems are controlled by natural processes just like storms and earthquakes. We know how germs spread and we know how germs affect the human body. We have evidence that God does not interfere with these processes on a regular basis because they consistently follow known laws of science. Now some will claim God can impact biological systems and they point to people who have been cured of a disease and medical science has no explanation for it. It is possible that God is involved in these situations but it is also true our knowledge of biology is incomplete and in the future we very well might have a natural explanation for these seemingly miraculous cures.
So how is God involved in our world? We will start to answer that question in the next blog.
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Spotlight on Orchis
Origins | Description | Qualities | History | Cultivation | Harvesting
Culinary Uses | Magical Uses | Other Uses | Quotes
Sara Jeannette Duncan
Latin name(s) - Orchis mascula, Orchis maculata, Orchis latifolia, , Orchis Morio, Orchis militaris, Orchis saccifera, Orchis pyrimidalis, Orchis coriphora, Orchis conopea
aka - Salep. Saloop. Sahlep. Satyrion. Cuckoos, Granfer Griggles, Dog stones, goat stones, fool-stones fox-stones cullions
Family - N.O. Orchidaceae
Parts used - Whole herb and seeds.
Purported actions - astringent, diuretic, tonic
Methods of use - Infusion, expressed juice, seeds dried
Origins - Orchis is a genus in the orchid family (Orchidaceae).
There are two varieities of Orchis - one has branched and the other unbranched tubers. Orchis mascula is the most common Orchid. They are native to Central and Southern Europe and Turkey. Orchis mascula is also widespread in British woodlands.
Description - Most Orchids flower from April to August. The most common Orchid, O. mascula , the Early Purple Orchid, common in English woods, is in flower from mid-April to mid-June. A single flower-stem rises from the tuberous root, bearing flowers that as a rule are a rich purple colour, mottled with lighter and darker shades Though every tint, from purple to pure white can be found. Each flower has a long spur which turns upwards. The leaves are lance-shaped and are close to the ground.
In woods and meadowland, the plant often attains a height of a foot or more, while on exposed and breezy downs it is seldom more than 6 inches high. The blossoms are practically odourless in some specimens, whilst others are faintly fragrant. In most cases the smell is not only strong, but offensive, especially in the evening. There is no honey in the flowers, but a sweet juice in the walls of the spur, which insects pierce with their probosces and suck out.
Attributed medicinal qualities - Astringent, Demulcent, Expectorant, Nutritive.
Orchis mascula is an aphrodisiac according to Culpepper “ … provoke lust exceedingly.”
It cures worms in children. It heals the 'kings evil' - Scrofula (Scrophula or Struma) refers to a variety of skin diseases; in particular, a form of tuberculosis, affecting the lymph nodes of the neck.
It was held in great repute in herbal medicine, being largely employed as a strengthening and soothing properties To allay irritation of the gastro-intestinal canal, it is used by shaking 1 part of powdered Salep with 10 parts of cold water, until it is uniformly diffused, when 90 parts of boiling water are added and the whole well agitated. It has thus been recommended as an article of diet for infants and invalids suffering from chronic diarrhoea and bilious fevers.
History - This name orchis comes from the Greek όρχις orchis, meaning "testicle", due to the appearance of the paired subterranean tuberoids.
For many centuries starch has been extracted from the tubers of various kinds of Orchis and exported under the name of Sahlep (an Arabian word, corrupted into English as Saloop or Salep), -which was used, especially in the East, for making a wholesome and nutritious drink of the same name. * see recipe below
Before coffee supplanted it, it was sold at stalls in the streets of London.. The best English Salep came from Oxfordshire, but the tubers were chiefly imported from the East.
According to Dioscorides, an early Greek physician, married couples used Orchis mascula to determine the sex of their unborn child. When the man ate the larger tuber, they would have a boy; if the woman ate the smaller tuber, they would have a girl.
Charles Lamb refers to a 'Salopian shop' in Fleet Street, and says that to many tastes it has 'a delicacy beyond the China luxury,' - ( tea ) and adds that ...'a basin of it at three-halfpence, accompanied by a slice of bread-and-butter at a halfpenny, is an ideal breakfast for a chimney-sweep. '
Cultivation - In general they are not difficult to grow, but there are a few points to note. Orchis mascula likes a lime rich soil.
Seeds should be surface sown in a greenhouse, preferably as soon as they are ripe, do not allow the compost to dry out. The seed depends upon a symbiotic relationship with a species of soil-dwelling fungus, which acts as a food supply for the plant until it is able to obtain nutrients from decaying material in the soil.
Another way to grow this plant is by division of the tubers. As the flowers fade it produces a new tuber. If this is removed from the plant as its flowers are fading, the shock to the plant can stimulate new tubers to be formed. The tuber should be treated as being dormant, whilst the remaining plant should be encouraged to continue in growth in order to give it time to produce new tubers. The entire new growth is removed from the old tuber from which it has arisen and is potted up, the cut being made towards the bottom of the stem but leaving one or two roots still attached to the old tuber. This can often be done without digging up the plant. The old tuber should develop one or two new growths, whilst the new rosette should continue in growth and flower normally.
Harvesting, preparation and storage - Tubers required for making Salep are taken up at the close of the summer, when the seeds are fully formed Next year's tubers contain the largest amount of starchy matter and are full and fleshy. You should not use any tubers that are shrivelled.
Wash them and then immerse for a short time in boiling water. This scalding process removes the bitterness and makies drying them more easy Rub off the outer skin and dry in the sun or a gentle low oven . Once dried, the milky appearance will have turned transparenty though the bulk will not be reduced. Place in the freah air to dry and harden for a few days. They are them ready to use, or store for as long as needed as damp doesn't affect them. The dried tubers are generally ground to a yellowish powder before using.
Culinary Uses - None known
Other Uses - None known
Culpeper - “To describe all the several sorts of it were an endless piece of work:…”
Culpeper - “It has almost as many several names attributed to the several sorts of it, as would almost fill a sheet of paper:… together with many others too tedious to rehearse.”
Shakespeare - "But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. " From Hamlet ( one of the flowers draped around the dead Ophelia)
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Q. Why do my hands swell during long hikes? A. Swollen hands hiking or similar physical activities are quite common.
The most likely cause of this problem relates to the body’s blood vessels and increased energy demands. While the swollen hands are usually harmless, it is an indication of the body attempting to control the core temperature.
If the swollen hands do not subside within 2-3 hours after completing a hike it might benefit to visit a doctor.
Swollen hands hiking
Here are five reasons why the hands swell during long hikes:
Decreased blood flow
Engaging in strenuous exercise like hiking increases blood flow throughout the body to the muscles, heart, and lungs, while certain areas will notice a reduction in blood flow such as the hands and feet.
This reduction in blood flood can result in hands swelling and cooling down. Plus, the physical activity increases the body temperature and blood vessels dilate which can push them closer to the surface of the skin – this can also lead to swollen hands.
Vasodilation (or blood vessel dilation) is one of the methods the body relies on to control temperature while active or taking part in physical exercise.
Hyponatremia on the hiking trails is a more serious condition and can relate to taking in an excessive amount of fluids.
Consuming too much water or energy drinks can impact the balance of sodium in the bloodstream. If the dilated sodium is combined with a high amount of sweating this can result in an excessive amount of sodium leaving the body. A consequence of this is nausea, fatigue, and swollen hands.
Any hiker experiencing the symptoms of hyponatremia should stop the hike with immediate effect and request medical attention. Hyponatremia left untreated, can result in a life-threatening situation.
Wearing tight watches, bracelets, rings, etc. can make the first signs of swelling more uncomfortable and noticeable.
Pregnant women might be at a higher risk of swelling because of the higher rate of blood to the muscles, lungs, heart, and uterus.
There are plenty of outdoor allergens that can lead to an allergic reaction such a swelling in the hands or other areas of the body.
Poison ivy, oak and sumac are common plants that can result in skin allergy and discomfort while on the trail. Wearing a long-sleeve top and pants can help to minimize most issues with poisonous plants that cause an allergic skin reaction.
There are several actions that can be taken to reduce or prevent issues related to swollen hands hiking, including:
• Use the hiking trails in regions with cooler climates to minimize issues with swelling or overheating.
• Cut back on the salty snacks eaten prior to starting a hike to lower the chance of water retention.
• Drink the suggested amount of water (2-3 quarts per day) on the hike to avoid thinning the sodium levels.
• Control the early signs of swelling in the hands by lifting them overhead every now and then.
• Give the hands a gentle massage to help improve the blood flow and reduce the signs of swelling.
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MSK researchers harness power of CRISPR/Cas9 to create more-potent CAR T cells
Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) have harnessed the power of CRISPR/Cas9 to create more-potent chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells that enhance tumor rejection in mice. The unexpected findings, published in Nature on February 22, uncover facets of CAR immunobiology and underscore the potential of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing to advance immunotherapies for cancer.
CRISPR is a genome-editing tool that enables scientists to cut and manipulate a cell's DNA with high precision. In the Nature paper, MSK investigators show that CRISPR technology can deliver the CAR gene to a very specific location in the genome of the T cell. This precise approach creates CAR T cells with more stamina — they can kill tumor cells for longer because they are less prone to becoming exhausted. This could eventually lead to safer, more effective use of this powerful form of immunotherapy in patients.
"Cancer cells are relentless in their attempt to evade treatment, so we need CAR T cells that can match and outlast them," explained Michel Sadelain, MD, PhD, senior author on the Nature paper and Director of the Center for Cell Engineering and the Gene Transfer and Gene Expression Laboratory at MSK. "This new discovery shows that we may be able to harness the power of genome editing to give these 'living therapies' a built-in boost. We are eager to continue exploring how genome-editing technology could give us the next generation of CAR T cell therapy."
Some of the first clinical trials using CRISPR technology are currently in the planning stages. Dr. Sadelain and his team aim to eventually explore the safety and efficacy of these CRISPR-built CAR T cells in a trial. Currently, CAR T cells are usually made using a retroviral or lentiviral technology to deliver the CAR gene into the T cells. This delivery method results in the CAR gene being inserted at random into the genome of the recipient cells, which can result in unwanted genetic side effects.
CAR T cell therapies, which were first developed at MSK, are transforming the treatment of certain cancers, including several blood cancers. This type of targeted immunotherapy aims to boost the immune system by giving immune cells the information they need to better recognize tumor cells as foreign and attack them. Dr. Sadelain and colleagues have led the efforts to develop these genetically engineered immune cells to fight cancer.
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The Future of Nuclear Energy Could Be Seawater Uranium
Under the sea, there's a world filled with uranium. Now, just to get it out.
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The questions—which Cui and his co-authors, including Stephen Chu, fresh from a stint running the Department of Energy aim to answer—are threefold: How much uranyl sticks to the fibers? How quickly can ions be captured? How many times can the fibers be reused?
Their solution? To create a conductive hybrid fiber incorporating carbon and amidoxime. The conductivity of the fiber is key. By sending electrical pulses down the fiber, the properties of the hybrid fiber are altered so that more uranyl ions can be collected. Testing proved the construction had merit. When electrified in California's scenic Half Moon Bay, the Stanford fiber was able to capture three times as much uranyl during an 11-hour test.
Of course, it's more than access to uranium that is holding back nuclear power. Incidents like Fukushima still weigh large in the public's mind. The general state of nuclear power in America is slow, over-budget, and economically untenable. Issues of nuclear waste remain political flashpoints. But Chu believes that these issues can be either be worked on in parallel or be eased by greater access to uranium.
"For much of this century," he says in a press statement, "some fraction of our electricity will need to come from sources that we can turn on and off. I believe nuclear power should be part of that mix, and assuring access to uranium is part of the solution to carbon-free energy."
Source: Stanford
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Emotional Healing: The Mind-Heart Connection
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Throughout history, people believed that love comes from the heart, and poets still pay respect to this concept. Unpredictably, the latest science shows that this idea may be based in truth.
The function of the heart does affect the mind and emotions, possibly even more than the hormone-producing endocrine system. Mind and emotions are affecting the function of the heart. This is sometimes referred to as the “second brain.”
The power of the heart to influence the mind and emotions was first examined during scientifically 1990s. By the fact, initially researchers were intrigued that transplanted hearts are able to beat immediately upon transplantation.
The researchers are primarily intrigued by translated hearts to beat transplantation immediately. Even primarily en before nerves coming from the brain is functional.
The heart has a built-in nervous system of it own occurs they exposed. This can cause it to beat even without messages from the brain. This nervous system consists of a lot of nerve cells, or neurons, similar to those in the brain.
The nervous systems as lots of neurons include parasympathetic and sympathetic neurons that make heartbeat possible. Without contract, relax the heart cannot function. This nervous system has been dubbed the heart-brain. Without messages from the brain the nervous system can beat.
The vagus nerve function which stretches from the brain to the torso. Therefore, a two-way lane is outdated to think that nerve messages travel only from head to heart.
All most researchers are exposed that the heart-brain even has the power to send messages to the brain. Even the power to send messages heart to brain, via the spinal cord the messages sent through the largest nerve in the body.
For the reason that the heart can “speak” to the brain, through the vagus nerve and spinal cord feedback system, messages are override that comes from the brain. Particularly messages are anguish, which can generate heart attacks.
Most scientists are continued to study the autonomy of the heart, and they found that the heart is also endocrine gland.
As researchers continued to study the shocking autonomy of the heart, which was previously considered by most scientists to be just a simple drive, they found that the heart is also an endocrine gland, which secretes its own hormone, ANF (Atrial Natriuretic Factor).
ANF influences not only the blood vessels and kidneys, but also the mood-influencing adrenal glands and the brain.
Heart transplantation
At beginning of heart transplantation some patients infrequently accept personality tendencies of their donors In the brain, sympathetic or parasympathetic impulses coming from the heart, and help activate the commencement of either calming or excitatory opinions.
This may be the reason why some heart transplant patients infrequently accept personality tendencies of their donors, an event that has been noted since the beginning of heart transplantation.
In sensitively healthy people, working smoothly dialogue, and they appears to be a strong propensity for the heart and brain, and to remain in synchronization, or entrainment.
The body, clearly, can help heal the mind. But what inaugurates this healing? The mind itself! Your mind, when focused on appreciation, has an incomparable power to activate physical and exciting healing.
Entrainment appears not only to reflect a positive framework of mind, but also to help create it, in part by attractive balance of the autonomic nervous system.
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Root Canal Therapy: Preserve Teeth, Prevent Tooth Loss
Root Canal Northeast Philadelphia Dentist
Dr. Dmitry Karagodsky understands how painful it can be to have infected tooth pulp. This can be caused by trauma to the tooth, deep decay, cracks and chips, or simply the passage of time. Dr. Karagodsky offers root canal therapy at his Philadelphia, PA office to soothe pain and eliminate infection. Root canal therapy is the complete removal of the nerve of a tooth. Furthermore, root canal therapy involves a thorough cleaning, disinfecting, and sealing of a tooth’s root canal system. The root canal system is located in the center of each tooth.
Why would a tooth root canal system need its nerve removed, cleaned, disinfected, and sealed? The main culprit is tooth decay (bacteria). Tooth decay starts small when it’s usually found in the first two layers of the teeth, the enamel, and dentin. When detected at this early stage, we can easily remove the decay and cure the tooth with a resin filling. But what tends to happen is that since there is generally no pain associated with this stage of tooth decay, a lot of people do nothing about it and completely neglect the tooth. The problem is that tooth decay does not stay small; it progresses until it reaches the third layer of the tooth, the root canal system in the center of the tooth where the nerve and blood vessels are contained. Once the bacterium reaches the nerve it multiplies even faster because the nerve is soft tissue, unlike the first two layers of the teeth which are hard tissue (enamel and dentin). The bacteria then travel down the root canal system, contaminating it and causing an infection in the jawbone. At this point, the person will experience an agonizing toothache, and will be in a lot of pain and distress. Once the nerve is contaminated, a resin filling will not work to cure the tooth anymore. Your dentist will be limited to only two options that can resolve the infection and alleviate the pain. One option is to extract (remove) the tooth and the other option is to save the tooth with root canal therapy.
Root canal therapy will remove the diseased and necrotic nerve. It will also clean, disinfect, and seal the tooth’s root canal system. Consequently, root canal therapy will eliminate the bacteria, cure the infection in the bone, and alleviate the pain. You will be able to save your tooth and enjoy chewing on it for a long time; thanks to root canal therapy’s long-term success.
Other reasons for root canal therapy are nerve damage due to physical trauma, a hypersensitive tooth, and any other aggravating circumstance that causes inflammation within the root canal system.
Northeast Philadelphia Root Canal Dentist
Any of the above symptoms will ultimately lead to the need for non-surgical root canal treatment to eliminate the diseased pulp. The injured and infected pulp is removed and the root canal system is thoroughly cleaned and sealed. We use local anesthesia to numb any potential pain and discomfort.
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Albanian Videos
Albanian Music History
Posted on: January 17, 2008
Music of Albania
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Albania is a Southeast European nation that was ruled by Enver Hoxha’s communist government for much of the later part of the 20th century; it is now a democratic country. Even before Hoxha’s reign began, Albania was long controlled by the Ottoman Empire and other conquering powers, leading to a diversity of influences that is common in the much-fragmented Balkan region and resulting in a diverse and unique musical sound. Albanians (and the ethnic-Albanian Kosovars of nearby Serbia) are commonly divided into three groupings: the northern Ghegs and southern Labs and Tosks. Turkish influence is strongest around the capital city, Tirana, while Shkodër has been long considered the center for musical development in Albania.
Folk music was encouraged to some degree under the socialist government, which promoted a quinquennial music festival at Gjirokastër provided that the musicians expressed frequent support for the party leaders. After the fall of socialism, Albanian Radio-Television launched a 1995 festival in Berat that has helped to continue musical traditions.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Characteristics
2 Folk music
2.1 Northern Albania
2.2 Southern Albania
3 Popular music
3.1 1930s art song
3.2 1950s and beyond
3.3 Albanian music in Macedonia and Kosovo
4 Classical music
5 Notes and references
6 Further reading
[edit] Characteristics
Albania’s political, military and cultural domination by outside elements have contributed to the country’s modern music scene. Albanian music is a fusion of the musics of Southeastern Europe, especially that of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Albania for more than 500 years. However, the Albanian people kept themselves culturally apart from the Ottomans, with many living in rural and remote mountains. The Ottoman were Turkish people.
[edit] Folk music
Albanian folk music falls into three sylistic groups, with other important music areas around Shkoder and Tirana; the major groupings are the Ghegs of the north and southern Labs and Tosks. The northern and southern traditions are contrasted by the “rugged and heroic” tone of the north and the “relaxed, gentle and exceptionally beautiful” form of the south. These disparate styles are unified by “the intensity that both performers and listeners give to their music as a medium for patriotic expression and as a vehicle carrying the narrative of oral history”[1], as well as certain characteristics like the use of obscure rhythms such as 3/8, 5/8 and 10/8[2]. The first compilation of Albanian folk music was made by Pjetër Dungu in 1940.
Albanian folk songs can be divided into major groups, the heroic epics of the north, and the sweetly melodic lullabies, love songs, wedding music, work songs and other kinds of song. The music of various festivals and holidays is also an important part of Albanian folk song, especially those that celebrate St. Lazarus Day (the llazore), which inauguarates the springtime. Lullabies and laments are very important kinds of Albanian folk song, and are generally performed by solo women[3].
[edit] Northern Albania
The Ghegs from north of the Shkumbini River are known for a distinctive variety of sung epic poetry. Many of these are about Skanderbeg, a legendary 15th century warrior who led the struggle against the Turks, and the “constant Albanian themes of honour, hospitality, treachery and revenge”. These traditions are a form of oral history for the Ghegs, and also “preserve and inculcate moral codes and social values”, necessary in a society that, until the early 20th century, relied on blood feuds as its “primary means of law enforcement”[4]. Styles of epics include këngë trimash (songs of bravery), këngë kreshnikësh, ballads and maje krahi (cries)[citation needed]. Major epics include Mujo and Halil and Halil and Hajrije[3].
The most traditional variety of epic poetry is called Rapsodi Kreshnike (Poems of Heroes). These epic poems are sung, accompanied by a lahuta, a one-stringed fiddle. It is rarely performed in modern Albania, but is found in the northern highlands[1].
Somewhat further south, around Dibër and Kërçovë in Macedonia, the lahuta is not used, replaced by the çifteli, a two-stringed instrument in which one string is used for the drone and one for the melody. Though men are the traditional performers, except for the Vajze të betuar, women have increasingly been taking part in epic balladry[1].
Along with the def, çifteli and sharki are used in a style of dance and pastoral songs. Homemade wind instruments are traditionally used by shepherds in northern Albania; these include the zumarë, an unusual kind of clarinet. This shepherds’ music is “melancholic and contemplative” in tone[1]. The songs called maje-krahi are another important part of North Albanian folk song; these were originally used by mountaineers to communicate over wide distances, but are now seen as songs. Maje-krahi songs require the full range of the voice and are full of “melismatic nuances and falsetto cries”[3].
[edit] Southern Albania
Audio sample:
Albanian kaba
Image:Albanian kaba.ogg
Sample of an Albanian kaba.
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The Tosk people are known for ensembles consisting of violins, clarinets, llautë (a kind of lute) and def. Eli Fara, a popular émigré performer, is from Korçë, but the city of Përmet is the center for southern musical innovation, producing artists like Remzi Lela and Laver Bariu. Lela is of special note, having founded a musical dynasty that continues with his descendants playing a part in most of the major music institutions in Tirana[1].
Southern instrumental music includes the sedate kaba, an ensemble-driven form driven by a clarinet or violin alongside accordions and llautës. The kaba is an improvised and melancholic style with melodies that Kim Burton describes as “both fresh and ancient”, “ornamented with swoops, glides and growls of an almost vocal quality”, exemplifying the “combination of passion with restraint that is the hallmark of Albanian culture.”[1]
The ethnic Greek inhabitants of Dropulli, whose music is very similar to the music of Epirus in Greece. These Greek-Albanians have a rougher and more aggressive sound than other forms of Albanian music, and lack the polyphonic complexity, but otherwise the same scales and rhythmic patterns as the rest of the country[1].
[edit] Popular music
The city of Korca has long been the cultural capital of Albania, and its music is considered the most sophisticated in the country. Bosnian sevdalinka is an important influence on music from the area, which is complex, with shifts through major and minor scales with an Turkish sound and a romantic and sophisticated tone[1]. Traditional musicians from Shkodër include Bujar Qamili, Luçija Miloti, Xhevdet Hafizi and Bik Ndoja. Albanians also play the Armenian Duduk.
Albania’s capital, Tirana, is the home of popular music dominated by Romani influences and has been popularized at home and in emigrant communities internationally by Merita Halili, Parashqevi Simaku and Myslim Leli[1]. In recent times, influences from Western Europe and the United States have led to the creation of bands that play rock, pop and hip hop among many other genres.
The best voices of contemporary Albanian music are those of Vace Zela and Nexhmije Pagarusha. The first one had a successful career in Tirana and the second one in Prishtina. Its only fair to admit that their success was never recognised internationally, but that does not take away anything from their greatness. The Albanian music has never had the chance to get a worldwide publicity such as the one that would come from a successful movie or other event of international interest. It is really like an unexplored treasure of antiquity, that is waiting to be discovered.
[edit] 1930s art song
The urban art songs of 1930s Albania can be traced back to the 19th century folk music of Albanian cities. These songs are a major part of Albania’s music heritage, but have been little-studied by ethnomusicologists, who prefer to focus on the rural folk music that they see as being more authentically Albanian. Urban art songs are strongly influenced by the music of the Ottoman authorities who controlled Albania for a very long time, introducing elements of Turkish music, especially the Ottoman modal scales, to local folk styles. The northern part of Albania took more readily to Turkish music because both traditions use monophony, while the south of Albania has long been based on polyphony and a Greek modal system[3].
Out of this melting pot of local and imported styles came a kind of lyrical art song based in the cities of Shkodra, Elbasan, Berat and Korça. Though similar traditions existed in other places, they were little recorded and remain largely unknown. By the end of the 19th century, Albanian nationalism was inspiring many to attempt to remove the elements of Turkish music from Albanian culture, a desire that was intensified following independence in 1912; bands that formed during this era played a variety of European styles, including marches and waltzes. Urban song in the early 20th century could be divided into two styles: the historic or nationalistic style, and the lyrical style[3]. The lyrical style included a wide array of lullabies and other forms, as well as love songs.
By the end of the 1930s, urban art song had been incorporated into classical music, while the singer Marie Kraja made a popular career out of art songs; she was one of Albania’s first popular singers. The first recordings, however, of urban art song came as early as 1937, with the orchestral sounds of Tefta Tashko-Koço[3].
[edit] 1950s and beyond
Modern Albanian popular music uses instruments like the çifteli and sharki, which have been used in large bands since the Second World War to great popular acclaim; the same songs, accompanied by clarinet and accordion, are performed at small weddings and celebrations[1].
[edit] Albanian music in Macedonia and Kosovo
Main articles: Music of the Republic of Macedonia, Music of Kosovo
Kosovo has been home to many important Albanian musicians and the same can be said for Macedonia. Prior to the Kosovo War, there was a thriving music industry in Kosovo, which reached new heights in recent years. The Kosovar music industry was home to many famous musicians, including the famous Nexhmije Pagarusha, Ismet Peja and the romantic, more elaborate Qamil i Vogël of Djakovica[1]. The Macedonian band Vëllezërit Aliu became well- known for the traditional vocal duets accompanied by drum box, electric bass, synthesizer and clarinet or saxophone[1].
[edit] Classical music
One pivotal composer in modern Albanian classical music was Mart Gjoka, who composed several vocal and instrumental music which uses elements of urban art song and the folk melodies of the northern highlands; Gjoka’s work in the early 1920s marks the beginning of professional Albanian classical music[5]. Later, the Albanian-American emigres Fan S. Noli and Murat Shendu achieved some renown, with Noli using urban folk songs in his Byzantine Overture and is also known for a symphonic poem called Scanderberg[3]. Shehu spent much of his life in prison for his religious beliefs, but managed to compose melodramas like The Siege of Shkodër, The Red Scarf and Rozafa, which helped launch the field of Albanian opera[citation needed]. Other famous art composers include Thoma Nassi, Kristo Kono and Frano Ndoja. Preng Jakova became well-known for operas like Scanderbeg and Mrika, which were influenced by traditional Italian opera, the belcanto style and Albanian folk song. Undoubtedly the most famous Albanian composer, however, was Çesk Zadeja, known as the Father of Albanian classical music[5]; he composed in many styles, from symphonies to ballets, beginning in 1956, and also helped found the Music Conservatory of Tirana, the Theatre of Opera and Ballet, and the Assembly of Songs and Dances.
Later in the 20th century, Albanian composers came to focus on ballets, opera and other styles; these included Tonin Harapi, Nikolla Zoraqi, Thoma Gaqi, Feim Ibrahimi and Shpetim Kushta. Since the fall of the Communist regime, new composers like Aleksander Peci, Sokol Shupo, Endri Sina and Vasil Tole have arisen, as have new music institutions like the Society of Music Professionals and the Society of New Albanian Music[5].
[edit] Notes and references
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Burton, Kim. “The Eagle Has Landed”. 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp 1-6. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0. Burton notes that even lullabies contained the wish that the infant would grow up to be a strong worker for Enver and the Party.
^ Arbatsky, Yuri, cited in Koco with the footnote Translated and published by Filip Fishta in Shkolla Kombëtare (The National School; No.1, May 1939), 19, and quoted from his Preface to Pjetër Dungu’s Lyra Shqiptare (see note 2).
^ a b c d e f g h Albanian Music. Eno Koco at the University of Leeds. Retrieved on August 28, 2005.
^ Burton, pg. 2 Both epic traditions serve as a medium for oral history in what was until quite recently, a pre-literate society… and also preserve and inculcate moral codes and social values. In a culture that retained the blood-feud as its primary means of law enforcement until well into this century such codes were literally matters of life and death. Song was one of the most efficient ways of making sure that each member of the tribe was aware of what obligations he or she was bound by.
^ a b c The Tradition of Classical Music In Albania. Frosina Information Network. Retrieved on August 28, 2005.
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Darwin originally studied medicine at Edinburgh University. He later went to Cambridge to prepare to become a clergyman in the Church of England. After receiving his degree, Darwin accepted an invitation to serve as an unpaid naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle, which departed on a five-year scientific expedition to the Pacific coast of South America on 31 December, 1831.
Darwin's research resulting from this voyage formed the basis of his most famous book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Published in 1859, the work aroused a storm of controversy. Darwin's work, which attempted to explain the repeating patterns observed in the biological diversity of the natural world, was seen to challenge contemporary beliefs about the creation of life on earth.
Darwin continued to write and publish his works on biology throughout his life. Thought now to have suffered from panic disorder, as well as from Chagas' disease contracted during his travels in South America, Darwin was plagued with fatigue and intestinal sickness for the rest of his life. He died on 19 April, 1882, and lies buried in Westminster Abbey.
His other important writings are:
• The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex, 1874
• The variation of animals and plants under domestication, 1875
• The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom, 1878
• The expression of the emotions in man and animals, 1890
Online references:
Darwin was one of the popular examples of the Meyers-Briggs INTP. As such, he was riddled with self-doubt and anxiety over his realization about the Origin of Species. As noted by pimephalis, he was quite a religious man, and when it became obvious that the theory he had formulated was directly contradictory to the doctrine of the church, he was tortured by the truth he had always been taught to believe and wanted to believe, and the truth that he now knew to be fact.
In the end, the scientist won out over the priest. Although Darwin would not live to see his theories vindicated as they are today, he clearly understood the gravity of them, and it was probably that which drove him to his supposed panic attacks, and generally made him sick with worry, which probably contributed to his rather sickly condition near the end of life.
To clarify, Darwin was not the naturalist of the H.M.S. Beagle. He was a companion to the captain, because societal standards did not allow captains and crew to converse, but the captain had to talk to somebody, or go crazy. The official naturalist was actually some poor working stiff who left the ship a few months into the voyage, since he could not serve as naturalist without Darwin constantly doing whatever he did, but more so because Darwin was rich.
Before the Origin of Species, before the The Descent of Man, before the HMS Beagle, before all of the controversy surrounding his theories, there lived a young Charles Darwin . Though he did poorly in school, remarking, "Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind," he showed a fond interest for nature from the very beginning. Of all things though, the young Darwin was really into Beetles (the insect, not the band). In fact, that is quite an understatement. Darwin was really, really into beetles - the rarer the better. In the earlier days of his interest, he heeded the advice of his sister that he should not kill any beetle simply for the purpose of collecting and he therefore stuck to acquiring new and intact beetle corpses. Later, however, his "morals" on the subject went out the window and he pursued the insects at full force, dead or alive. This all lead up to an incident during his time at Cambridge which he recounted in his autobiography:
It was as a beetle collector that Darwin's name first appeared in print in various British insect collecting publications. Oddly enough, despite his later tendencies, this fascination had little to do with science. Many times he didn't even bother to find out the names of the varieties of species that he captured. It was simply a hobby as one would collect stamps, coins, or baseball cards, done for the thrill of finding rare and new species and occasionally seeing his name in print as captor.
For me, amidst all of the controversy and propaganda surrounding him, this particular fact really put a human face on the man for the first time - an original geek.
- Charles Darwin
Quotes by Darwin and on Evolution/Darwinism
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world. Charles Darwin "The Descent of Man"
It is generally admitted that with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man: but some , at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation. Charles Darwin "The Descent of Man"
The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain - whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses or hands. Charles Darwin "The Descent of Man"
'Social Darwinism' is often taken to be something extraneous, an ugly concretion added to the pure Darwinian corpus after the event, tarnishing Darwin's image. But his notebooks make plain that competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality were written into the equation from the start- 'Darwinism' was always intended to explain human society. Adrian Desmond, & James Moore, "Darwin", (1991)
The Darwinian insight can be turned upside down and grotesquely misused: Voracious robber barons may explain their cut throat practices by an appeal to Social Darwinism; Nazis and other racists may call on "survival of the fittest" to justify genocide. But Darwin did not make John D. Rockefeller or Adolf Hitler. Greed, the Industrial Revolution, the free enterprise system, and corruption of government by the monied are adequate to explain nineteenth-century capitalism. Ethnocentrism, xenophobia, social hierarchies, the long history of anti-Semitism in Germany, the Versailles Treaty, German child-rearing practices, inflation, and the Depression seem adequate to explain Hitler's rise to power. Very likely these or similar events would have transpired with or without Darwin. And modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barons and Fuhrers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival. Carl Sagan 1995
source: alt.quotations
Why is Charles Darwin sometimes called the last of the natural theologians?
Natural theology can be described as "the attempt to provide proofs or arguments for the existence of god" and, under this definition, a natural theologian would explain the properties of the natural world within a worldview that is consistent with the existence of god. A theological interpretation of nature relies on the direct action of a deity and aims to further religious understanding by studying nature. For natural theologians of Darwin's time, nature was the direct creation of god and so studying nature was studying god's work. Today, Darwin's fame rests on his theory of natural selection which is widely accepted in the scientific community. The majority of the supporters of Darwin's theory view his work as being completely secular because natural theology explains adaptation by supernatural action while Darwinism explains it by natural selection. However, Darwin himself was greatly influenced by the theological interpretations of organisms' adaptation and he had a tremendous impact on religious thought.
His faith
Darwin grew up at a time when Christian beliefs were common and expected. It is well known that religious sources, especially the natural theology of the eighteenth century, had a large impact on Darwin. As a young student at Cambridge University, he embraced a natural theological perspective and saw the stunning adaptations of creatures to their environments as irrefutable evidence of God's plan. Darwin saw the myriad complex and elegant designs in the natural world and interpreted this as only being possible if it were the expression of an omnipotent divine being. He maintained his religious beliefs during his expedition on HMS Beagle and often quoted scripture as an unanswerable authority.
However, as Darwin began to formulate his theory of natural selection, he was forced to reconsider the realities of the Christian doctrine as a scientist. Doubt began to creep into Darwin's mind and he reflected that the Bible's miracles seem incredible in a world where the fixed laws of nature were understood so precisely. In his diaries, Darwin noted the dogmatism of religion and his own waning devotion. He commented on the inevitable inaccuracy of the Gospels and claimed that the morality of the New Testament is largely based on the interpretation of metaphor and allegory. Despite this, he admitted to himself that he was still unwilling to give up his faith.
Darwin's creeping disbelief in Christianity was hastened by the death of his father Robert in November 1848, after a period of great suffering. He hated to see unnecessary anguish and misery and had great difficulty reconciling a loving god with the pain and agony he saw experienced by humankind. The death of his daughter at the age of ten – one of three children his family lost – marked the final destruction of Darwin's belief in a beneficent Christian god and a just and moral universe. The conventional orthodoxy of his youth made way for a sceptical agnostic outlook: "disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete … this is a damnable doctrine".
His work
As Darwin refined his ideas and prepared the first edition of On The Origin Of Species, he began to move away from the optimism of natural theology. His theory developed into an account that did not explicitly include a supernatural divine creator. Post Darwin there was no longer a distinction between god and science. He abolished the need for an explanation of the natural world in terms of a religious entity – nature was both the producer and the product. The beautiful designs of nature, which Darwin first saw as evidence of god's work, were now deemed to the products of natural selection. He wrote that, "the old argument of design in nature, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man."
Over time, Darwin's conception of nature grew in complexity as he understood more fully the inherent dynamic of the principles of population. Natural theologians viewed the adaptation of organisms to be static whereas Darwin's model allowed for a path toward complex specialisation and, indeed, progress in which adaptation was redefined each generation. He no longer had any need for a god because his sagacious creator of the diverse living world was simply "selection" or nature itself. Darwin said that if any biological adaptation could be explained without resorting to a divine miracle "the way was free to an explanation for all adaptation, and thence for the diversity of species." Notably, Darwin also viewed homo sapiens to be a species like any other and refused to single humans out. The idea that one species ought to be divinely ordained over all others was absurd to him.
Despite this, Darwin avoided talking about the theological and sociological aspects of his theories and stressed that evolution and religion were not incompatible. However, other writers used his work to support their own ideas about society. It is only from later analysis and reference to his work that the theory of evolution gained the reputation of being incompatible with Christianity and effectively being the catalyst for the death of natural theology. Darwin never intended to denounce organised religion or to cast doubt on people's faith, but some offence was taken at the implications about god as the creator in On The Origin Of Species. Because of this, he went to great length to stress that evolution does not preclude belief in a Christian god. To distinguish between a providential creator and the evolutionary process Darwin emphasised his belief that organisms behave "selfishly" and that, under his theory of natural selection, they "act solely by and for the good of each."
Few people would consider Darwin to be a natural theologian in any form at all but, looking back over the way he approached his work, it is clear that religious beliefs strongly shaped the direction of his theory. Darwin grew up in a time where the accepted standard was to be a Christian who lived unerringly by the Bible and it took much of his life to realise that, rationally, his research asked some very searching questions of conventional religious beliefs. He had the early view that organisms were "perfectly" adapted and used other religious terminology and ideas in formulating his theory while Neo-Darwinian Christians managed to reconcile natural selection with their religious beliefs. In closing On The Origin Of Species, Darwin reflected that he ought to be called a theist but there is no denying that the theory of evolution revolutionised and, arguable, did much to secularise the biology of organisms. In the sense that he was one of the last to approach his attempt to understand the natural world from the perspective of a natural theologian, it is a fair term to describe him. However, the legacy of his work has proven not to further the ideas behind natural theology.
• Darwin, Charles. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin.
• Desmond, Adrian and Moore, James. Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist (1994).
A battle occurred in the mind of Charles Darwin, and it was witnessed to in a charming and charitable book review entitled DARWIN'S ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES Reviewed by John Morris in the Dublin Review. which appeared within a year of the publication of the Origin of Species. (The review by John Morris is reprinted from the Dublin Review 48 ( 1860), 50-81)
Written from a Roman Catholic perspective, the review is forty pages in length, serious beyond modern standards, and in a lay journal. The reviewer has observed that the 'main work' of Darwin 'approves itself to be genuinely scientific', but then declares himself grieved that Darwin ventures beyond the 'main work' to the 'gratuitous and so repulsive idea' of human origin by evolution from lower forms.
"The work itself, in the main, we will say frankly, seems to us so valuable, and approves itself to us individually as so genuinely scientific; the basis of facts is so unusually broad and comprehensive, the reasoning is so dispassionate, and the writer shows himself throughout so keen-sighted to every objection, that we cannot say how grieved we are that the book should be marred by the introduction of so gratuitous and so repulsive an idea, or that the theory should be carried to such unreasonable lengths. (Wallace et al. 4) Darwinism: Critical Reviews from Dublin Review, Edinburgh Review, Quarterly Review by Alfred Russell Wallace, Thomas Henry Huxley, James Rowland Angell, J. Mark Baldwin, Francis Galton, Daniel N. Robinson; University Publications of America, 1977.
The Dublin reviewer, in a keen and unexpectedly humane insight, identified in Darwin two threads. The first thread, the 'main work' has been 'marred' by the intrusion of the second thread, the 'gratuitous and so repulsive an idea'. But most significantly, in the mind of the reviewer, the two threads must be separated. The wheat is to be separated from the chaff and though the reviewer does not hesitate in his disdain for the chaff he does not dampen his expression of delight in the wheat. What else is a review? It was an excellent review and an outstanding instance of a truth well sounded.
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584 - Freedom of Religion Under the Constitution (2 hours)*
This course concerns the First Amendment’s two Religion Clauses: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” These sixteen words are the most disputed and litigated of constitutional issues. The Supreme Court has not read the Religion Clauses literally. The Court has, as Prof. Steven Gey has written, “vacillated between a moderately separationist interpretation of the Religion Clauses and a more lenient approach that permits—sometimes requires—government action accommodating religious belief and practice. Of course the meaning of a constitutional provision is not coterminous with what the Supreme Court says the provision means. Lawyers are citizens and advocates, and frequently lawyers also are judges and public policymakers. Consequently, any meaningful discussion of the meaning of constitutional norms cannot rely only on what courts have said the Constitution means. Doctrines change, and lawyers are often the catalysts for those changes. This course is designed to examine a discrete interpretive issue: What should the Religion Clauses—i.e., what should the free exercise and anti-establishment norms of the First Amendment—mean in our modern, secular, religiously pluralistic democracy? In that respect, our discussion will often operate outside of the realm of court decision. We will begin with a look at the major Religion Clauses cases. Some of these you may have covered in Constitutional Law; many you will not have seen before. From there we will consider the (more interesting, perhaps) question of the role private religious belief should play in public policymaking. Specifically, we will consider: What is the proper role of religious conviction in the policy-making of the liberal state? In essence, this question is: What do the religion clauses of the 1st Amendment mean in contemporary American society, and—specifically to each student—what should they mean? This question will guide us for the rest of the course. Once each student has come to her/his position as to this core question, we will consider the following, particularly with regard to the part religious morality has played in shaping the policy of each question: Capital Punishment Abortion Physician-assisted Suicide Same-Sex Marriage
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Authored or posted by | Updated on | Published on March 19, 2013
Fractal Universe
Flickr Commons: Image provided by Aion
Conventional science taught us that the material world came into existence by accident. If we study the science of matter deeply enough, we should eventually come to the conclusion that the material world did not occur by accident. The fact that physicists can describe the Universe using only mathematical formulas is proof that a divine being designed and created the material or external world. The knowledge behind these formulas was not created by scientists; rather it was rediscovered.
The difference between vibration and frequency
How reality works at the most fundamental level
The following excerpt from does a great job of explaining how binary codes work:
The simple process of using binary codes to create things within the hardware of computers is similar to how Creation creates our external reality or material world. The material world works similar to a virtual reality. At its core, the material world is made of only light (energy) that flashes on and off to create energy codes. This fundamental process that involves light flashing on and off is sometimes known as “partiki phasing” in certain spiritual teachings.
The flashing patterns of light are responsible for creating the fundamental structures of our external reality. It is through the dynamics of their interactions that electromagnetic fields of sound frequency and light spectra are created, and frequency and vibration are brought into being.
Visual evidence of how frequency and vibration create matter and life
Frequencies Sound + Vibration = Sacred Geometry
Cymatics: Bringing Matter To Life With Sound (Part 3 of 3)
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Category: Consciousness & Thought, Frequency & Vibration, Spirituality
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1. Alex says:
This is very nice articulated and informing article.
However, I don’t quite understand something and that bothers me, so if you can, I’d be grateful if you can answer.
In simplistic language, every matter in this world vibrates, so that vibration we call frequency, and we measure it in Hz. The sound has its own frequency which is also measurable in Hz. The guy in the beginning of the video says that everything owes its existence to sound. According to that, matter (which is already here) has its own unique frequency and sound merely shapes the matter, is that right? So, when sound shapes the matter (which is already here), the matter gets the same frequency as the frequency of sound. So matter frequency equals sound frequency?
Can than rightly be said that every matter is actually merely a sound frequency, a sound wave? But, what about matter before the sound? Is that matter actually the energy, which sound shapes into form? So, energy is light fotons – information waiting to be shaped by sound waves.
The main question I want to raise here: Can it be said that frequency of matter is actually the sound frequency – a sound wave? How separable is sound (which shapes) from energy (that is)? Is that the same thing, because energy has its frequency, a sound frequency?
Thank you very much
• PL Chang says:
It is more complex than that. My understanding is that light, sound, frequency and vibration all play a role in shaping matter. I like to use sound to demonstrate how frequency and vibration organize matter into shapes, because there are videos in public domain that can demonstrate this effect.
In some ways, you are correct. My understanding of matter is that it is basically condensed light. To be more accurate, matter is a projection of energy and therefore it behaves more like an illusion. Frequency and vibration allow light and sound to have expression, giving them unique properties and characteristics.
2. mic5ive says:
When we remember Einsteins famous equation e=mc2, we are aware that everything in this universe is energy. All particles however small or large are energy masquerading as everything from strings, quarks, protons, electrons, atoms, planets, solar systems, galaxies to universes. We know that light or photons travel from stars and when put through a glass prism we can see the spectrum of colours within the light. The prism bends the light and the colours represent the different frequencies of energy. Frequencies move like waves in an ocean up and down repeating cyclically. So light is made up of energy vibrating and oscillating within a very tight range frequently. Sound also travels in waves of frequencies but sound waves are much larger than light waves and need some kind of matter to travel upon. I would imagine that stars are very loud places.
3. Sacred Geometry represents (the interference patterns of) Three Dimensional Nonlinear Standing Waves:
4. Waller Joel says:
We hear repeatedly that we must up (increase) our vibrations to move dimensionally (afterlife, heavenly realms, etc.) and to lessen our density.
If we are eternal beings which migrate back to our infinite, timeless etheric world, then how can there be “frequency” when f = 1/period [time] or the rate at which something occurs or is repeated over a particular period of time?
• Kevin mac says:
uh, you’re right, Waller
• Hmm’ I am pretty sure when the phrase is uttered about raising your frequency that is never meant to be taken literally. The meaning is meant as an analogy for the idea of modifying your thinking from thoughts that are profane to thoughts that are loving sort of thing. Which is a nice idea, though personally I ascribe to the notion that we achieve salvation through faith in Christ as a free gift from God to us in his infinite grace. The handiwork of God may be evident in his creation but the creation itself is not God. He is with us but also apart from the creation. Not that I have anything against people raising their vibrations.
I have been reading up on some physics a bit here and there, there is a great deal to be had from the internet and many good books on the subject. I have learned that first of all, the concepts really are complex and easy to misunderstand. and second of all, that without the ability to understand the math involved no one can really understand it in a way that is actually meaningful, even though it is fun to try.
5. Brenda Crozier says:
Sound and vibration
How do you block sound and vibration I am being bombarded with 30 to 40 decimeters all day everyday and I would like some instruction on how to block the sounds and the vibrations or is there a way you can Bounce It Back from which you came please let me know thank you
6. Parker says:
How about this: sound is itself a form of energy expression. light is another. Physical matter is another vibration. The vibration that holds matter together is itself a component of not just frequency, but of energy that has both a particle and wave compliment existing side by side not as a result of one or the other, but as a duality that is part of the whole. It has been, I observe, that it is the waveform of the energy surrounding all of this matter (or rather, IS matter) that leads us into extradimensional aspects and the suspension of what we would call the laws of physics through what I suspect is a “run-around” the normal laws…..all based on the fact that a wave or field is without mass. It is this lack of mass that allows matter to exhibit some pretty wild characteristics through the manipulation of these frequencies. But what are these frequencies? We need to find out…do the work, observe and repeat the results just as Tesla did. My feeling is that the theory of relativity was just one side of the story and left out some important things related to gravity and frequency. When this is done, I suspect, it is possible to locally suspend gravity by shifting the density through a conductive surface (like metal). The challenge is finding the frequencies. Carr was supposed to be the inheritor to this knowledge from Tesla and was known to have developed a series of flying craft that could go hyperdimensional (invisible) and do things that normal physical craft could not do. Sadly, I ma not sure that his knowledge survived. If it does, it is being kept as secret as possible in order to fly under the radar of those who see this tech as a threat. It is, I feel, our greatest avenue of liberation as a species (technologically) for a variety of reasons. 3¢.
7. Steven says:
Speaking of a divine being, I was reminded of the first verses in the Bible. That God spoke the world into being… sound
And he said “Let there be light”
It’s interesting and amazing to see the relationship between sound/light, and from there to matter and life.
“… energy patterns. This is the big secret of the Art of Creation.”
God – painting
Thanks for this
8. Brian Fraser says:
Frequency is derived from rotation (a more fundamental concept). See
Some of the other insights sought here are best illuminated in an article “Beyond Einstein: non local physics” by Brian Fraser (2015) The free 22 page paper can be downloaded from: The .html file gives a link to the .pdf file but the former has additional information, and many more links and insights.
• DB33 says:
Einstein only knows theoretical mathematics. If you want answers look to Tesla, Schauburger, Maxwell and Faraday. Remember this is an electric universe, everything operates on pure electrodynamics (waves) Heinrich Hertz. Also please refer to plasma as the beginning of all things, the division of plasma is where all light, magnetism and matter comes from.
9. Where is the concept and phrase of partiki coming from. You say that light flashing on and off is called partiki phasing. I tried to google that expecting maybe to find a wiki entry on some physics concept but all that comes up leads me back to your website. Did you just make up that idea. I don’t think that is a very accurate representation of what physics is really saying about the relationship between energy and matter. But I would like to know, if you understand the secret to the art of creation, then what happens next? Can you walk through walls, or does this insight give you the ability to engineer machines that amazing things? What exactly is the point?
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Encouraging Entrepreneurs: Lessons for Government Policy
Who you know and how much money is in your pocket have always been significant contributors to entrepreneurial success. New research by Harvard Business School professor Ramana Nanda explores new wrinkles in this age-old formula—and how government policy may impact entrepreneurship. Key concepts include:
• Policymakers can benefit from understanding how peer networks and the financing environment impact the kinds of people who become entrepreneurs.
• People with a higher fraction of co-workers who have been entrepreneurs are more likely to try it themselves. Moreover, peer effects substitute for an individual's own background—those whose parents have been entrepreneurs benefit less from exposure to entrepreneurial peers.
• Not everyone who wants money to start a new business necessarily deserves it. Wealthy people are often able to start inadvisable businesses because they don't need to undergo the reality check of an investor's approval for funding.
by Julia Hanna
It's common wisdom: When it comes to starting a new business, it matters who you know and how much money you have.
But research into the inspiration and success of entrepreneurs has not delved very deeply into why this is so. Does it matter whether who you know are themselves entrepreneurs? Does it matter where and at what price the money to fund an entrepreneurial venture comes from?
The answer, it turns out, is that it does matter—a fact that policymakers may benefit from
understanding as they look at ways to generate more entrepreneurial activity that boosts the economy and increases local, regional, and national competitiveness.
“Former entrepreneurs offer a positive impression of what it's like to own your own business.”
In recent research, Harvard Business School professor Ramana Nanda analyzes these deeper layers of entrepreneurship. In "Peer Effects and Entrepreneurship," a working paper coauthored with Jesper B. Sørensen of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, Nanda examines the question of whether a person is more likely to pursue an entrepreneurial activity if some of his or her coworkers have experience as entrepreneurs.
In a second working paper, "Cost of External Finance and Selection into Entrepreneurship," Nanda looks at how entrepreneurial activity is affected across various groups of individuals when a tax reform increases the cost of financing a business.
The Tug Of Entrepreneurs
The research on peer effects emerged from a growing academic interest in the influence of social networks on entrepreneurial successes and failures, Nanda says. As an example, he cites Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128, a 1994 book by AnnaLee Saxenian that examines contributing factors behind the differing results of high-tech companies started in Silicon Valley and Boston's Route 128 loop.
What is different about Nanda's work is that it's some of the first research to go beyond the regional level to consider peer effects within a firm.
Using a rich dataset that monitors individuals in the Danish labor market across time (the data tracks when a person enters a company and when he or she moves between periods of employment and self-employment), Nanda and Sørensen found that rates of entrepreneurship are higher in organizations where a greater number of coworkers are former entrepreneurs.
"A certain efficiency exists in the market when it comes to which businesses get off the ground.”
"Thanks to this unusually detailed data, we can determine for each individual what fraction of their colleagues were entrepreneurs in the past," says Nanda, adding that Denmark was also an ideal choice for the study because its labor market shares many of the same characteristics as those found in the United States and the United Kingdom.
"Aside from being a source of ideas and opportunities, these former entrepreneurs offer a positive impression of what it's like to own your own business—even if that business may have failed."
Nanda and Sørensen control for the possibility that former and aspiring entrepreneurs are more likely to cluster together at a company with an entrepreneurial culture, demonstrating that the positive association between the number of former entrepreneurs and the higher levels of entrepreneurial activity continues to hold.
"A peer's experience can substitute for a worker's own past," Nanda says. "We find that this influence is diminished, however, when a person has been exposed to entrepreneurship because one or both of their parents owned a business when they were growing up. So we can see that there's an influencing mechanism at play here, and that there's a substitute for it as well."
Follow The Money
The distinctions are a bit more subtle when considering the effects of external finance on who starts a business and who doesn't.
Nanda also uses Danish data for his second working paper, exploring a tax reform introduced in 1987 that made the cost of external finance significantly more expensive for entrepreneurs in the middle- to higher-level tax brackets (previous studies showed that in developed countries, wealthier individuals are more likely to become entrepreneurs).
As one would expect, the entry rates into entrepreneurship fell for those individuals who faced an increase in the cost of external finance. Digging down another level, however, produced some surprising findings: The highest number (50 percent) of people adversely affected by the tax reform were high wealth individuals who had low levels of human capital. In other words, these would-be entrepreneurs lacked the skills, experience, and people power so essential to the launch of a successful business.
“Not everyone who wants the money to start a business necessarily deserves it.”
The second-largest adversely affected group, at 40 percent, were low wealth, low human capital individuals. Least affected, at 10 percent, were underfunded individuals with high levels of human capital. (High wealth, high human capital individuals were virtually unaffected.)
These numbers should be of interest to policymakers in developed countries, Nanda says.
"This goes against the conventional wisdom held in government policy circles and elsewhere that there are a large number of talented people lacking in personal wealth who can't start a new business because they don't have access to capital," says Nanda.
"Yes, it's a real problem that we do in fact have this 10 percent of low wealth, high human capital individuals who are unable to launch a new venture," he continues. "That's the group the Small Business Administration should be targeting with subsidies.
"My point is that not everyone who wants the money to start a business necessarily deserves it; and that wealthy people are often able to start inadvisable businesses because they don't need to undergo the reality check of a bank's approval for funding. The natural experiment created by this tax reform shows that, contrary to popular belief, a certain efficiency exists in the market when it comes to which businesses get off the ground and which don't."
Examining Government Policy
Nanda notes that much of his work is broadly connected to government policy in relation to economic development and entrepreneurial activity.
"In the peer effects paper, we see that policies that may encourage one person to become an entrepreneur have knock-on effects that go beyond that one individual, which in turn can influence overall economic activity," he says.
Meanwhile, the finance paper shows that a straightforward government policy of providing cheap credit for any and all new ventures may not be the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars.
"There are different ways that governments can try to spur entrepreneurial activity," Nanda remarks. "Each approach has its own costs and benefits, whether it's a direct subsidy, a loan guarantee program, or a venture capital model where the government is a direct investor."
In the future, Nanda hopes to find a situation where a government would randomize its funding of businesses so that he could study the outcome. "That's truly how to find out what does and does not work in a given environment," he says.
Julia Hanna is associate editor of the HBS Alumni Bulletin.
About the Author
Julia Hanna is Associate Editor of the HBS Alumni Bulletin.
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Friday, April 3, 2009
The period between 500 and 1200 AD was the golden age of Indian Astronomy. In this long span of time Indian Astronomy flourished mainly due to eminent astronomers like Aryabhatta, Lallacharya, Varahamihir, Brahmagupta, Bhaskaracharya and others. Bhaskaracharya, or Bhaskara II (1114 – 1185) is regarded almost without question as the greatest Hindu mathematician of all time and his contribution to not just Indian, but world mathematics is undeniable. He was born near Bijjada Bida (in present day Bijapur district, Karnataka state, South India) into the Deshastha Brahmin family. Bhaskara was head of an astronomical observatory at Ujjain, the leading mathematical centre of ancient India. His father Maheshwar taught him mathematics and astronomy.
Some of Bhaskara's contributions to mathematics include the following:
• Bhaskara is the first to give the general solution to the quadratic equation ax2 + bx + c = 0, the answer being x = (-b ± (b2 - 4ac)1/2)/2a.
• He also gives the (now) well known results for sin (a + b) and sin (a - b).
• Solutions of indeterminate quadratic equations (of the type ax² + b = y²).
• Bhaskara also goes deeper into the 'differential calculus' and suggests the differential coefficient vanishes at an extremum value of the function, indicating knowledge of the concept of 'infinitesimals'
Bhaskaracharya wrote Siddhanta Shiromani in 1150 AD when he was 36 years old. This is a mammoth work containing about 1450 verses. It is divided into four parts and each part can be considered as separate book. The numbers of verses in each part are as follows, 1. Lilawati has 278 2. Beejaganit has 213 3. Ganitadhyaya has 451 4. Goladhyaya has 501 verses.
One of the most important characteristic of Siddhanta Shiromani is, it consists of simple methods of calculations from Arithmetic to Astronomy. Essential knowledge of ancient Indian Astronomy can be acquired by reading only this book. Siddhanta Shiromani has surpassed all the ancient books on astronomy in India. After Bhaskaracharya nobody could write excellent books on mathematics and astronomy in lucid language in India.
Lilawati is an excellent example of how a difficult subject like mathematics can be written in poetic language. Lilawati has been translated in many languages throughout the world. Lilavati covers the topics of definitions, arithmetical terms, interest computation, arithmetical and geometrical progressions, plane geometry, solid geometry. Bhaskara's method of solving was an improvement of the methods found in the work of Aryabhata and subsequent mathematicians.
His work Bijaganita is effectively a treatise on algebra and contains the following topics: - Positive and negative numbers.
- Zero. - The 'unknown'.
- Surds.
- Kuttaka (modern indeterminate equation of first order)
- Simple equations (indeterminate of second, third and fourth degree).
- Simple equations with more than one unknown.
- Indeterminate quadratic equations (of the type ax2 + b = y2).
- Quadratic equations.
- Quadratic equations with more than one unknown.
- Operations with products of several unknowns.
Ganitadhyaya and Goladhyaya of Siddhanta Shiromani are devoted to astronomy. All put together there are about 1000 verses. Almost all aspects of astronomy are considered in these two books. Bhaskara has given a very simple method to determine the circumference of the Earth. According to this method, first find out the distance between two places, which are on the same longitude. Then find the correct latitudes of those two places and difference between the latitudes. Knowing the distance between two latitudes, the distance that corresponds to 360 degrees can be easily found, which the circumference of the Earth.
He also showed that when a planet is farthest from, or closest to, the Sun, the difference between a planet's actual position and its position according to "the equation of the centre" (which predicts planets' positions on the assumption that planets move uniformly around the Sun) vanishes. He therefore concluded that for some intermediate position the differential of the equation of the centre is equal to zero.
A Glance at the Astronomical Achievements of Bhaskaracharya
1. The Earth is not flat, has no support and has a power of attraction.
2. The north and south poles of the Earth experience six months of day and six months of night.
3. One day of Moon is equivalent to 15 earth-days and one night is also equivalent to 15 earth-days.
4. Bhaskaracharya had accurately calculated apparent orbital periods of the Sun and orbital periods of Mercury, Venus, and Mars. There is slight difference between the orbital periods he calculated for Jupiter and Saturn and the corresponding modern values.
5. Earth’s atmosphere extends to 96 kilometers and has seven parts.
6. There is a vacuum beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.
There have been several unscrupulous attempts to argue that there are traces of Diophantine influence in Bhaskara's work, but this once again seems like an attempt by European scholars to claim European influence on (all) the great works of mathematics. These claims should be ignored. Particularly in the field of algebra, Diophantus only looked at specific cases and did not achieve the general methods of the Indians.
Related article "Aryabhatta and Evolution of Zero"
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Growing from seeds allows your child to see the entire plant life cycle.
How to Plant Seeds With Kids
by Shelley Frost
Kids naturally gravitate toward dirt, as any mom knows, so gardening with your little ones is a productive way to encourage all of that dirty play. Growing from seeds instead of seedlings lets your child see the entire growing process. The choice of seeds is one of the most important situations. Tiny seeds are difficult for small hands. Likewise, seeds that take forever to germinate lose your child's attention. With attention to your children's needs, you can help them plant their own garden while they enjoys fresh air and learn about the plant life cycle.
1 Choose kid-friendly seeds that will grow into plants that appeal to your children. Beans, sunflowers and gourds have large seeds that children can plant easily. Herbs and lettuce have smaller seeds, but they germinate quickly so your little ones see growth soon after planting. Let your kids pick their own seeds to make the garden more exciting for them.
2 Prep the planting area before your little one heads to the garden. Break up the soil for easy planting. Dig the rows or create the hills depending on the specific planting requirements for the seeds. He'll quickly lose patience if he has to wait for you to dig up a garden plot or loosen the dirt. An older child may want to tackle the ground prep, but younger kids usually do better if they can get right to the planting.
3 Explain the planting process to your child. Show her the seeds before you start planting. Tell her where the seeds go and how far apart they should be planted. Place a few seeds in the ground to give her a guide before she starts planting.
4 Pour a small amount of seeds into a little plastic cup or bowl. Your junior gardeners can easily reach in the container to pick up seeds and are less likely to spill them than they would holding them in their hands. Supervise them as they put the seeds in the dirt. Give them guidance if they put the seeds to close, but don't get too upset if the spacing is wrong. If a few seeds get too close you can thin them as they begin to grow.
5 Help your kids cover the seeds with soil. If the seeds only need a light layer of dirt, give them a cup of soil that they can sprinkle on top. If they try to push soil from the sides of the row, they may shift the seeds.
6 Fill a misting spray bottle with water. Have your gardening assistant mist the area where she planted the seeds. The misting prevents washing away the seeds, which can sometimes happen when using a hose or watering can.
Items you will need
• Seeds
• Plastic cup or bowl
• Misting spray bottle
About the Author
Photo Credits
• Polka Dot Images/Polka Dot/Getty Images
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Literacy, Diversity, Creativity
The Love Books Project was initially setup by Musama Heppell and her husband in response to the lack of children's picture books at the St. Andrews School in Lusaka, Zambia. When Musama found out that her niece, a St. Andrew's pupil, had to take her own books to school so that her classmates could borrow them in order to learn how to read, Musama immediately started fundraising for books to be donated to the school. But it soon became apparent that our mission couldn't stop there as St. Andrews proved to be one of many schools and orphanages who have no access to children's picture books let alone a library.
Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, there still exists a real lack of diversity in children's books with stories and pictures that do not reflect and celebrate today's multicultural society. We feel that this is unacceptable in the 21st century and parts of the UK with communities of BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) families that would benefit from our programme. Every child deserves to have access to books that revolve around characters that they can identify with. We plan to tackle this issue in the UK by working closely with libraries and schools.
Diversity in children's literature also help break down barriers and prejudice which in turn opens up a whole new world to children who have yet to experience cultures outside of their own.
Love Books have 3 objectives:
Provide amazing children's books that celebrate diversity to schools and orphanages in Africa as well as schools and libraries in the UK.
Establish a permanent literacy programme using the books we donate.
Become self-sustaining from the sale of books and other items on our web store.
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Sunday, September 23, 2012
Apache Shale Framework
Shale is a modern web application framework, fundamentally based on JavaServer Faces. Architecturally, Shale is a set of loosely coupled services that can be combined as needed to meet particular application requirements. Shale provides additional functionality such as application event callbacks, dialogs with conversation-scoped state, a view technology called Clay, annotation-based functionality to reduce configuration requirements and support for remoting. Shale also provides integration links for other frameworks, to ease development when combinations of technologies are required.
To know more about shale framework , visit the following links.
Javassist (Java programming assistant) is a load-time reflective system for Java. It is a class library for editing bytecodes in Java; it enables Java programs to define a new class at runtime and to modify a class file before the JVM loads it. Unlike other similar systems, Javassist provides source-level abstraction; programmers can modify a class file without detailed knowledge of the Java bytecode. They do not have to even write an inserted bytecode sequence; Javassist instead can compile a fragment of source text on line (for example, just a single statement).
To know more about Javassist , refer the following links.
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Research co-authored by APEM’s head of ornithology tracked the movement of lesser black-backed gulls in and around offshore windfarms.
It used state-of-the-art GPS tags to show how the gulls, breeding at a protected site in Suffolk, used areas of sea where offshore wind farms already exist and where future developments are earmarked.
lesser black-backed gull
Offshore windfarms are a key part of the government’s plan to obtain 15 per cent of the UK’s energy from renewable sources by 2020. It is therefore important to properly assess and quantify the impact that such developments could have on marine wildlife and habitats.
APEM’s chief ornithologist, Dr Mark Rehfisch, formerly worked with the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) for 21 years. Whilst there he heard about advanced new bird tags developed by the University of Amsterdam and approached the university to help set up the research project.
The BTO tracked twenty-five birds in three consecutive summers and found that gulls visited offshore wind farm areas significantly more in some years than in others. In every year, birds spent more time in wind farms zones when their chicks were young than at other times in the breeding season.
Males also spent more time in wind farm zones than females later on in the breeding season, when chicks were growing bigger and more independent.
Dr Chris Thaxter of the BTO said:
“These results indicate just how varied individual seabirds can be in their behaviour, and highlight the value of long-term tracking datasets in estimating potential impacts of offshore wind farms on seabird populations.”
Dr Rehfisch said: “This project would have been impossible a decade ago. This newly available GPS tag technology makes it possible to understand how birds interact with windfarm developments over several years and in a three-dimensional space that includes flight height.
“Combined with population surveys, such tags allow us to collect the facts needed to properly understand the likely effect of windfarm developments on birds and to replace the often overly-precautionary guesses of the potential impacts with facts.
“These facts provide industry and regulators with the confidence needed to develop and consent the green energy that the world urgently needs.”
The paper is published in Biological Conservation.
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15 Cards in this Set
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Rene Descartes
He invented analytical geometry and is famous for the statement "I think, therefore I am"
Andreas Vesalius
He defied French law by dissecting human bodies, contradicting many beliefs about human anatomy.
Francis Bacon
This philosopher helped develop the scientific method.
Galileo Galilei
His belief that the earth was not the center of the universe (based on observations with his telescope) was banned by the Catholic church.
Isaac Newton
He revolutionized European thinking by applying the scientific method to math and science.
He wrote "Principia" to mathematically explain the universe
Robert Hooke
He discovered the cell.
William Harvey
He discovered how the circulatory system works.
Robert Boyle
He criticized alchemists, proved there were more than four basic elements, and defined elements as something that cannot be broken down into simpler parts.
Priestley and Lavoisier
They studied the properties of air and its elements.
These early chemists were much like sorcerors and believed in the existence of only four basic elements.
Theories that attempt to explain a set of facts
(Your expected result)
Nicolaus Copernicus
A Polish astronomer who theorized that the earth was round and rotated on an axis around the sun.
Johannes Kepler
He mathematically proved Copernicus's theories that the earth was round and rotated on an axis while circling the sun; he also found that it "circled" on an oval path.
He invented calculus
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List of Eco Friendly Trees and Plants That You Can Consider Growing
Eco Friendly Trees are green plants, which help in creating an excellent balance between the nature and environment. These are grown-up naturally without using harmful chemicals and develop into most enduring and healthier plants. They are beneficial to the earth as well as the environment. There is a great list of eco Friendly trees and plants.
Great benefits of the list of eco friendly trees and plants:
• Plants that are Pest resilient
• Plants, which suppress weeds
• Shade giving plants
• Erosion or Corrosion control plants
• Fruits and vegetables bearing plants
• Plants that provide food for birds
Eco Friendly Trees and PlantsEco Friendly Trees and Plants
Here are the list of eco friendly trees and plants that help in preventing pollution and maintaining the house fresh and pure:
• Phalaenopsis
• Parlor ivy plant
• Christmas cactus plant
• Peace lily plant
• Yellow goddess plant
• African violet plant
• Feston rose plant
• English ivy plant
• Garlic wine plant
• Devils ivy plant
• Umbrella plants
Cool plants for work place:
This list of eco friendly trees and Plants in the office not only enhance the beauty with flowers and greenery but they will help in reducing stress and in removing air pollutants. They can be opted depending on the exact requirements and space provided. Some of them are:
Philodendron plants, Snake plants, Cactus plants, Spider plants, Dracaena plant, Pothos that are heart shaped with white splotched and simple plant, Rubber plants.
Grow self-sustainable plants that are required in our daily routine like vegetables and fruits. Transportation and packing process can be reduced by growing these ECO-Friendly trees and plants by our own.
As green is beautiful, encourage ECO-Friendly trees and plants. Trees absorb CO2 and releases O2.Trees are categorized accordingly with the characteristics and features. They are classified as non-green and green, based on leaves, as they change seasonally some are evergreen always and some dry up. Here are different varieties of trees: Olive Trees, Shaded trees, Ash trees, Willow Trees, Christmas Trees, Conifer trees.
The non- flowering eco friendly trees are referred Gymnosperms and flowering plants are referred Angiosperms.
Angiosperms list:
Plum tree, Hawthorne tree, Cherry tree, Maple tree, Almond tree, Apple tree, Bottlebrush tree, Yellow wood, Dog Wood and Buckeye tree.
Gymnosperms list:
Scoadopitys, Zamia, Cycas, Cypress, Sequoia, Podocarpus, Spruce, Cedar and yew.
So grow Eco-friendly trees and plants as trees work as pollution safeguard, serving to protect the environments we live. Make yourself engaged with eco friendly practices and habits and be more conscious of the resources you use.
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What is a bailout? Where does the word come from?
Bailout has become closely associated with the idea of financial rescue - to bail out the Greece etc.
But the word has many subtle usages - and two spellings!
1. bail/bale is to abandon abruptly as in making an emergency exit from an aeroplane in a parachute.
2. to bail out is to remove water from a leaky boat.
3. It is now more common to use bail in a figurative/metaphorical sense:
The minister has bailed on the government's housing policy (announced his opposition).
The pilot bailed out
The actor bailed on the script (stopped reading his lines with any show of conviction)
4. 'Bail out' is also used metaphorically but usually with a closer connection to the literal meaning: The pilot bailed out of his plane.
5. The noun is sometimes spelled as one word: bailout.
6. Bail or bale - the spelling is disputed but bail is probably used more frequently. Both spellings are allowed by most dictionaries.
A version of this post is included in the English FAQ Teaching Pack Download for only £1.99
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What is Globish?
Globish is a term invented by a French business man, Jean-Paul Nerriere, to describe the form English used as a lingua franca or common world language.
Top 10 words with the most entries in the Oxford English Dictionary?
Here are the words with the most separate entries in the OED:
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Tae Kwon Do
Tae Kwon Do is one of the most systematic and scientific Korean traditional martial arts that teaches more than physical fighting skills. It is a discipline that shows ways of enhancing our spirit and life through training our bodies and mind. Today, it has become a global sport that has gained an international reputation and stands among the official games in the Olympics.
Tae Kwon Do literally means the way of the hand and foot Fighting. “Tae” means “foot”, “leg”, or “to step on”; “Kwon” means “fist” or “fight”; and “Do” means the “way” or “Discipline”.
Tae Kwon Do is the right way of using Tae and Kwon “fists and feet”. Second, it is a way to control or calm down fights and keep the peace. This concept comes from the meaning of Tae Kwon and puts fists under control. Thus Tae Kwon Do means “the right way of using all parts of the body to stop fights and build a better and more peaceful world.
Tae Kwon Do is a way of life, much like having a job, raising a family, or fighting for a cause. What makes Tae Kwon Do different from these is that it is an activity for survival in extremely antagonistic situations. One must always overcome the enemy that is trying to cause harm. But simply winning a fight is not enough to guarantee one’s safety, because the enemy may recuperate and attack again. Moreover, there may be many other enemies than the one that was just defeated. One cannot ever feel safe unless one gains permanent peace. To attain this permanent or lasting peace, one needs unity. This is what Tae Kwon Do aims for. Otherwise Tae Kwon Do would be no different from any other street-fighting skills.
Tae Kwon Do pursues harmonious growth and improvements of life through its unique activities. This is why one could say Tae Kwon Do is a way of life. To ultimately enable ourselves to lead more valuable lives, we would do well by finding the guiding principles deeply hidden in Tae Kwon Do.
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Parent's Name if student is a child.
The facilities are great. Good family environment, all ranks classes are excellent. BBC - this program is good idea to supplement Tae Kwon Do with weapons training.
Nigel Brownjohn
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The Awardees of Dickin Medal
CTAIggGWcAEqzsJThe Dickin Medal is an honor bestowed upon animals who displays prominent devotion and gallantry while fulfilling their responsibilities or duty. This popular award was introduced by the founding member of the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals – Mrs Maria Dickin. This is also the only award which was restricted to the animal Kingdom. The statics’ indicate that between the years of 1943-1949, the medal was awarded to around 54 animals who has displayed chivalry and has served the mankind by an act of enormous gallantry and devotion. The recipients included one cat, three horses, 18 dogs and 32 pigeons.
The most prominent pigeon who received the award was ‘White Vision’, for carrying and delivering an important message under extremely difficult scenario and the bird also helped in rescuing an aircraft in 1943, October as a part of RAF mission. White vision is estimated to have flown across heavy seas (60 miles) fighting against winds at 25 miles/hour.Some of the Dickin medal winners other than White Vision:Winkie: He was bred in Whitburn by AR Colley and was bestowed the award for delivering an important information under extremely difficult conditions which helped in rescuing an aircrew.
600804-f01b70d0-676b-11e3-b121-6260b4b49643Another pigeon, George (Tyke) belonged to Middle East Pigeon Service received the award for being a messenger to RAF and rescuing an aircrew as a part of service.The wars employed pigeons to carry news or messages across the military troop’s camp to the war front. Once the pigeons, arrived their destination the wires were used to give indication or information to the soldiers and they would retrieve the message from the bird and telegraph it to the required destination. Sometimes even a personal messenger or wired phones were used too. These pigeons job nature was immensely dangerous as many at times, they would be spotted and shot down.
Read also: The Pigeons of the Trafalgar square.
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The science behind blood thirsty vampires
Posted By: Staff
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Washington, November 26 (ANI): A new article in has analyzed in a scientific manner whether vampires could have ever existed, and how accurate are their depiction in the movies nowadays.
The first fact that the article discusses is about vampires avoiding sunlight.
Vampires are commonly depicted as creatures of the dark, being highly sensitive to sunlight. This is the case for people afflicted with porphyria, a well-known condition that makes one allergic to the sun.
When exposed to the sun, people with porphyria develop burning blisters and swelling of the skin.
Porphyria is extremely rare, of course, but not so its milder cousin, polymorphic light eruption, which is a type of allergic reaction characterized by the formation of bumpy and itchy rashes on sun-exposed skin.
The second fact discussed is how vampires are considered to be immortal.
According to Dr. Katherine Ramsland, who teaches forensic psychology at DeSales University and wrote the book, "The Science of Vampires", there is science to explain this aspect of the myth, noting research on what scientists call "immortalized cells."
The aging process is partly predicated on the lifespan of our cells; as long as they continue dividing, we remain young, and structures in our cells called telomeres play a part in cellular division.
Ramsland explained that "through the activity of an enzyme known as telomerase, the youth-preserving activity of the telomeres can be extended. In other words, there's an actual chemical in our cells that may hold the secret to eternal youth, and if so, it may explain how vampires can live forever."
A popular issue that is discussed in the article is about vampires drinking blood.
Mosquitoes, bats and other creatures drink blood, but humans rarely do, unless they have an iron deficiency such as anemia, according to Dr. Manuel Alvarez, managing editor for health at
Dr. Manny notes that pica, the pattern of eating non-foods or even blood, can result from anemia.
This may not explain the vampire mythology, but it could explain one of the characteristics associated with the creatures.
As far as killing humans is concerned, physicists Costas J. Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi argue a good case against vampires, based on the hard facts of physics.
The pair has worked out a mathematical formula to describe the number of humans left after x months of vampirism.
"We conclude that if the first vampire appeared on January 1st of 1600 AD, humanity would have been wiped out by June of 1602, two and a half years later," they said.
"We conclude that vampires cannot exist, since their existence contradicts the existence of human beings," they added. (ANI)
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Naturally occuring protein reverses brain damage caused by meningitis
Posted By: Staff
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Washington, June 17 (ANI): Scientists have discovered an important role for a small, naturally occurring protein called interleukin-10 (IL-10) in removing bacteria from the blood of infected mice and reversing damage to the brain.
This bacterium, Escherichia coli K1, is the most common cause of meningitis in premature infants and the second most common cause of the disease in newborns.
"The ineffectiveness of antibiotics in treating newborns with meningitis and the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria require new strategies," explains Nemani V. Prasadarao, Ph. D, associate professor of infectious disease at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA).
One of a class of proteins known as cytokines, IL-10 is involved in immune function.
Rahul Mittal, lead author on the paper and a post-doctoral fellow in Prasadarao's lab, said: "We found that during an episode of bacteremia, when a large number of bacteria are circulating in normally sterile blood, IL-10 acts to clear antibiotic-sensitive as well as antibiotic-resistant E. coli from the circulation of infected mice."
They also determined that E. coli infection produced damage to the mouse brain comparable to that seen in humans. Three-dimensional imaging studies of infected animal and human infant brains showed similar gross morphological changes.
"When we gave IL-10 to mice 48 hours after infection, those changes to the brain were reversed," said Mittal.
Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) is a cytokine active in producing inflammation. When the researchers replicated these experiments using antibiotic or anti-TNF, brain damage resulting from E. coli infection was not prevented.
The team also discovered a mechanism of action for IL-10 protection. In culture, using mouse and human white blood cells called neutrophils, they found that exposing these cells to IL-10 produced an increase in the number of a certain type of receptor on the surface of the neutrophils. An increase in the CR 3 receptor led to enhanced killing of bacteria.
Another white blood cell, called a macrophage, works to clear bacteria from the blood by engulfing or "eating" the pathogen. Similar to what was seen in neutrophils, macrophages treated with IL-10 showed an increase in CR 3 receptors that enhanced their ability to destroy invading bacteria.
To confirm that the CR 3 receptor is critical to the protective effect of IL-10 against E. coli, CR 3 expression was suppressed in a group of mice. Before exposing the animals to bacteria, white blood cells were examined and the CR 3 receptor was determined to be absent. These animals were exposed to E. coli and then treated with IL-10.
The mice were found subsequently to have bacteria in the CSF and morphological changes indicating brain damage. The protective effect of IL-10 during bacteremia was absent in animals without CR 3 receptors. The researchers further concluded that the crucial increase in CR 3 receptor was a result of IL-10 suppressing an important inflammatory agent, prostaglandin E-2.
"Since diagnosing meningitis is difficult until bacteria reach the central nervous system, finding an agent that can clear the bacteria while also preventing or restoring the damaged brain is very exciting," said Mittal.
The study, conducted in collaboration with the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and the Universite Auvergne, France, has been published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. (ANI)
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The History of the Community Emergency Response Team
CERT is a Community Emergency Response Team working together to assist neighbors in need when disaster occurs. The concept of CERT was developed and implemented by the City of Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) in 1985. They recognized that citizens would very likely be on their own during the early stages of a catastrophic disaster. Accordingly, LAFD decided that some basic training in disaster survival and rescue skills would improve the ability of citizens to survive until responders or other assistance could arrive.
The training program that the LAFD initiated proved to be beneficial that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) felt that the concept and the programs should be made available to communities nationwide. In 1994, the Emergency Management Institute (EMI), in cooperation with the LAFD, expanded the CERT materials to make them applicable to all hazards.
In the CERT training, citizens learn to:
• Manage utilities and put out small fires
• Treat the three medical killers by opening airways, controlling bleeding, and treating for shock
• Provide basic medical aid,
• Search for and rescue victims safely,
• Organize themselves and spontaneous volunteers to be effective
• Collect disaster intelligence to support first responder efforts
How CERTs Operate
As each CERT is organized and trained, its members select a team leader and an alternate and identify an emergency meeting location, or staging area, to be used in the event of an emergency. Teams are encouraged to go into action even during relatively moderate emergencies, regardless of actual need, to gain practice mobilizing and assessing damage.
The staging area is where the fire department and other services will interact with CERTs. Having a centralized contact point makes it possible to communicate damage assessments and allocate volunteer resources more effectively.
CERT members who encounter no need in their immediate area then report to their staging area, where they take on assigned roles based on overall area needs. Members who find themselves in a heavily affected location send runners to staging areas to get help from available resources.
The CERT program can provide an effective first-response capability. Acting as individuals first, then later as members of teams, trained CERT volunteers can fan out within their assigned areas, extinguishing small fires, turning off natural gas inlets to damages homes, performing light search and rescue, and rendering basic medical treatment. Trained volunteers also offer an important potential workforce to service organizations in nonhazardous functions such as shelter support, crowd control, and evacuation.
The idea to train volunteers from the community to assist emergency service personnel during large natural disasters began. In February of 1985, a group of Los Angeles City officials went to Japan to study its extensive earthquake preparedness plans. The group encountered an extremely homogenous society that had taken extensive steps to train entire neighborhoods in one aspect of alleviating the potential devastation that would follow a major earthquake. These single-function neighborhood teams were trained in either fire suppression, light search and rescue operations, first aid, or evacuation.
In September of 1985, a Los Angeles City investigation team was sent to Mexico City following an earthquake there that registered a magnitude 8.1 on the Richter scale and killed more than 10,000 people and injured more than 30,000. Mexico City had no training program for citizens prior to the disaster. However, large groups of volunteers organized themselves and performed light search and rescue operations. Volunteers are credited with more than 800 successful rescues; unfortunately, more than 100 of these untrained volunteers died during the 15-day rescue operation.
The lessons learned in Mexico City strongly indicated that a plan to train volunteers to help themselves and others, and become an adjunct to government response, was needed as an essential part of overall preparedness, survival, and recovery.
The City of Los Angeles Fire Department developed a pilot program to train a group of leaders in a neighborhood watch organization. A concept developed involving multi-functional volunteer response teams with the ability to perform basic fire suppression, light search and rescue, and first aid. This first team of 30 people completed training in early 1986 and proved that the concept was viable through various drills, demonstrations, and exercises. Expansion of the program, however, was not feasible due to limited City resources, until an event occurred in 1987 that impacted the entire area.
On October 1, 1987, the Whittier Narrows earthquake vividly underscored the threat of an area-wide major disaster, and demonstrated the need to expedite the training of civilians to prepare for earthquakes and other emergencies. Following the Whittier Narrows earthquake, the City of Los Angeles took an aggressive role in protecting the citizens of Los Angeles by creating the Disaster Preparedness Division (now the Disaster Preparedness Section) within the Los Angeles Fire Department. Their objectives included:
• Educate and train the public and government sectors in disaster preparedness
• Research, evaluate, and disseminate disaster information
• Develop, train, and maintain a network of Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs)
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) decided to make the concept and program available to communities nationwide. The Emergency Management Institute (EMI), in cooperation with the LAFD, expanded the CERT materials to make them applicable to all hazards.
In January 2002, CERT became part of the Citizen Corps, a unifying structure to link a variety of related volunteer activities to expand a community's resources for crime prevention and emergency response.
As of January 2004, 50 states, three territories and six foreign countries are using the CERT training.
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9 Things Doctors Wish You Knew About Cervical Cancer
Cervical cancer can be deadly. But if you follow the recommendations for prevention and screening, and then cervical cancer becomes very treatable. Here are the latest developments you need to know.
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The deadliness of cervical cancer is greater than we thought
deadlinesiStock/m-imagephotographyThe cervical cancer mortality rate has dropped drastically in the last 40 years—by over 50 percent, according to the American Cancer Society. This is largely due to screening with the Pap test, which any woman who sees a gynecologist knows well. That's the good news. The bad news is that the rate of deaths from cervical cancer is actually higher than we thought. According to a new study from Johns Hopkins, the way the original rate was calculated was flawed. "Prior calculations did not account for hysterectomy," says study author Anne F. Rositch, PhD, MSPH, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Instead, "following the concept of using only those 'at risk' for a specific cancer, we limited our cervical cancer 'at risk' population to females with a cervix." Although this doesn't mean more women are actually dying than previously thought, it does mean that the chance of dying among the women at risk is greater. For white women in the United States, the new estimates are 4.7 women per 100,000, 47 percent higher than the previous estimate of 3.2; for black women, the rate is 10.1 per 100,000, 77 percent higher than the previous estimate of 5.7.
You've probably had the virus that causes cervical cancer
virusiStock/RapidEyeAlthough the new study is alarming, dying of cervical cancer is still rare, especially now that we know the cause. In the 1980s, researchers discovered that the human papillomavirus (HPV) is at the root of the cancer. "Virtually all cases of cervical cancer are caused by a persistent high-risk HPV infection," says Mahboobeh Safaeian, MPH, Ph.D., director of Clinical Sciences for HPV at Roche Molecular Diagnostics. HPV is an extremely common virus spread through intimate contact, including but not limited to sex. According to the CDC, condoms can help prevent the spread of the infection but won't protect against it completely because HPV can infect areas not covered by a condom. "While most women will acquire HPV infection via intercourse at some point if not vaccinated, in most women, HPV is cleared by the immune system and does not have adverse effects or cause cancer," says Kimberly Levinson, MD, MPH, a a gynecologic oncologist with Johns Hopkins Medicine. "However, if HPV persists, it can cause changes to the cervical cells leading to dysplasia [abnormal cells] and ultimately cancer." Read why you might be at risk for STDs that are at a record high.
If you've had HPV, you won't necessarily get cervical cancer
necessarilyiStock/PeopleimagesOK, so most people who aren't vaccinated will get a virus that could cause cancer? Yikes! While that is a very scary thought, there are many strains of HPV, most of which are perfectly harmless. "There are over 150 different types of HPV," Dr. Safaeian says. "Of these, 14 HPV types are considered high-risk because of their association with cancer, with HPV 16 and HPV 18 identified as the highest‐risk genotypes. HPV16 and 18 are responsible for approximately 70 percent of all cervical cancers." The CDC's statistics indicate that 79 million Americans are infected with HPV (men and women), and 11,000 women get cervical cancer each year—so the risk of actually getting cancer is still quite low. "Fortunately, cervical cancer is a preventable disease with adequate screening, treatment, and vaccination," Dr. Safaeian says. Here are other cervical cancer risks you need to know.
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The HPV vaccine is safe and effective in preventing cervical cancer
vaccineiStock/fstop123The HPV vaccine has caused a lot of controversy since it came out 10 years ago, with some people worried about long-term side effects. However, many studies have shown the vaccine to be safe, and claims otherwise should be met with skepticism. "On a daily basis, I tell cancer patients that I long for the day when I can prescribe them a magic pill that could make their cancer go away," Dr. Levinson says. "This vaccine is that pill—in the form of a shot! We can use the vaccine to prevent this horrible disease that continues to kill young women." A recent statement by 69 National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers strongly encourage people to follow the recommendations for HPV vaccination. New CDC guidelines say two doses should be given to all 11- to 12-year-olds and three doses should be given to 15- to 26-year-olds. This applies to both boys and girls because although men can't get cervical cancer, they can pass HPV to women who can. The ultimate goal is to vaccinate children before they become sexually active to avoid the spread of the infection completely. "The newest HPV vaccine prevents against nine strains of HPV virus, which cause up to 90 percent of cervical cancers," Dr. Rositch says. "For the generation of adult women who are beyond the age of vaccination, the data from this new study [showing an increased risk of dying] should help prompt them to vaccinate their daughters and sons." These are other vaccine myths to ignore.
You don't need a Pap every year to detect pre-cancer
papiStock/fstop123Because the HPV vaccine is only approved for use in people under 26 years old, the second line of defense is still the good old Pap test. Everyone's favorite part of their gynecological exam (not), the invasive test involves swabbing a sample from the cervix to detect pre-cancerous cells. Luckily, you probably don't need the test annually anymore. "The guidelines for cervical cancer screening have changed significantly over the past several years," Dr. Levinson says, noting that they now vary based on your age and the results of previous screenings. New recommendations from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) advise no Pap tests for those under age 21; a Pap every three years for women age 21 to 29; and a Pap with the new HPV test (more on that later) every five years for women 30 to 65. The new recommendations stem partly from the fact that many abnormal cells clear on their own within a few years, and treating them right away can sometimes cause other problems later on, like miscarriage. "For women with abnormal screening tests, management with further testing and repeat screening is based specifically on the patient's findings," Dr. Levinson says, so talk to your gynecologist about the right course of action for you. Cervical cancer from HPV, thankfully, takes a long time to develop. Find out what you should and shouldn't do before a Pap test.
New screening methods might even be better than Paps
screeningiStock/megafloppPaps detect abnormal cells, but a new test can actually detect HPV itself, making it an even better indicator of a woman's risk for developing cervical cancer. The HPV test "simultaneously detects 12 high-risk HPV types and provides individual results for the highest risk types, HPV 16 and HPV 18," Dr. Safaeian says. "It can provide clinicians with the support they need to more accurately identify women at highest risk for cervical cancer—women who test positive for HPV16 and/or HPV18— and distinguish those who need immediate management from those who can be watched over time or be returned to routine screening intervals." Unfortunately, this test is also gathered the same way a Pap is, so there's no getting out of putting your feet in the stirrups. The HPV test is also why frequent Paps are less necessary. "Screening can be extended to every five years [for women 30 to 65] because HPV testing is a sensitive test, meaning it is quite good at identifying women who have the HPV infection," Dr. Levinson says. "These women can then be referred for further testing to identify whether pre-cancers or cancers are present. For women who do not have HPV infection, their risk of subsequent development of pre-cancer or cancer is very low." Women under 30 don't need the HPV test because the virus so often clears on its own, and only becomes of concern when it hangs around for a while.
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Older women can still get cervical cancer
older-womeniStock/Highwaystarz-PhotographyAnother finding from the Johns Hopkins study was that the death rate for older women was higher than previously thought, potentially because a greater number of older women have had hysterectomies and shouldn't have been included in the "at risk" population. But older women can still get cervical cancer. "I think these data highlight that older women remain at risk of getting and dying from cervical cancer, so it's important to screen according to the guidelines," says Dr. Rositch. "Although screening is not recommended for the majority of women over age 65, it's important to ensure that women have been adequately screened and with negative results before exiting screening." Right now, the guidelines say you should have had three negative Paps or two negative HPV tests in a row within the last 10 years, with the most recent being in the last five years, before you can stop the screening. Even a hysterectomy might not be enough to get you out of the tests—ACOG says you might still need them if your cervix wasn't totally removed or if you have a history of cervical cell changes. You might have these questions about menopause you were too embarrassed to ask.
African-American women are more at risk of dying from cervical cancer
african-americaniStock/monkeybusinessimagesAs seen from the Johns Hopkins study's results, there is a larger racial disparity in the risk of dying from cervical cancer among white and black women than previously thought. The gap was underestimated by 44 percent, and socio-economic factors may play a part in the reason why, although more research is needed. "We already have national and state-level data to suggest that black women are less likely to receive adequate therapy at initial diagnosis [for cervical cancer], but we need to determine actionable reasons why care is differential to begin to address the mortality difference," Dr. Rositch says. "There are likely social determinants of health contributing to these racial disparities." Dr. Safaeian says other reasons could include "inadequate screening, differential immune response to the infection and cervical precancers, to name a few." But if you are African-American, no need to panic—just make sure you get your regular screenings.
You might not have cervical cancer symptoms until it's too late
too-lateiStock/iascicSo much of cervical cancer awareness efforts focuses on screening because the disease is so preventable—but once symptoms appear, it's often very far along and hard to treat. "Cervical cancer symptoms such as bleeding often do not present until the disease is quite advanced," Dr. Levinson says. "This is the reason why vaccination and cervical cancer screening are so critical." The American Cancer Society says improvements in the treatment of cervical cancer are on the horizon, including immunotherapy, gene-targeted drug therapy, hyperthermia, and improved biopsy methods. But with cervical cancer, an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure.
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Roscrea Workhouse - Roscrea Through The Ages
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Roscrea Workhouse
History > History 1
by Joe Coughlan
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In the mid 1840s there were 130 workhouses in Ireland and by 1852, three hundred thousand people died in them.
Roscrea workhouse was built to house 700 and was on the site in Scart where Crea House and St Cronan’s Workshop are today. The workhouses were modelled on the English version, but Daniel O’Connell said that Ireland was too poor to support such a poor law system.
Visit "LEST WE FORGET" by Veronica Griffin (nee Bourke) in the USA formerly of Burgoo for some rules governing inmates.
The workhouses were very elaborate buildings for the purpose for which they were built. They were built with cut stone having arched windows and spiral staircases all at a time when people were starving – a lavish extravagance considering that they were proposed to cater for the absolute destitute. The board of guardians was made up of local landlords, merchants and strong farmers who also funded it so it was in their best interest to run it on as low a budget as possible.
On entering the workhouse the men, women, boys and girls were separated into different dormitories. The parents only saw their children at meal times and then only from a distance. Their clothes were then taken and then they were washed and de-loused, many having their heads shaved due to their infestation of lice. They were then given a uniform which had Roscrea Union stamped on it. From then until they left their lives were governed by a strict regime. You could leave at any time but you had to give 3 days’ notice and should you leave without permission you would be flogged for stealing the workhouse uniform.
The master of the Roscrea workhouse was George O’Malley and his wife was matron in charge of the women’s dorms. They were said to be good and fair administrators. Also on the staff were a medical doctor, 4 nurses, porters and various tradesmen. Some of the biggest issues were heat and ventilation. It was very warm in summer with poor ventilation which led to disease causing many deaths. In winter there was an open fire at the end of the dorm and this led to many fights breaking out by people trying to get close to the fire. There was also a hierarchy among the poor like you find in prisons today. One woman survived because she got the job of cleaning out the big pot that was used for cooking.
The main hall was used for assembly, dining and church. When you arrived in the hall in the morning there was a roll-call and then prayers; after this the meal was served which had to be eaten in silence. Males and females entered the hall by separate doors and were kept separated during meals. Only children under the age of two or children who were seriously ill were allowed a visit by the parents.
In 1845 there were 330 people in Roscrea workhouse of which 26 died, many of these being elderly. By mid 1846 it was full to capacity and people were crowding around the gates screaming and pleading to be let in. The government passed a law which stated that a person had to give up all rights to the land before they would be allowed to enter. By the end of 46 there was so much pressure on Roscrea that they had to convert the stables and build platforms in the dormitories to accommodate the crowds, but it still was not enough. They then opened auxiliary workhouses in a school in Dunkerrin, the military barracks in Moneygall and in Egan’s Brewery in Abbey St now Hasting’s Mill. People were so tightly packed that fever and disease was rampant. People went in healthy and soon became ill. In Roscrea 80% of orphaned children died and 30% of children who had families, it was a death-trap for young children. Each week a pit was dug and the dead for that week were put in it. When they excavated at some workhouses they were able to record the amount of deaths by the amount of remains in each pit.
Smallpox spread like wildfire and sheds at the rear had to be used as fever sheds as the fever hospital was not built till 1850. Then in 1849 there was a large-scale outbreak of cholera in the country and a cholera hospital was opened on the Monastery road.
In 1846 104 people died in Roscrea workhouse; 1847 -719 died; 1848 - 867 died and of this number 258 died in May and June of that year. By the end of the famine 3,156 men, women and children died in Roscrea workhouse and were buried on the workhouse grounds in unmarked graves.
The building was eventually demolished in 1993.
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Celtic Origin
Ancient Origin of Shattockes
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What You Will Find Here
1. This "Celtic Origin" page explores the family's deep history, all the way back to 1500 BC.
4. The "Famous" page lists notable Shattocke places and people.
The Shattocke Family Tree
The graphic shows our descent from the La Téne Celts (Z36) and our common ancestor (Y16884) in 14th century England. The diagram shows how we branched from our common ancestor in subsequent centuries.
We are a wandering tribe that in very ancient time came out of the vast, treeless Pontic steppe stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea as far east as the Caspian Sea. We eventually migrated to central Europe. Around about 2400 we were members of the fearsome La Tène Celts whose influence spread throughout Europe. It is most likely that a single West German speaking ancestor or his family emigrated to England in the 14th century. Then our wandering forefathers early in the 17th century our ancestors began leaving England and settling in the English colonies. Today descendants are found primarily in the former colonies, from Massachusetts to California, from New Brunswick to British Columbia. From Western Australia to Queensland. In New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and we have ancestors buried in India.
All Shattockes, and our genetic cousins the Parrishs and Byars, descend from a single male in the 14th century, who fathered a new branch of the human family called Y16884, the name of the mutation he had. If you have the Y16884 mutation you are a descendant of this common ancestor.
In my studies of Shattocke descendants over time and around the world, I have discovered that the single factor that has led to Shattocke "population explosions," like the massive growth of the Shattuck branch of the family in America, was the availability of land for homesteading. Only 13% of the entire modern population of Shattockes now live in England. There was a massive diaspora of Shattockes from England seeking land in the colonies to establish their families. We were farmers and land ownership was the key factor leading to the establishment of major branches of the family. We were also merchants and tradespeople. The early west Somerset branches of the family and London branches of the family features entrepreneurs, trades people and merchants. Some rose to high social rank in England and the colonies. There is a record of a Sir Thomas "Shottoke" in his mother's will of 1533 and a Sir John Shattock in a legal document dated 1570. Two other Shattockes who achieved knighthood are found in the late 16th century. Although there is no royal blood in our lineage, members of our family did reach to the highest ranks of society in the 16th century and the 19th century.
Although DNA testing shows definitively we are all descended from a man with the Y16884 mutation in the 14th century, it is probably true that it was actually his descendant born about 1420 who is the actual common ancestor of all Shattockes.
Robert Walter Weir - the embarkation of the pilgrims
When records began in the early 16th century, "Shattickes" are found in North Molton, a border village with a thriving wool industry and a mining industry. See the North Molton page for a study I made of the history of North Molton and a theory promoted by one of our ancestors that it was the original home of all Shattockes. Subsequently North Molton Shattockes spread north and south, occupying north Devon and branching off to the Yarnscombe Shattockes and its sub-branches the New Brunswick Shaddicks, the Tawstock Shaddocks, and the Burrington Shaddocks. Another branch of the North Molton Shattockes are the Fremington Shaddicks. While the earliest settlements in America appear to have been west Somerset Shattocks, later emigrations to Canada, Australia and New Zealand included Shaddocks and Shaddicks from Devon.
Direct descendants of west Somerset Shattocks who have recent ancestor there (19th century) form three branches of the family, the Y29590 Shattockes found west and south of Taunton in the villages of Milverton and Wellington, the Staplegrove Shattocks and as yet unidentified branch, the Y16884* Shattocks. Shaddocks who originally settled in Virginia, and now are found throughout the U.S. south, have been shown to be related to west Somerset Shattocks in Milverton and Wellington. See the Virginia Shaddocks and the Milverton Shattocks.
Two Questions About Our Origins
There are two major questions about our origins: are we medieval immigrants to England, and where in the south west of England did our common ancestor live? At the end of this page I will propose some answers to the first question and on the next page ("English Heritage") I will propose an answer to the second question.
Second question: Historical records show that Shattockes originated from England's west country, particularly in west Somerset and the border village of North Molton in north Devon. Shattockes are not found anywhere else in England prior to the 16th century. Some evidence points to our origin in the village of North Molton, on the border of Devon and Somerset as the home village. Other evidence points to the upper part of the Tone valley in West Somerset. This is the second question I am going to try to answer.
Let's dig deeper into the evidence.
Ancient Origins
When did our first ancestor become England's newest citizen? To answer that we need to retrace our most ancient ancestors' migration out of Africa.
Y16884 branches off the dominant paternal lineage of Western Europe, R1b, also known as M343. Around 200,000 years ago our ancestors began a long migration that ended up in in the south of England, before more recently emigrating to the former English colonies. We carry the story of that migration in the male Y-chromosome members of our family.
Migration path of our ancestors.
Our La Tène Ancestors
Reconstruction of the house your 93rd great-grandfather lived in.
The Earliest Shattocke Records
The John Shattock Will of 1533
Res.—Alice my wyff.
Overseer.—John Sauser.
Witn.—Thos. Smyth, Thos. Gymmose.
Is Thomas Shattocke of Bishop's Hull the founder of the Shattocke family? By the beginning of parish records in 1538 there were a number of multi-generational Shattocke families in villages in west Somerset and in the village of North Molton in Devon, on the border between Devon and Somerset. So it seems unlikely Thomas Shattocke was the original founder. But he was probably the son, grandson or great grandson of the founder who lived in the 14th century. If he was not the founder, he may have heard stories of his grandfather or great grandfather.
The Spelling of the Surname
The Manor of Taunton Deane tenants list provides a date for the earliest spelling of the name found on record. However there is an alternate version of the name found in the parish records of North Molton, Devon on the border with Somerset: Shatticke. The date is almost 100 years later, 1542. But it is possible Shattickes had been present in North Molton in the previous century.
The Shattick Version
The Shadduck Version
The Chaddock Surname
Philip Chaddock has discovered Chaddocks belong to subclades U106 and U198. It is thought U106 people descend from Germanic tribes that inhabited what is modern day Denmark and northern Germany. They are part of a distinctly different migration of early peoples into Europe than Shattocke ancestors. This makes Chaddockd very different in their ancestral origin than Shattockes. The bottom line is that people who are descendants of Chaddocks and other variants in the north of England are not genetically related to West Somerset Shattockes who belong to the entirely different branch of the human family, Z36.
The Chadwick or Shadwick Surnames
The Chadwick and Shadwick surnames have sometimes been mixed up with Shattocke variants in places like Dorset or New England. The Instow and Frithelstock branches of the family have Shadwick variations and Lemuel Shattuck mentions Shadwick as a version of Shattuck. But DNA tests of descendants of Chadwicks or Shadwicks from English areas north like Lancashire have proven that their ancestors are not even remotely related to Shattockes of south western England. The mix up in names occurs especially often in places like New York state where incoming immigrants in colonial times, arriving with heavy accents, often had their names recorded incorrectly. In two different cases I have examined, one Shaddock was actually a Polish immigrant and the other was a Chadwick from Lancashire.
There are very early records of a surname "Saddok" in the patent rolls and various legal documents dating back to 1288 AD in the county of Berkshire. John, son of Richard Saddock is a tenant on the Stroud farm in the civil parish of Bray in the county of Berkshire in that year. There is a long history of the Saddok family in the county, with its most prominent member, Andrew Saddok, the rector of Whyte Waltham, a parish in Berkshire. He was apparently a man of property and wealth, as "Andrew Saddok and Richard Hanard owned an interest in the Earley Batholomew manor as of 1344 until 1355." The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland lists Saddok as possible early form of Shattocke, although Saddok has an obscure origin. It is possible, and the earliest reference to the name happens to coincide with the estimated date when the common ancestor of all Shattockes lived. The name disappears from the records about the time Shattocke begins appearing in parish records in west Somerset. I have collected the references to the Saddok family in a subpage of this one. One reference spells the name "Saddock." If Saddok or Saddock is an early form of the Shattocke name, then the proximity of the county of Berkshire to London might support the theory of an early immigrant to England from Europe, since London was a major entry point, and the family could have migrated in a south west direction.
I found a few references to the Saddok name in contemporary sources. The surname apparently is Arabic in its modern form.
Captain Shaddock and The Forbidden Fruit
Philip Chaddock's Y-DNA does not match any Shaddocks that have been tested against him. At this time we have not found a genetic link between Chaddocks and Shaddocks. I believe this is a case where two similar sounding names with completely different family genealogies have been confounded.
Parrishs (and Byars or Byas)
In Shaddocks, Shaddicks and Shattucks who have been Y-DNA tested, numerous individuals with the surnames "Parrish, Byers, Byars and Byas" show up as matches, meaning they are closely related to our family. By "closely" I mean in the past 600 years. They are our very distant cousins, people we are more closely related to than all the other human beings on the planet. Advanced SNP testing has shown we share a common ancestor with them who lived in the 15th century. And it appears the Parrish ancestor split off from the Shattockes about 1600 AD. Byas or Byars and its variants may have branched off of Parrishs.
The YFull SNP interpretation service has assigned the Parrishs to the subclade of Y16884 called A8033. It is important to note that the date of formation of this subclade (1600 AD) is estimated from Parrishs who have tested so far. If additional Parrishs or Byars do SNP testing that date will become more accurate.
My best guess is that the Parrishs and Byars in our family came from a NPE event in Virginia. This guess is based on the date of the common ancestor (1600) and the fact they are found exclusively in the southern states of America and most trace their ancestors back to Viriginia.
All but a few A8033 Parrishs and Byars have a unique genetic signature. They have 13 repeats for their DYS444 STR marker. This suggests a single common ancestor for all Parrishs and Byars or Byas descendants.
You can download a Phylogenetic Tree of the Parrish family here.
The Etymological Evidence: Shatticke and Shattocke
The DNA evidence cannot pinpoint a window of time for the immigration of a Shattocke or Shattockes into England, and no medieval document has been found that unequivocally identifies such a time period. But there is another way of determining the time frame. That is found in the etymology of the Shattock name.
Etymological studies have long treated the Shattock name as having a German origin. Specifically it belongs to the West German branch of the Germanic languages, the others being the North Germanic and the extinct East Germanic languages. In "An Etymological Dictionary of Family and Christian Names" by William Arthur (1857) he has the following entry for the Shaddock name (page 32):
Shaddick. G. Schadeck ; a p.n.
• Switzerland 16
• Luxembourg 9
• Germany 8
• Netherlands 2
• Belgium 1
Some have argued for a Middle English origin of the name. But etymologists since the 19th century have given the name a West Germanic origin, and some have theorized that it was originally "Schadeck." In fact the parish records of North Molton show "Shatticke" as the earliest form of the name, enduring down to the present in the alternate spelling of the surname, "Shaddick." And modern Shaddicks all originate from ancestors in North Molton. The question of where the common ancestor of Shattockes lived in the 14th century is open to question, so it is at least possible that the original form of the surname was "Shatticke."
What is the evidence for an origin in North Molton? The earliest record of the name in North Molton is found shortly after parish records began in 1542. This suggests Shattickes were already living in North Molton in 1542. Nineteenth century etymologists, studying genealogical sources, considered Shaddick to be the closest modern form of the original spelling, presumably "Shatticke." And they considered Shaddick to be derived from the West German "Schadeck" surname. This raises an important caveat to the etymological study of our surname. Do we use "Shatticke" or "Shattocke" for etymological studies of the origin of the surname? For these reasons I agree with Dr. McClure when he ways the Shattocke name is "obscure" from the point of view of etymology.
Etymological studies of the Shattocke or Shatticke name are useful forms of evidence, but ultimately the two basic questions about our origins are going to be answered through DNA mutational analysis. DNA testing shows that Shattockes and our genetic cousins the Parrishs and Byars share a common ancestor who lived in the 14th century. Study of parish records and other documents show an origin of Shattockes in northern Devon and western Somerset. According to the DNA evidence we do not have relatives in Britain or Ireland. Our common ancestor with other La Tène Celts lived 4300 years ago in the Alpine mountains of Europe.
Further evidence is that all six branches of the family have as their common ancestor Y16884, the ancestor bearing the SNP mutation sometime in the middle of the 14th century. All but one of the six branches of the family discovered so far bear a variation of the name "Shattocke." (The Byars / Parish branch is most likely a Shattocke NPE.) This suggests a single founder with the name "Shattocke." If our ancestors emerged from the early or middle ages you would expect to discover other surnames that are genetically related to us. Why are there six branches of the family with the surname Shattocke or Shatticke and no other surname variant? Because we are descended from an individual with the Shattocke surname.
• Parish records
I have added all these references to my Word document
• Old Cleeve 1
• Stogumber 7
• Crowcombe 2
• West Bagborough 1
• Bishop's Lydeard 3
• Taunton 1
• Staplegrove 3
• Norton Fitzwarren 3
• Milverton / Runnington 2
• Kingston St. Mary 1 ?
• Wivelescombe 1 ?
• Stoke St. Gregory 1 ?
• London 1 ?
From this list it can be seen that the most populous Shattocke village was Stogumber in the upper part of the Tone valley with seven male Shattockes 18 years old or older. When Stogumber is lumped in with nearby villages, it appears nearly forty percent of Shattockes were in the upper part of the Tone valley. The Taunton / Staplegrove / Norton Fitzwarren area is the second most populous area with nine Shattockes. The third most populous area appears to be Bishop's Lydeard with three Shattockes, although there is some evidence that Bishop's Lydeard should be lumped in with Staplegrove as Dea found a will that shows an early 17th century founder in Staplegrove had relatives in Bishop's Lydeard. In the DD\SP/1630/18 will in the archive at South West Heritage in Norton Fitzwarren, Henry Shattocke of Staplegrove has a will in 1638 where he distributes part of his estate to John and William Shattocke in Norton Fitzwarren, formerly of Bishop's Lydeard.
Again, it seems that the DNA evidence is in accordance with this distribution of Somerset Shattockes into three main groups. The Milverton Shattockes have a common ancestor. The Staplegrove Shattockes have a common ancestor. The Upper Tone Valley Shattockes have a common ancestor. There is a Shattock (Dr. Michael Shattock) who belongs to a fourth branch of the family, although preliminary evidence is that he is a Bishop's Lydeard Shattock.
There was one Shattocke who is found in Protestation Returns for the Wareham area of Dorset, with the name John Shatticke. This is a North Molton spelling of the surname. (However we should treat evidence from early Dorset and London parish records with a degree of caution. Chaddocks, who have a similar sounding last name to ours, are not genetically related to us and come from northern England, especially Lancashire. They seem to have been a seafaring people, because you find them in London and Dorset early on. There is at least one family in London where the parish record records them initially as Chaddocks and later their children are baptized Shaddock.)
Fifty-seven Shattockes, Parrishs and Byars have DNA tested and fall into the six branches. The sampling has been done with Shattockes and our genetic cousins throughout the world. All 57 Shattockes have the 14th century Shattocke ancestor Y16884 as their common ancestor. There are no ancestors of Y16884 that have appeared in what is a pretty good sampling of the population. This is additional support for the theory that we descend from a German speaking immigrant to England circa 1350.
The tenants list for the Manor of Taunton Deane seems to show that there was only one Shattocke family by 1500 in the area. But tenants lists for other manors in Somerset apparently do not exist. Is it possible that the Thomas Shattocke on the Taunton tenant's list had other male children that dispersed to other areas of Somerset and as far afield as North Molton in Devon? The 16th century parish records are somewhat unreliable. Parish records were not mandated until 1538 and some parishes did not comply until late into the 16th century. Records have become lost or are illegible. This is a list of villages that had Shattocke families and the date when the first child in the family was baptized or another type of record like a tax record or will indicated the presence of a family.
• Tolland 1525 - 1
• Taunton 1533 - 1
• North Molton 1542 - 1
• Milverton 1549 - 1
• Stogumber 1560 - 2
• West Bagborough 1560 - 1
• Fitzhead 1576 - 1
• Cannington 1577 - 1
• Wivelescombe 1582 - 1
• Wedmore 1584 - 1
• Crowcombe 1595 - 1
• Bishop's Lydeard 1599-1
The evidence shows few Shattocke families in Somerset in the early 16th century, though we cannot dismiss entirely the idea that missing records may be the main culprit. It is difficult to tell from this study of the parish records if Thomas Shattocke from the Tenant's list of 1450 was the founder of all subsequent Shattock branches.
What we do know is STR DNA results for those six branches of the family. They do not appear to share any signature markers suggesting the branches diverged earlier than the late 15th century. A case in point: We know that the founder of the Massachusetts Shattucks, William Shattuck (ca. 1622-1672) was born in Somerset before his pilgrimage to the Massachusetts Bay colony. Bob Shattock, who belongs to the Australian branch of the Southwark - London Shattocks, shares the SNP mutation with the Shattucks of America, indicating a common ancestor with them. He shares only a few signature STR markers with his distant relatives. So his common ancestor with the Shattucks must have lived early in the 16th century, or possibly the 15th century. One result suggests 1540. Because Bob and the Massachusetts Shattucks share no signature STR markers with any other branch of the Shattocke family and his common ancestor is Y16884 in the 14th century, it is possible the Massachusetts and Southwark London Shattockes split off from the family before Thomas Shattocke who is on the 1450 Manor of Taunton tenants list.
As a passing note, Bob Shattock's extended STR markers are additional, and perhaps final, proof that the South Carolina Shattucks are descended from William Shattuck (ca. 1622-1672) the founder of Shattucks in America. The South Carolina Shattucks have the Massachusetts Shattuck signature markers that Bob's Australian Shattocks lack. Take a look at the currently uploaded family spreadsheet, which has been revised with Bob's extended STR results.
All the other branches of the family appear to be similarly divergent, sharing no signature STR markers among them. I think the plague probably wiped out the missing links between the branches of the Shattocke family, although it is possible that a descendant will be tested in the future that supplies one or more missing links.
The Story Continues
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Bermuda is a self-governing British overseas territory in the Atlantic Ocean north of the Caribbean. Bermuda was first settled in 1609 by shipwrecked English sailors trying to get to Virginia. Then Bermuda became a popular destination for Americans escaping harsh winters. Today Bermuda has more gold courses per square mile than anywhere else and it is home to the smallest drawbridge in the world – 12 inches long and just wide enough for a sailboat to pass through. bermuda
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Case Study Leonardo Bridge Project
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• Published : November 22, 2003
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When Leonardo da Vinci designed a 240 meters bridge it would have been the longest bridge in
the world. His plan was ambitious. In 1502, a skeptical sultan rejected Leonardo's design as
impossible, but 300 years civilization finally embraced the engineering principle - arches as
supports - underlying the construction. The bridge has been constructed, in Norway.
Now instead of spanning the Bosporus , his visionary creation was destined to span 500 years as
a bridge to another millennium. Vebjorn Sand, the man behind the modern project, has a site
with images and details.
Leonardo Bridge Project
In 1502 Leonardo da Vinci did a simple drawing of a graceful bridge with a single span of 720-foot
span (approximately 240-meters.) Da Vinci designed the bridge as part of a civil engineering
project for Sultan Bajazet II of Constantinople (Istanbul.) The bridge was to span the Golden
Horn, an inlet at the mouth of the Bosphorus River in what is now Turkey. The Bridge was never built.
Leonardo's "Golden Horn" Bridge is a perfect "pressed-bow." Leonardo surmised correctly that
the classic keystone arch could be stretched narrow and substantially widened without losing
integrity by using a flared foothold, or pier, and the terrain to anchor each end of the span. It was
conceived 300 years prior to its engineering principals being generally accepted. It was to be 72
feet-wide (24 meters), 1080-foot total length (360 meters) and 120 feet (40 meters) above the
sea level at the highest point of the span.
Norwegian painter and public art creator, Vebjørn Sand, saw the drawing and a model of the
bridge in an exhibition on da Vinci's architectural & engineering designs in 1996. The power of the
simple design overwhelmed him. He conceived of a project to bring its eternal beauty to life. The
Norwegian Leonardo Bridge Project makes history as the first of Leonardo's civil engineering
designs to be constructed for public use.
Vebjørn Sand took the project to the Norwegian Public Roads Administration. Though hardly a
visionary organization, when Sand presented the project the reaction was unanimous. "Everyone
on the project knew we would be making something more than another boring bridge," Sand
says of his meetings with government officials, "We would be making history."
On the Project, Vebjørn Sand successfully collaborated with a professional team of engineers and
architects to test the build-ability of the design. Numerous sites were considered all over Norway
until the right one was found in the township of Ås spanning E-18, the highway linking Oslo and
Stockholm. Fundraising for the project also became a major responsibility for Sand. The next five
years required the ability to sustain the vision while building coalitions to undertake the
construction of what the Norwegian press would call "Vebjørn Sand's Leonardo Project."
The Norwegian Leonardo Bridge Project did not easily fall into place. Vebjørn Sand's celebrity in
Norway rests on his reputation as a young painter of considerable ability who gleefully joined the
public debate over the issue of the dominant Modernist orthodoxy. Sand supports rigorous
technical mastery required of classical art training. The Norwegian art academies no longer taught
those skills. As the Leonardo Bridge Project developed, this debate continued to grow more
heated in the Norwegian press. Sand's conceptual tribute to the Renaissance thinkers, and
Leonardo's vision, came under scathing criticism. Some said the bridge belonged in Disneyland;
others accused Vebjørn Sand of being a fascist.
Conceptually, Vebjørn Sand sees the project as a vivid meeting between the functional and
esthetical worlds. It is a reminder that the technology the human race has come to consider a
necessary part of daily life, was...
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What is a Functioning Alcoholic?
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A functioning alcoholic is someone with a dependence on alcohol who manages to maintain a high level of function. This is not an official medical term and is in use by laypeople to describe alcoholics who do not fit the stereotypes associated with alcoholism. Functional alcoholics, as they are also called, are dependent on alcohol but mask it with their professional and personal successes. Often, it is not until a crisis situation occurs that the alcoholic is diagnosed and receives treatment.
When someone is a functioning alcoholic, the person consumes a high volume of alcohol on a regular basis and can experience medical problems associated with alcohol dependence like liver damage, general malaise, and malnutrition. Obsessive thoughts about alcohol are common, and the alcoholic may count down the time until the next drink, refuse to attend events where drink is not served, and experience blackouts.
However, the functioning alcoholic may also hold down a job, often a high powered and stressful one. Functioning alcoholics can be active with their families, contribute to their communities, and appear, on the surface, to be healthy, well-balanced individuals. Their alcohol consumption may be noted, but not addressed, because people believe it is not an issue, since the person's life does not seem to be in a state of disruption as a result of alcohol dependence.
With no one to comment about alcohol consumption, a functioning alcoholic can remain in a state of denial and will generally not seek treatment for alcohol dependence or abuse, as the person doesn't think there is a problem. An event like a drunk driving citation, a mistake at work while drunk, or a similar crisis precipitates a reevaluation of the person's life and may reveal the alcohol problem. The crisis can lead to treatment, but not in all cases; excuses are often made for functioning alcoholics and the event may be attributed to a one-time lapse in judgment.
It is not uncommon for functioning alcoholics to be very bright, driven, and motivated individuals. They may be reluctant to seek treatment because they don't want to show weakness or they are afraid of the career consequences of going to a treatment facility. The people around them may not believe that they have an alcohol problem, and this can contribute to the denial associated with functioning alcoholism.
Doctors can screen for signs that someone is a functioning alcoholic by asking how much alcohol the person consumes, whether the person has obsessive thoughts about drinking, and checking for physical signs. However, this screening must be conducted with care, as the patient may lie or obscure details to maintain denial about the alcoholism.
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Post 2
I came from an alcoholic family myself, and I'd say my mother was a functional alcoholic and my dad was not. My mom could still keep the house clean and cook meals and pay our bills, but my dad could barely walk from the bedroom to the kitchen sometimes. She understood she had a drinking problem, and she would make a point of sobering up before going out in public.
I don't know how many of her friends really knew how much she drank at home. She could act very normal at a point when others would have been slurring their words or stumbling. The thing about functional alcoholism is that other people may have a hard time believing there's a real problem. I tried to stage an alcoholic intervention with her friends when I got older, but they thought I was overreacting and wouldn't participate. She finally died from liver disease caused by her alcoholism.
Post 1
My dad was a functioning alcoholic, although we didn't realize it at the time. We knew he had a drinking problem, because there was always cases of beer or bottles of whiskey in the house. He would get very drunk on the weekends, but I rarely saw him miss a day of work during the week. He'd be miserable on Monday mornings, but I thought that was normal for everybody. I didn't want to get up on Monday morning, either.
I thought he had things under control until his boss called the house and asked to speak to my mother. She started crying after a few minutes and hung up the phone. I found out later that my dad's
boss discovered some empty bottles in my dad's desk at work and the company had a very strict policy on alcohol in the office. Dad got a written reprimand and an unpaid week off, and that's when we realized how bad it was.
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Deep Learning: Artificial Neural Networks with Python How To Learn Online
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Neural Network R codes in Power BI Part2
In this post I will show how to apply neural network in a scenario in R and how to see the results and hidden layers in a plot. As you can see in the below picture number 2,3 and 4,data is not in a same scale, we need to do some data normalization before applying any machine learning. Next, I am going to call a package for Neural network that has been used a lot, name as "neuralnet". The only changes is to add parameter "Hidden" to the neural net function (number 1).
Will Apache Spark Finally Advance Genomic Data Analysis?
The last decade or so has shown massive advancements in the capabilities of storage and data processing like Apache Hadoop and as these big data technologies have grown, so have their uses. Cotton Seed, senior principal software engineer at Broad Institute said that he and his team use genomic research platform they built on Spark, leveraging its SQL querying function and its library of machine learning algorithms. Spark's speed and scalability for data mining and genomic data analysis have made it the number one player in genomics. Overall, Spark has given genomic data analysis the answer it's needed in running real time data seamlessly through a system and offering batch processing applications that are faster than any other platform out there.
Learning about the world through video – twentybn – Medium
A few notable exceptions, like DeepMind's recently released Kinetics dataset, try to alleviate this by focusing on shorter clips, but since they show high-level human activities taken from YouTube videos, they fall short of representing the simplest physical object interactions that will be needed for modeling visual common sense. To generate the complex, labelled videos that neural networks need to learn, we use what we call "crowd acting". Predicting the textual labels from the videos therefore requires strong visual features that are capable of representing a wealth of physical properties of the objects and the world. The videos show human actors performing generic hand gestures in front of a webcam, such as "Swiping Left/Right," "Sliding Two Fingers Up/Down," or "Rolling Hand Forward/Backward."
Deep Learning with TensorFlow in Python
Let's first learn about simple data curation practices, and familiarize ourselves with some of the data that are going to be used for deep learning using tensorflow. After preprocessing, let's peek a few samples from the training dataset and the next figure shows how it looks. Here is how the test dataset looks (a few samples chosen). Let's first train a simple LogisticRegression model from sklearn (using default parameters) on this data using 5000 training samples.
Visualizing Time-Series Change
To evaluate the different methods for visualizing change, I chose to examine population data from the three major North American countries. The chart above shows population of the United States, Mexico, Canada, and North America as a whole (including Central America and the Caribbean). While plotting change in absolute units allows us to make comparisons within specific datasets, it is not particularly effective for comparing change across datasets with vastly different scales. As a Managing Consultant, Data Science for FI Consulting, Nick creates data science solutions for financial institutions.
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Household cleaning product (stain remover)
Be thankful for the presence of chemistry as it is here to help us remove our stains. Many different molecules are present in stain removers and detergents to help remove grease and dirt, and they have different functions.
Stains can be grouped into several groups: enzymatic, oxidisable, greasy, and particulate. In reality, a stain will have a few components, which may fall into more than one of these categories. As such, stain removers have multi-functions (a mixture of all of the agents), to remove these multi-component stains.
Enzymatic stains are mostly made up of proteins, which includes blood stains and human sweat. Enzymes present in stain remover can be used to break down the protein. Proteases will break down proteins by breaking down the larger molecules into smaller, soluble molecules. Other molecules (fats and starch) that can be broken down by enzymes (lipase and amylase).
Brightly coloured stains is in the oxidisable stain category. These include stains like tea and coffee, as well as red wine. Stain removers contain bleaching agents, most often hydrogen peroxide, which breaks down colour-causing sections of chemical structures, removing the appearance of the stain. The hydrogen peroxide(gas) is usually in the form of sodium percarbonate(solid), which releases hydrogen peroxide when dissolved in water.
However, hydrogen peroxide does not function well at removing stains below 40˚C. It is not an issue if one is washing at or above that temperature, but if you’re washing below, or just wanting to use your stain remover on carpet or furnishings, the hydrogen peroxide needs to get some extra help- an addition of tetraacetylethylenediamine(TAED). TAED reacts with hydrogen peroxide to produce peracetic acid, which makes it a stronger bleaching agent as compared to hydrogen peroxide.
Oils and grease can be broken down by lipase enzymes but they are primarily removed by the use of surfactants. These are commonly long carbon chain compounds with a charged water-soluble ‘head’ and an oil-soluble ‘tail’. Generally, they are either named ‘cationic surfactants’, ‘anionic surfactants’, or ‘nonionic surfactants’ on the stain remover bottle. It refers to the charge on the molecule’s ‘head’. A cationic surfactant has a positive charge, an anionic surfactant a negative charge, while a nonionic surfactant is electrically neutral.
These surfactants remove oil and grease by forming structures called ‘micelles’ around them. The oil-soluble parts of the molecule dissolve in the oil or grease, forming a spherical structure around the oil droplet. The water-soluble parts of the surfactant molecule then stick outwards, which means that that the micelles will be able to dissolve in water, allowing the greasy stain to be removed.
Last but not least, we have particulate stains. There are compounds in the stain remover which are also known as ‘Builders’. These compounds primarily help to soften the water during washes by removing positive metal ions (mainly calcium and magnesium ions) from the water. It is also useful in removing soil stains from clothes, as these stains are often bound to fabrics by calcium ion bridging. Removing the calcium ions therefore helps remove the dirt.
Washing detergents is commonly uses sodium triphosphate as a builder, but due to concerns about its excessive release into the environment, many companies have now swapped it with other agents, such as sodium carbonate or zeolites. Zeolites are crystalline aluminium silicates, inorganic structures that is ready to bond with calcium and magnesium ions. They also possess a number of advantages over other builders, such as inhibiting dye transfer during washes. Generally, builders help improve the cleaning action of other chemicals in the detergent, by preventing cations combining with other charged molecules, such as surfactants. They can also help prevent the redeposition of dirt onto fabrics once it has been removed.
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Difference between a 2 strokeand a 4 stroke engine
Discussion in 'General Questions' started by greguk, Oct 17, 2007.
1. greguk
greguk Member
What's the difference between a 2 stroke
and a 4 stroke engine?
A 4 stroke engine usually has a distributor that supplies a spark to the cylinder only when its piston is near TDC on the compression stroke, ie. one spark every two turns of the crank shaft. Some 4 stroke engines do away with the distributor and make sparks every turn of the crank. This means a spark happens in a cylinder that just has burnt gasses in it. This just means the sparkplug wears out faster.
This from Michael from BIGENZ:
Most of what is written below on advantages and disadvantages of 2 strokes Vs 4 strokes is not actually correct! Take for example the lubrication issue of 2 stroke engines, sure small chainsaw engines may have the oil mixed with the fuel but this is not a direct result of the engine being a 2 stroke, this is just a result of someone designing a very simple engine. look at any large Caterpillar, or Detroit 2 stroke they have conventional oil sumps, oil pumps and full pressure fed lubrication systems and they are 2 stroke!!! also the argument about valves of 4 strokes Vs reeds and ports of 2 strokes is also incorrect. Sure some simple 2 strokes may use very primative systems to achieve the conrol of fuel/air mixture into the engine and exhaust out of the engine but again this is not a function of them being 2 stroke! I've worked on 2 stroke engines that feature poppet valves in the head (like a standard 4 stroke) - but they are definately 2 stroke - it's just that engines like this are not so much in the public eye - next time an ocean liner (ship) pulls into port check out its 2 stroke, turbo charged, direct injected diesel engine!! Finally the arguments of simplicity, weight, power to weight, and cost of manufacturing are not a funtion as such of 2 stroke Vs 4 stroke engines. The mistake of most of these commentaries is that they are comparing a simple chainsaw 2 stroke engine Vs a complex 4 stroke engine from a automobile - not a very fair comparision. As far as emmisions of 2 strokes - check out the Surrich/Orbital 2 stroke design that Mercury outboards are using - this is as clean burning as any 4 stroke.
The ONLY correct comparison below of 2 strokes Vs 4 strokes is that a 2 stroke can (in theory) produce twice the power of a 4 stroke for the same sized engine and the same revs.
As for the diagram [in the Snowmobiles episode of Scrapheap Challenge] - sure small 4 stroke engines do tend to "waste fire" the spark plug at the end of the exhaust stroke but this would not cause an explosion as depicted in the diagrams, but again here the idea of "waste firing"has noting to do with the 4 stroke cycle, rather it is a result of the simple design of a lawnmower motor. The diagrams should depict the inherant differances of a 2 stroke and 4 stroke engine. Hence one should show a firing every revolution and the other a firing every 2 revolutions.
- Two-stroke engines produce more pollution.
And from Jonne's page: Why 4-stroke beats 2-stroke
First some explanation on how the 4-stroke engine works:
When the piston moves down fresh air and gas is sucked inside the cylinder from the carburettor. When the piston moves up again the valves are closed and the air is being compressed. When the piston reaches it's highest position the sparkplug produces a spark that ignites the fumes and causes an explosion. Because of the power of the explosion the piston is pushed back. When the piston moves back up again the exhaust valve is open and the fumes are pushed out the cylinder. Now the whole process restarts (exactly after 4 strokes. That's why we call it a 4-stroke engine...Duh!).
The 2-stroke engine works a little different. It performs 2 strokes at the same time (twice) so after only 2 strokes the whole process restarts. A two stroke engine uses the space above and below the piston. Below the piston are fresh gasses, above the piston these gasses are ignited. Assume the piston is in the lowest position with fresh gasses in the cylinder above it. When the piston moves up, these gasses are compressed, but at the same time teh air pressure below the piston drops and fresh air is sucked inside. When the piston is in it's highest position the spark plug ignites the gasses and the piston is pushed down. About halfway down a channel from the fresh gasses to the exhaust gasses opens and a channel to the exhaust. Because of air pressure differences the fresh gasses flow inside the cylinder pushing the exhaust fumes out. Now the process starts again. As you can see this only took 2 strokes.
But which one is better?!? Of coarse "we" 4-stroke people say 4-stroke, but do you know why?? Probably not, so I'll explain. First I'll name some of the advantages of the 2-stroke engine over the 4-stroke engine.
* When the engine is reving at 10000rpm the 2-stroke engine ignites gasses 10000 times per minute while 4-stroke engines ignite only half. So it should have twice as much power, right?
* The 2-stroke engine does have channels for air transport but the piston opens and closes the channels, in a 4-stroke engine there are separate valves and a camshaft that do this. This means extra moving parts and a far more difficult cylinder head design. Because of this maintenance is more difficult.
* 2-stroke engines give more power. At 50cc races 2-stroke bikes can reach speeds of over 130km/h while 4-stroke bikes can hardly reach those speeds with 70cc!! The same applies to everyday use. When you remove some restrictors from a scooter it will go 80km/h. You won't reach these speeds with you're 4-stroke bike by just removing some restrictors.
What about the advantages of 4-stroke bikes? Are there any? OF COURSE! LOTS!!
* So what does a stock 2-stroke bike use? About 1 litre fuel per 35km. What does a stock 4-stroke bike use? About 1 litre fuel per 50km!
* 2-stroke bikes burn oil!! This absolutely doesn't give them more power and is of no use at all (for ignition purposes), all it does is clogg up the exhaust and smell bad! So why they do it? They have to lubricate the cylinder and cylinder channels big time or the engine will be wrecked...
* Look at the cylinder(head) of both engines. Notice the HUGH cooling fins on the 2-stroke engine. Heck, some of them even have forced air cooling or even water cooling.Did you burn the fuel for heat!?! I don't think so! 2-stroke bikes waste much more energy on heat than a 4-stroke bike does so the 4-stroke engine is much more energy efficient.
* Did you read the part on how the 2-stroke engine works?? Did you notice fresh fumes are used to push out the exhaust fumes?? Of course these two gasses will mix in that process, so or fresh fumes are pushed out too or exhaust fumes stay in, either way, it's bad and it sucks.
* Ever tried to speed up a 2-stroke bike?? So fast that it could do speeds of over 100km/h. If you have you know you have to add lots of extra oil to the fuel and even than it's a big problem to keep the engine running for let's say a couple of months without mayor engine damage, wasted cilinders and screwed up pistons. Take a 4-stroke engine on the other hand and it will keep running fine for months and months and months... without extra oil ;) The reason is that because of those channels in the cylinder it's much harder to keep it lubricated enough all the time. The 4-stroke engine doesn't have this problem because it has no channel in the cylinder.
* Have you ever drove on a Honda MT/MB or anything comparable with a fast cylinder? Did you notice it only had power between about 9000 to 12000 rpm?? Take a 4-stroke engine and it will have power from 1000 to 12000rpm. No problem! The reason is that such a 2-stroke cylinder has optimized airflow channels for that rpm range, outside that range the whole gas mixture gets screwed up big time. That's why those scooter engines always run at almost the same rpm. To optimize airflow, without that a 2-stroke engine looses a lot of it's power.
* Because of technical aspects the 2-stroke engine can only have it's intake channel open only half as long as the 4-stroke engine...What a pity :)
* Listen to the sound of both engines...Doesn't need further explanation I suppose.
Yeah, yeah, I know, 2-stroke bikes with the same displacement are faster, but look at it in another way. A 50cc racing 2-stroke engine will use over a litre per 10km. Now take a 4-stroke engine that uses the same amount of fuel. I guess you would end up with a 90cc or even a 106cc with a 26mm carb or something. No try beating such a machine with that crappy 50cc race bike thing :)
2. mate that was greta thanks... but still i like reliablity of the four stroke
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The preventive motive behind Pearl Harbor (War and Peace in East Asia, Lecture 9)
Sometimes lectures write themselves. Unsurprisingly, I like it when that happens.
Today, we focused on Japan’s decision to expand its regional war, focused on pacifying China through the late 1930s, into a global war by attacking not only Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 but, in the same timeframe, Thailand, Malaya, The Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, Hong Kong, and the International Settlement at Shanghai. Knowing that the first target would likely draw the United States into the war—though hoping to cause a significant delay—why would Japan turn some of its focus away from its main theater in China?
This won’t come as much of a surprise to IR folks, but Paine’s account of the decision framed it quite well as an escalation of the war driven by a commitment problem—specifically, the fact that the United States, which has been mobilizing for a while and had embarked on building a two-ocean navy, would soon outstrip Japan in naval power; Japan’s leaders calculated roughly even odds of defeating the United States by late 1941, given their respective shipbuilding programs and future potential, followed by a sharp decline—which would allow the US to prevent the fall of China, which Japan had long viewed as critical to its survival as a great power.
In fact, the United States made a series of peace proposals before December’s attack, most of which involved withdrawals from China—but which, ex post, were clearly preferable to the outcome of the war. Why didn’t Japan cut such a deal? Paine is worth quoting here:
[P]eace on American terms, entailing a withdrawal from China, would lead to the gradual impoverishment of Japan and would undo the efforts of generations of Japanese to transform their country into a modern power. War with the United States, on the other hand, offered a 50-50 chance of success (p. 185)
In other words, cutting a deal would allow US power in the region to grow unchecked, and such increased power could be used, down the road, to force Japan out of China anyway. If the worst outcome of a war would be similar, then rolling the dice before military prospects got worse—as Japan’s leadership expected—might’ve looked pretty attractive.
Interestingly, we’ve also got a story about the timing of war in the shadow of shifting power, but rather than the typical rising-declining state story, we’ve got one where in the late 1930s Japan expects to improve in the short term—so it waits before attempting a knockout blow—but to decline in the long term. So while some work finds that there’s no particular time during a shift in power that’s more war-prone than others, I wonder if taking a step back temporally, considering a short-term versus long-term changes in power, might alter those expectations…
One thought on “The preventive motive behind Pearl Harbor (War and Peace in East Asia, Lecture 9)
1. Pingback: Fighting “unwinnable” wars (WWI in Real Time, Lecture 10) | The Wolf Den
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BY HANNAH RENTZ – u0991445
This product is a stacking shape game, made for children to determine which wooden shape is stacked on which set of pegs. The game/puzzle set is designed to help develop dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and shape recognition. The toy is completely made of wood, with no flashing lights or electronic pieces, and the shape pieces are painted red, green, yellow, and blue. It is titled to be targeted toward toddlers from ages three to five. This product is interesting because it doesn’t utilize electronics and flashing lights to entertain the toddler or grab their attention. This makes this toy unique in this day and age.
From the ages of three to five, children are reaching many milestones when it comes to social behaviors, communication, dexterity, comprehension, and balance. At this point, they begin to learn even more deeply by experience and trial and error. Conversations between the child and caretakers become even more in depth and intricate, and learning by conversation becomes easier. Now that they have a greater concept of depth, shapes, and concepts.
In the research article I found, it discusses children’s use of inquiry and questioning to learn. However it also reports that children preschool-age rarely come to conclusions about their questions themselves through the use of things like observation and predictions (Hollingsworth 187). Therefore, through the use of this toy, the children may be able to discover things of their own doing, instead of asking others. They can also explore the variations of what they can do with the toy instead of just asking about you.
This product doesn’t directly apply itself to the main types of learning and growth that three to five year olds utilize. Where children this age are beginning to use their language skills to learn and utilize information in the world, this toy focuses more on dexterity and hand-eye coordination that is learned in earlier years and months. However, due to the smaller size of this toy, it is not necessarily safe in the use of small children that would be learning hand-eye coordination and dexterity. At that age, children also tend to put things in their mouths in order to understand and sense the world.
In conclusion, this toy does work just fine for children from ages three to five; however, it does nothing to help encourage the social and communicative growth for that age group. It does help with coordination and imaginative play, however, that is not necessarily necessary for the children. The puzzle-solving aspect of the toy is the only beneficial aspect of it.
Hollingsworth, Heidi L., & Vandermaas-Peeler, Maureen (2016). Almost Everything We Do Includes Inquiry’: Fostering Inquiry-based Teaching and Learning With Preschool Teachers. Taylor Francis Online, 1, 187.
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I'm going to try something a little different with this month's story. Instead of a photo of a dog trot cabin, I'm going to give you a model of one. First you download this big graphics file (It's big, one full meg). It might not all display on your browser, but you can drag it to your desktop and the whole thing (should be 8 x 10) will be there. Then you print it on cardstock at 300 dpi. You cut it out and paste it together and bingo, you've got yourself a 1/100th scale model of a genuine Arkansas dog trot log house with a porch. When finished it should look like this. Actually it should look better. I kind of slapped this one together just to make sure the pieces fit.
Through the magic of computers you can change the scale of your model. For example, 1/87 scale is popular with model railroaders. Just resize the graphics file to 115%, print and paste and you've got an HO scale model log house.
You can tell from the picture that a lot of the detail is just painted on. If you want to get intricate with the 3D details you certainly can. You can extend the ends of the logs. You can recess the windows, build out the frames, recess the gables, extend the eves over the loft beams. If you want to get really obsessive about it, you could print two sets of walls and paste them back to back so that the interior would show the log graphics as well. Knock yourself out.
The life model for this specific dog trot cabin can be found in the Murfreesboro city park.
In the 250 years from the earliest European settlement of Arkansas to about the beginning of the twentieth century, most non-Indian Arkansans lived in log houses. If you cruise around the state you'll see them. Half the cities in the state have a log house in a park or a public square as homage to our pioneer ancestors.
Nails cost money and so did milled lumber. And if you had money in 1830, you wouldn't come to Arkansas anyway. You would have bought yourself some good land in another part of the country. The Arkansas was the least desirable, least accessible, least hospitable part of the Louisianna Purchase. There were a few arable strips of bottomland along the rivers, but for the most part Arkansas was malarial swamp in the east and thin-soiled mountains in the west. Pioneers did not show up in Arkansas with a pocket full of silver. They had no Social Security, no health insurance, no 401k, no Roth IRA, no Pell grant, no Freddie Mac, no Fannie Mae and no student loan. What they got from the government was the promise that if they could hold the land they could keep it. It might be two miles to the nearest road and five miles down that to the nearest neighbor. What they did bring with them was their strong backs and a borrowed axe, and from dead scratch mud nothing they built a life for themselves out of what was in arm's reach.
The pioneers piled up logs to make walls, and they notched the logs to make them interlock so their own weight would hold them in place. This was called "saddle and notch" construction. If they had an adze and a drill in addition to an axe, they could hew the logs square and fit them together with pegs. The pegs were made of dried wood and holes were drilled in logs still green. As the logs dried, the holes shrank around the pegs, seizing them permanently. Peg and hole construction required more tools and more skill, but the cabin was tighter and didn't require so much chinking.
Chinking is the practice of plugging holes in your wall with clay or straw or pieces of old shirt or anything, really. Rough log construction left a lot of irregular cracks in the walls which had to be chinked, and since the chinking dried out and fell out and got blown out by storms and scratched out by varmints and insects, chinking was regular maintenance. The less you had to do, the more time you had to spend on other matters.
The chimney was the hardest and dirtiest part of making the cabin. If you could afford a wood stove you didn't mess with a chimney; and you'll notice the model doesn't have a chimney. Definitely the abode of a frontier aristocrat.
Building chimneys involved some guesswork. Remember you don't have any money so you don't have any proper cement, bricks or mortar. You're going down to the creek and hand carry to your building site a half ton of flat flagstone that you hope won't 1) explode when heated and/or 2) shift and collapse when the weather changes. You cut a hole in one wall and start stacking rocks around to make a fireplace. Most chimneys are rock topped with a wooden extension. The higher you stack your rocks, the more likely it is to fall over, but the less likely the upper wooden part is to catch fire from a long lasting spark. If your chimney is rock or brick all the way up, then you either got some mortar or you're some kind of expert rock balancer. Mud or clay is spread on as if it were mortar, but it adds little structural strength. It's mainly just sealing cracks. And by the way, next summer bees are going to burrow into that mud and make their homes there. Something to look forward to.
The basic design is the one room cabin. You make for yourself an enclosed rectangle of logs and you cut a hole in one wall so you can get in and out. The dog trot cabin is a compound of this design. The builder places two one-room cabins several feet apart with their front doors facing one another and covers them with a common roof. Not only does the breezeway provide shade and ventilation in the sweltering Arkansas summer, but walling in the dog trot quickly adds a third room to accommodate additions to the pioneer family.
On the subject of roofing, and bearing in mind that the pioneer had no money and no place to spend it if he had any, how did he make a roof to shed rain? The most primitive roof was made with parallel poles covered with slats split from raw timber. These slats were in effect large wooden shingles. They were laid overlapping on the roof poles and were held in place by the weight of sapling poles which were laid diagonally across them. Sleeping space was most often in the loft, so if the roof leaked you knew about it right away. According to Gerstaeker (note below) one man could build a one-room cabin from scratch in two days.
The disposition and purpose of the traditional rail fence changed with time. Before the Civil War settlers turned their cattle loose to forage in the woods. A fence was built surrounding the cabin not to keep livestock in but to keep it out. If you had no barn, the animals would seek shelter where they could find it. Goats will climb to the highest point they can reach, and that's a bad way to discover the disadvantages of having your shingles held on by the weight of sapling poles. Only the calf of your milk cow was kept inside the fence, a kind of lure that insured Elsie would come round on her own when her udder was full.
All this was fine as long as the population was sparse enough that your animals were not competing for forage with your neighbor's animals. At that point, in the couple of decades following the Civil War, people started arranging their fences to separate "my stuff" from "your stuff." The barn which before had customarily been built in front of the house, across the road and outside the fence was now being built behind the house and within the fence.
In the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" there's a scene in which a gruff north British character describes to his son how he had managed to build Swamp Castle against all advice and odds on absurdly inhospitable territory. Show that movie to a bunch of Arkansans and that scene evokes not laughter but misty-eyed nostalgia. A perpetual marginal existence is so assumed to confer nobility on the Arkansan that some of us are reluctant to do better for fear of disgracing the sacrifice of our ancestors.
Take for example our traditional ritual meal, the Arkansas seder, corn bread and turnip greens. These two items can be ordered in any diner in the state any time of year in spite of the fact that corn bread can be kind of bland and lots of people can't stand the bitter mineral bite of turnip greens. These plain foods, however, sustained our ancestors on the poorest of soils through the hardest of times, and to eat cornbread and turnip greens and pretend that you like them is to honor and acknowledge the hardiness and resilience, if not the good sense, of your great grandparents.
Right about here is where I start ranting and raving. If you didn't think the Unabomber Manifesto was funny, you probably won't care for the rest of this article either. This is your chance to hit the "back" button.
When we compare our lives today to those of our ancestors we find that we've become obsessive compulsive worker bees hurrying back and forth from flower to hive, socking away our paychecks. Then we pay someone to build our house. Then we pay some utility to heat and light our house. Then we pay a grocer to get our food for us. Then we pay our taxes so the police can protect us physically. Then we pay a daycare and preschool to raise our children for us. We daily run back and forth and back and forth to earn cash so that we can pay somebody to live the most basic elements of our lives on our behalf.
The basic elements of living, getting food, staying warm, making shelter, all that stuff has been replaced with a cash equivalent. For the last ten thousand years the trend of human civilization has been away from independence and toward interdependence, the surrendering of our daily functions to specialists and professionals. Doing this requires the consolidation of smaller social entities like families, clans and tribes into larger entities like city states, world religions, nations, corporations, empires and hegemonies, more efficient and requiring more organization and more central authority.
I could be overromanticizing the frontier. It was crazy dangerous and often unnecessarily so. Every house with a pot bellied stove had no restraints to prevent a child from putting his hand on it. My dad got his first knife when he was six years old and within 24 hours he had learned how not to cut himself. If you turned your first grader loose with pocket knife today the state would take that kid away from you. Help on the frontier was remote if it existed at all. The nearest cop or doctor could easily be a day's ride away. Your medicine was in the herbs you found in the woods and your cop was the shotgun you kept over the mantle. You were clean maybe once a week for a couple of hours. Disease bearing mosquitoes marauded all the warm months and you had no deet, no window screens, and remember that the millions of acres of fertile farm land you see today were skeeter-breeding swamps up until the 1930's. Our forefathers lived half their lives with pellagra and infestations of parasites, and the woods around their dogtrot cabins were home to wolves, mountain lions, bears and giant man-eating feral hogs. Those animals were capable of coming after you, but they'd be just as happy to eat your livestock or your food stores, which would be just as bad for you as if they had attacked you directly. Even something as trivial as a possum finding its way into your root cellar could result in serious hardship. Any little injury or infection or moment of carelessnes that today wouldn't even be noted in your diary could have been fatal to a frontier family a hundred years ago.
Today we've smoothed out life's rough edges, childproofed our cabinets and legislated away all the dangerous splinters of a rough-hewn dog trot house and we are infinitely safer and happier today than our ancestors were.
In a way.
Our ancestors lived in a personally dangerous environment and they were personally responsible for dealing with those threats and handling the occasional catastrophe. While every piece of playground equipment built today is coated with rubber so they'll never have to experience a splinter or bruise, our children face the prospect of instant wholesale incineration at the hands of people who have access to the best bunkers tax money can buy. The kinds of dangers we face today, from terrorist attacks to invisible industrial contamination to nuclear war, are rarely directly addressable by the individual. Our individual efforts against modern dangers are as futile as prayer was against polio before modern science came to our rescue. The threat is remote and without recourse, out of reach like a voodoo curse and grotesquely, massively destructive. We've saved ourselves from the naked Franklin stove and replaced it with newer, bigger horrors like the Nuke of Damocles, devised by the same technology and social institutions that require us to have seat belts in our cars.
Ironic, right?
All this extra safety we have bought for ourselves is an illusion. We have replaced concrete reality with conceptual equivalents in hopes of disguising modern dangers that can not be rectified and which our system seems unable to diminish. If a tree falls on our car, the company gives us the cash value of the car as determined by a computer. The cosmic balance is maintained. Terrorists kill 3000 on 9/11, the government determines the cash value of those people and issues checks to the families.
What was this article about, anyway? Oh yeah, dog trot cabins.
McKim, Jimmy; History of the Hunter Homestead in Van Buren County, Arkansas; Arkansas Historical Quarterly, vol. 12, pp 378-386; 1953.
Friedrich Gerstaeker in Arkansas; Arkansas Historical Quarterly, vol. 5 pp45-46; 1946.
Wiggington, Eliot; The Foxfire Book; pp 53-115; Doubleday and Company, Inc.; Garden City, NY 1972.
Arkansas Travelogue home page
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Various Timelines in Mold Making and Casting
b097cc38ab56401d463029e2069f56afThere are a lot of basic things that beginners need to know about working with mold making and casting materials like alginate, clay, plaster, polyurethane resin, silicone rubber, liquid latex rubber and thermoset mold rubber.
Pot time (or Pot Life) and cure time are routinely mentioned by mold makers and this determines everything from the quantity of a mold making or casting material that mold maker will mix in one go, to the amount of time it will take for the mold or cast to be complete and ready.
Let’s look at some of these terms:
Pot time – Also known as pot life, gel time or working time, this is the amount of time you have to work with the product after it is mixed until it starts to set. After this, the material will start getting viscous and cannot be applied properly. The working time varies widely for different materials – some may need to be used within minutes, whereas some may give you a window of even up to an hour. Therefore, you should only mix as much quantity of the base material with the catalyst or hardener as you can comfortably use within the given period. For instance, life casters mix small quantities of alginate,perhaps a pound at a time as it tends to set very quickly.
Cure time – This is the time that a material will take to completely set. It can range from a few hours to as long as a few days. It is generally measured at normal room temperature and can vary depending on the atmospheric and climatic conditions. At times, a hot air dryer or dehumidifier is used to hasten the cure time, like for plaster casting.
De-mold time – At times, the de-mold time may be different from the cure time. It means that the mold or cast has cured to the point that it can be removed from the object or mold without distortion. You are now free to use the object or mold again. However, keep in mind that the mold or cast is only partially cured at this time. The cure time is longer and you will have to wait for it to be properly cured to avoid getting smudges or fingerprints.
Shelf life – This defines the length of time that a product can be stored before it becomes unusable. It is like an expiry date beyond which the product starts deteriorating in quality and will not function as expected. It may start to set in the container or may not mix/cure properly when used. In simple terms, shelf life is an indication of how long you can expect a product to last on the shelf. It tends to vary depending on whether the container has been opened or not and also whether it is being stored properly as directed.
Pot time, cure time and shelf life are generally mentioned on the product containers and should be strictly adhered to at all times, irrespective of whether you are making alginate molds, silicone casts or plaster casting.
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Friday, 15 July 2011
The primacy of the Commons over the Lords - Part 1
The Commons is the dominant chamber of Parliament, though the House of Lords is conventionally referred to as the "upper house" (and Halsbury's Laws politely calls it the "senior" house). How did the predominance of the Commons originate?
The primacy of the House of Commons in the post-Cromwellian age goes back to resolutions passed in 1671 and 1678 that asserted the supremacy of the Commons in financial matters.
In 1700, the Commons wished to pass a particular bill, and combined it with a finance bill in order to require the Lords to pass it - a practice known as "tacking". The Lords initially resisted, and then gave way. As Macaulay put it in his History of England:
It was evident that on that question the Lords could not hope to have the country with them, and that, if a general election took place while that question was unsettled, the new House of Commons would be even more mutinous and impracticable than the present House.
Something similar happened during the lead-up to the signing of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. Queen Anne was persuaded to create 12 new Tory-leaning peers during the winter of 1711-1712 in order to ensure that the unpopular treaty would be approved by Parliament. A few years later, in 1719, an attempt to prevent this kind of flooding of the Lords by fixing the size of the chamber's membership failed to make it onto the statute book.
By 1713, then, three principles had been established:
1. The House of Lords could be forced to act against its will, both in financial matters and in other matters.
2. The House could be forced to act in accordance with the will of the House of Commons, and of the people.
3. One means of forcing it to act was through flooding the House with new peers.
These principles were reaffirmed in the controversy over the enactment of the 1832 Reform Act. The Lords abandoned its resistance to the will of the Commons in the face of a threat to create sufficient new Whig peers to force the passage of a reform bill. There was considerable popular anger at the Lords' intransigence, and this seems to have been a key factor in persuading the Tory statesman the Duke of Wellington in acquiescing in the bill. Wellington adopted a similar stance over Catholic emancipation and the repeal of the Corn Laws. In the last-mentioned case, a revealing anecdote is told about him:
"Bad opinion of the bill, my lord!" he said to a Protectionist peer; "you can't have a worse opinion of it than I have; but it was recommended from the throne, it has passed the Commons by a large majority, and we must all vote for it. The Queen's government must be supported." (T.Archer, Our Sovereign Lady: Queen Victoria (1887), 2.183)
Assuming that this quotation is authentic, Wellington was probably not articulating a general principle that the Lords was required to defer to the Commons and to the Government in all circumstances. He was, however, clearly accepting that the Lords' parliamentary role was in some sense a subordinate one.
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Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Taxes: Fair or Foul?
by John Médaille
Somewhere in the Analects of Confucius, the Master says that the first step in solving a problem is to call things by their right name. When things are mislabeled, it is very difficult to think about them correctly. On the other hand, if you do not wish people to think correctly about an issue, the first step is to mislabel things. If you deliberately wish to confuse people, you can start in no better place than to give things the wrong name. A name describes what a thing is, and if you wish to conceal from people what that thing is, then call it something it is not.
However, mislabeling things does give a clue to the fact that someone is trying to mislead you. If someone is afraid to call something by its right name, then they are afraid that people will find that thing fearful. Which brings us to the 30% National Sales Tax. I use this name because it describes what the thing is. But if you have not heard of it before, it is because the supporters of this idea do not call it by this name. They are afraid that any name which accurately describes it would certainly cause people to fear it. And I am afraid that they are right. The name they have chosen is one that gives an opinion about the tax, rather than describe what it is. One is certainly entitled to one's opinions; one is not entitled (this side of Karl Rove and George Bush) to misuse the language. And the opinion they have rendered on their own plan, the mislabel they have chosen for it, is the “Fair” Tax. I am not concerned, for the moment, with whether this opinion, rendered as a “name,” is accurate. My concern for the present moment is why they chose this particular bit of propaganda for their moniker.
The reason is simple: they have perceived, quite correctly, that fairness is a basic principle of a just tax system. Now, I do not know what standards the backers of this tax use to render the judgment of fairness on their plan. I have searched their web site ( in vain for a definition of “fairness.” So I will have to supply my own. And I believe that we can define fairness as justice.
But what is justice? Obviously, there are many different notions of what constitutes justice, but I believe that they all have one thing in common, namely the idea that what one gets should be proportional to what one gives, that one's rewards should be commensurate with one's contributions. There is not much dispute, I believe, about this principle. However, the devil is in the details. No one will quarrel with the proposition that if you spend a dollar, you should get a dollar's worth of goods; if you pay for a pound of ground beef, you should get a pound, and it wouldn't be just if the butcher had his thumb on the scales. This is justice in exchange, or what Aristotle called commutative or corrective justice. This kind of justice deals with exchanges between individuals or between firms acting like individuals.
But there is another kind of justice called distributive justice, which deals which how collective entities (a family, a company, or a state) distribute their corporate products to the individuals that make up that collective entity and contribute to it. And it is a fairly well established principle that rewards from the corporate entity (the state, in this case) should be distributed in proportion to the contributions each individual makes. Now, there are many different kinds of contributions to the common good (which is, or should be, the “product” of the state). There are soldiers to protect us, nurses and doctors to heal us, mothers to give us life and serve as our first teacher, entrepreneurs to create new wealth, and so forth. It is difficult to judge the relative merits of each of these contributions, but we know that life would be more precarious, or even impossible, without the contribution of each of these people. Hence we know that it is in our best interests to see that each person is properly rewarded for their contribution to our comfort and well-being.
There is another kind of contribution to the common good that we all make, one way or the other, and that is the contribution of money to pay for the whole thing. This brings us (at last) to the question of taxes. Who should pay, and how much? I think the answers are: “Everyone,” and “In proportion to the benefits they receive.” Now, we don't have to worry too much about the first point, since many taxes will be passed on, one way or another, in the prices we pay for things. Hence, everyone will pay, even if taxes are not directly collected from everyone. It is the second point that is the interesting one, since we receive different levels of rewards from society and from government. For example, the police are there to protect us in our persons and our property. Now, we all have the same “property” in ourselves and receive the same benefit (in theory) from police protection. But we have differing amounts of property in “things.” Some have very little, but others have a great pile of things, and derive greater benefit from the protection of those things. Clearly, they receive a greater benefit and should pay a larger proportion of the costs of police protection.
Now, even with a flat-tax, the rich will pay a greater amount, but should they also pay a greater proportion of their income? This brings us to the great debate about taxes: Should they be regressive (the poor pay a larger proportion of their incomes), flat (everybody pays the same percentage), or progressive (the rich pay a larger proportion of their income)? Each of these answers embodies a different ideal of justice. Here we cannot reduce things to a rule (as we could in the case of simplicity) but must make a judgment about what constitutes justice.
A regressive tax embodies the ideal of the ruling class as the leaders of society who should receive the bulk of the rewards. At its most extreme, regressive taxes express the ideals of a slave society, since you can regard the slave as someone who is taxed at a 100% rate, minus some “prebate” equal to the level of subsistence the that the master is willing to give to the slave. One would think that regressive taxes are excluded from a democratic society, but in fact many of our tax structures are regressive. Sales taxes are one example. Another is the differential rates of taxation for income from capital and labor. Labor is taxed at a higher rate than capital gains, which is regressive because the rich tend to make a higher percentage of their income from their capital rather than their labor.
A flat tax embodies abstract ideals of economic and political equality; each person is deemed to be rewarded by the economic system in a manner proportional to his or her efforts. As such, the flat-tax has some appeal from the standpoint of the ideals of equality. However, the evidence that people are rewarded in exact proportion to their contributions and productivity is weak at best, and flat contradicted at worst. Look at the following chart (click on the chart to get a clearer view).
What it shows us is that median wages (adjusted for inflation) have been flat since 1973. Yet in that same time-frame, productivity for all classes of workers has increased dramatically. What has happened is that one relatively small group has appropriated to itself all the gains arising from increased productivity; the connection between contributions and rewards has been broken. Now, while there may be good arguments for a flat tax in the case of taxes on wealth (land taxes, for example), these arguments are weak when applied to incomes, at least in the concrete situation in which we find our society. This is not only a violation of basic justice, but has deleterious practical consequences as well (see The Investor's Dilemma and The Investor's Dilemma II).
This would seem to leave progressive as the only system that would meet the standards of fairness and justice, at least, in our current situation. Those who receive a disproportionate share of the rewards should contribute a disproportionate share to the upkeep of the commonweal.
Both the 30% National Sales Tax and the Flat-Tax proposals make a nod in the direction of progressive taxation, the former by establishing a universal welfare program that prebates the sales taxes up to the poverty level, and the latter by a standard deduction equal to the poverty level. In the case of the Flat tax, the degree of progression is trivial. Further, since the tax only replaces the income tax and leaves the FICA taxes in place, it ends up being regressive. A worker will pay the 17% flat tax, plus the 7.65% payroll taxes. A self-employed person (like myself) will get a flat tax of 32.65%, which is close to the marginal rate for the richest Americans, and I am by no means rich. Further, since the FICA taxes stop at about $90,000, the resulting structure is regressive.
In the case of the National Sales Tax, "progression" is an outright lie. The “progression” comes only if you assume that the rich convert all of their income to consumption, which is patently untrue. At the extreme, a man like Warren Buffet has difficulty converting even 1% of his income into consumption; therefore his tax rate will equal 23% of 1%, or 0.0023% of his income. This is a rate more compatible with a class-based or even a slave society than with a democratic nation.
Obviously, there can be different judgments about justice; it is not something that can be calculated, but must resolve itself back to some basic, but “unprovable” notions about the kind of society we want. But I do believe that any discussion will have to take into account the factors that I have mentioned here, namely the proportion between the benefits one receives and the contributions one makes.
The Distributist Review
Interview with Thomas Storck
On Cooperative Ownership
John Médaille Interview in Romania
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Why the American Flag is Folded 13 Times
Have you ever noticed on TV or at military funerals that the honor guard pays meticulous attention to correctly folding the American flag 13 times? I've known how the 21 gun salute was determined (adding the individual digits of 1776), but only recently learned why the flag was folded 13 times when it is lowered or when it is folded and handed to the widow at the burial of a veteran. Here it is:
After the flag is completely folded and tucked in, it takes on the appearance of a cocked hat, ever reminding us of the soldiers who served under General George Washington, and the sailors and marines who served under Captain John Paul Jones, who were followed by their comrades and shipmates in the Armed Forces of the United States, preserving for us the rights, privileges, and freedoms we enjoy today. There are some traditions and ways of doing things which have deep meaning. You will see many flags folded in the coming weeks, and now you will know why.
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Monday, January 21, 2008
Veteran, 109, revisits WWI trench
The Germans suffered the same as we did
Harry Patch
Tuesday marks the anniversary of the start of the Battle of Passchendaele.
Badly wounded
Mr Patch served with the Duke of Cornwall's light infantry and was called up for service while working as an 18-year-old apprentice plumber in Bath.
He made the trip with historian Richard van Emden, who helped Mr Patch write down his memories.
Wreath laid
Mr van Emden showed him the five miles they advanced over 99 days which claimed 3,000 British casualties every dayMr Patch was also shown a recently discovered panoramic photograph of the fields taken in 1917.
"Too many died. War isn't worth one life," said Mr Patch.
He said war was the "calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings".
Mr Patch laid a wreath at the site of the trench, which now forms part of a German war cemetery.
War effort
"The Germans suffered the same as we did," he said.
Germany also had heavy losses in the battle which has been described as one of the bloodiest and most brutal of the Great War.
The Battle of Passchendaele was officially known as the Third Battle of Ypres - the name of the principal town within a bulge in the British lines.
British commanders wanted to reach the Belgian coast to destroy German submarine bases following a warning that a blockade would soon cripple the war effort.
There was also the prospect of a Russian withdrawal from the war which would strengthen the Germans on the Western Front.
Battle of Passchendaele
The battle lasted from 31 July to 6 November 1917
An initial bombardment of German positions involved 4.5m shells and 3,000 guns
The battle was infamous for the mud - shelling had churned clay soil and smashed drains
The heaviest rain for 30 years made the mud so deep men and horses drowned
The battle ended when British and Canadian forces captured Passchendaele
The village was barely five miles beyond the starting point of the offensive
There was a total of 325,000 Allied and 260,000 German casualties
French soldier Lazare Ponticelli (pictured), 110
British pilot Henry Allingham, 111
Austro-Hungarian artilleryman Franz Kunstler, 107
A small number of other veterans are also still alive
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Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Assessment of the anterior chamber angle (ACA) is commonly performed by indirect gonioscopy.
However, gonioscopy is a relatively subjective method of examination.
Recent imaging techniques have made objective assessment and grading of ACA possible.
These techniques include:
1. Ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM)
2. Scheimpflug photography
3. Anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT)
4. Eyecam
First developed by Charles Pavlin and Stuart Foster in 1989.
Uses high frequency ultrasound (50-100 Mhz) for anterior segment imaging (compared with 10 MHz for posterior segment imaging).
A computer program then converts the time delay of these sound waves into a high-resolution B-scan image.
A 50 MHz transducer emits sound waves which pass through ocular tissues reaching a penetration depth of 5.5 mm.
The waves are reflected back from tissue interfaces and detected by sensors in the probe.
The Ellex-Eyecubed system available in our hospital is a 40 MHz wide-field anterior segment UBM.
Specifications of the Ellex-Eyecubed system include:
Image acquisition rate
13 frames per second
Adjustable transmit gain
Minimum to 0 dB
Adjustable receive gain
27-90 dB
Adjustable dynamic range
Log S1, S2, S3
Axial resolution
23 microns
Lateral resolution
33 microns
Scanning angle
30 degrees
Image depth (displayed image)
11.9 mm
Focal depth
12.5 mm
Focal range
10.5-14.5 mm
On UBM, the first structure visualized is the cornea.
The Bowman’s membrane is seen as a first dense echo.
The stroma shows low irregular reflectivity.
The Descemet’s membrane is seen as a dense, highly reflective line.
The corneo-scleral junction is identified on the basis of low internal reflectivity of the cornea compared to sclera.
The AC is visible as an echo poor area between the cornea and iris.
The iris is seen as a flat, uniform echogenic area. The iris and ciliary body converge in the iris recess and insert into the scleral spur. The area under the peripheral iris and above the ciliary processes is defined as the ciliary sulcus. In general, the iris profile is straight, compared to the anterior bowing in angle closure or posterior bowing in pigment dispersion.
The ACA can be visualized by orienting the probe radially at the limbus. The scleral spur is seen as a small echogenic dot when the line between the sclera and ciliary body is traced to the AC.
UBM image quality is dependent on the examiner’s skills. In order to attain good quality images from the ACA, the images must be acquired perpendicularly to the structures of interest. A good scan usually shows a double-arc of the cornea and the scleral spur.
The configuration of the ACA can be altered by forces acting at 4 anatomic levels, which predispose the eye to angle closure. These include:
I. Iris (pupillary block)
II. Ciliary body (Plateau iris)
III. Lens (Phacomorphic glaucoma)
IV. Forces posterior to the lens (Tumors)
Pupillary block shows “iris bombe configuration” on UBM.
In plateau iris, the pars plicata is wide or anteriorly positioned. This mechanically holds the ciliary body against the trabecular meshwork. The iris root is inserted anteriorly on the ciliary face so that the angle seems crowded and narrow. The AC is usually not shallow and the iris surface appears flat or slightly convex.
Abnormalities in the size or position of the lens can lead to pupillary- or angle-block, which can be identified on UBM.
Tumors and cysts of the ciliary body or choroid may also lead to pupillary block.
Other pathological conditions detectable on UBM:
1. Malignant Glaucoma (Ciliary block glaucoma; aqueous misdirection syndrome): UBM will reveal medial or anterior rotation of the ciliary body and processes. There can also be echo-free zones in the vitreous (suggestive of posterior misdirection of aqueous).
2. Pigment dispersion glaucoma: There is deep AC with posterior bowing of iris seen on UBM.
3. Post-trabeculectomy: UBM helps to identify the patency of the iridectomy, internal ostium, tract and bleb. Tenon’s cyst and episcleral scarring are also visible on UBM studies.
4. Ciliary body and processes: Supraciliary effusion is seen on UBM by the presence of fluid in the supraciliary space with medial rotation of the ciliary body leading to partial angle closure. In chronic uveitis, cyclitic membranes and traction to the ciliary body can occur.
5. IOL-related: UBM helps to identify the position of the optic and haptics of the IOL. The haptic may also be in contact with uveal tissue leading to chronic inflammation and development of “UGH syndrome”.
6. Trauma: Traumatic angle recession appears as a deep angle beyond the scleral spur and tear of ciliary processes. Cyclodialysis cleft is seen as communication between the supraciliary space and AC. The exact extent of zonular dialysis or stretching can be determined by UBM. It can also reveal “occult zonular damage” and non-metallic foreign bodies.
Limitations of UBM:
UBM cannot visualize structures deeper than 4 mm from the surface.
It cannot be performed when a full-thickness corneal/scleral laceration is suspected/present.
When using the immersion system it requires the patient to lie down.
Has a narrower field of view compared to AS-OCT.
There can be inter-observer variability in measurements.
OCT technology was initially (in 1991) used to produce images of the posterior segment of the eye by using a wavelength of 820 nm. In 2001, the wavelength was altered to 1310 nm to allow better penetration through light-retaining tissues such as the sclera and limbus and to improve visualization of the anterior segment.
In our hospital the Zeiss Cirrus HD OCT is available.
AS-OCT is a non-contact, rapid imaging system which uses “low coherence interferometry” to obtain cross-sectional images of the anterior segment. The technique has good reproducibility.
Like the UBM, this technology allows the user to evaluate the 4 forces which might be responsible for angle closure.
Compared with UBM, this technology provides a higher axial resolution (18 um versus 25 um in 50 MHz UBM) and faster sampling rate (2.0 kHz versus 0.8 kHz).
AS-OCT provides better diagnosis of angle-closure due to the ease of it’s use, non-operator dependence and objective measurements of important quantitative data. AS-OCT parameters important in diagnosis of angle closure include: “Smaller AC width, area and volume; larger lens vault; greater iris thickness, curvature and area”.
In cases, the angles do not open following iridotomy, nonpupillary block mechanisms (i.e., plateau iris, lens-related anterior rotation of the iris) can be easily identified. The characteristic iris configuration and thick profile in plateau iris syndrome is visualized by the AS-OCT.
Practitioners can also observe blebs and implants by scanning the affected tissue.
AS-OCT allows the practitioner to view the anatomical angle features in both light and dark conditions, thereby allowing a better evaluation for possible angle closure. (OCT is done in light, then the light is turned off for a few minutes and AS-OCT done again).
Peripheral iridotomies (PIs) can be visualized on AS-OCT for their size and patency. Also, angle widening after PIs can also be demonstrated by this technique.
Limitations of AS-OCT:
Light energy cannot penetrate tissue behind the iris pigment epithelium, therefore, AS-OCT cannot visualize structures posterior to the iris due to blockage of wavelength by pigment. This limits its application in discerning several secondary causes of angle closure, such as plateau iris, ciliary body cyst or tumor, lens subluxation, or ciliary effusions
The image acquisition can be affected at times by the superior eyelid, and oblique angles may allow cross-sectional images.
Image distortions may result from off-axis measurements, requiring special software correction to eliminate the influence of scanning angle and refractive index of the cornea.
Lack of a coupling medium may also affect the image quality due to abnormalities in the anterior surface of the eye.
AS-OCT is unable to visualize pathology causing primary or secondary glaucoma including trabecular pigment or narrow bands of peripheral synechiae.
The Pentcam (Oculus, Lynnwood, WA) uses a rotating Scheimpflug camera to provide a 3-dimensional image of the anterior segment of the eye.
Advantages of this system include a noncontact, rapid image acquisition and measurements of anterior chamber depth and volume, corneal thickness, and lens thickness.
However, it does not provide detailed information of the angle recess because of light-scattering and has limited application in documenting angle closure.
The EyeCam (Clarity Medical Systems, Pleasanton, CA) was originally designed to obtain wide-field photographs of the retina in pediatric cases. However, the modified optical technique can be used to assess the anterior chamber angle. Good agreement between EyeCam and conventional gonioscopy findings has been reported.
The major advantage of this technique is its ability to visualize the angle in its entirety, compared with UBM and AS-OCT that provide only cross-sectional views.
The disadvantages include lack of quantitative analysis, expense, supine position for exam, longer image acquisition time, inability to perform indentation gonioscopy, and influence of fiberoptic light source on angle recess assessment.
AS-OCT: Angle recession
AS-OCT: Cyclodialysis (Small arrow); choroidal detachment (Large arrow) and blood vessel (bv)
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The Problem of Reformism
— Robert Brenner
I WAS ASKED to talk about the historical lessons of revolution in the twentieth century. But since we are primarily interested in historical lessons that are likely to be relevant to the twenty-first century, I think it would be more to the point to consider the experience of reform and reformism.
Reformism is always with us, but it rarely announces its presence and usually introduces itself by another name and in a friendly fashion. Still, it is our main political competitor and we had better understand it.
To begin with, it should be clear that reformism does not distinguish itself by a concern for reforms. Both revolutionaries and reformists try to win reforms. Indeed, as socialists, we see the fight for reforms as our main business.
But reformists are also interested in winning reforms. In fact, to a very large extent, reformists share our program, at least in words. They are for higher wages, full employment, a better welfare state, stronger trade unions, even a third party.
The inescapable fact is that, if we want to attract people to a revolutionary-socialist banner and away from reformism, it will not generally be through outbidding reformists in terms of program. It will be through our theory—our understanding of the world —and, most important, through our method, our practice.
What distinguishes reformism on a day-to-day basis is its political method and its theory, not its program. Schematically speaking, reformists argue that although, left on its own, the capitalist economy tends to crisis, state intervention can enable capitalism to achieve long-term stability and growth. They argue, at the same time, that the state is an instrument that can be used by any group, including the working class, in its own interests.
Reformism's basic political method or strategy follows directly from these premises. Working people and the oppressed can and should devote themselves primarily to winning elections so as to gain control of the state and thereby secure legislation to regulate capitalism and, on that basis, to improve their working conditions and living standards.
The Paradox of Reformlsm
Marxists have, of course, always counterposed their own theories and strategies to those of reformists. But, probably of equal importance in combatting reformism, revolutionaries have argued that both reformist theory and reformist practice are best understood in terms of the distinctive social forces on which reformism has historically based itself—in particular, as rationalizations of the needs and interests of trade union officials and parliamentary politicos, as well as middle-class leaders of the movements of the oppressed.
Reformism's distinctive social basis is not simply of sociological interest it is the key to the central paradox that has defined, and dogged, reformism since its origins as a self-defined movement within the social democratic parties (evolutionary socialism) around 1900. That is, the social forces at the heart of reformism and their organizations are committed to political methods (as well as theories to justify them) that end up preventing them from securing their own reform goals—especially the electoral legislative mad and state-regulated labor relations.
As a result, the achievement of major reforms throughout the twentieth century has generally required not only breaking with, but systematically struggling against, organized reformism, its chief leaders and their organizations. This is because the winning of such reforms has, in virtually every instance, required strategies and tactics of which organized reformism did not approve because these threatened their social position and interests—high levels of militant now action, large-scale defiance of the law, and the forging of increasingly class-wide ties of active solidarity—between unionized and ununionized, employed and unemployed, and the like.
The Reformist View
The core proposition of the reformist world view is that, though prone to crisis, the capitalist economy is, in the end subject to state regulation.
Reformists have argued—in various ways—that what makes for crisis is unregulated class struggle. They have thus often contended that capitalist crisis can arise from the “too great” exploitation of workers by capitalists in the interests of increased profitability. This causes problems for the system as a whole because it leads to inadequate purchasing power on the part of working people, who cannot buy back enough of what they produce. Insufficient demand makes for a "crisis of underconsumption"—for example (according to reformist theorists), the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Reformists have also argued that capitalist crisis can arise, on the other hand, from “too strong” resistance by workers to capitalist oppression on the shop floor. By blocking the introduction of innovative technology or refusing to work harder, workers reduce productivity growth (output/worker). This, in turn means a slower growing pie, reduced profitability, reduced investment, and ultimately a "supply-side crisis"—for example (according to reformist theorists), the current economic downturn beginning at the end of the 1960s.
It follows from this approach that, because crises are the unintended result of unregulated class struggle, the state can secure economic stability and growth precisely by intervening to regulate both the distribution of income and capital-labor relations on the shop floor. The implication is that class struggle is not really necessary, for it is in the long term interest of neither the capitalist class nor the working class, if they can be made to coordinate their actions.
The State as Neutral Apparatus
The reformist theory of the state fits very well with its political economy. In this view, the state is an autonomous apparatus of power, in principle neutral, capable of being used by anyone. It follows that workers and the oppressed should try to gain control of it for the purpose of regulating the economy so as to secure economic stability and growth and, on that basis, win reforms in their own material interests.
Reformism's political strategy flows logically from its view of the economy and the state. Workers and the oppressed should concentrate on electing reformist politicos to office. Because state intervention by a reformist government can secure long-term stability and growth in the interests of capital, as well as labor, there is no reason to believe that employers will stubbornly oppose a reformist government.
Such a government can prevent crises of underconsumption by implementing redistributive tax policies and prevent supply-side crises by establishing state regulated worker-management commissions in the interest of raising productivity. On the basis of a growing, increasingly productive economy, the state can continually raise spending on state services, while regulating collective bargaining so as to insure fairness to all parties.
Reformists would maintain that workers need to remain organized and vigilant—especially in their unions—and prepared to move against rogue capitalists who won't be disciplined in the common interest: ready to take strike action against employers who refuse to accept mediation at the level of the firm or, in the worst case, to rise en masse against groups of reactionary capitalists who can't abide giving over governmental power to the great majority and seek to subvert the democratic order.
But presumably such battles would remain subordinate to the main electoral-legislative struggle and become progressively less common since reformist state policy would proceed in the interest not only of workers and the oppressed, but of the employers, even if the latter did not at first realize it.
Responding to Reformism
Revolutionaries have classically rejected the reformists' political method of relying on the electoral/legislative process and state-regulated collective bargaining for the simple reason that it can't work.
So long as capitalist property relations continue top, the state cannot be autonomous. This is not because the state is always directly controlled by capitalists (social democratic and labor party governments, for example, often are not). It is because whoever controls the state is brutally limited in what they can do by the needs of capitalist profitability ... and because, over any extended period, the needs of capitalist profitability are very difficult to reconcile with reforms in the interest of working people.
In a capitalist society, you can't get economic growth unless you can get investment, and you can't get capitalists to invest unless they can make what they judge to be an adequate rate of profit. Since high levels of employment and increasing state services in the interest of the working class (dependent upon taxation) are predicated upon economic growth, even governments that want to further the interests of the exploited and the oppressed—for example social democratic or labor party governments—must make capitalist profitability in the interest of economic growth their first priority.
The old saying that "What's good for General Motors is good for everyone,' unfortunately contains an important grain of truth, so long as capitalist property relations continue in force.
This is not of course to deny that capitalist governments will ever make reforms. Especially in periods of boom, when profitability is high, capital and the state are often quite willing to grant improvements to working people and the oppressed in the interests of uninterrupted production and social order.
But in periods of downturn, when profitability is reduced and competition intensifies the cost of paying (via taxation) for such reforms can endanger the very survival of firms and they are rarely granted without very major struggles in the workplaces and in the streets. Equally to the point, in such periods, governments of every sort—whether representative of capital or labor—so long as they are committed to capitalist property relationships, will end up attempting to restore profitability by seeing to it that wages and social spending are cut, that capitalists receive tax breaks, and so forth.
The Centrality of Crisis Theory
It should be evident why, for revolutionaries, so much is riding on their contention that extended periods of crisis are built into capitalism. From this standpoint, crises arise from capitalism's inherently anarchic nature, which makes for a path of capital accumulation that is eventually self-contradictory or self-undermining. Because by nature a capitalist economy operates in an unplanned way, governments cannot prevent crises.
This is not the place for an extended discussion of debates over crisis theory. But one can at least point out that capitalist history has vindicated an anti-reformist viewpoint Since the later nineteenth century, if not before, whatever type of governments have been in power, long periods of capitalist boom (185Os-187(, 1890s-1913, late 1940s.c.1970) have always been succeeded by long periods of capitalist depression (1870s-1890s, 1919-1939, c1970to the present). One of Ernest Mandel's fundamental contributions in recent years has been to emphasize this pattern of capitalist development through long waves of boom and downturn.
During the first two decades of the postwar period, it seemed that reformism had finally vindicated its political world view. There was unprecedented boom, accompanied by—and seemingly caused by—the application of Keynesian measures to subsidize demand, as well as the growing government expenditures associated with the welfare state. Every advanced capitalist economy experienced not only fast-rising wages, but a significant expansion of social services in the interest of the working class and the oppressed.
In the late '60s or early 170s, it thus appeared to many that the way to insure continually improved conditions for working people was to pursue "class struggle inside the state—the electoral/ legislative victories of social democratic and labor parties (the Democratic Party in the United States).
But the next two decades entirely falsified this perspective. Declining profitability brought a long-term crisis of growth and investment Under these conditions, one after another reformist government in power—the Labour Party in the late 70s, the French and Spanish Socialist Parties in the '80s, and the Swedish Social Democratic Party in the '80s—found itself unable to restore pros-parity through the usual methods of subsidizing demand and concluded that it had little choice but to increase profitability as the only way to increase investment and restore growth.
As a result, virtually without exception, the reformist parties in power not only failed to defend workers' wages or living standards against employers' attack, but unleashed powerful austerity drives designed to raise the rate of profit by cutting the welfare state and reducing the power of the unions. There could be no more definitive disproof of reformist economic theories and the notion of the autonomy of the state. Precisely because the state could not prevent capitalist crisis, it could not but reveal itself as supinely dependent upon capital.
Why Reformism Doesn't Reform
It remains to be asked why the reformist parties in power continued to respect capitalist property rights and sought to restore capitalist profits. Why didn't they instead seek to defend working class living and working standards, if necessary by class struggle? In the event that that approach led capitalists to abstain from investing or to capital flight, why could they not then have nationalized industries and moved toward socialism? We are back to the paradox of reformism.
The key is to be found in the peculiar social forces that dominate reformist politics, above all the trade union officialdom and the social democratic party politicos. What distinguishes these forces is that, while they are dependent for their very existence on organizations built out of the working class, they are not themselves part of the working class.
Above all, they are off the shop floor. They find their material base, their livelihood, in the trade union or party organization itself. It's not just that they get their salaries from the trade union or political party, although this is very important The trade union or party defines their whole way of life—what they do, whom they meet—as well as their career trajectory.
Asa result, the key to their survival, to the fluctuations in their material and social position, is their place within the trade union or party organization itself. So tong as the organization is viable, they can have a viable form of life and a reasonable career.
The gulf between the form of life of the rank and file worker and even the low level paid official is thus enormous. The economic position—wages, benefits, working conditions—of ordinary work-era depends directly on the course of the class struggle at the workplace and within the industry. Successful class struggle is the only way for them to defend their living standards.
The trade union official, in contrast, can generally do quite well even if one defeat follows another in the class struggle, so long as the trade union organization survives. It is true that in the very long run the very survival of the trade union organization is dependent upon the class struggle, but this is rarely a relevant factor. More to the point is the fact that, in the short run, especially in periods of profitability crisis, class struggle is probably the main threat to the viability of the organization.
Since militant resistance to capital can provoke a response from capital and the state that threaten the financial condition or the very existence of the organization, the trade union officials generally seek studiously to avoid it The trade unions and reformist parties have thus, historically, sought to ward off capital by coming to terms with it.
They have assured capital that they accept the capitalist property system and the priority of profitability in the operation of the firm. They have at the same time sought to make sure that workers, inside or outside their organizations, do not adopt militant, illegal, and class-wide forms of action that might appear too threatening to capital and call forth a violent response.
Above all, with implacable class struggle ruled out as a means to win reforms, trade union officials and parliamentary politicians have seen the electoral/legislative road as the fundamental political strategy left to them. Through the passive mobilization of an election campaign, these forces thus hope to create the conditions for winning reforms, while avoiding too much offending capital in the process.
This is not to adopt the absurd view that workers are generally chomping at the bit to struggle and are only being held back by their misleaders. In fact, workers often are as conservative as their leaders, or more so. The point is that, unlike the trade union or party officials, rank and file workers cannot, over time, defend their interests without class struggle.
Moreover, at those moments when workers do decide to take matters into their own hands and attack the employers, the trade union officials can be expected to constitute a barrier to their struggle, to seek to detour or derail it.
Of course, trade union leaders and party officials are not in every case averse to class struggle, and sometimes they even initiate it The point is simply that, because of their social position, they cannot be counted on to resist Therefore, no matter how radical the leaders' rhetoric, no strategy should be based on the assumption that they will resist.
It is the fact that trade union officials and social democratic politicians cannot be counted onto fight the class struggle because they have major material interests that are endangered by confrontations with the employers that provides the central justification for our strategy of building rank and file organizations that are independent of the officials (although they may work with them), as well as independent working class parties.
Reformism Today and Regroupment
Understanding reformism is no mere academic exercise. It affects just about every political initiative we take. This can be seen particularly clearly with respect both to today's strategic tasks of bringing together anti-reformist forces within a common organization (regroupment) and that of creating a break from the Democratic Party.
Today, as for many years, Solidarity's best hope for regrouping with organized (however loosely) left forces comes from those individuals and groups which see themselves as opposed from the left to official reformism. The fact remains that many of these leftists, explicitly or implicitly, still identify with an approach to politics that may be roughly termed "popular frontism."
Despite the fact that it was framed entirely outside the camp of organized social democracy, popular frontism takes reformism to the level of a system.
The Communist International first promulgated the idea of the popular front in 1935 to complement the Soviet Union's foreign policy of seeking an alliance with the “liberal” capitalist powers to defend against Nazi expansionism ("collective security"). In this context, the Communists internationally put forward the idea that it was possible for the working class to forge a very broad alliance across classes, not only with middle class liberals, but with an enlightened section of the capitalist class, in the interest of democracy, civil liberties, and reform.
The conceptual basis for this view was that an enlightened section of the capitalist class preferred a constitutional order to an authoritarian one. In addition, enlightened capitalists were willing to countenance greater government intervention and egalitarianism in order to create the conditions for liberalism, as well as to insure social stability.
Like other reformist doctrines, the popular front based itself, in economic terms, on an underconsumptionist theory of crisis Underconsumptionism was in fact receiving a wide hearing in liberal, as well as radical-socialist, circles during the 1930s, receiving a particularly strong boost with the promulgation and popularization of Keynes' ideas.
In the United States, the implication of the popular front was to enter the Democratic Party. The Roosevelt administration, containing as it did certain relatively progressive establishment types, was seen as an archetypical representative of capitalism's enlightened wing. And the imperative of working with the Democrats was very much increased with the sudden rise of the labor movement as a power in the land.
The Communists had originally been in the lead in organizing the CIO, and had, in fact, spectacularly succeeded in auto largely by virtue of their adoption, for a very brief but decisive period (1935-early 1937), of a rank-and-file strategy much like that of Solidarity today. This strategy had, at the start, found its parallel in Communist refusal to support Roosevelt.
But by 1937, soon after the adoption of the popular front with its implied imperative not to alienate the Roosevelt administration, the CF had come to oppose labor militancy (sitdown strikes, wildcats) in the interest of the classically social democratic policy of allying with the "left wing of the trade union officials.
The implication of this policy was to reject the notion that the labor officialdom represented a distinct social layer that could be expected to put the interests of its organizations ahead of the interests of the rank and file—a notion that had been at the core of the politics of the left-wing of pre-World War I social democracy (Luxemburg, Trotsky, etc.) and of the Third International since the days of Lenin.
Instead, trade union officials ceased to be differentiated in social terms from the rank and file and came to be distinguished (from one another) by their political line alone (left, center, right).
This approach fit very well with the Communists strategic objective of getting the newly-emergent industrial unions to enter the Democratic Party. Of course, much of the trade union officialdom was only too happy to emphasize its political role inside the emergent reform wing of the Democratic Party, especially in comparison with its much more dangerous economic role of organizing the membership to fight the employers.
The dual policy of allying with the left" officials inside the trade union movement and working for reform through electoral/legislative means within the Democratic Party (hopefully along. side the progressive trade union leaders) has remained to this day powerfully attractive to much of the left.
A Rank-and-File Perspective
In the trade unions during the 1970s, representatives of tendencies that eventually ended up inside Solidarity were obliged to counterpose the idea of the rank-and-file movement independent of the trade union officials to the popular front idea of many leftists of supporting the extant "progressive" leadership.
This meant, in the first place, countering the idea that the progressive trade union officials would be obliged to move to the left and oppose the employers, if only to defend their own organizations.
Revolutionaries contended that, on the contrary, precisely because of the viciousness of the employers' offensive, trade union officials would for the most part be willing to make concessions in the interest of avoiding confrontation with the employers. They would thereby allow the bit-by-bit chipping away of the labor movement virtually indefinitely.
The latter perspective has been more than borne out, as officials have by and large sat on their hands as the concessions movement has reached gale proportions and the proportion of workers in trade unions dropped from 25-30% in the '60s to 10-15% today.
Equally to the point, revolutionaries in the trade union movement had to counter the popular front idea that the trade union leaders were "to the left of the rank and file. If you talked with many leftists in that period, sooner or later you'd get the argument that the rank and file were politically backward.
After all, many "progressive" trade union leaders opposed U.S. intervention in Central America (and elsewhere) more firmly than did the membership, stood much more clearly than did the membership for extensions of the welfare state, and, even, in a number of cases, came out for a labor party.
Our response to this argument was to contrast what "progressive" trade union leaders are willing to do verbally, "politically," where relatively little is at stake, with what they are willing to do to fight the bosses, where virtually everything may be at risk It cost the well-known head of the IAM William Winpisinger virtually nothing to be a member of DSA and promulgate a virtually perfect social democratic world view on such questions as the reconversion of the economy, national health care, and the like.
But when it came to class struggle, we pointed out, Winpisinger not only came out clearly against Teamsters for a Democratic Union, but sent his machinists across the picket line in the crucial PATCO (air controllers) strike.
Over the past decade or so, many leftists have broken with the Soviet Union or China and become open to reexamining their entire political world view. But this does not mean that they automatically move in our direction. For their popular front political strategy corresponds in central ways with a still (relatively) powerful and coherent political trend—Le. social democratic reformism.
If we are to win over these comrades, we will have to demonstrate to them, systematically and in detail, that their traditional popular front strategy of working with the trade union "lefts" and penetrating the Democratic Party is in fact self-defeating.
Independent Political Action
At various points in the election campaign, important elements within the leaderships of the Black movement, the women's movement, and even the labor movement proclaimed that they would like to see a viable political alternative to the Democratic Party. Their statements of intent seemed to make the IPA project suddenly much more real. These people are indispensable, at this point, for any practical third party effort for the simple reason that the great majority of Black, women, and labor activists look to them, and no one else, for political leadership. But are they serious about IPA?
In one sense, it is obvious that all these forces need independent political action. The Democratic Party has long been seeking to do ever more to improve capitalist profitability and progressively less in the interest of workers, women, and oppressed minorities. It has therefore been of decreasing use to the established leaderships of the union, Black, and women's movements who, after all, work inside the party primarily so that they can win something for their constituents.
The official leaderships of the movements would thus no doubt love to have in existence a viable third party. But it is the paradox of their social stratum and their reformist politics that they are unable to do what is necessary to create the conditions in which such a party could come into being.
It is difficult to see how these conditions could be achieved except through the revitalization of the social movements, above all the labor movement—the growth of fighting militancy and fighting unity within the union movement and beyond. Newly-dynamized mass movements could provide the material base, so to speak, for the transformation of political consciousness that could bring into being an electorally successful third party. But such movements are just what the established leaderships are afraid to create.
On the other hand, in the absence of a massive break in the activity and consciousness of the mass movements, it makes absolutely no sense to the established leaderships to break with the Democrats. These elements take the electoral road extremely seriously; for it is the main means for them to secure gains for their constituencies. And the sine qua non for gains through the electoral road is all too self-evident: it is electoral victory. Without electoral victory, nothing is possible.
The problem is that, for the foreseeable future, no third party would have a chance to win. The political consciousness is not yet there. Moreover, third parties are especially disadvantaged here by the winner take all electoral system.
In this situation, the established leaderships of the trade union, Black, and women's movement are in a double bind: they cannot break from the Democrats until the conditions are present that can promise electoral victory for a third party; but they cannot create the conditions for a third party without forsaking, probably for a substantial period, their established methods of winning gains via the electoral road.
It is, unfortunately, not at all surprising that the most serious supporters of a break toward a third party within the established leaderships of the movements—to be found within the women's movement—showed themselves much less interested in "their own." Twenty-first Century Party than with the Democratic Party candidacies of Carole Moseley Braun, Barbara Boxer, and even Dianne Feinstein.
Just as any revival of the labor movement, the social movements, and of the left will have to depend on a break from—and confrontation with—the social and political forces that underpin reformism, so will the project of building a new party to the left of the Democrats.
March-April 1993, ATC 43
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The Broken Trees Islands were a cluster of islands on Veron located in the Sea of Graves. The Gazaran believed that the islands were the remnants of a large continent which was home to the first great Gazaran civilization. For reasons they did not understand, one day a great storm swept over the continent, destroying many of the trees. After several days of these storms, most of the land sank, leaving only the peaks of the mountains. Miraculously, some of the Gazaran were able to migrate to the other continents. Scientific expeditions to the islands found ancient Gazaran artifacts in the shallow waters and many tourists came to the area for aquatic expeditions. Any discovered artifacts were confiscated by the Department of History and Culture, although the tourist responsible for the discovery was given fair compensation. Despite this, the smuggling of artifacts off-world was a cottage industry for amateur archaeologists.
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Oromo is an Afro-Asiatic language. It is the most widely spoken tongue in the family's Cushitic branch. Forms of Oromo are spoken as a first language by more than 35 million Oromo and neighbouring peoples in Ethiopia and parts of northern Kenya. Some linguists think of Oromo as a dialect continuum, since not all varieties are mutually intelligible. Wikipedia
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Lose Weight by Eating More
Certain foods are extremely difficult for the human body to convert into body fat – not impossible but damned near impossible. By consuming calories derived from these foods, the anabolic margin of error is extended dramatically, which means it will be easier to lose fat and gain muscle, if you choose.
Lean protein, protein devoid of saturated fat, has been the staple, the bedrock nutrient of elite athletes for 50 years. Why? You can eat a mountain of lean protein and not get fat – assuming you train with intensity sufficient enough to trigger muscle growth. Lean protein is difficult for the body to break down and digest. As a direct result of this digestive difficulty, the body kicks the metabolic thermostat upward to break protein down into subcomponent amino acids.
The human body wants to preserve stored body fat as a last line of defense against starvation. If overworked and under-fed, the body will preferentially eat muscle tissue to save precious body fat.
Obese people that go on crash Diets, precipitously slashing calories, might lose 100-pounds of body weight, yet still appear fat. Despite losing from say 350-pounds to 250-pounds, they still appear fat because they still are fat. The body has cannibalized muscle tissue and saved the fat. Though they might weigh 100-pounds less, they still possess 25-40% body fat percentile.
Lean protein is the bedrock nutrient in the physical renovation process because it supplies muscle tissue battered by a high intensity weight workout with the amino acids needed to heal, recover and construct new muscle tissue. Lean protein is a bedrock nutrient in the physical renovation process because it causes the basal metabolic rate (BMR) to elevate; the metabolic thermostat, the rate at which our body consumes calories, increases when digesting protein. Lean protein is a bedrock nutrient in the physical renovation process because it is damned near impossible for the body to convert it into body fat.
The other bedrock nutrient in the physical transformation process is fibrous carbohydrates: carrots, broccoli, green beans, bell peppers, spinach, cauliflower, onions, asparagus, cabbage, salad greens, Brussels sprouts and the like. Fibrous carbohydrates, like lean protein, are nearly impossible for the body to convert into body fat. Fibrous carbohydrates require almost as many calories to digest as they contain. A green bean or carrot might contain 10-calories yet is so dense and difficult to break down that the body has to expend nearly as many calories to break down that bean or carrot as the vegetable contains.
Fibrous carbohydrates have a wonderful “Roto-Rooter” effect on the internal plumbing: as they work their way though the digestive passageways they scrape mucus and gunk off intestinal walls and help keep sludge buildup to a minimum. For this reason fibrous carbohydrates are the perfect compliment to a lean protein diet. Too much protein can cause bile buildup: fiber is the Yin to protein’s Yang. The two nutrients should be eaten together.
Both protein and fiber have a beneficial dampening effect on insulin secretions. It is no accident that professional bodybuilders, the world’s best dieters, capable of reducing body fat percentiles to 5% while maintaining incredible muscle mass, construct their eating regimen around protein and fiber.
The best way to eat is to eat often. If you eat 3,000 calories a day the best way is in five 600-calorie feeding or six 500-calorie feedings instead of a breakfast containing 400-calories, a lunch of 1000-calories and a late dinner of 1,600-calories. Avoid calories easily converted into body fat.
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Bivalves were a type of mollusk composed of two valves that connect with a hinge of organic material. Both valves are not symmetrical. Usually they had interlocking teeth along the hinge. Bivalves usually burrowed into sediment, stone, or wood or attached themselves to objects by means of their foot. They were filter feeders.
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Do Children learn better in boys only and girls only school
Do Children learn better in boys only and girls only school
Learning is the process of gaining knowledge which means to acquire knowledge. School is an institution where students went for learning. Now the question arises which schools are better for learning:
1. Boys only/Girls only
2. Co-Educational Schools
As we are living in a democratic country, so why we are talking about gender disparity. Then what is the need of gender disparity at the school level which is the beginning of learning stage.
What is the need to have gender based education? But this is a controversial topic. Actually, earlier we have gender based schools because people were orthodox & they do not want to meet the opposite sex. This leads to more attraction towards opposite sex and infatuation. As boys gets more attracted towards girls and always thinks about her and vice-versa. There are so many demerits of same gender schools:
1. Lack of concentration on their own work
2. Attraction/Infatuation
3. Wastage of time
4. Gender differences
5. No motivation
6. No respect for women
7. Lack of experience of so many things
8. Lack of information
So, with the above listed merits, I found that co-education is the best way of education where boys and girls together can take education under the same roof or in the same building.
According to my point of view:
1 Gender Disparity end: As when the children of two different sexes sit together in a class, there will be no differences & treated equally. So, boys will not think of themselves as superior as some sections of society are treating them.
2. Concentration power increases: As from the childhood, boys and girls are learning together so the concept of equality comes to their mind for both the sexes and they don't have much attraction for opposite sex as when they are studying in gender based schools there they have curiosity to see the girls. So, now they can concentrate on their own work.
3. Competition: When both girls and boys are studying together, they may develop the feeling of competition as girls are doing better from last so many years in board examination. So, it develops the feeling of excelling in boys also. As boys are good in mathematics and girls are in languages and arts, both can exchange their knowledge and can do something productive for our society and it helps our country to develop. As educated population leads a country for developed country.
4. Respect for girls: When they are studying together from the childhood, they came to know about etiquettes of how to behave with the girl and this will help them in their social life when they are home how to behave with mother, sister, wife, daughter and relatives. This will help them in enhancing their social life when they are at home or at public places. Finally it may develop a safe and beautiful nation.
5. Sex Education: In Co-education schools from time to time sex education is imparted to the students to understand the physiology of the sexes and how they are different from each other.
6. No curiosity: there is any curiosity for opposite sex as when they were studying together gender differences in mind ends.
So, here I conclude the topic by saying that No I don't think single sex schools is better for education: Students need a mix of girls and boys classmates for the betterment of society. I don't think single sex schools are better for education, but rather Co-Education is the best option.
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Item #: 30044
Our Price: $16.95
By, Rosalyn Schanzer
The narrative of George vs. George introduces anew the two enemies, both named George: George Washington, the man who freed the American colonies from the British, and George III, the British king who lost them. Two leaders on different sides of the Atlantic, yet with more in common than we sometimes acknowledge. We are lead through their story, and the story of their times, and see both sides of the arguments that divided the colonies from the kingdom. Was King George a "Royal Brute" as American patriots claimed? Or was he, as others believed, "the father of the people"? Was George Washington a scurrilous traitor, as all the king's supporters claimed? Or should we remember and celebrate him as "the father of his country"? Who was right? History teaches us that there are two sides to every story.
64 Pages, Hardcover, ISBN 978-0792273493, National Geographic Children's Books, 2004.
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wikiHow to Change Font Size on a Computer
Four Methods:Windows 10 System Font SizeWindows 8 and EarlierMac System Font SizeWebpage Font SizeCommunity Q&A
Changing the font size on your computer can be helpful when viewing applications that contain text that is too small, or too large to read comfortably. Font size can be changed for the user interfaces in Windows and Mac OS X, and also in every Internet browser. Newer versions of Windows have more options for control over the elements you can adjust.
Windows 10 System Font Size
1. 1
Right-click on your desktop and select "Display settings." This will open the "Display" section of the Settings menu.
2. 2
Use the "Change the size of text, apps, and other items" slider to change font size. Moving the slider to the right will increase the size of the system font, as well as icons and other system elements. Moving it all the way to the left will return the size to the default.
3. 3
Click "Advanced display settings" to change individual elements. If you'd rather just change the size of menu bars, tooltips, or other elements, you can do so without changing everything at once.
4. 4
Click "Advanced sizing of text and other items." This will open a new Control Panel window.
5. 5
Select the element you want to change from the drop-down menu. You can change font sizes for title bars, menus, icon labels, tooltips, and more. Select the element that you want to change.
6. 6
Select a new font size for the chosen element. You can pick a font size between 6 and 24. You can also choose to make the font bold. The default size for all items is 9.
• You can repeat this for each element in the drop-down menu.
7. 7
Click "Apply" to save your settings. Your new sizes will be applied immediately.
Windows 8 and Earlier
1. 1
Open the Control Panel. The method for opening the Control Panel depends on what version of Windows you are using.
• Windows 8.1 - Right-click on the Start button and select "Control Panel."
2. 2
Select "Display." If you don't see this option, select "Appearance and Personalization" and then select "Display."
3. 3
Select the percentage that you want to increase the font by. Depending on your version of Windows and your monitor, you may be able to select 125% or 150%. Changes won't take effect until you log back in.
• This will increase the size of all Windows elements, including icons.
4. 4
Set a custom text size (Windows 7 and earlier). If you're using Windows 7 or earlier, you can set a custom text size:[1]
• Click the "Set custom text size (DPI)" option in the left frame of the Display menu.
• Drag the ruler with your mouse or use the drop-down box to adjust the text size. In Vista and XP, you'll just have two presets to pick from
5. 5
Set a custom text size (Windows 8). If you're using Windows 8, you can change the text size for specific elements.[2]
• Find the "Change only text size" in the Display menu.
• Use the drop-down menu to select the element you want to adjust.
• Set the size you want with the second drop-down menu. You can also make the font bold for that element.
• Click "Apply" to see your changes immediately.
Mac System Font Size
1. 1
Open a Finder window. You can do this by opening any folder or by selecting Finder from the Dock.
2. 2
Open the "View Options" menu. You can click "View" → "Show View Options" or you can press Command+J.
3. 3
Use the "Text size" menu to select a new text size. This will apply to all Finder windows, but you'll need to re-apply the chan ge for each of the different Finder views that you use (Icon, List, Column, etc.).
4. 4
Increase your sidebar size. Even though you've increased the font size in Finder, this won't affect any sidebars. You can adjust the sidebar size separately:
• Click the Apple menu and select "System Preferences."
• Click the "General" button.
• Use the "Sidebar icon size" menu to adjust the size of the sidebar. This will change both the icon size and the text size.
• In iTunes, open the Preferences menu and select the "General" tab. Select "Use large text for list views."
5. 5
Change the font size for Messages. If you use the Messages app a lot, you can adjust the font size for it independently:
• With Messages open, click the Messages menu and select "Preferences."
• Select the "Messages" tab and then click "Set font" for either your sent messages or messages you receive. These settings will only affect how you view messages on your computer.
Webpage Font Size
1. 1
Visit the page you want to increase. Nearly all web browsers allow you to magnify websites so that you can read them more easily. This will increase the text size as well as the size of other items on the page.
• This method should work for any browser on any operating system, including Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Edge.
2. 2
Hold .Ctrl/ Cmd and press + to zoom in. This will increase the size of everything in the web browser. You can hit this multiple times to continue increasing the size.
• You can scroll your mouse wheel up instead of pressing + to accomplish the same thing.
3. 3
Hold .Ctrl/ Cmd and press - to zoom out. This will decrease the size of the text and everything else in your browser. You can decrease the size below the original default size if you'd like.
• You can scroll down with the mouse wheel instead of pressing -.
4. 4
Press .Ctrl/ Cmd+0 to reset the zoom level. This will return the page to the default zoom level so that you don't have to guess what it was originally.
Community Q&A
Add New Question
• How do you increase the Gmail font size?
wikiHow Contributor
Click the button on the right of the blue "send" button. Then click the button that looks like two letter Ts, and you can click on the font.
• How do I enlarge the size of the letters on my computer?
wikiHow Contributor
Go to control panel, and choose "Ease of Access" on Windows 7. In Windows 8.1 and 10, open your charms panel and type "Ease of Access" into the search box. There will be a number of ways to modify your computer display there. An easy trick is to hold down the CTRL key, and roll your mouse wheel.
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Categories: Computer Fonts
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Русский: изменить размер шрифта на компьютере, Español: cambiar el tamaño de las letras en una computadora, Italiano: Cambiare la Dimensione dei Font sul Tuo Computer, Português: Mudar o Tamanho da Fonte do Computador, Français: changer la taille de la police sur un ordinateur, 中文: 更改电脑的字体大小, Bahasa Indonesia: Mengubah Ukuran Font di Komputer, Deutsch: Die Schriftgröße auf einem Computer ändern, Nederlands: De grootte van het lettertype wijzigen op een computer, العربية: تغيير حجم الخط على جهاز الكمبيوتر
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Browse Dictionary by Letter
Dictionary Suite
animal cracker a small cookie or cracker baked in any of various animal shapes.
animalcule a tiny or microscopic creature.
animal husbandry the science or practice of raising and breeding domestic animals, such as livestock.
animalism the condition or quality of being motivated mainly by physical drives and appetites. [2 definitions]
animality the essential characteristics or nature of an animal. [3 definitions]
animalize to make (someone or something) be or resemble an animal or brute or animal matter.
animal magnetism an internal biological force supposed by Franz Mesmer to induce hypnotism in others; biomagnetism.
animal rights rights of animals not to be subordinated to the needs and wants of human beings.
animal spirits the quality of one who is in high spirits and good health; vitality.
animate to rouse or bring to life. [8 definitions]
animated full of activity, spirit, or excitement. [3 definitions]
animated cartoon a motion picture made by photographing a sequence of drawings showing stages of movement, so as to create the illusion of motion when the images are projected in quick succession.
animation the act or result of animating or causing to be lively. [4 definitions]
animato in a lively and animated style or manner (used as a musical direction).
animator one that animates. [2 definitions]
anime an animated film or video that, typically, is of Japanese origin, is richly illustrated, and employs magical characters and themes.
animism the belief that the universe and all of its material objects, beings, and phenomena possess a spirit or consciousness. [3 definitions]
animosity strong dislike or active hostility.
animus motivating force; intention. [3 definitions]
anion a negatively charged ion.
anise a plant with small clusters of flowers and licorice-flavored seeds. [2 definitions]
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Electromagnetic Railway
Source: Electromagnetic Railway Tag: x ray machine inventor
Thomas Alva Edison was born in Ohio in the United States, was a businessman, inventor and scientist who lived between 1847 and 1931. There is an extensive list of patented objects on your behalf and that if did not get to come true in life at least the basis for something later was created.
He was the creator of the incandescent light bulb, its great and recognized invention. In addition, objects like tattoo pen, vacuum packaging, rubber wheels, X-ray machine and even video cameras were designed by the inventor.
Electromagnetic Railway
Although not applied in Brazil, electric trains and subways are widely used in major cities in the world for passenger and cargo back and forth.
Electromagnetic irons roads emerge as effective and clean alternative for urban mobility and also for transit between cities, states and countries around the world. On May 13, 1880, Thomas Edison was the first test of his road electric iron in Menlo Park, United States.
For over 130 years, so when sustainability and alternatives to fossil fuels were not as on the agenda, the scientist already started an idea that floraria years later in various parts of the world. The largest cities in the world with electric trains and subways to carry passengers and cargo from one side to another.
However, with the technology that we have rails and trains as what Thomas Edison designed become increasingly "outdated". Nowadays we can ride on trains to even touch the ground. The Union between advanced technology and physics allows the train to move by magnetic fields, called magnetic levitation.
The train (train) of magnetic levitation or Maglev (Magnetic levitation transport) is propelled by the attractive and repulsive forces of magnetism through the use of superconductors. The lack of direct contact with the rail, how does the conventional trains, the only force of friction that exists is between the train and the air, which provides relatively low energy consumption, little noise and very high speeds.
The first commercial train that uses this technology made its maiden voyage in 2002 in China. The project was imported from Germany, being able to reach a speed of 501 km/h connecting Shanghai to the Pudong International Airport.
In April 2015, the Maglev train is operated by Central Japan Railway Company in Japan slammed his own world record of speed upon reaching 603 km/h.
Group: Tiago Machado,João Victor O., Pedro P. 3E
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Google’s self-driving car: How does it work and when can we drive one?
All set for some more vehicle news? We have an excellent post today that you ought to really check out. Stay up to date with all vehicle related details and auto transport news here.
Google unveiled a brand new self-driving car prototype on Tuesday; the first company to build a car with no a steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedal.
The car’s arrival marks the next stage in Google’s self-driving car project, which was born from the Darpa Grand Challenges for robotic vehicles in the early 2000s. Google kickstarted its own self-driving car project in 2008, and it has been rumbling on ever since, first with modified Toyota Prius and then with customised Lexus SUVs, which took the car’s existing sensors, such as the cruise-control cameras, and added a spinning laser scanner on the top.
What is it?
Google's self-driving carGoogle’s self-driving car taking a spin around a car park Photograph: Google
It is the first truly driverless electric car prototype built by Google to test the next stage of its five-year-old self-driving car project. It looks like a cross between a Smart car and a Nissan Micra, with two seats and room enough for a small amount of luggage.
It is the first real physical incarnation of Google’s vision of what a self-driving car of the near future could be.
Where is it?
It operates in and around California, primarily around the Mountain View area where Google has its headquarters.
What does it do?
It ferries two people from one place to another without any user interaction. The car is summoned by a smartphone for pick up at the user’s location with the destination set. There is no steering wheel or manual control, simply a start button and a big red emergency stop button. In front of the passengers there is a small screen showing the weather, the current speed and a small countdown animation to launch.
Once the journey is done, the small screen displays a message to remind you to take your personal belongings – reinforcing that this is not aiming to be a substitute for your personal car at the moment, but more as a replacement for the taxi without the human driver.
What’s it like?
Google's self-driving carThe go button right next to the big red emergency stop button, just in case. Photograph: Google
Very few people outside of Google have been allowed to ride in the new car. Most of the people depicted in Google’s promotional videos for the new car described the experience as “smooth” and “nothing that feels the least bit threatening”.
Kara Swisher and Liz Gannes from technology site Recode were one of the few independent test riders, who described the car as having “ample” room despite being small, likely due to the lack of the normal controls taking up space in the cabin, and “that this felt a lot like a theme park ride”.
Who built it?
Google has designed the car from scratch, starting with the sensors and a frame to interconnect them, then adding a cabin that does not block any of the sensors or create blind spots and eventually the body shell. The manufacturing of the 100 or so prototype cars will be done by a firm in the Detroit area, but Google declined to comment on which.
How does it work?
Powered by an electric motor with around a 100 mile range, the car uses a combination of sensors and software to locate itself in the real world combined with highly accurate digital maps. A GPS is used, just like the satellite navigation systems in most cars, to get a rough location of the car, at which point radar, lasers and cameras take over to monitor the world around the car, 360-degrees.
The software can recognise objects, people, cars, road marking, signs and traffic lights, obeying the rules of the road and allowing for multiple unpredictable hazards, including cyclists. It can even detect road works and safely navigate around them.
Google's self-driving carGoogle’s self-driving car being built in Detroit. Photograph: Google
The new prototype has more sensors fitted to it that can see further (up to 600 feet in all directions) and in greater detail than the ones available on the previous repurposed Lexus and Toyota vehicles.
How safe is it?
The new car is the next evolution of Google’s self-driving car. While the new frame is untested, the company’s previous versions have clocked up over 700,000 miles of testing on public roads, mainly around California, including over 1,000 miles of driving in the most complex situations and cities like San Francisco’s hills and busy streets.
The car itself is limited to 25 mph, which restricts it to certain roads, but also minimises the kinetic energy it could carry into a crash if one should happen. The front of the car is also made to be as kind to pedestrians as possible with a foam bumper and a flexible windscreen that is designed to absorb energy from an impact with a person’s body.
Seat belts are also provided – a safety requirement for vehicles on the road – while the car has redundant systems, a “fault-tolerant architecture” as Google calls it, for both steering and braking, should the primary systems fails; plus that emergency stop button that passengers can hit at any time.
Google has also taken the data and behaviours it learned from its previous vehicles to create a defensive, considerate driving style that is meant to protect both the passengers and other road users. For instance, the car will wait a second after the traffic lights turn green before it moves off, although this could incur the anger of drivers stuck behind it.
Google also says that making it drive in a natural and predictable way has been one of the key goals, so that it behaves in a familiar way on the road for other drivers.
Google's self-driving carA laser sensor on the roof constantly scans the surroundings. Photograph: GoogleWhy now?
Google says it has gone as far as it can with the current customised vehicles and that a new platform is needed to take the project and technology to the next step and closer to a product people can actually use.
For instance, the previous generation Lexus vehicle had blind spots right up against the car where the sensors couldn’t see, something that needs to be eliminated in any vehicle open to the public.
The cars will first be used to test the software driving the car and push its capabilities. Google says at some point, when it deems its software safe, it will start putting real people into the cars beyond Google engineers. It will use the cars in a similar manner to the company’s Google Glass explorer programme, analysing how people use them and what works and what doesn’t.
Why do damn cute?
Why does it still look like a car on the inside?
Is this something I’m going to be able to buy?
Google's self-driving carThe front of the car is designed to absorb as much of the impact as possible with a pedestrian, if one ever happens. Photograph: Google
Who will build it for me?
When can I get one?
What about legislation?
• Google’s driverless car: no steering wheel, two seats, 25mph
• Analysis: a long and winding road to success for Google’s self-driving car
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Northern Lights on the Battle of Hastings.
by Kari Ellen Gade
The earliest sagas of the Norwegian kings are in general sparse in their comments on episodes and events taking place abroad and involving non-Scandinavian participants. Whereas Haraldr harðraði’s (Hardrule’s) invasion of England in 1066 and the battle of Stamford Bridge are documented in detail, little attention is paid to the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England the same year. Neither Theodoricus nor Agrip mentions the Battle of Hastings, but in Heimskringla (ca.1230-1235) Snorri Sturluson gives the following account:1
But Harold then marched with his army to southern England because he had just learned that William the Bastard had invaded England from the south and subjugated the country. Harold’s brothers Swegn, Gyrth, and Waltheof accompanied him. The meeting between King Harold and Earl William took place south in England near Hast–ings. There was a great battle. There King Harold fell, together with his brother, Earl Gyrth, and a large part of their army. That was nineteen nights after the fall of King Haraldr Sigurðarson.
Similarly, the author of Fagrskinna (ca. 1225), one of Snorri’s sources, has little to say about Harold Godwinson’s last battle:2
Nineteen nights after the fall of King Haraldr Sigurðarson, King Harold Godwinson and William the Bastard fought in southern England. There fell King Harold and his brother Earl Gyrth, and the greater part of his army. Harold had then been king for nine and a half months.
In another of Snorri’s sources, Morkinskinna, we find the following curious account of the Battle of Hastings and last dealings between Harold Godwinson and William the Conqueror:3
Now we pick up the story at the moment when William had arrived in southern Eng–land and was subjugating the country wherever he went.
He let the relics of Odmarus be tied to his standard, those very relics on which Harold had sworn. King Harold and William fought a great battle when they met. That was twelve months after the fall of King Haraldr Sigurðarson. The battle did not go in Harold’s favor. Then he said: “What is tied to William’s standard?” And he was told. “Then it may be,” said King Harold, “that there will be no escape.” There fell King Harold Godwinson and his brother Gyrth.
Although the texts of Heimskringla, Fagrskinna, and Morkinskinna differ some–what in their length and sequence of events, the wording of the three versions is sufficiently similar to posit a common exemplar, namely the *Oldest Morkinskinna (ÆMsk), which was available to both Snorri and the author of Fagrskinna.4 However, the extant version of Morkinskinna (MskMS) contains information which is not found in any other version, and which raises the following questions: Who was the obscure Odmarus and why did William amble onto the field of battle with Odmarus’s relics tied to his standard? And, more importantly, what was the source this information in Morkinskinna? In the following I shall discuss the historical background for the Battle of Hastings as it emerges from Old Norse, English, Norman, and Anglo-Norman sources, and attempt to shed some light on these questions.5
Anglo-Saxon wedding
Anglo-Saxon wedding
The section immediately preceding the Battle of Hastings in Morkinskinna provides us with William’s motivation for bringing Odmarus’s relics into the battle against Harold Godwinson. We are told that Edward the Confessor of England, being child–less and advanced in age, decided to appoint William of Normandy his successor to the English throne.6 He sent Robert, archbishop of Canterbury, to convey that mes–sage to William and later dispatched Harold Godwinson on the same errand. Harold arrived on the Continent and spent some time at William’s court. During his stay there, rumors arose about an amorous affair between Harold and William’s wife and, to counter those rumors, Harold asked for the hand of William’s daughter in mar–riage. Morkinskinna continues: “And in addition to that Earl Harold swore oaths to Earl William on the relics of Odmarus that he would never be opposed to him”.7 Harold Godwinson then went back to England, stayed with Edward the Confessor, and upon his death succeeded him on the English throne. When William learned that, he felt that Harold had broken his oath because Edward had appointed him, William, successor to the English throne.
Whereas Fagrskinna is silent about the events leading up to the Norman Con–quest, Snorri follows the Morkinskinna account but makes certain significant changes. According to him, Harold Godwinson, Edward the Confessor’s favorite, at one point set out for Wales in a ship, was blown off course, and landed by accident in Rouen, in Normandy.8 Then follows an expanded version of the story told in Morkinskinna about Harold, William’s wife, and Harold’s betrothal to William’s daughter, but no oath of allegiance is mentioned. After the betrothal Harold left for England and never returned to claim his wife.9 Upon Edward’s death Harold ascended to the throne. When the news reached William, he was enraged, first of all because, in his opinion, his kinship with Edward entitled him to the English throne, and, secondly, because he felt slighted by Harold’s failure to fulfill the marital obligations to his daughter. William consequently decided to invade England and claim his rights.10
Such is the account of the two Old Norse versions of the events that culminated in the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest. If we look to England, the Anglo–Saxon Chronicle provides no information about William’s motivation for the invasion. No mention is made of Harold Godwinson’s alleged visit to Normandy, to an oath of allegiance, or to a betrothal. Of the later Anglo-Norman historians, “Florence” of Worcester (d.1118) follows the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in his description of the events leading up to the Norman Conquest,11 but he does mention that William was Edward’s cousin, thus legitimizing, as it were, his claim to the English throne (“Nortmannorum comes Willelmus, Eadwardi regis consobrinus”).12 The anonymous Vita Æddwardi regis, written between 1065 and 1067 and most likely commissioned by Queen Edith,13 has nothing to say about Harold’s trip to Normandy, but its characterization of Harold, who was “rather too generous with oaths (alas!)” (“sed ille citius ad sacramenta nimis, proh dolor, prodigus”), would seem to support the view that Harold at some point had committed perjury.14
The silence of the earliest English sources about Harold’s visit to Normandy and his alleged oath to William is understandable in view of the fact that these works were written shortly after the events they recorded and in most cases have an English bias. The Norman historians, however, whose aim it was to extol William the Conqueror and to legitimize his claim to the English throne, have more to say on this subject.15 William of jumieges, who wrote his Gesta normannorum ducum between 1050 and 1070, gives the following account of Edward’s embassies to Normandy concerning the succession to the English throne:16
Etwardus quoque Anglorum rex disponente Deo succesione prolis carens olim miserat disci Willelmo Rodbertum Cantuariorum archipresulem ex regno a Deo sibi attributo illum statuens heredem. Sed et Heroldum postmodum illi destinauit cunctorum sue dominationis comitum diuitiis honore et potentia maximum, ut ei de sua corona fideli–tatem faceret ac Christiano more sacramentis firmaret.
According to William of Jumieges, Harold set out on his mission and drifted off course to Ponthieu where he was imprisoned and held for ransom by Count Guy. When the news of this reached William of Normandy, he sent envoys to Guy to free Harold, and Harold was forced to swear fealty to William with many oaths concern–ing the kingdom of England (“facta fidelitate de regno plurimis sacramentis”).17 William of Jumieges does not mention where the oath was taken, the year it was taken, or the nature of the relics on which Harold swore. When Edward died, William says, Harold usurped the throne, perjuring himself (“ex fidelitate peieratus quam iurauerat dud”).18
William of Poitiers, who was commissioned by William the Conqueror to write his Gesta Guillelmi ducis Normannorum et regis Anglorum, also mentions that Edward appointed William his heir and sent Archbishop Robert of Canterbury as his envoy to William (“Optimatum igitur suorum assenseu per Rodbertum Cantuariensem archipraesulem hujus delegationis mediatorem”), along with Godwin’s son and grandson as hostages to secure the promise.19 Later, when Edward felt death approaching, he sent Harold, whose brother and nephew were held hostage in Normandy, to recon–firm his earlier promise (“Fidem sacramento confirmaturum Heraldum ei destinavit, cunctorum sub dominatione sua dividis, honore atque potentia, eminentissimum: cujus antea frater et fratruelis obsides fuerant accepti de successione eadem”).20 William of Poitiers then proceeds to describe Harold’s being blown off course, his landing in Ponthieu, his imprisonment by Count Guy, and the subsequent rescue by William of Normandy. Harold was then brought to the castle of Eu, to Rouen, and finally to a council at Bonneville-sur-Touques, where he swore an oath to William to the effect that he would support William’s claim to the English throne; that he would surrender the castle of Dover and other fortifications to William; and that he would become William’s vassal.21 Neither the year of these events nor the identity of the relics on which Harold swore are mentioned. Upon Edward’s death, Harold usurped the throne, thus violating his oath, and William decided to defend his heritage with arms.22
William of Jumieges’s Gesta normannorum ducum was interpolated before 1113 by the Anglo-Norman monk Ordericus Vitalis of Saint Evroult, who added to William’s account of the pre-conquest events several details, among them that Harold had been betrothed to William’s daughter during the stay in Normandy (“Deinde dux post–quam Heraldus fidelitatem sibi de regno pluribus sacramentis firmauit, Adelizam fil–iam suam cum medietate Anglici regni se daturum eidem spopondit”), as well as the fact that Wulfnoth, Harold Godwinson’s brother, remained in Normandy as a hostage when Harold returned to England.23 In book 3 of his Historia ecclesiastica (written between 1114 and 1123-1124), Ordericus repeats the information from his interpo–lated version of William of Jumieges, but adds that Harold’s oath of allegiance to William was sworn at Rouen in the presence of the Norman nobles, and that, after becoming William’s man, Harold swore on the most sacred relics to carry out all that was required of him (“et homo eius factus omnia qux ab illo requisita fuerant super sanctissimas reliquias iurauerat”).24 The identity of the relics is not mentioned, and Ordericus does not indicate the year in which Harold’s alleged mission took place.
Harold’s presence in Normandy and his oath on the relics is depicted on the Bayeux tapestry, dating from the end of the eleventh century and possibly commis–sioned by William’s half-brother, Odo of Bayeux.25 Here Harold is shown with his outstretched hands resting on two enormous caskets of relics.26 The oath is also men–tioned by Wace, who, in accordance with the Bayeux tapestry, places the oath at Bayeux and not at Rouen or Bonneville.27 Wace expands on the episode that describes the oath of allegiance, but he does not mention the identity of the relics in question:28
toz les corsainz fist demander
e en un leu toz assenbler,
tote une cove fist emplir,
pois les fist d’un paile covrir,
que Heraut ne sout ne ne vit,
n’il ne li fu mostre ne dit;
desus out mis un filatiere,
tot le meillor qu’il pout eslire
e le plus chier qu’il pout trover,
oil de boef l’ai oi nomer.
(He [William] sent for all the relics to be assembled at that place [Bayeux], and so many of them as to fill a whole casket. Then he covered them with a pall, so that Harold nei–ther saw them nor knew of their presence, for nothing was shown to him or told to him about it. Over it a philactery was placed, the most beautiful they could select and the most precious they could find: “oeil-de-boeuf” [“bull’s eye”] I have heard it called.)
We see, then, that most of the earliest Norman sources agree on the following points: 1) Edward appointed William his heir; 2) Edward’s bequest was communicated to William by Robert, archbishop of Canterbury; 3) some time later, Harold Godwinson was sent to reconfirm the promise, but he drifted off course to Ponthieu, was imprisoned by Guy, and later redeemed by William; 4) after having been brought to Normandy, Harold swore an oath to William. It is also equally clear that, with the omission of the fact that Harold drifted off to Ponthieu, was imprisoned by Count Guy, and rescued by William, the sequence of events in the Morkinskinna version follows the Norman tradition closely. As far as Snorri is concerned, his version of Harold’s visit to Normandy appears to follow that of William of Malmesbury and it will not concern us here.29
Scholars have long debated which, if any, of the versions of Harold’s trip to Nor–mandy and his alleged oath to William has a basis in history.30 It was argued above that the silence of the English sources in this matter is understandable, but it would appear that William of Poitiers, who wrote at the commission of William himself, could not have departed too far from the truth in his description of the events that prompted the Norman invasion of England. That is also the case with William of Jumieges, who was present at the monastery of Jumieges during the residency of the former archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Champart (d.1055), after Robert’s exile from England in 1052, and who would have been in an excellent position to obtain information about the affairs at Edward’s court.31
It has been suggested that, where the earliest Norman versions all agree, “they are probably all based on a single story, first composed by the duke’s advisers and sent to Rome early in 1066 to obtain the support of Pope Alexander II.”32 However that may be, it is curious that none of the earliest versions agrees on where Harold swore the oath to William, and, furthermore, that they mention neither the identity of the relics on which the oath was sworn, nor the year that event took place. The Carmen de Hastingae proelio, most likely composed before 1072 by Guy of Amiens, the uncle of Count Guy of Ponthieu, refers to the oath as “secret”: “Nescit que furtiva mihi periu–ria fecit,”33 and it could be that the conflicting information about the time, place, and content of Harold’s oath in the Norman sources indeed resulted from the fact that the circumstances surrounding that oath were never made public.34 If that was the case, the information in Morkinskinna about the relics of “Odmarus” is even more puzzling.
As far as the Battle of Hastings is concerned, the descriptions in the extant versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are quite brief and resemble the versions found in Heim–skringla and Fagrskinna:35
Meanwhile Earl William landed in Hastings on the day of the Feast of St. Michael. And Harold came from the north and fought with him before his entire army had arrived. He fell there with his two brothers, Gyrth and Leofwine.
Then William earl of Normandy came to Pevensey on the eve of the Feast of St. Michael. And as soon as they were able to move on, they erected a stronghold at Hast–ings. This was then told to King Harold, and he gathered a great army and came against him by the hoary apple tree. And William came upon him unawares before he could marshall his troops. But the king nonetheless offered him very hard resistance with those men who were willing to support him, and there was great slaughter on both sides. There King Harold was killed and Earl Leofwine, his brother, and Earl Gyrth, his brother, and many good men.
The Norman sources are very detailed, but only two historians, namely, William of Poitiers and Ordericus Vitalis, mention that the relics on which Harold swore were attached to William during the battle. According to William of Poitiers, William got ready for battle and placed those relics around his neck: “Appendit etiam humili collo suo reliquias, quarum favorem Heraldus abalienaverat sibi, violata fide quam super eas jurando sanxerat.”36 Ordericus Vitalis did not include that information in his interpo–lations in William of Jumieges, but it found its way into his Ecclesiastical History where he states that William prepared for battle by fortifying “his body and soul with the holy sacraments, and humbly hung the sacred relics on which Harold had sworn round his neck” (“reliquiasque sanctas super quas Heraldus iurauerat collo suo humiliter appendit”).37
In keeping with their earlier silence on this topic, neither William of Poitiers nor Ordericus identifies the relics; neither of them comments on the effect the sight of the relics had on Harold Godwinson; and in both accounts William wears the relics around his neck and not tied to his banner, as in Morkinskinna. Despite these differ–ences, there is certainly reason to believe that the Morkinskinna account ultimately was derived from a Norman source. Because William of Poitiers’s history fails to include all the details of the Morkinskinna version, it would appear that the author of Morkinskinna followed a version of a text derived from Ordericus’s Ecclesiastical History. When Morkinskinna places the relics around William’s banner instead of around William’s neck, this could stem from a confusion of information: according to most Norman sources, William rode into the Battle of Hastings carrying a sacred banner dedicated to Saint Peter, which had been given to him by Pope Alexander II;38 and the Morkinskinna author could have conflated the two traditions, namely, that of the relics hung around William’s neck and that of his holy banner. However, the identity of the saint on whose relics Harold swore his oath, and whose presence at Hastings looms so large in Morkinskinna, must have entered the Old Norse tradition from another source.
In the calendars of saints there are two candidates whose names could serve to identify them as the Odmarus in Morkinskinna, namely, Saint Otmar, patron saint of Saint Gall, and Saint Audomarus, patron saint of Saint-Omer in Flanders.39 There appears to be no link between the Alemannic saint and Normandy; and, although Saint Otmar’s bones were distributed over a large area indeed, there are no records of his presence in Normandy or in any area immediately bordering on Normandy.40
If we turn to the Flemish saint Audomarus, however, the situation seems more promising. Saint Audomarus, whose feast fell on 9 November (changed from 1 November after 807), was bishop of Therouanne. He founded the monastery of Saint Bertin in Sithiu on the river Aa, as well as the abbey of Saint Omer, which later gave its name to the city of Saint-Omer. Audomarus died after 667 and was buried in the church of Saint Martin at Saint-Omer.41
Saint-Omer is located in Flanders, which at the time of the Norman Conquest was ruled by Count Baldwin V father-in-law of William the Conqueror and half-brother of Judith, wife of Earl Tostig Godwinson.42 Saint-Omer was situated on the pilgrim–age route from England to southern and eastern France and Rome, and English pil–grims and merchants passed regularly through that city.43 The most famous pilgrim to make his devotions at the altars of Saints Audomarus and Bertin was Knutr inn riki (the Great), king of Denmark, Norway, and England, who visited their relics on his way to Rome in 1026 or 1027. The author of the Encomium Emmae reginae, a resi–dent either of Saint Omer or of Saint Bertin, who was commissioned by Queen Emma to write her encomium in 1040-1042, was an eyewitness on that occasion (“ut credibiliora fiant quae assero, quid in una urbe Sancti Audomari fecerit dicam pro exemplo, quod etiam oculis meis me uidisse recordor”).44 He gives a detailed descrip–tion of Knutr’s donations, and concludes as follows:45
Haec et alia his mirificentiora a domno Cnutone gesta uidi ego, uester uernula, Sancte Audomare, Sancte Bertine, cum fierent uestris in caenobiis; pro quibus bonis tantum regem impertate uiuere in caelestibus habitaculis, ut uestri famuli canonici et monachi sunt orantes orationibus cotidianis.
The literary specialty of the monastic house of Saint Bertin at Saint-Omer was histor–ical works and saints’ lives in rhyming prose, and not only Emmas encomium, but also the earliest Vita Edwardi was written by an ecclesiastic from Saint-Omer.46
In the eleventh century, Flanders was a haven for political refugees from England, as the following list shows:47
1037 Queen Emma is exiled to Baldwin in Bruges, Flanders;
1039 Horðaknutr arrives in Bruges;
1044 Knutr’s niece, Gunnhildr, is banished and goes to Bruges, where she stays for a long time before she leaves for Denmark;
1047 Swegn Godwinson is exiled to Baldwin in Bruges and stays all winter;
1049 Swegn Godwinson is outlawed after the slaying of Bjorn Olfsson and goes to Bruges to stay with Baldwin;
1051 Godwin and all his sons are exiled; Godwin and his wife, Swegn, Tostig, and Gyrth go to Baldwin in Bruges.
We see, then, that during the years 1037-1051, Bruges in Flanders served as a refuge for English exiles, and in particular for Godwin and his sons. However, when Tostig Godwinson was exiled in November 1065, right before the death of Edward on 5 Jan–uary 1066 and his brother Harold’s succession to the throne of England, he did not go to Bruges but to Saint-Omer. The entry for the year 1065 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reads as follows: “Tostig then went across the sea and his wife with him, to Baldwin’s country, and he set up winter quarters at Saint–Omer”.48 That information is corroborated by the Vita Ædwardi, where it is added that Saint-Omer was the place in Flanders where Baldwin’s court met on special days, and furthermore, the “first place met by those who have crossed the British ocean” (“Susceptum [Baldwin] ergo sororis sue maritum honorifice et gratanter more suo, iussit morari et quiscere a tot laboribus in castro quod ex nomine beati Audomari inibi principaliter quiescentis nuncupatur, quod precipuis diebus sollempnis eius curia ibi conueniat, Brittannieque occeanum permensis primum occurrat”).49
Thus it was from Saint-Omer, then, that Tostig Godwinson, according to Old Norse sources, set out to solicit support from Haraldr of Norway for the ill-fated attempt to invade England.50 It could well be that the connection between the Godwin family and Flanders, and, in particular, the city of Saint-Omer, “which is named after the famous St Omer who lies honourably within,”51 became part of oral tradition and found its way into the Morkinskinna account of the Anglo-Norman affairs before and during the Norman Conquest.
There is, however, another intriguing possibility that needs to be explored. It emerged from the discussion above that none of the earliest Norman sources gives the year or the place of Harold Godwinson’s oath to William. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has no entries for the year 1064, and, although some are uneasy about that dating, most scholars tentatively agree that Harold’s oath to William took place in Normandy in 1064.52 After reviewing all the evidence, Freeman, for example, states that “I have myself placed the event at the point of time which on the whole seemed least unlikely; but I confess to have had all along a lurking feeling that the whole story may have arisen out of something which happened in that earlier French journey of Harold’s, of which we have no details.”53 The visit to which Freeman refers is recorded in the Vita Ædwardi, where it is stated that Harold went on a pilgrimage to Rome and on his way stayed in France, where “he carefully observed the Frankish customs.”54 That journey is not mentioned in any other source, and Freeman tentatively dates it to the year 1058.55
There is evidence of the presence of Harold Godwinson on the Continent on yet another occasion, however. On 13 November 1056, Count Baldwin V of Flanders subscribed a diploma at Saint-Omer for the abbey of Saint Peter of Ghent, and among the witnesses were Harold Godwinson and Count Guy of Ponthieu, the very person who, according to Norman sources, held Harold captive after his shipwreck on the coast of Ponthieu.56 In his article “A Visit of Earl Harold to Flanders in 1056,” Philip Grierson brings up the possibility that Guy of Ponthieu could have brought his captive to Baldwin in Saint-Omer in the hope “that the count of Flanders might be prepared to take an active part in the negotiations over the payment of the ransom required by the count of Ponthieu.”57 However, after weighing the evidence, Grierson concludes that the most likely date of Harold’s oath was 1064, and he chooses to con–nect Harold’s presence at Saint-Omer in 1056 with a possible mission from Edward the Confessor to secure the return of the exiled Edward Etheling to England.58
The evidence for the year 1064 for Harold’s stay in Normandy rests on the lack of an entry for that year in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as well as on the account of William of Poitiers to the effect that, after Harold swore the oath of allegiance to William, he partook in William’s Breton campaign against Count Conan.59 Harold’s presence on that campaign is also documented by the Bayeux tapestry, which places Harold’s oath after the Breton campaign.60 Neither William of Poitiers nor the tapestry men–tions the year of the campaign, but on indirect evidence it has been dated tentatively to 1064.61 Yet it is a historical fact that two of the main persons involved in the events that culminated in Harold’s perjury, namely, Count Guy of Ponthieu and Harold Godwinson himself, were present in Saint-Omer in November of 1056. We may ask, then, whether Guy on that occasion brought his captive to Baldwin, and whether Baldwin’s son-in-law William of Normandy had a hand in the release of the English hostage. And, furthermore, did Harold at that point swear an oath on the relics of Saint Audomarus, as is stated in the Old Norse Morkinskinna?
Our investigations have shown that the narrative elements contained in the pre-con–quest events related in Morkinskinna are also present in Ordericus Vitalis’s Ecclesiastical History that is, Edward’s bequest of the English throne to William, the two embassies to Normandy to convey that bequest (by Robert Champart and Harold Godwinson), Harold’s oath of allegiance on the relics, and his betrothal to William’s daughter.62 Furthermore, like Morkinskinna, Ordericus (following William of Poitiers) also locates the relics, on which Harold swore his fateful oath, at the scene of the Battle of Hastings.
In his introduction to Heimskringla III, Bjarm Aðalbjarnarson noted that the Mor–kinskinna version bears semblance to the accounts by Ordericus Vitalis and William of Jumieges.63 The presence of the relics on which Harold swore, however, is not men–tioned by William of Jumieges, nor was that information incorporated into Orderi–cus’s interpolations in William’s work. Hence, it is clear that the Gesta normannorum ducum could not have served as the source of the Morkinskinna account.
As far as William of Poitiers is concerned, Harold’s betrothal to William’s daughter, which figures quite prominently in Morkinskinna, is not stated explicitly as taking place during Harold’s stay in Normandy, but is only implied in a later section: “Imo voluit patris Godwim potentiam 1111 ampliare, et natam suam, imperatoris thalamo dignissimam, in matrimonium, uti fuerat pollicitus, tradere.”64 Thus it is unlikely that William of Poitiers’s History could have been the source available to the Morkinskinna author.
Ordericus’s Ecclesiastical History is the only version to incorporate all the elements present in the Morkinskinna version. It is doubtful, however, that the author of Morkinskinna had access to a copy of Ordericus’s Historia ecclesiastica.65 It was not widely disseminated,66 and, if the author of Morkinskinna had Ordericus’s work before him, it is not clear why Morkinskinna in general provides so much misinformation about English and Norman affairs.67 On the other hand, the wording of Morkinskinna is in places very close to that of Ordericus’s history. Consider the following example, of passages from Morkinskinna: “then he [Edward] sent Robert, archbishop of Canterbury, to his kinsman William in Normandy, and wanted to designate him as his successor; and another time he sent Earl Harold on the same mission to William”, and from Ordericus: “Eduardus nimirum propinquo suo Willelmo duci Normannorum primo per Rodbertum Cantuariorum pontificem, postea per eundem Heraldum integram Anglici regni mandauerat concessionem.”68
It is possible, however, that the source available to the author of Morkinskinna was not the work of Ordericus Vitalis himself, but an abbreviated and interpolated version of either his Ecclesiastical History or of William of Jumieges’s Gesta normannorum ducum. We know that such versions existed, and one of them, Quedam exceptiones de historia normannorum et anglorum, is still extant.69 Quedam exceptiones is an abbrevia–tion of the C version of William’s Gesta normannorum ducum, with interpolations relating to the Fitz Osbern family.70 It was composed between July 1101 and some–time during 1103 by someone with access to that family, in particular to Bishop Osbern of Exeter; its place of composition is unknown.7l The text survives in a com–posite manuscript, London, BL Cotton Vespasian A.xviii fols. 157-162v, and was written by one scribe. It has been dated to the early twelfth century.72 What is peculiar, however, are the verbal correspondences with the Old Norse Morkinskinna. The following excerpts will suffice to demonstrate the point.73
When Edward the Good was king of England and childless, then he sent Robert, arch–bishop of Canterbury, to his kinsman William in Normandy, and wanted to designate him as his successor; and another time he sent Earl Harold, the son of Godwin, on the same mission to William.
Quedam exceptiones
Interea rex Edwardus carens sobole Willelmum Normannorum ducem cognatum suum sibi constituit heredem Angliam dimittens, primum per Robertum archipresulem Cantuariorum quem propter hanc causam direxit in Normanniam, dehinc per Heroldum filium comitis Goduini.
And again Morkinskinna
William became king and died of illness in Normandy. After him his son, William Rufus, ruled for fourteen years. He died of illness. Then his brother Henry, the second son of William I, succeeded him as king.
And Quedam exceptiones
[William] regnauitque annis .xxii. et in Normannia antequam transfretaret in Angliam rexit ducatum Normannie .xxx. annis feliciter. Quo mortuo regnauit Willelmus filius eius pro eo annis .xiii. . . . Anno autem .xiii. regni sui occubuit Willelmus rex Anglorum uenando sagitta. Cui successit Henricus frater eius.
Because Quedam exceptiones fails to include information incorporated into Morkin–skinna, such as the presence of the relics at the Battle of Hastings, it is unlikely that this particular work was the immediate source of Morkinskinna; but I suggest that a work of a similar nature was available to, and used by, the author of Morkinskinna. And, furthermore, because the list of William’s successors in Morkinskinna stops with Henry I and does not include the years of his reign (so also Quedam exceptiones), I propose that Morkinskinnds Anglo-Norman source must have been written prior to the death of Henry I in December 1135.
Excerpts of the genealogical information and the events leading up to the Norman Conquest as related by Quedam exceptiones were copied verbatim from a similar source into the chronicle of Roger de Hoveden, under the caption “Descriptio gene–alogix ducum normannorum, a Rollone primo duce usque secundum Henricum regem Anglix, et qua auctoritate quave ratione sanctus rex Eadwardus ducem Willel–mum constituit hxredem.”74 As Gustav Storm has shown, an earlier and expanded version of “Descriptio genealogiæ” could have served as a source for the anonymous author of Historia Norwegiae, which would seem to confirm the presence of such abbreviated versions of Anglo-Norman historical writings in Scandinavian territory in the early thirteenth century.75 Whether the source of Morkinskinna was a Latin import or an Old Norse translation of a Latin exemplar (or Old Norse excerpts from a Latin exemplar?) is of course impossible to ascertain; but because there is scant evidence that the author of Morkinskinna knew Latin, the latter seems more likely.
If we return to Saint Odmarus and his relics, we cannot exclude the possibility that the name of this saint was given in Morkinskinna’s foreign source. But because all other versions, both English and Norman, as well as Anglo-Norman, are silent on this point, it would appear that the name of the saint in Morkinskinna has a different provenance. If “Saint Odmarus” indeed was concocted by the Morkinskinna author, it is not clear why he would have settled on an obscure Flemish saint who was not ven–erated in the North, rather than on a more mainstream figure of devotion: William’s banner, for example, was dedicated to Saint Peter, and the famous cathedral in Caen, founded and endowed by William and his place of burial, was dedicated to Saint Stephen.76
It seems more likely that there existed an independent Old Norse tradition con–necting the Flemish saint with the Godwin family, in particular with Harold Godwinson and Harold’s perjury. As suggested above, that tradition could stem from the Godwin family’s ties to Flanders and from Tostig’s refuge at Saint-Omer in 1065–1066. But it is also possible that the reference to Saint Audomarus in the Old Norse Morkinskinna has its roots in historical events that took place in the autumn of 1056 at Saint-Omer and involved Baldwin of Flanders, Guy of Ponthieu, Harold Godwinson, and William of Normandy. It could well be that Harold’s mission to the Conti–nent in 1056 was aimed at obtaining the release of the English hostages (his uncle and nephew) from the Norman duke through the mediation of Baldwin of Flanders, William’s father-in-law and the half-brother of Tostig Godwinson’s wife Judith.
Henry of Huntingdon explicitly states that Harold was on his way to Flanders when he drifted off course to Ponthieu, and in his Historia novorum in Anglia, Eadmer maintains that the sole purpose of Harold’s journey was to obtain the release of his uncle and nephew.77 Eadmer does not give the date of the mission; he only states that it took place some time after Godwin’s death: “Is [Harold], elapso modico tem–pore, licentiam petivit a rege Normanniam ire et fratrem suum atque nepotem qui obsides tenebantur liberate, liberatos reducere.”78 Godwin died on 15 April 1053, and the phrase “elapso modico tempore” would appear to fit the year 1056 better than 1064.
If we assume that Harold was on his way to secure the release of his relatives when he drifted off course to Ponthieu and was imprisoned by Guy, Guy could have brought the English earl to Baldwin’s court in Saint-Omer, where the ensuing negoti–ations could have involved Harold’s swearing an oath of some sort to William upon the relics of Saint Audomarus. Such a reconstruction of events must admittedly remain speculative, but in light of the conflicting evidence from the earliest Norman sources, it should not be dismissed out of hand.
The Morkinskinna version of the Battle of Hastings, then, was based on a conglomerate of sources – written and oral, foreign and native – and it not only provides us with a unique insight into the working methods of the earliest Icelandic compiler of the Norwegian kings’ sagas, but it may also serve to shed new light on an issue that never has ceased to puzzle historians, namely, on the events that culminated in the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest of England.
Viking Ship on the sunset
Viking Ship on the sunset
End Notes
1. Heimskringla III, ed. Bjarni Abalbjarnason, Islenzk fornrit 28 (Reykjavik 1951) 194. All translations from Old Norse, Old English, and Old French are my own. The orthography of the citations from Morkinskinna has been normalized. The battle of Stamford Bridge took place on Monday, 25 September 1066. William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey on 28 or 29 September and marched on to Hastings (Ordericus Vitalis [henceforth OV], The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols. [Oxford 1969-1980] 2.170 n. 2). The battle took place on 14 October at Senlac (OE “Sandlacu”), a short distance from Hastings (OV 2.172). Heimskringla is the only Old Norse source to mention the loca–tion of that battle, and the name “Helsingjaport” appears to be a scribal corruption of OE “Hæstingaport” (see the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle [henceforth ASC]: Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel with Supplementary Extracts from the Others, ed. Charles Plummer, 1: Text, Appendices and Glossary [1892; repr. Oxford 1952] D, 199). For convenient English translations of the sections dealing with the Battle of Hastings in the most pertinent primary sources, see The Battle of Hastings Sources and Interpretations, ed. Stephen Morillo (Woodbridge 1996) 1-53.
2. Fagrskinna-Noregs konunga tal, ed. Bjarni Einarsson, Islenzk fornrit 29 (Reykjavik 1984) 293.
3. Morkinskinna, ed. Finnur Jonsson, Samfund til udgivelse of gammel nordisk litteratur 53 (Copenha–gen 1928-1932) 285-286.
4. For a discussion of the relationship between Heimskringla, Fagrskinna, and Morkinskinna, see Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, Om de norske kongesagaer, Skrifter utgitt av det norske videnskaps-akademi i Oslo 2, his–torisk-filosofisk klasse, 1936, no. 4 (Oslo 1937) 135-236. The *Oldest Morkinskinna (ÆMsk) has been dated to around 1220 (ibid. 136), and the extant manuscript (MskMS) was written around 1275 (see Morkinskinna [n. 3 above] iv; Jonna Louis-Jensen, Kongesagastudier. Kompilationen Hulda-Hrokkinskinna, Bibliotheca Arnamagnxana 32 [Copenhagen 1977] 63).
5. The scholarly literature on the Norman Conquest is vast, and this article will refer only to works directly pertaining to the topic at hand. For the most exhaustive, yet highly subjective, discussion of primary sources, see Edward A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, Its Causes and Its Results 3: The Reign of Harold and the Interregnum, rev. American ed. (Oxford 1873). David C. Douglas (William the Conqueror. The Norman Impact upon England [Berkeley 1964] 427-434) and Frank Barlow (Edward the Confessor [Berkeley 1970] 345-351) give bibliographical overviews of the most important primary sources. For bibliogra–phies of secondary sources, see Douglas 434-447 and Barlow 351-357. See also Eric John, “Edward the Confessor and the Norman Succession,” English Historical Review 371 (1979) 241-267. There is no exhaustive scholarly discussion of the Battle of Hastings in Old Norse sources (but see Bjarni Aoalbjarnarson’s notes on “Haralds saga Siguroarsonar” in Heimskringla [n. 1 above] 168-174, 193-197).
6. Morkinskinna (n. 3 above) 284-285.
7. Ibid. 285.
8. Heimskringla (n. 1 above) 169.
9. Ibid. 170.
10. Ibid. 170-171. Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna, and Heimskringla make Emma of Normandy, Edward’s mother, William’s aunt (Morkinskinna [n. 3 above] 34, 284; Fagrskinna [n. 2 above] 291, 293; Heimskrin–gla [n. 1 above] 168; see also Danakonunga sogur, ed. Bjarni Guonason, tslenzk fornrit 35 [Reykjavik 1982] xcix n. 24, c, 107 n. 2). The same mistake occurs in certain English sources (Florence of Worcester [henceforth FW]: Chronicon: Florentii Wigorniensis monacbi Chronicon ex chronicis, ed. Benjamin Thorpe, 2 vols. [1848-1849; repr. Vaduz 1964] 1.225; Symeon of Durham: Symeonis monachi Opera omnia 2: His–toria regum, eadem historia ad quintum et vicesimum annum continuata, per joannem Hagulstadensem: acce–dunt varia, ed. Thomas Arnold, Rolls Series [1885; repr. Wiesbaden 1965] 183; Roger de Hoveden [henceforth RH]: Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. William Stubbs, 4 vols., Rolls Series [1868; repr. Wiesbaden 1964] 2.235; Henry of Huntingdon: Henrici archidiaconi Huntendunensis Historia anglo–rum, ed. Thomas Arnold, Rolls Series [1879; repr. 1965] 187). In reality, Emma was the daughter of Rich–ard I, duke of Normandy (942-996), sister of Richard II, duke of Normandy (996-1026). Richard II’s sons (Emma’s nephews) were Duke Richard III (1026-1027) and Duke Robert I (1027-1035), William’s father.
11. FW 1.224-227.
12. Ibid. 1.225; see n. 10 above. For a detailed, but highly biased, discussion of William’s claim to the English throne, see Freeman (n. 5 above) 182-191. For a more recent discussion, see John (n. 5 above).
13. Vita Ædwardi [henceforth VÆ]: The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster, attributed to a monk of Saint-Bertin, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow, ed. 2 (Oxford 1992) xxiii, xxix-xxxiii.
14. VÆ 80/81.
15. For exhaustive discussions of the different versions of Harold’s journey to Normandy, his capture by Guy, redemption by William, and the alleged oath of allegiance, see Freeman (n. 5 above) 144-170, 448–469, and Barlow (n. 5 above) 220-229.
16. William of Jumieges [henceforth WJ]: The Gesta normannorum ducum of William of Jumieges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. Elisabeth M. C. Van Houts, 2 vols. (Oxford 1992-1995) 2.158, 160.
17. Ibid. 2.160.
18. Ibid.
19. William of Poitiers [henceforth WP]: Guillaume de Poitiers Histoire de Guillaume le Conguerant, ed. and trans. Raymonde Foreville, Classiques de histoire de France au moyen age 23 (Paris 1952) 30, 32.
20. Ibid. 100.
21. Ibid. 100-104, 172, 176.
22. Ibid. 146-148.
23. WJ 2.160. Wulfnoth remained a prisoner of William’s until William’s death in 1087 (FW 2.20). For a discussion of the English hostages at the Norman court, see Barlow (n. 5 above) 301-306.
24. OV 2.136.
25. Freeman (n. 5 above) 377-385.
26. English Historical Documents 2: 1042-1189, ed. David C. Douglas and George W Greenaway (London 1953) 235, 252.
27. Wace: Guillaume le duc, Guillaume le roi: Extraits du Roman de Rou de Wace, poete normand du Xlle siecle, ed. and trans. Rene Lepelley (Caen 1987) 42. Ordericus locates the oath at Rouen (2.134; so also Vita Haroldi: The Life of King Harold Godwinson, in Three Lives of the Last Englishmen, trans. Michael Swanton, Garland Library of Medieval Literature set. B 10.[New York and London 1984] 19-20, 26).
28. Wace 42-43.
29. William of Malmesbury [henceforth WM]:Willelmi Malmesbiriensis monachi de gestis regum anglorum, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols., Rolls Series (London 1887) 1.279-280; see also Heimskringla (n. 1 above) xxviii. For an overview of other versions in which the broken betrothal is seen as the sole source of William’s grudge against Harold, as in Heimskringla, see Freeman (n. 5 above) 464-465. William, it would appear, had made a habit of extending his power through marital alliances: not only did he himself marry Mathilda, daughter of Baldwin V of Flanders, but sometime after 1055 Count Herbert of Maine was betrothed to one of William daughters, and Herbert in return engaged his sister Margaret to William’s son Robert Curthose (WP 88; OV 2.304; see Douglas [n. 5 above] 73).
30. After examining the extant sources, Freeman (n. 5 above) 163 concludes, “Harold then, I admit, swore, but when he swore must remain a matter of conjecture. And, if we are thus left to conjecture as to the time when Harold swore, we are equally left to conjecture as to the place.” Similarly Barlow (n. 5 above) 228 states that “the truth about Harold’s embassy to Normandy in 1064 or 1065 cannot be estab–lished: the evidence is too unreliable. All we can do is to list the main possibilities.” See also Douglas (n. 5 above) 175-177.
31. WJ l.xlvii. Robert Champart, the alleged envoy from Edward to William of Normandy, was the former prior of Saint-Ouen, Rouen (1035-1042). He accompanied Edward the Confessor to England, where he was consecrated bishop of London (1044-1050). In 1050 he was elected archbishop of Canterbury, but he was subsequently exiled from England in 1052 along with other Norman dignitaries after the reinstatement of Godwin and his sons (WJ Lxxv). Doubts have been cast on the historicity of Robert’s mission, but it could have taken place in 1051, which could account for the presence of William of Normandy at Edward’s court later that year (ASC D 176; see Barlow [n. 5 above] 107-108; Douglas [n. 5 above] 169).
32. WJ l.xlvii; see also Barlow (n. 5 above) 221.
33. The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy Bishop of Amiens, ed. Catherine Morton and Hope Muntz (Oxford 1972) 16.
34. Ibid. 71.
35. ASC E 198, D 199.
36. WP 180, 182.
37. OV 2.172/173.
38. See WP 154, 184; OV 2.142; WM 2.302; Freeman (n. 5 above) 215.
39. See M. van Uytfange, “Audomarus,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters (Munich 1980) 1.1197-1198, and W Vogler, “Otmar,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters (Munich 1993) 4.1560-1561. The name of the Alemannic saint is also given in sources in its Latin form Audomarus (Johannes Duft, St. Otmar in Kult and Kunst [St. Gall 1966] 37 n. 11), and Audomarus of Konstanz was occasionally confused with the Flemish Audoma–rus of Coutances (ibid. 38, 102 n. 6).
40. Ibid. 42-48.
41. See Georges Coolen, “Saint Colomban et Saint Omer,” in Milanges Colombaniens Actes du congres international de Luxeuil 20-23 juillet 1950 (Paris 1950) 361-375, and Vita Audomari, ed. W Levison, MGH Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 5.753-764.
42. See Philip Grierson, “The Relations between England and Flanders before the Norman Conquest,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society ser. 4, 23 (1941) 99-100 n. 5; see also Freeman (n. 5 above) 433-442.
43. Philip Grierson, “A Visit of Earl Harold to Flanders in 1956,” English Historical Review 51 (1936) 94; idem (n. 42 above) 94; and VÆ x1vii.
44. Encomium Emmae reginae, ed. and trans. Alistair Campbell, Camden Third Series 72 (London 1949) 36.
45. Ibid.
46. For the literary connections between Saint-Omer and England, see VIE xlvii-liii.
47. ASC CDEF 160-161; C 160; D 165; E 166; CE 171; CDE 172, 176. See also Grierson (n. 42 above) 96-103.
48.ASC C 192.
49.VÆ 82183.
50. Tostig’s journey to Norway is mentioned in all Old Norse sources (Theodrici monachi Historia de antiquitate regum norwagiensium, in Monumenta Historica Norvegiae. Latinske kildeskrifter til Norges histo–rie i middelalderen, ed. Gustav Storm [1880; repr. Oslo 1973] 56; Agrip of Noregskonunga sogum, ed. Bjarni Einarsson, Islenzk fornrit 29 [Reykjavik 1984] 39; Fagrskinna [n. 2 above] 274-276; Heimskringla [n. 1 above] 172-74; Morkinskinna [n. 3 above] 262-264). That journey is otherwise attested only in Ordericus Vitalis’s interpolations in William of Jumieges: “Heraldum Herfagam Northweghe regem adiit, ipsumque supplex ut se iuuaret rogitauit. Ipse uero precanti Tostico libenter adquieuit” (WJ 2.162), as well as in his Ecclesiastical History (OV 2.142, 144). The latter version, greatly expanded, contains a dia–logue between Tostig and Haraldr of Norway reminiscent of the dialogue found in Morkinskinna 263–264. Scholars have doubted the historicity of that journey (Heimskringla xxix n. 1), and the account in Morkinskinna shows that the author of that work had access to two conflicting versions of Tostig’s mission to Haraldr (264): “Ok pat segja sumir menn, at Tosti jarl sendi Gothorm Gunnhildarson til fundar vib Harald konung at bjdoa honum Noroimbraland meo svardogum ok eggja hann til vestrfarar. Ok for Gothormr til Noregs, en Tosti su6r um sja til Vallands at hitta maga stns” (“And some men say that Earl Tostig sent Gothormr Gunnhildarson to meet with King Haraldr and offer him Northumbria with pledges and incite him to travel west. And Gothormr went to Norway, but Tostig went south across the sea to Normandy to find his in-laws”).
51. VÆ 83.
52. Freeman (n. 5 above) 468 surveys the dates assigned to Harold’s visit in the different sources (1056, 1059, 1063, 1064), and settles on the year 1064 as the most likely candidate. But he admits that “at the same time . . . I do not commit myself to the date or to anything else” (ibid.). See also Barlow (n. 5 above) 221, 228, and Douglas (n. 5 above) 175. John (n. 5 above) 260 suggests that Harold’s visit to William took place between 1 November and 28 December 1065.
53. Freeman (n. 5 above) 163.
54. VÆ 53; see also Vita Haroldi (n. 27 above) 17-18.
55. VÆ 52 n. 125; but see Grierson (n. 43 above) 93-94.
56. Grierson (n. 43 above) 91-92; idem (n. 42 above) 100-101; VÆ 52 n. 125; Barlow (n. 5 above) 217.
57. Grierson (n. 43 above) 92.
58. Ibid. 94-97. Edward Etheling, the son of Edmund Ironside, Edward the Confessor’s half-brother, returned to England from Hungary in 1057 and died shortly after his arrival (ASC DE 187-188).
59. WP 106-114.
60. Douglas and Greenaway (n. 26 above) 234-235, 248-251; see also Ordericus’s interpolations in William of Jumieges, WJ 2.160, and OV 2.136.
61. Freeman (n. 5 above) 145-162, 471-472; Grierson (n. 43 above) 92-93; Barlow (n. 5 above) 221; Douglas (n. 5 above) 178-179.
62. Both Morkinskinna (n. 3 above) 285 and Heimskringla (n. 1 above) 193 report a curious story to the effect that William the Conqueror, prior to his departure for England, kicked his wife with his spur and killed her. That story is also referred to by William of Malmesbury, who admits to having heard it but attaches no credence to it (WM 2.331). It appears to be an oral variant of an episode related by Ordericus Vitalis, according to which Harold Godwinson, before riding into battle against William, kicked his mother, who tried to restrain him, with his spur (WJ 2.168; OV 2.172).
63. Heimskringla (n.1 above) xxviii.
64. WP 230.
65. For a review of the Scandinavian information in Ordericus’s Ecclesiastical History see Lucien Musset, “L’image de la Scandinavie dans les ceuvres Normandes de la periode ducale (911-1204),” in Les relations litteraires franco-scandinaves au moyen rage, Bibliotheque de la Faculte de philosophie et lettres de l’Univer–site de Liege fasc. 208 (Paris 1975) 193-213. Hans Bekker-Nielsen (“The French Influence on Ecclesiasti–cal Literature in Old Norse,” in Les relations . . . 140-141 n. 10) maintains that Ordericus Vitalis was known in medieval Scandinavia, but I have been unable to trace the source of that information.
66. OV 2.xxv.
67. To mention a few: the dates of Edward’s death and Harold Godwinson’s coronation are wrong (the fifth and seventh day of Christmas [Morkinskinna (n.3 above) 262]; the correct dates are January 5 and 6 [OV 2.136]); the genealogy of William is wrong (Morkinskinna 284; see n. 10 above); the nickname “langaspjot” (“long spear”) coined from the French longespee (“long sword”) is attached to Robert the Magnif–icent, William’s father, rather than to William I of Normandy, father of Richard I (284); the reign of William Rufus is given as fourteen years and he is said to have died of illness (286; William reigned thir–teen years and was killed in a hunting accident); the Battle of Hastings is said to have taken place twelve months, rather than nineteen days, after the battle of Stamford Bridge (286); Earls Morcer of Northum–bria and Waltheof of Huntingdon are said to be sons of Godwin, and furthermore, according to Morkin–skinna, Morcer fell at the battle of the river Ouse (267-268).
68. Morkinskinna (n. 3 above) 284-285; OV 2.134.
69. Printed in WJ 2.292-304.
70. Some of the interpolations in Quedam exceptiones appear to have been derived from Ordericus’s Eccle–siastical History For instance, in both Harold Godwinson’s oath is said to have taken place in Rouen (WJ 2.291, 301; OV 2.136).
71. WJ 2.292.
72. Ibid. 2.290.
73. Morkinskinna (n. 3 above) 284-285; WJ 2.301; Morkinskinna 286; WJ 2.304.
74. RH 2.239-241. Compare the following relevant passages: “Hic 7Edwardus carens sobole, Willelmo cognato suo Normannorum duci misit Robertum Cantuariensem archiepiscopum, et de regno eum con–stituit hxredem. Sed et comitem Haraldum post eum misit” (RH 2.240-241); “[William] regnavit autem annis viginti duobus. Quo mortuo, regnavit Willelmus filius ejus pro eo annis tredecim . . . . Willelmus autem rex, decimo tertio anno regni sui, occiditur venando sagitta. Cui successit Henricus frater ejus” (RH 2.241). A similar version, incorporating passages corresponding to Quedam exceptiones not printed in the Rolls edition of Roger de Hoveden’s chronicle, is found in Leges anglo-saxonicae ecclesiasticae et civiles, ed. David Wilkins (London 1721) 209-210, as a preface to the laws of William the Conqueror (“De duc–ibus normannorum in Neustria, qux modo vocatur Normanniae”).
75. Storm (n. 50 above) xxi-xxii, 91, 121; see also Bjarni Gubnason (n. 10 above) c-cii; of a different opinion is Svend Ellehoj, Studier over den aldste norrone historieskrivning, Bibliotheca Arnamagnxana 26 (Copenhagen 1965) 161-163, 171-174. Because Historia Norwegiae shares information with “Descriptio genealogix” that is not included in Morkinskinna, it is unlikely that the two Old Norse versions ultimately went back to the same text (“Cui successit Henricus frater ejus, et regnavit triginta sex annis. Hic erat pas–tor ferarum et custos nemorum, quern Merlinus Ambrosius leonem justitix in Historia Regum nomi–navit” [RH 2.241]; “iste genuit Wilelmum rufum et Henricum fratrem ejus, qui in prophetia Merlini regis leo justitix prxnominatus est” [Monumenta Historica Norvegiae 91]). For a discussion of the age and prov–enance of Historia Norwegiae, see Bjarni Adalbjarnarson (n. 4 above) 1-54.
76. FW 2.20. St. Odmarus or Audomarus does not appear to be among the saints worshipped in the North. See Margaret Cormack, The Saints in Iceland Their Veneration from the Conversion to 1400, Sub–sidia Hagiographica 78 (Brussels 1994).
77. Henry of Huntingdon 196. Eadmer: Eadmeri Historia Novorum in Anglia, et opuscula duo de Vita sancti Anselmi et quibusdam miraculis ejus, ed. Martin Rule, Rolls Series (London 1884) 6; so also Symeon of Durham (n. 10 above) 182-185.
78. Eadmer 6.
This article was first published in Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies v.28 (1997) We thank the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies of the University of California Los Angeles for giving us permission to republish this article.
(via De Re Militari)
O legado desconhecido da Inglaterra medieval.
Site criado pela Universidade de Oxford disponibiliza gratuitamente imagens e documentos históricos dos povos anglo-saxões ancestrais
por Pietro Henrique Delallibera
Na maioria dos livros didáticos brasileiros, a Inglaterra só parece entrar em cena na Idade Moderna, sendo a França a grande “protagonista” do período medieval. Por sorte, um site criado pela Universidade de Oxford está disponibilizando gratuitamente um acervo riquíssimo sobre a história dos anglo-saxões entre os séculos V e XI.
Chamado de Woruldhord , o projeto reúne uma grande quantidade de fotografias e documentos de época que foram doados por museus, bibliotecas, universidades e centros de pesquisa de todo o mundo. Ao todo, 400 instituições colaboram com o site, que já conta com cerca de 4.500 objetos digitais em seu acervo. E o melhor: o uso dessas imagens e textos, desde que para fins não-comerciais, é livre e gratuito.
O internauta poderá encontrar, por exemplo, uma reprodução da íntegra do poema épico Beowulf, considerado uma das mais importantes obras escritas no idioma do período, um ancestral do atual inglês. Mas o grande destaque do Woruldhord é seu banco de imagens: dividido em categorias como “igrejas”, “armas” ou “joias”, o acervo traz fotografias de grandes monumentos da Inglaterra medieval e de achados arqueológicos guardados em museus de todo o globo.
Os criadores do site, professores Stuart Lee, Anna Caughey e Tom Birkett, esperam que o conjunto de imagens e textos reunidos ajude educadores de todo o mundo a ensinar a história dos anglo-saxões e do Old English, idioma falado na Grã-Bretanha durante o período medieval.
Old English in Middle-Earth.
August 27, 2010 by Stuart Lee
Part One
To help create this brief introduction to Old English – the language of the Anglo-Saxons – I have consulted Mitchell and Robinson’s Guide to Old English, Dorothy Whitelock’s revised version of Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader, and J.R. Clark Hall’s Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Out of respect for Tolkien’s feelings I have avoided the great Bosworth and Toller dictionary, although it remains a necessary tool for anyone who is serious about working on Old English. There are books, tapes, and teaching materials which will help you further.
If you have not yet read The Lord of the Rings, chapter references will help you to find the relevant passage.
As we know, Tolkien loved the language of the Anglo-Saxons, the people of Germanic origin who first came to Britain as a mercenary force after the Romans had left. They settled here and developed their own society, culture and language. That language is generally known, especially in its written form, as Old English, usually abbreviated to OE. Tolkien worked on it professionally as a philologist and translator, and used it creatively in The Lord of the Rings.
There were many dialect forms of Old English. Tolkien preferred the dialect of the west midlands known as Old Mercian and once said he thought he would speak nothing but Old Mercian.
All the Old English we are about to look at is primarily in the West Saxon dialect because that came to be the main literary language in Anglo-Saxon England and many of the most important texts that have survived are written in it, although they may have been composed in other dialects.
If you want to speak like the Anglo-Saxons it will take a much more detailed course than this short introduction to learn all the grammar, but you can learn some sounds and some words and phrases that are of particular interest as you read The Lord of the Rings.
The first steps in OE begin with learning some of the special Old English letter forms that are used in it, and how they sound. Old English used a few runic forms, especially þ (it is called thorn) which looks like a /p/ with a long ascender (the bit sticking up); and ð (which is called eth) which looks like a /d/ with a curved ascender with a little line through it. They describe the particular /th/ sound each is used for – the hard form of /thorn/ and the soft form of /eth/. TRY SAYING the words ‘thorn’ and ‘eth’ TO HEAR THE DIFFERENCE IN THE SOUND OF THE RUNES- it is quite subtle.
Next you need to recognise the very commonly used vowel combination æ (called ash, but more correctly spelt in OE, asc). It always has the sound of the /a/ in mat/hat/cat.
Then we have the frequent eo which is sounded – e+o but the sounds are run together, not said separately. You will be familiar with this if you have seen the films or listened to the BBC radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.
As Tolkien uses it in names, the /e/ in this combination should sound like the /a/ in ‘hate’, not like the /e/ in ‘bet’. It is a much harder vowel sound. The reason for this particular pronunciation is because names like ‘Éomer’ and ‘Éowyn’ borrow their ‘Eo’ syllable from the word for ‘horse’ – eoh, and this is a stressed syllable.
As a useful rule for pronunciation we can say that OE vowels are pronounced more like vowels in German or French.
There are some tricky consonants in OE. As with the name of the æ vowels sound, it is called /ash/ but the word is spelled asc in OE where the consonants sc taken together have a /sh/ sound.
The cg in OE words like ecg (meaning an edge or sword) is pronounced as /dge/ as in MnE (Modern English) ‘ledge’, ‘hedge’.
c can also be tricky. If you see it in a text with a dot over it then it is pronounced as we pronounce ‘ch‘.
Sometimes g will appear with a dot over it, or italicised in a word. This means that it has a ‘y’ sound. This happens frequently when making past tenses in OE. A dotted or italicised ge is tacked onto the front of some verbs to make a past tense, as in gelædan (guided, led). In these cases it has a /y/ sound, so the word is pronounced ‘yelædan’.
Using what you have just read, try saying this: Meriadoc gelædde þone eoh ‘Meriadoc led the horse’.
Be sure to sound the final /e/ of gelædde and þone. There are no really silent letters in OE. For example, cniht – ‘boy’ or ‘squire’, needs to have its /c/ sounded [it is not dotted so it has its usual sound], and even its /h/ needs to be ‘breathed’ in.
The ge is also sometimes found at the start of nouns like geweorc (work) and has the same /y/ sound. Modern editors always show by dotting or italicising the ge if it should be pronounced as a /y/ or should be left lone as a /g/.
It can also happen in the middle of words. If we look back a moment, just to make life difficult, in OE the word for ‘hedge’ is spelt hege, but the /g/ is pronounced as a /y/ so it sounds like ‘heye’, from which ‘hay’ as in the High Hay, is derived.
Words and phrases
Probably the best known OE phrase Tolkien borrowed, and one which is fun to use with friends, is the greeting Wes þu hal. It means roughly ‘good health to you’.
The archaic word ‘wassail’ comes from it and Tolkien uses a modern spelling form in the phrase – ‘Westu Theoden hal‘
The later greeting ‘Ferthu hal‘, or ferþu hal means roughly ‘health to your spirit’. See The Two Towers, Book 3 Chapter VI for the use of both these greetings.
There are lots of OE words that Tolkien transfers straight into The Lord of the Rings, mostly into the Rohan episodes.
For example: The names Theoden and Thengel are both common nouns in OE simply meaning ‘prince’ or ‘lord’. The OE word for ‘king’ is cyning and is pronounced with a hard /c/ (a /k/ sound) and note that the /y/ is pronounced as /i/ with lips in a whistling position so it sounds like the /u/ in French ‘tu’. See The Two Towers, Book 3 Chapter VI.
We could then say Theoden cyning rad þone eoh = ‘Theoden the king rode the horse’.
If we learn the verb ‘to be‘ in OE, we make up other sentences of our own. And this is easier than you may expect!
We can say things like – se hring is gold – ‘the ring is gold’; þeoden is wlanc – ‘The prince is proud’. You can see that is does not need to be translated. It has come down to us unchanged, so you use the language of the Anglo-Saxons every day of your life if you speak English!
There are many words in Modern English (MnE) that are the same, or almost the same as words in OE, as you can see with the spelling of ‘hring’ – only the /h/ is missing from the modern word.
Some examples:
* Sam wyrceþ = Sam works [sounds like ‘Sam worketh]
* Frodo bideþ = Frodo waits [biden gave us the word we use in the phrase ‘biding her (or his) time’]
* Gollum biteþ = Gollum bites
* Se stan is heard = the stone is hard
* Ylfe lufiaþ steorran = Elves love stars
* Sam lufaþ Rose = Sam loves Rose
* Ic eom cald = I am cold
* þu eart cild = you are a child [the /c/ of ‘cild’ may be dotted to show that it should be pronounced as /ch/]
* he is wicing = he is a viking
* heo is wif = she is a woman
* wit waciaþ = we two keep watch [‘wit’ is the special OE pronoun used to mean ‘we two’]
* we þencaþ = we think
* git swimmaþ = you two swim [‘git’ is the special OE pronoun used to mean ‘you two’]
* ge cunnon = you all can / know how to
It is easy to ask questions –
* Hwær is se hring? = where is the ring?
* Hwaet hring? = what ring?
* Hwær eart þu = where are you? [this will sound like ‘where art thou?’]
* Hwy stande ge idele? = why are you standing idle? [this will sound like ‘why stand ye idle?’]
* Hwa is se cyning? = who is the king?
Some harder bits
We know that Theoden is cyning. Note that OE does not always use the definite article as we do in MnE (Modern English). The definite article in MnE is ‘the‘. When it is used in OE its form depends on whether the following noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter, and singular or plural. This is something we all need to look up until we have learnt the vocabulary very well.
Because OE is an inflected language, like French, German, Latin, the definite article the has different forms, and nouns change their endings depending on where they are used in a sentence.
OE may begin a sentence with a definite article, e.g. Se cyning – the king (a masc. noun with a masc. definite article). Seo cwen – the queen (fem. noun with fem. definite article). þæt sweord – the sword (neut. noun with neut. definite article).
But in a sentence OE does not always use the definite article in the way we do, so we find sentences like Oswald cyning his cynedom geheold hlisfullice. (Oswald the king held his kingdom gloriously.) You can see how Tolkien adopted this way of referring to a king as the form he uses to name the king in Rohan where he is addressed as ‘Theoden king’, not ‘King Theoden’.
With care we can come up with our own sentences such as se hol bytla feoll in þæm smygle.
Remember when pronouncing a sentence like this to sound all vowels and consonants. Remember /æ/ has the sound of /a/ in ‘mat’, and note that the /g/ in smygle is itself a /y/ sound so the word sounds like ‘smiyl’. The form of the word perhaps reminds us of Smeagol who lived in a hole, but Tolkien seems to have derived /smial/ from the OE word although he says in the Appendices that it is pronounced like ‘smile’. [Smeagol’s sneaking suggests his name has a closer relationship to OE /smeagan/, a verb which means ‘to investigate, look closely into’].
The whole sentence – se hol bytla feoll in þæm smygle means ‘the hole-dweller fell into the burrow’. Which is better, as we know, than saying se hol bytla feoll in þæt wætere (the hole dweller fell into the water)!
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Testing: Use The Opportunity
People get mad about tests. We fight about their fairness, content, and relevance. I applaud those who devote their careers to creating tests that create parity (with varying success) among students. It’s tough. I don’t want the job.
Nevertheless, while different tests come and go, they aren’t going away. I say, if tests are a fact of life, let’s do everything we can to equip ourselves to approach them with as much efficiency and intelligence as we possibly can. Let’s learn from the test, rather than “teach to it.”
Rather than talking about math, the most easily quantified skill, let’s get right into the thick of it: let’s talk testing reading comprehension.
One might argue that the objective of a multiple-choice reading test is to arrive at the answer the test-maker has decided is correct. It’s just a task: identify the test-maker’s correct answer. The point is not to read the passage and write a reflective essay about what this passage means to you, how it relates to your life, or connections you see with other pieces of literature.
Everyone bristles.
I have my own ideas! I got something else out of it! I disagree with this author—that conclusion isn’t true!
And to that, I say this: you’re missing the point of the exercise.
When we read a newspaper or a magazine, we’re reading a passage in which a predetermined set of conclusions are already drawn by the writer and media outlet and at which we are expected to arrive. The same is true of literature—rest assured that everyone from Paul of Tarsus to Jane Austen to Toni Morrison intends to lead us to particular assumptions about the people and scenarios about which they’re writing.
We could probably go so far as to say that that’s the whole point of writing and communication.
It’s imperative that we be able to identify the primary purposes, subtexts, and intentions of the writers we’re reading—even if we don’t agree with those conclusions. More importantly, we as readers must be able to identify those assertions which the writer is not making. Current American culture is characterized by sensationalism, political grandstanding, and general hyperbole in the endless pursuit of readership, election, and ratings. It’s our responsibility as consumers of information to equip ourselves with the tedious task of parsing out meaning and intention.
Interestingly, approaching reading test answer choices using a purely subtractive technique can enhance a student’s overall critical thinking skills. Subtractive elimination is a process of elimination that goes beyond assessing an answer choice as a whole thought or idea and, instead, encourages the reader to focus on the choice one word at a time. A multiple choice test provides an unusual opportunity in that students can learn to winnow through answer choices that are usually only 6 to 15 words in length and critically assess each word in each answer choice. When it may be only one word that makes an answer choice wrong, students must read as carefully and closely for meaning as they possibly can. A correct answer on a critical reading multiple choice test is the answer at which we arrive when we’ve clinically disproven the other options.
This means that each noun, adjective, preposition, verb, and article in each answer choice must be criticized—consciously defined or assessed in a student’s mind—and then eliminated or included based on that critique.
It’s so challenging… and so important.
This sort of thinking-in-a-vacuum is foundational; it’s a core competency that enables students to express themselves with specificity and purpose when they themselves write and to confidently engage in written and oral discourse.
If we can’t read articles, literature, or legislation for specific understanding and meaning, we have a problem.
We may start believing in UFO’s, entrusting our money in Ponzi schemes, or thinking we may die by death panel.
In fact, let’s look at this post as an example.
What is the primary purpose of this post? It is not to argue that students should be graded based solely on test scores, that teachers should “teach to the test” (whatever that means), that students should not be writing essays and poetry frequently, or students should be discouraged from drawing their own conclusions from their reading experiences. Rather, it aims to point out the merits and real-world relevancy of learning critical, quantitative reading skills in the context of an extremely structured multiple choice test.
Teaching critical reading skills that apply to a standardized format transforms a traditionally ineffective school practice into a useful skill. It empowers students to read critically both on test day and as lifelong consumers of information. …and isn’t that really the point?
Elizabeth KingComment
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Current event
There has been a long time debate over the idea of Nuclear Energy. There’re some that believe that nuclear power plants are too big of a risk. There’s a large cost associated with building nuclear facilities. In the long run though the operating cost significantly lower. Along with that is the low carbon emissions that come from the plant.
Recently the debate has started again with the Fukushima disaster that was triggered by tsunami in 2011. This showed how vulnerable nuclear reactors are to natural disasters. Along with that there is always the threat of being targeted by terrorist organizations. People have also been wary due to the waste of uranium lasting up to 200 to 500 years and the effects on the environment.
To learn more about Nuclear Energy. Here is a link discussing the pros and cons. Nuclear.
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How money affects our decisions and how it drives our life.
Updated on August 24, 2009
How money makes the world round
Money brings good and bad effects in our lives; mostly good because we cannot live without money and everything is acquired using money like the food we eat, our beverages, our clothes, our school tuition fee, utilities and everything. I bet you could agree with me if I say money makes the world go around unless if you’re a beggar. I bet everyone know what money is about, even young children already know the importance of money and ask for some coins for candies.
Nowadays, there’s no more direct barter as means of getting the things you need and want unlike during the early 1900’s. Everything has a cost or a price tag on it, even if other’s say money cannot buy everything. Yeah right, happiness cannot be bought but you can divert yourself in so many things to get happiness. Happiness is up to you, I can be happier if I have the financial freedom. Happiness is what we make it and it’s a journey not a destination. How do money affects our lives?
Good effects:
- It can be means of appreciation to someone you love. You can buy gifts and give it to them making them feel special.
- It can be a motivator. You give money to your employees as incentives so they work more effectively. They do make good performance because they wanted to get the money or cash prizes. Your child will do well in school because s/he knows you’re buying a Wii if s/he gets good grades.
- It pays all the essential/ basic needs like food, shelter and clothes also the utilities (telephone, internet, car bills)
- It pays for your wants thus making you feel rewarded for your efforts of working hard. You can buy the things you want to make your life better, a new car, new shoes, bags, chocolates and more.
- It helps other people in means of donations and solicitations. Money can help other people’s lives.
- It binds friendship, merging of new partnerships and uniting west and east. Money can unite people of different races, ages, gender and status of life; they can agree about money issues. Some companies do merge and improving sales and hiring more people and more people have jobs.
- Money can be the first factor in your buying capacity or decisions
Bad effects:
- It takes your time. Money needs time to gain it so you work long hours. You also set aside other priorities for choosing earning money.
- It lessens intimacy in life making the person empty or hallow. Because you have money it makes you greedy and wanting more of it and most people tend to not appreciate getting only a portion thus working more and more and don’t stop. At the end, the person feels he lacks something in his life that cannot be filled out. Actually, it’s just relaxation time and a time to bow to God and appreciate what he had.
- It destroys friendship and family ties. Some family quarrels over big lands and gold and even kill other family members just to take it out from the last will. It also destroys friendship when arguing about it, money is just so powerful that leads everyone do anything just to get it.
- Money can destroy trust, love and happiness; need to say more?
- It’s the source of greed. Makes a person not satisfied thus trying to get more of it not noticing he is already stepping at other people just to get what he’s aiming for – higher positions for higher pay.
There are more effects of money in our lives both good and evil ways, I’m sure you have more things in mind than this article says. I guess the best thing to end this article is a warning or a friendly advice that we should remember that Money isn’t our master and we are not money’s servants. We can get what we want but in a righteous/legal ways. Even if we get good money today in a bad way but 20 years later it will haunt you and the money you earned will vanish like water in your hand. Using money wisely can be a good thing and it can even help you get better in life.
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ribaa 5 years ago
this is crap and you stile it off some other website, thief ¬¬
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no helpful
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oh wow
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Hannah Robinson 5 years ago
this is really helpful. just what i need to put on my porject!:)
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Its just ok article but not great
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Yesterday and Tomorrow
My question for this final project is one that I believe is important both now and in the future and that is “What effects does the use of social media technologies have on our real life interactions and how will it affect our relationships in both the short and long term?”social_media_strategy111
In today’s society our social interactions are shaped strongly by our online presents. Many individuals are involved in various types of online interactions including but not limited to Facebook(, Twitter(, and Linkedin( all of these involved a level of commitment to stay up to date and as beneficial as possible. Much of these actions can cause individuals to become overwhelmed and stressed. The effects of developing relationships online and connecting with many others easily can seem like a beneficial idea at first but when a lack of depth is developed in these relationships it can turn to a feeling of isolation and loneliness having 400 friends on Facebook isn’t and won’t ever be equivalent to having a set amount of quality in person friends. When one of these many online relationships goes sour it can often times lead unhealthy residue. This is can be known as cyber bullying and can be detrimental to anyone. It is most common among young teens or preteens. In the linked article it discusses real life scenarios that have unfolded and have had detrimental effects on their lives. In one example a student online was bullied and forced too even switch schools. Cyber bullying has been a tough crime for local law enforcement to patrol so often times individuals have been left to fend for themselves. This had become an example of how your actions online can put your real life into a troubling state. Often time’s individuals will act out online for attention this can often times lead to bullying or verbally aggressive behavior. If an individual feels seriously threated by the actions online they may take too acted upon them in real life. This has often times led to physical altercations.I Like
However the positive aspects that social media has on our lives is that it can help us interact and reconnect with long lost friends and allows us to easily communicate with family that may be geographically distanced from us. In addition we as humans can create meaningful relationships through interactions of sharing pictures and life events which has been made easy thanks to various social mediums. Some additional benefits on social networking is that it can give birth to inner confidence to any individual who may be struggling and fuel them with real life confidence. Confidence is known to be a great asset of the rich and successful so you’re social networking skills maybe already paying off. Other benefits include become more adaptable in real life this can be developed by adjusting to the constantly changing world of social networking. One aspect of the internet that gets lots of negative views is that of the exposure to diverse political, social, and environmental viewpoints that can help create ingenuity and intrigue in the real world setting. Online life’s have become and extension of communication in both the real world workplace and the real world social life. The ability to always be connected with individuals between real life exposures can help grown and develop stronger relationships. A great example of this can be found on Facebook if someone decides to post devastate and heart ripping news on their Facebook feed about something that has just happened to them. Then you can understand that if you run into them later maybe a condolence or sign of gratitude is appropriate. This would be something that could have been missed or improperly handled. Facebook has been known to create a sense of joy or happiness in people’s lives by increasing social trust and engagement these positive actions are backed by the sharing of successful outcomes and can lead to a measure of self-reinforcing excitement building confidences in an individual. However I am not the only individual who believes there are positive impacts of social media on our lives, in the article Millennials Reflect on Social Networking written for Psychology Today we can find that social networking can help lead to breaking the ice with new relationships if you have experience interacting online then you will likely have an easier time interacting for the first time in person. An over looked benefit of social networking that younger generation benefit more from then older is the ability to receive breaking news and event information near instantly. Being connected online can help you be aware of what’s going on anywhere in the world at any time, which would be a grueling and a likely impossible task otherwise.
Social media can affect and shape our real lives by allowing us to connect too many different people ranging anywhere from our childhood best friend to the individual at your office that you SocialMediaLandscapemay not know very well. With this medium we are able to meet individuals that we wouldn’t normally had the opportunity to have both online and in person. Many relationships are formed online and are continued after an online foundation is established in person. Many individuals are turning to the internet to utilize online dating websites such as MatchFarmers OnlyEHarmony and many more. Each one is user specific and allows individuals with similar interest and objectives to be plugged into various algorithms in hopes of completing the ultimate connection between two users. EHarmony for example has grown to over 150 countries would wide and have boasted to be taking 15,000 new dater applications every day. These online dating experiences can be a significant positive or negative on any individual’s life. The benefits and dramas are the same with online dating as they are with person to person interactions. However individuals believe that they are entering a greater pool of potential mates and in return will likely have a better percentage of finding the one.
Maybe the biggest impact that modern day social media has on individuals real life is that it amplifies everything we do in our lives from accomplishments to failures. With the ability and utilization of social media such as Facebook we are constantly connected and connecting to everyone about our life’s and with this constantly comparing ours to theirs. Since Facebook has been linked to many signs of depression, various studies have shown the direct impact it has on day to day life it has been linked to detonating relationships by causing jealousy and envy in relationships where there typically would have been neither. However the biggest issue with Facebook is that it is addictive and creates a sense of resentment as we compare our lives to others. If everyone one of your friends (or at least it feels like it) is going on a vacation this spring break its likely all you will see on Facebook each day is about those planned vacations making you the one staying home become jealous and start to resent your friends. Maybe one of the most direct repercussions of posting something on Facebook is the police could arrest you. Please check out this link. However there are a few things everyone can do to help prevent negative effects of social media and theyare; limit the time you use them, monitor your emotions on line, try not to compare yourself to others, and maintain a good life balance between virtual and real.
The long long term effects of having social media around and widely used is still a ways in the future but for now we can study research and articles that were conducted by Dr. Larry Rosen professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills was published in the Courier Press shows us the results of social media in the academic setting. He found that students who utilized Facebook at least once during a 15 minute period achieved lower grades as a whole. In addition to Facebook the more windows a student would open as a time period elapsed the worse off they would be at studying and retaining information. The results of his study showed us that if you weren’t able to go a long period of time then 15 minutes without checking your Facebook then you were likely going to struggle in an academic setting.
In conclusion social media and living a life online have both good and bad effects on our everyday lives through research and critical think I have found that it remains key like any good or bad thing in life to stay in balance with it. Never get too carried away one way or the other. An individual doesn’t want to live there life only online that will not be satisfying and will likely not lead to long term happiness.However in the same respect an individual will not want to live there life only offline. The ability to compare contrast and adapt to the every changing mediums of social media will help individuals live a more fulfilling life.
Works Cited You tube video
Konnikova Maria, How Facebook Makes us Unhappy. September 10, 2013. Accessed: February 28, 2015.
Price Marilyn. Millennials Reflect on Social Networking Teens question how social media affects relationships. Jun 17, 2014 in The Moment of Youth
Rosen Dr. Larry. Research Confirms Social Media’s Impact on Adolescent Development. August 15, 2011.
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Strategic planning
Flowers of silver maple, Acer saccharinum. Photo from
We don’t usually think of plants as strategic planners, but they are. All plants compete with each other for necessary but limited resources: pollination services, nutrients, water. They need effective strategies for staying alive and reproducing.
All three common species of native maples that I see everyday are in bloom right now: silver maple, sugar maple, and red maple. Most trees flower in mid- to late spring, after the weather has warmed up and lots of pollinating insects have emerged. So there’s lot of competition for the available pollination services. Maples don’t wait: they bloom earlier than most other trees, usually between mid-March and April, about a month before the leaves appear. In order to ensure that they produce seed when few insects are around to pollinate them, maple flowers rely primarily on wind to do the job.
But they hedge their bets: most maple trees can be pollinated by wind or by insects. And while most trees are either monoecious (each individual bears flowers of both sexes) or dioecious (each individual bears flowers of just one sex), maple trees hedge their bets again: individual trees or even individual branches on the same tree might use either strategy. Clever.
Ever notice that maple trees produce seeds much earlier than most hardwood species? Maple seeds will be ripe in about 6 weeks, at a time when seeds are scarce and animals are hungry. The trees produce a huge overabundance of seeds, ensuring that some will remain to produce new maple trees—but not until next year. The seeds require a cold period before they can germinate, helping to ensure that they won’t begin to grow at the wrong time of year.
Red Maple
Red maples in flower are conspicuous against an early spring background of bare branches. Photo from Botany Blog.
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All collectibles are not created equal - the value of the Declaration of Independence
2015-06-26 12:27:55
On July 4, 1776, the document which founded the United States of America was signed
As every American will know, today in history marks the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence of the United States from Great Britain.
On July 4, 1776 the document was adopted by the Continental Congress, announcing that the 13 American colonies at war with the UK were now independent states, and no longer colonies of the British Empire.
Independence is associated most closely with George Washington, since he had led America to victory and went on be declared its first President, but the main writer of the declaration was the third-President-to-be Thomas Jefferson.
US declaration of independenceThe US declaration of independence
The second sentence is famous and typical:
Versions of the document itself naturally have a powerful impact on the collectibles markets.
In 1820 there were growing concerns about the condition of the original Declaration of Independence, so a copperplate facsimile was engraved from the original utilising a wet-ink transfer process.
This was used to engrave a copperplate, with 201 copies printed from it immediately, though only 30 survive, of which 19 are in museums. In 1843, another set of copies was printed by Peter Force before the copperplate was retired.
Around 250 examples of the Force copies are known to exist. We sold one of the best examples in 2010.
An alternative way for American collectors to celebrate the Declaration is to gather together an example of a signature from every signer. This however is an extremely stout challenge.
Button Gwinnett manuscriptButton Gwinnett manuscript
The biggest difficulty isn't in tracking down a George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock or Benjamin Franklin autograph, though all of these are valuable - sometimes extremely valuable if you get the right Washington or Jefferson manuscript.
No, the biggest difficulty is tracking down an autograph by the infrequent signer and duel casualty Button Gwinnett, one of the most sought-after autographs on the planet. One example was sold as part of the James Copley collection for $722,500.
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Italian artists Andrea Palladio statue Vicenza
Italian Artists
Italian artists create all the treasures that we can see now. For sure thanks to an important historic context. As a result, from the late Classic period to the end of the 18th century. In conclusion, thanks to the greek, as well as the Etruscan and the roman civilizations. In fact, the Italian art has adopted from each period some of the principles and of the characteristics.
The land in the middle of the Mediterranean
Italy has always been open to all kind of influences. And this due to its position in the middle of the Mediterranean. In fact, after the fall of the western roman empire, all the dominations left some deep imprints. The Byzantines ruled in the north of the Adriatic shores for some centuries. While a succession of invading peoples left their imprint in the south of Italy. In the detail, we find the Ostrogoths, the Lombards, as well as the Franks, the Arabs, and the normans.
Hence due to their character, the Italians absorbed these influences. As a result, all the centers of minor or major importance became the cradle of a flourishing artistic movement.
The art during the Middle Ages
As soon as the Middle Ages, the Italian artists start to show some characters in common. Also in spite of the region diversities. We are talking about a shared taste for harmony and solidity of form. As well as an innate sense of space inherited from the Classic culture. In fact, the Italian art has a sense of the harmony and restraint, not present in the other art traditions. Which aim to depict the rational and intelligible order of things.
The man and the Renaissance
Hence, the renaissance represents a new vision where man is in the center of the universe. In the detail, an abiding passion to the antique is at the base of this period. And we find also lordships and principalities that rule the city states. In the renaissance, we see a flowering of the culture thanks to a large number of Italian artists, scholars, and poets. As a result, in Florence, the family of the Medici unifies all these conditions. And the town became the place of birth for this culture movement, called as the Renaissance.
The human sensibility grows in the 16th century. Most of all, we know that it already marked the previous century. As a result, more and more, there is an attraction to the antique and the mythology. As well as to the discover of the humanity. Hence the art center of the Renaissance moved from Florence to Rome and Venice. And in the Venetian area, we find the works of an artist who changed the history of the western classic architecture. His name is Andrea Palladio. I dedicate a whole page to this genius with some excursions to discover his works. In the detail, you will find villas, palaces, bridges, churches and other works.
Just below you will find a list of the Italian artists per region considering their place of birth.
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Mais informações sobre o conteúdo Impressão
Voting Abroad
The electronic voting machine is a special microcomputer purpose for elections, with the following features:
Tough, with small dimensions, lightweight, with energy independence and security features.
Two terminals constitute the electronic voting machine: the terminal of the poll worker, where the voter is identified and authorized to vote and, in some models of voting machine, where your identity is verified through biometric, and the voter’s terminal, which is recorded numerically the vote.
The poll worker’s terminal has a numeric keypad, where is typed the number of voter registration, and a liquid crystal display, which appears the name of the voter, if it belongs to that electoral sections and if he is able to vote. Before the license, in the sections where there is biometric identification, the voter has his identity validated by the voting machine. Thus, a voter cannot vote for another one.
The voting machine only records the indication that the voter has already voted. By internal shuffling and other security mechanisms, there is no possibility to verify which candidate a voter voted, in respect to the Brazilian Federal Constitution, which determines the secrecy of vote.
Three small visual signals assist the pull worker, informing him that the terminal is available to the voter, if already completed his vote and if the voting machine is working connected to the electrical current or internal battery.
The voter’s terminal has the numeric keypad, which is registered the vote, and a liquid crystal display, which are recorded messages that guide the voter to register his vote.
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School Bus Safety For Kids!
Riding a school bus can be lots of fun as long as you follow the rules. As a fourth grader, I have been riding the bus since Kindergarten and I have learned a lot of what it means to be safe on school bus. Here are the three most important rules:
school bus safety1. Listen to the bus driver.
2. Wear your seat belt.
3. Don’t get up when the bus is moving
It is your job to follow these rules so that your bus driver can get you to school safely and on time. Oh, and one more thing, never ever scream on the bus either. That can be very distracting for the bus driver.
So buckle up and enjoy the ride to school.
Guest Blogger: Michael 4th grader in NJ
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How lutein and zeaxanthin combat blue light exposure
blue-light-610x343-txt Download PDF Now!
High-energy blue light is a growing concern because of the increased exposure from multiple sources including sunlight, energy-efficient lighting and digital devices. The need to help protect the eyes from blue light’s damaging effects is urgent. Of the more than 600 carotenoids found in nature, only three—lutein, RR-zeaxanthin and RS-zeaxanthin—also known as meso-zeaxanthin—are found in the eye. Together, lutein and the zeaxanthin isomers absorb a broader spectrum of high-energy blue light. Download our whitepaper to learn more about the role lutein and zeaxanthin isomers play in minimizing blue light damage.
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Saturday, September 1, 2007
Cerebral Palsy
What is Cerebral Palsy? Cerebral palsy is a medical condition caused by brain damage that occurs during pregnancy, labor and/or delivery or shortly after birth. This is a group of disorders that affect a person's ability to move and to maintain balance and posture.
The children who diagnosed cerebral palsy, They have signs of cerebral palsy which appear before 3 years of age. Insults to the brain after age 3 years through adulthood may manifest clinically as similar or identical to cerebral palsy, but by definition, these lesions are not cerebral palsy.
Cerebral palsy are often accompanied by disturbances of sensation, cognition, communication, perception, behavior and a seizure disorder or mental impairment. Cerebral palsy has nonprogressive brain abnormality, which means that it does not get worse over time, though the exact symptoms can change over a person's lifetime.
Risk factors for cerebral palsy are multi-factorial and can include pre-term birth, multiple gestation, intrauterine growth restriction, male sex, low Apgar scores, intrauterine infections, maternal thyroid abnormalities, prenatal strokes, birth asphyxia, maternal methyl mercury exposure, and maternal iodine deficiency.
Are you still have any questions about cerebral palsy? Learn all about cerebral palsy and the latest treatments, and why you need to find a professional attorney of Lawyers Incorporated or an united cerebral palsy if you have a child who diagnosed as cerebral palsy.
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How Drinking Water Quality Can Be Improved
When it comes to drinking sufficient water, many of us are guilty of not consuming as much as we should. It is recommended that we drink at least eight glasses of water every day. The problem is that the majority of folks do not like the taste of water straight from the tap. They do not believe that the drinking water quality is at a level good enough to warrant taking a mouthful that is flat as well as tasteless. Purchasing bottled water might not be the ideal solution either if you are thinking of going that route.
In the past, well water was considered as being the best drinking water to consume but nowadays that may not be the case. The reason for this is that water from a well or other natural source water can oftentimes become contaminated from nearby runoff. At one time in the not so distant past, it was considered safe to drink from a stream. These days, however with the increased use of pesticides, you could easily find yourself with a case of dysentery or even worse.
The bottled water industry is not proving to be a much better option either. Recent investigations indicate that bottled water is frequently taken straight from the tap. It is no better than your tap water with the exception of that flavors may have been added in order to camouflage the chemical taste of purification. Furthermore, there is the environmental impact of so many plastic bottles to consider. It is after all our world and wellbeing we are talking about.
At the end of the day, drinking water quality is ultimately your own responsibility once it leaves the water processing station. You are able to take extra steps to ensure safe water by installing water purifiers to get rid of any remaining sediments. However, this is all based on clean water coming into your home in the first place. If the water plant or local supply is being polluted by farm run-off or industrial parks, you should contact the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and have them check into the situation.
Demand that your drinking water quality from your local source water provider is fully within the EPA's guidelines and never settle for anything less than great drinking water quality. Your local source water should be free from contamination and the Environmental Protection Agency sees to that. Understand your rights as a consumer and do your part to help keep your area clean and free from wastewater. If you know of somebody or some business concern dumping chemicals or waste into the water supply system, then it is your job as a consumer to report them to local EPA groups and prevent the contamination of our groundwater system. Think of it as your civic responsibility.
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Symptoms of a Bloated Dog
Formally known as gastric dilation and volvulus, canine bloat is always a veterinary emergency. Gastric dilation refers to a buildup of gas or air in the stomach, while volvulus means stomach rotation. Without swift treatment, a dog will die if his stomach twists, cutting off the blood supply to his internal organs. Bloat can strike anywhere, anytime leaving your previously healthy dog at death's door just hours after symptoms appear. Only emergency surgery can save your dog if he experiences torsion, or stomach twisting. Seek immediate veterinary care if your dog is showing signs of bloat.
Great Danes are among the breeds most prone to bloat.
(RalfWeigel/iStock/Getty Images)
While any dog can experience bloat, it's more likely to occur in older, large breed dogs with deep chests, such as the Saint Bernard, Great Dane, Doberman pinscher and Weimaraner. The build of these dogs makes it easier for the stomach to twist. Risk factors include eating once daily, a dry food only diet, anxious or aggressive temperament, less than ideal weight and a canine family history of bloat. The condition occurs more often in males than females.
Signs of bloat include a distended stomach, which will cause your dog pain. He might constantly look at his stomach, as well as frequently lie down and get up again. You'll notice anxiety in his eyes. He may be restless and pacing. Inside, his stomach is filled with gas and stretching, expanding far beyond normal size. As it expands, it has the potential to twist, which stops gas from escaping via the rest of the intestinal tract as it would normally.
If your dog attempts to vomit, or retch, and nothing comes up, that's a bad sign. It's a classic indication of bloat, since his stomach is no longer capable of bringing forth its contents. Your dog might start dry heaving as he attempts to relieve his abdominal pain. He might start salivating excessively as well.
A dog suffering from bloat generally experiences a rapid and irregular heartbeat, accompanied by heavy panting, pale mucous membranes or shortness of breath. His body temperature drops significantly. An affected dog will often go into shock, or become weak and collapse. If not treated immediately, oxygen can no longer reach your dog's internal organs, and his kidneys and liver will fail. His whole gastrointestinal tract's lining could die off and shed. Toxins might start circulating throughout his bloodstream, with related bacteria causing blood poisoning. It's imperative to seek immediate veterinary care.
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Software quality and testing issues, Software Engineering
Software quality and testing issues:
The aim of this assignment is to enable students to conduct an in-depth research on software quality and testing issues. Software Quality can be defined as the level of conformance to the requirements and Software Quality Assurance (SQA) is practiced for ensuring the conformance. Software Testing, on the other hand, is the first SQA tool applied to control the software product's quality before it's released. As both of these involve a wide range of area, students are encouraged to explore any area of their interest. This helps students to gain a better understanding of the current trend on the software quality and testing and most importantly, to train students on conducting an academic research. The outcome of this assignment will be a significant publishable research paper and a presentation.
Posted Date: 2/12/2013 5:29:01 AM | Location : United States
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What everyone can do
The simplest thing you can do is be aware. Humans have a love for elephants, and many of us would like to be very close to them. What you need to take into consideration is at what cost to the elephant (or any other wild animal in captivity) does such closeness cause. Do not attend circuses that use animals in their shows. There is no way to have animals in a circus ethically, and there are other options, such as Cirque du Soleil, that allow for the feel of amazement a circus performer can bring, without any harm to animals. Only go to zoos that seem to be trying to mimic an elephant’s natural habitat, that give them space, stimulation, and companionship from other elephants. When you see an elephant alone in an exhibit, they are having their most basic need, the need for companionship, taken away from them. There are trainers that say their elephants are “people elephants”, but these elephants have no other option, so they bond with their caregiver. They do indeed care for their keeper, but when given the companionship of another elephant they get along with, that becomes their primary relationship. There are many elephants that genuinely like people, but nothing can replace being with a member of the same species, one who communicates as they do. Make sure the location of the zoo allows for their elephants to be outside at least 75% of the year. Elephants live in warm climates; their bodies are not made for cold temperatures as they can suffer from pneumonia, lung infections, and frostbite. If an elephant has to spend the majority of its time in an indoor enclosure, this compounds the psychological and physical affects of captivity.
Never buy anything containing ivory; even the littlest piece of ivory means an elephant was killed to get it. The US is the second largest market for ivory, and these pretty little trinkets are causing the demise of our wild elephant population.
If you go on vacation somewhere that does elephant rides or has elephant camps, resist the temptation to go, as you will not get any sort of real experience with an elephant. You will spend several moments on the back of an animal that is exhausted, somewhat malnourished, possibly stolen from the wild, and lives a deprived, chained life in captivity. An experience that is a moment of excitement for you means a lifetime of misery for that animal. Instead, visit a sanctuary or refuge that allows visitors or has a look out platform. Make sure it is a truly good place for elephants. You should not see any bullhooks, the elephants should look healthy, no open wounds, no injuries, they should IMG_2268not look skinny; all of these things indicate hidden practices that go on when the public is not around, and they should have free access to open spaces. The beauty of elephants is who they truly are when they are allowed to simply be elephants. You should be able to witness, usually from a distance, everyday behaviors that may not seem very exciting, but if you watch closely you’ll soon be mesmerized by the nature and passivity of an elephant’s life. Elephants dusting, swimming, naturally grazing, sleeping, socializing with other elephants, all of those very basic things that are essential to an elephant’s well-being.
Find out if there is any legislation in your local government regarding elephants, and most importantly help educate your friends. Talk about the reality of a captive elephant’s life, write a paper on the impact of poaching on African elephants, design a piece of artwork displaying the beauty of the species or the sadness of the loss of their freedom. Most people don’t realize the effect humans have had on an elephant’s world, and if everyone were to educate one other person, imagine the impact that could have. As Jacques Cousteau said “For man cannot give wild animals freedom, they can only take it away.” We, as humans, are responsible for animals being in these captive situations, and their disappearance from the wild. The least we can do is try to do something about it. Every little bit helps.
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Posted by: cymfonyiteam | July 6, 2010
How Induction Stove Works?
Induction is a method, completely different from all other cooking technologies– it does not involve generating heat which is then transferred to the cooking vessel, it makes the cooking vessel itself the original generator of the cooking heat.
How Induction Stove Works?
1. The element’s electronics power a coil (the red lines) that produces a high-frequency electromagnetic field.
3. The heat generated in the cooking vessel is transferred to the vessel’s contents.
4. Nothing outside the vessel is affected by the field–as soon as the vessel is removed from the element, or the element turned off, heat generation stops.
In Detail
An induction cooker uses a type of induction heating for cooking. It is chiefly distinguished from other common forms of cooking by the fact that the heat is generated directly in the cooking vessel.
A coil of copper wire is placed underneath the cooking pot. An alternating electric current is made to flow through the coil, which produces an oscillating magnetic field which creates heat in the cooking vessel over it, which must be made of a magnetic material (ferromagnetic) and electrically conductive, in two different ways.
• Less electricity is wasted compared with a conventional hot plate.
• The kitchen is heated up less by waste heat.
• The bottom of the pan is not burned by the stove and stays clean.
• Food spills and boil-overs aren’t burned on to the stove and are easily wiped off. Most stove-tops are easy-to-clean glass or ceramic.
• The pot can be conveniently left on the stove after cooking, without residual heat from the stove burning the food.
• The pot reacts instantly to changes in power, like a gas stove, because the stove itself doesn’t need to heat up or cool down first.
• A fan is used to cool the electronics. This can be noisy. The electronics or the magnetic field might also create a buzzing or humming noise.
• For safety, the stove will switch off if the pan is removed. This will interfere with cooking techniques that involve tilting or lifting the pan.
• Induction stoves need a minimum pan diameter to work. Pans that are too small will not be recognized and the stove will not switch on.
• The heated area might not cover the entire stove top. This is not an issue for boiling but can cause problems when frying. To check the heated area (typically a 5 inch diameter circle) a pan of water is heated on the stove. The pattern of the bubbles at the bottom of the pan will show the heated area.
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Green and easy driving – Some simple tips to help reduce fuel consumption
For many people a car is an essential part of everyday life. Each individuals driving style will have an impact on their fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. Everyone is able to do something to make their driving more environmentally friendly and attempt to lower carbon emissions. By just driving smarter the average UK driver could save between £300 and £350 each year.
Here are a few tips to get the best from your car and can help towards a sustainable environment:
• Choose the car that is most suited to your needs, if you are someone who only does short distances and uses a car as a “run around” then choose a car that is small and fit for your purpose.
• Drive more economically, shift to a higher gear as soon as you can, driving at lower speeds reduces fuel consumption.
• You should also drive consistently, harsh braking and acceleration uses more fuel than you think so anticipate the road ahead.
• Use gears wisely, there is no need to over rev your engine, 3rd gear can be more flexible than 4th gear in a 30mph limit.
• Driving at 50-55mph can use up to 30% less fuel than if you drove at 70mph. Equally driving at 85mph uses 25% more fuel than 70mph.
• Begin driving as soon as possible after starting the engine, but drive smoothly until the engine has warmed up.
• Well-kept vehicles use less fuel and pollute less so check tyre pressures, lighten your load and keep your engine in tune.
It is important to think about your journeys, always try to avoid unnecessary trips and find an alternative route. If you become a smart driver it is not only one of the easy ways to save money but will lead to a greener future.
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Girl in IT-wolrd
Everything has been downloaded. Quit download loop.
Java Interview Q&A. Java Core.[1-25/240]
This post opens series of posts about Java Core Interview Questions and Answers.
1) what are static blocks and static initializers in Java ?
Static blocks or static initializes are used to initialize static fields in java. we declare static blocks when we want to initialize static fields in our class. Static blocks gets executed exactly once when the class is loaded . Static blocks are executed even before the constructors are executed.
2) How to call one constructor from the other constructor ?
With in the same class if we want to call one constructor from other we use this() method. Based on the number of parameters we pass appropriate this() method is called.
Restrictions for using this method :
1) this must be the first statement in the constructor
2)we cannot use two this() methods in the constructor
3) What is method overriding in java ?
If we have methods with same signature (same name, same signature, same return type) in super class and subclass then we say subclass method is overridden by superclass.
When to use overriding in java If we want same method with different behavior in superclass and subclass then we go for overriding. When we call overridden method with subclass reference subclass method is called hiding the superclass method.
4) What is super keyword in java ?
Variables and methods of super class can be overridden in subclass . In case of overriding , a subclass object call its own variables and methods. Subclass cannot access the variables and methods of superclass because the overridden variables or methods hides the methods and variables of super class.
But still java provides a way to access super class members even if its members are overridden. Super is used to access superclass variables, methods, constructors.
Super can be used in two forms :
1) First form is for calling super class constructor.
2) Second one is to call super class variables,methods.
Super if present must be the first statement.
6) Difference between abstract class and interface ?
Interface Abstract Class
1) Interface contains only abstract methods 1) Abstract class can contain abstract methods, concrete methods or both
2) Access Specifiers for methods in interface must be public 2) Except private we can have any access specifier for methods in abstract class.
3) Variables defined must be public , static , final 3) Except private variables can have any access specifiers
4) Multiple Inheritance in java is implemented using interface 4)We cannot achieve multiple inheritance using abstract class.
5) To implement an interface we use implements keyword 5)To implement an interface we use implements keyword
7) Why java is platform independent?
The most unique feature of java is platform independent. In any programming language source code is compiled in to executable code . This cannot be run across all platforms. When javac compiles a java program it generates an executable file called .class file.
class file contains byte codes. Byte codes are interpreted only by JVM’s . Since these JVM’s are made
available across all platforms by Sun Microsystems, we can execute this byte code in any platform. Byte code generated in windows environment can also be executed in linux environment. This makes java platform independent.
8) What is method overloading in java ?
A class having two or more methods with same name but with different arguments then we say that those methods are overloaded. Static polymorphism is achieved in java using method overloading.
Method overloading is used when we want the methods to perform similar tasks but with different inputs or values. When an overloaded method is invoked java first checks the method name, and the number of arguments ,type of arguments; based on this compiler executes this method.
Compiler decides which method to call at compile time. By using overloading static polymorphism or static binding can be achieved in java.
Note : Return type is not part of method signature. we may have methods with different return types but
return type alone is not sufficient to call a method in java.
9) What is difference between c++ and Java ?
Java C++
1) Java is platform independent 1) C++ is platform dependent.
2)There are no pointers in java 2)There are pointers in C++.
3)There is no operator overloading in java 3)C ++ has operator overloading.
4)There is garbage collection in java 4) There is no garbage collection
5)Supports multi-threading 5)Doesn’t support multi-threading
6)There are no templates in java 6)There are templates in с++
7)There are no global variables in java 7)There are global variables in c++
10) What is JIT compiler ?
JIT compiler stands for Just in time compiler. JIT compiler compiles byte code in to executable code .
JIT a part of JVM .JIT cannot convert complete java program in to executable code it converts as and when it is needed during execution.
11) What is bytecode in java ?
When a javac compiler compiler compiles a class it generates .class file. This .class file contains set of instructions called byte code. Byte code is a machine independent language and contains set of instructions which are to be executed only by JVM. JVM can understand this byte codes.
12) Difference between this() and super() in java ?
this() is used to access one constructor from another with in the same class while super() is used to access superclass constructor. Either this() or super() exists it must be the first statement in the constructor.
13) What is a class ?
Classes are fundamental or basic unit in Object Oriented Programming .A class is kind of blueprint or template for objects. Class defines variables, methods. A class tells what type of objects we are creating.
For example take Department class tells us we can create department type objects. We can create any number of department objects.
All programming constructs in java reside in class. When JVM starts running it first looks for the class when we compile. Every Java application must have atleast one class and one main method.
Class starts with class keyword. A class definition must be saved in class file that has same as class name.
File name must end with .java extension.
public class FirstClass{
public static void main(String[] args){
System.out.println(“My First class”); } }
If we see the above class when we compile JVM loads the FirstClass and generates a .class file(FirstClass.class). When we run the program we are running the class and then executes the main method.
14) What is an object ?
An Object is instance of class. A class defines type of object. Each object belongs to some class.Every object contains state and behavior. State is determined by value of attributes and behavior is called method. Objects are alos called as an instance.
To instantiate the class we declare with the class type.
public classFirstClass {public static voidmain(String[] args){
FirstClass f=new FirstClass();
System.out.println(“My First class”);
To instantiate the FirstClass we use this statement
FirstClass f=new FirstClass();
f is used to refer FirstClass object.
15)What is method in java ?
It contains the executable body that can be applied to the specific object of the class.
Method includes method name, parameters or arguments and return type and a body of executable code.
Syntax : type methodName(Argument List){}
ex : public float add(int a, int b, int c)
methods can have multiple arguments. Separate with commas when we have multiple arguments.
16) What is encapsulation ?
The process of wrapping or putting up of data in to a single unit class and
keeps data safe from misuse is called encapsulation .
Through encapsulation we can hide and protect the data stored in java objects.Java supports encapsulation through access control. There are four access control modifiers in java public , private ,protected and default level.
For example take a car class , In car we have many parts which is not required for driver to know what all it consists inside. He is required to know only about how to start and stop the car. So we can expose
what all are required and hide the rest by using encapsulation.
17) Why main() method is public, static and void in java ?
public : “public” is an access specifier which can be used outside the class. When main method is declared public it means it can be used outside class.
static : To call a method we require object. Sometimes it may be required to call a method without the help of object. Then we declare that method as static. JVM calls the main() method without creating object by declaring keyword static.
void : void return type is used when a method does’nt return any value . main() method does’nt return any value, so main() is declared as void.
Signature : public static void main(String[] args) {}
18) Explain about main() method in java ?
Main() method is starting point of execution for all java applications.
public static void main(String[] args) {}
String args[] are array of string objects we need to pass from command line arguments.
Every Java application must have at least one main method.
19)What is constructor in java ?
A constructor is a special method used to initialize objects in java.
we use constructors to initialize all variables in the class when an object is created. As and when an object is created it is initialized automatically with the help of constructor in java.
We have two types of constructors
Default Constructor
Parameterized Constructor
Signature : public classname() { }
Signature : public classname(parameters list) { }
20) What is difference between length and length() method in java ?
length() : In String class we have length() method which is used to return the number of characters in string.
Ex : String str = “Hello World”;
Str.length() will return 11 characters including space.
length : we have length instance variable in arrays which will return the number of values or objects in array.
For example :
String days[]={” Sun”,”Mon”,”wed”,”thu”,”fri”,”sat”};
Will return 6 since the number of values in days array is 6.
21) What is ASCII Code?
ASCII stands for American Standard code for Information Interchange. ASCII character range is 0 to 255.
We can’t add more characters to the ASCII Character set. ASCII character set supports only English. That is the reason, if we see C language we can write c language only in English we can’t write in other languages because it uses ASCII code.
22) What is Unicode ?
Unicode is a character set developed by Unicode Consortium. To support all languages in the world Java supports Unicode values. Unicode characters were represented by 16 bits and its character range is 0-
Java uses ASCII code for all input elements except for Strings,identifiers, and comments. If we want to use telugu we can use telugu characters for identifiers.We can enter comments in telugu.
23) Difference between Character Constant and String Constant in java ?
Character constant is enclosed in single quotes. String constants are enclosed in double quotes. Character constants are single digit or character. String Constants are collection of characters.
Ex :’2’, ‘A’
Ex : “Hello World”
24) What are constants and how to create constants in java?
Constants are fixed values whose values cannot be changed during the execution of program. We create constants in java using final keyword.
Ex : final int number =10;
final String str=”java-interview –questions”
25) Difference between ‘>>’ and ‘>>>’ operators in java?
> is a right shift operator shifts all of the bits in a value to the right to a specified number of times.
int a =15;
a= a >> 3;
The above line of code moves 15 three characters right.
>>> is an unsigned shift operator used to shift right. The places which were vacated by shift are filled with zeroes.
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How to Harvest & Process Stinging Nettle
Nettle is one of those magical plants that gives us more than the effort we put into harvesting it. It’s no wonder that nettle has been used worldwide for centuries as a potent medicine, documented as far back as Ancient Greece. Nettle can be eaten as a nutrient-dense food, woven into cloth, applied to the skin, drunk as a tea, made into a tincture, or dried and put into capsules.
Growing season is June through September, though in some regions it can be harvested throughout the year.
Medicinal Benefits of Nettle
Nettle contains more protein than nearly all other plant species and is brimming with vitamins and nutrients.
Some useful properties include: anti-inflammatory, astringent, antiseptic, antioxidant, antimicrobial, trophorestorative to kidneys and adrenal glands, diuretic, promotes neurotransmitters, and more.
Studies have proven that nettle can be used to relieve certain health conditions, including: arthritis, muscular and joint pain, rheumatism, urinary issues, eczema, hay fever, anemia, and more.
1. Vitamins A, B complex, C, E, K
2. Protein
3. Folic Acid
4. Histamine
5. Anti-inflammatory compounds
6. Dietary fiber
7. Neurotransmitters, including 5HTP (serotonin)
8. Iron
9. Calcium
Harvesting Techniques
The whole plant can be harvested for medicinal use–leaves, stems, and roots. It’s good to know that if treating a specific medical condition, the above-ground parts have different pharmacological benefits than the below-ground parts. Generally, the leaves and stems provide relief for allergies and breathing issues, and the roots provide urinary relief.
Always wear thick gloves and long sleeves!
According to Mountain Rose Herbs, it’s best to collect nettle leaves just before it flowers or just after the first flowering. Nettles that are too old become stringy and less palatable for eating.
If you plan to start a nettle patch of your own, collect seeds by cutting off the flowering top and hanging them upside down. The seeds will fall out as the plant dries.
If you are a beginner at identifying nettle, the one sure way to know the plant is to very lightly touch it. I do not recommend this! However, it will resolve any worries about improper identification. The sting does hurt, but it’s not so bad. To alleviate the pain, rub the underside of a fern on the area. Baking soda paste also helps. The sting should go away within 15 to 20 minutes.
How to Process Your Harvest
Before ingesting nettle, neutralize the sting by soaking, cooking, wilting, refrigerating, or drying the plant. The leaves and stems can be made into soup, eaten on salad, or made into a tea. The roots can be dried and made into a tincture, tea, or powdered into capsules.
Courtesy of Shutterstock
Nettle leaf tea is the most common way to consume nettles, and a favorite of many herbalists!
Nettle leaves can be dried or used fresh.
1. Wash the nettles with gloved hands to neutralize the sting and remove any bugs or dirt.
2. Boil 1 cup of leaves in about 16 oz of water (enough for two mugs) for 10-15 minutes. Or, simply pour boiling water over the leaves and let steep for about 10-15 minutes. Feel free to adjust the steep time to strengthen or lighten the flavor.
3. Strain out the leaves and enjoy! Add a sweetener if you wish.
Courtesy of Daniel Zemans
There are so many incredible nettle recipes out there. It’s inspiring to see the range of foods that nettle can be woven into. From what I’ve seen, blanching nettles before cooking is the best way to go. Once blanched, transfer to a thin kitchen towel and squeeze out the moisture. Go ahead and cook the nettles right away, or even freeze them for later.
Here are some links to some great basic recipes:
Nettle Pesto Recipe by Hank Shaw
Nettle Soup by the Kitchn
Sauteed Stinging Nettles by Christina Gallary
Pizza with Garlic Cream and Nettles by Food & Wine
Tincture can be made with either the roots or the leaves.
According to Filip Tkaczyk of the Alderleaf Wildnerness College, “tincture is typically an alcoholic extract of plants for use as medicine. The alcohol acts as a solvent, extracting primarily the medicinal components such as alkaloids, glycosides, minerals, and essential oils. Other solvents can be used in place of alcohol, such as vinegar or glycerin, though they are typically less effective at extracting medicinal constituents of plants.”
Below are two well-written articles that outline the simple tincture making process.
How to Make Nettle Leaf Tincture by Nina Nelson
Nettles, Burdock, & How to Make Tinctures That Actually Work and Don’t Taste Like Death
by Old Ways Herbal
A Few Cautions
1.Avoid if you are pregnant unless you speak to a doctor, as nettles have been known cause contractions and miscarriage.
2. Avoid if you are diabetic, as nettle interacts with the body’s blood sugar.
3. Nettle may interact with the following medications: NSAID’s, diuretics, sedatives, lithium, blood thinners, and blood pressure medication.
As with any new herb, try a small amount before ingesting a large quantity to ensure that no allergies are present.
Sources that are not linked above…
Feature photo Courtesy of Thomas Dahms
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How to Skip a Stone
We asked a physics professor for the ultimate tips. (Adapted from here:
1. Throw at a 20-degree angle.
So says Lydéric Bocquet, a physics professor at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. That’s what he calls ‘‘the magic angle’’ for a maximum number of skips.
2. Choose the right stone.
Bocquet suggests something in the range of 4 to 6 inches in diameter. A thin, roundish rock is ideal, but with enough velocity you can skip almost anything.
3. Stand as a baseball pitcher would, with your body’s side facing the water.
4. Nestle a flat rock in the crook of your index finger and sling it sidearm, flicking the wrist to give the stone a spin.
5. Aim for at least 2 rotations per second.
The spinning motion allows the stone to stay on course, providing what physicists call ‘‘gyroscopic stability.’’
6. Trust that there’s something innate about the act.
‘‘Our bodies just know how to skip stones,’’ Bocquet says. ‘‘I don’t know why.’’
7. Don’t overthink the effort.
Chances are if you're reading this list, you've already failed this step. (Don't worry; we did too.)
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The work is part of the tribe’s bigger study on how wildlife is using the lakebeds since the river’s two fish-blocking dams were removed between 2011 and 2014. The idea is that the beavers’ tree-cutting and dam-building activities will potentially alter the river’s flow and create pools important for coho salmon fry habitat.
“Our big interest is documenting if and how beaver are recolonizing these habitats that were formally inundated with water,” said Kim Sager-Fradkin, the tribe’s wildlife program manager.
“We know from previous studies that beavers are most commonly found at the mouth of the river, where they are able to build dams in the estuary,” she said. “In the mainstem of the Elwha, because the river is so big, they are generally bank dwellers. But we feel like there is a possibility that in these new floodplain habitats created by dam removal and the emptying of the reservoirs, they may end up building dams to block side-channel habitat.”
A consistent sign of beaver activity this winter has been willow and cottonwood tree stumps, cut either into the shape of a sharpened pencil or at a sharp angle, with small teeth marks.
A beaver-cut tree stump.
Staff take note of each stump, including where it is located, what kind of tree cover and sediment surrounds it, how close it is to the river, and how many other cut stumps are within a few meters of it, indicating the types of habitat used by beavers and the intensity of that use.
“Beavers are frequently considered ecosystem engineers,” Sager-Fradkin said. “Their habit of cutting down trees to build dams helps with restoring areas in need of better salmon habitat.”
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Fossil Fuels
Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms. The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, and sometimes exceeds 650 million years.[1] Fossil fuels contain high percentages of carbon and include coal, petroleum, and natural gas.[2] They range from volatile materials with low carbon:hydrogen ratios like methane, to liquid petroleum to nonvolatile materials composed of almost pure carbon, like anthracite coal. Methane can be found in hydrocarbon fields, alone, associated with oil, or in the form of methane clathrates. The theory that fossil fuels formed from the fossilized remains of dead plants [3] by exposure to heat and pressure in the Earth's crust over millions of years[4] (see biogenic theory) was first introduced by Georg Agricola in 1556 and later by Mikhail Lomonosov in the 18th century.
The Energy Information Administration estimates that in 2007 the primary sources of energy consisted of petroleum 36.0%, coal 27.4%, natural gas 23.0%, amounting to an 86.4% share for fossil fuels in primary energy consumption in the world.[5] Non-fossil sources in 2006 included hydroelectric 6.3%, nuclear 8.5%, and others (geothermal, solar, tidal, wind, wood, waste) amounting to 0.9%.[6] World energy consumption was growing about 2.3% per year.
Fossil fuels are non-renewable resources because they take millions of years to form, and reserves are being depleted much faster than new ones are being made. The production and use of fossil fuels raise environmental concerns. A global movement towards the generation of renewable energy is therefore under way to help meet increased energy needs.
The burning of fossil fuels produces around 21.3 billion tonnes (21.3 gigatonnes) of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, but it is estimated that natural processes can only absorb about half of that amount, so there is a net increase of 10.65 billion tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year (one tonne of atmospheric carbon is equivalent to 44/12 or 3.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide).[7] Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases that enhances radiative forcing and contributes to global warming, causing the average surface temperature of the Earth to rise in response, which the vast majority of climate scientists agree will cause major adverse effects.
Important Things TO Know About Fossil Fuels
Fossil fuels are of great importance because they can be burned (oxidized to carbon dioxide and water), producing significant amounts of energy per unit weight. The use of coal as a fuel predates recorded history. Coal was used to run furnaces for the melting of metal ore. Semi-solid hydrocarbons from seeps were also burned in ancient times,[9] but these materials were mostly used for waterproofing and embalming.[10] Commercial exploitation of petroleum, largely as a replacement for oils from animal sources (notably whale oil), for use in oil lamps began in the 19th century.[11] Natural gas, once flared-off as an unneeded byproduct of petroleum production, is now considered a very valuable resource.[12] Natural gas deposits are also the main source of the element helium. Heavy crude oil, which is much more viscous than conventional crude oil, and tar sands, where bitumen is found mixed with sand and clay, are becoming more important as sources of fossil fuel.[13] Oil shale and similar materials are sedimentary rocks containing kerogen, a complex mixture of high-molecular weight organic compounds, which yield synthetic crude oil when heated (pyrolyzed). These materials have yet to be exploited commercially.[14] These fuels can be employed in internal combustion engines, fossil fuel power stations and other uses. Prior to the latter half of the 18th century, windmills and watermills provided the energy needed for industry such as milling flour, sawing wood or pumping water, and burning wood or peat provided domestic heat. The widescale use of fossil fuels, coal at first and petroleum later, to fire steam engines enabled the Industrial Revolution. At the same time, gas lights using natural gas or coal gas were coming into wide use. The invention of the internal combustion engine and its use in automobiles and trucks greatly increased the demand for gasoline and diesel oil, both made from fossil fuels. Other forms of transportation, railways and aircraft, also required fossil fuels. The other major use for fossil fuels is in generating electricity and as feedstock for the petrochemical industry. Tar, a leftover of petroleum extraction, is used in construction of roads.
Hodgson, who is senior research fellow emeritus in physics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, expects the world energy use is doubling every fourteen years and the need is increasing faster still and he insisted in 2008 that the world oil production, a main resource of fossil fuel, is expected to peak in ten years and thereafter fall. This maybe offset by new discoveries, although no large oilfields have been discovered since 1980.[20] The principle of supply and demand suggests that as hydrocarbon supplies diminish, prices will rise. Therefore higher prices will lead to increased alternative, renewable energy supplies as previously uneconomic sources become sufficiently economical to exploit. Artificial gasolines and other renewable energy sources currently require more expensive production and processing technologies than conventional petroleum reserves, but may become economically viable in the near future. Different alternative sources of energy include nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind, and geothermal. Environmental effects Global fossil carbon emission by fuel type, 1800–2007. Note: Carbon only represents 27% of the mass of CO2 Main article: Environmental issues with energy
Enviormental Affects
The U.S. holds less than 5% of the world's population, but due to large houses and private cars, uses more than a quarter of the world's supply of fossil fuels.[21] In the United States, more than 90% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the combustion of fossil fuels.[22] Combustion of fossil fuels also produces other air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds and heavy metals. According to Environment Canada: "The electricity sector is unique among industrial sectors in its very large contribution to emissions associated with nearly all air issues. Electricity generation produces a large share of Canadian nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide emissions, which contribute to smog and acid rain and the formation of fine particulate matter. It is the largest uncontrolled industrial source of mercury emissions in Canada. Fossil fuel-fired electric power plants also emit carbon dioxide, which may contribute to climate change. In addition, the sector has significant impacts on water and habitat and species. In particular, hydro dams and transmission lines have significant effects on water and biodiversity."[23] Carbon dioxide variations over the last 400,000 years, showing a rise since the industrial revolution. According to U.S. Scientist Jerry Mahlman and USA Today: Mahlman, who crafted the IPCC language used to define levels of scientific certainty, says the new report will lay the blame at the feet of fossil fuels with "virtual certainty," meaning 99% sure. That's a significant jump from "likely," or 66% sure, in the group's last report in 2001, Mahlman says. His role in this year's effort involved spending two months reviewing the more than 1,600 pages of research that went into the new assessment.[24] Combustion of fossil fuels generates sulfuric, carbonic, and nitric acids, which fall to Earth as acid rain, impacting both natural areas and the built environment. Monuments and sculptures made from marble and limestone are particularly vulnerable, as the acids dissolve calcium carbonate. Fossil fuels also contain radioactive materials, mainly uranium and thorium, which are released into the atmosphere. In 2000, about 12,000 tonnes of thorium and 5,000 tonnes of uranium were released worldwide from burning coal.[25] It is estimated that during 1982, US coal burning released 155 times as much radioactivity into the atmosphere as the Three Mile Island incident.[26] Burning coal also generates large amounts of bottom ash and fly ash. These materials are used in a wide variety of applications, utilizing, for example, about 40% of the US production.[27] Harvesting, processing, and distributing fossil fuels can also create environmental concerns. Coal mining methods, particularly mountaintop removal and strip mining, have negative environmental impacts, and offshore oil drilling poses a hazard to aquatic organisms. Oil refineries also have negative environmental impacts, including air and water pollution. Transportation of coal requires the use of diesel-powered locomotives, while crude oil is typically transported by tanker ships, each of which requires the combustion of additional fossil fuels. Environmental regulation uses a variety of approaches to limit these emissions, such as command-and-control (which mandates the amount of pollution or the technology used), economic incentives, or voluntary programs. An example of such regulation in the USA is the "EPA is implementing policies to reduce airborne mercury emissions. Under regulations issued in 2005, coal-fired power plants will need to reduce their emissions by 70 percent by 2018.".[28] In economic terms, pollution from fossil fuels is regarded as a negative externality. Taxation is considered one way to make societal costs explicit, in order to 'internalize' the cost of pollution. This aims to make fossil fuels more expensive, thereby reducing their use and the amount of pollution associated with them, along with raising the funds necessary to counteract these factors.[citation needed] According to Rodman D. Griffin, “The burning of coal and oil have saved inestimable amounts of time and labor while substantially raising living standards around the world”.[29] Although the use of fossil fuels may seem beneficial to our lives, this act is playing a role on global warming and it is said to be dangerous for the future.[29] Moreover, these environmental pollutions impacts on the human beings because its particles of the fossil fuel on the air cause negative health effects when inhaled by people. These health effects include premature death, acute respiratory illness, aggravated asthma, chronic bronchitis and decreased lung function. So, the poor, undernourished, very young and very old, and people with preexisting respiratory disease and other ill health, are more at risk.[30]
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WHO releases new ebook to promote safety syringes
September 11, 2015
A new ebook has been published by the World Health Organization (WHO) to further encourage governments and national bodies to implement safety syringes in their hospitals and other medical settings.
In the document, the United Nations (UN) agency outlines steps that need to be taken to ensure that all injections use safety syringes by 2020. It estimates that around 90 per cent of the 16 billion injections that are delivered each year are for curative care. WHO suggests that the majority of these medical procedures are unnecessary and the same treatment could be delivered by another method.
With this in mind, it is urging hospitals to reduce the number of unnecessary injections that are being carried out. This, WHO argues, is an essential part of the "urgent and clinical strategy" for reducing the transmission of viral infections.
It recognises how safety devices are just not suitable for certain procedures, such as when multiple medicines need to be administered at once as syringes that only permit one use are unable to mix them adequately.
Disposable syringes are also needed to maintain intravenous lines and for local anaesthetic, with other devices being used to perform these procedures.
However, for the vast majority of the billions of injections that are administered around the world each year safety syringes could be employed.
WHO's goal is to ensure that all injections use safety syringes wherever it is possible by 2020. These safety-engineered devices prevent multiple use and reduce the risk of needlesticks by safeguarding the sharp, therefore protecting the healthcare worker.
In order to achieve this aim, governments need to "set health-system-wide policies and standards for procurement, use and safe disposal of disposable syringes in situations where they remain necessary, including in syringe programmes for people who inject drugs", according to the ebook.
Speaking to governments, it reads: "Develop an implementation strategy for procurement of safety-engineered syringes, training and education of health workers and sound waste management. Establish a targeted communications programme and a framework for evaluating overall progress."
As part of the document, WHO cites a number of examples where not using safety syringes has had a dramatic impact on infection rates.
Back in 2007, an outbreak of hepatitis C outbreak occurred in Nevada, US, after one physician had injected a patient who had the infection. However, the doctor then used this same syringe to withdraw additional doses of the anaesthetic from the same vial, which had obviously been contaminated with the hepatitis C virus. A number of patients were given injections after this, potentially exposing them to infection.
It uses other WHO also presented case studies in India and Egypt where unsafe injection practices has have put people at risk of infections.
Related Clinician and Patient Safety:
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Helping Your Child Understand Family Safety In A Digital World
When you give your child their first cell phone or laptop, a major concern is their safety. This makes sense because they will probably use the device on a regular basis. And as kids are, there is a good chance they’ll share information they shouldn’t with people they do not completely know.
helping children understand the dangers of cell phone usage can create a loving bond between parent and child
What we hardly think about is family safety (in regards to cell safety). Not only does the child have their own safety at risk when they share too much information, but they put the entire family at risk.
We go out of our way to list out things they shouldn’t mention to strangers or in public places, but have we covered all of our safety bases?
Probably not, which is why it’s time to revisit the whole discussion about online safety with your children, teens and even young adults.
They already know the rules you’ve mentioned before about not using location names, people’s last names, etc. Now it’s time to consider adding some of the following guidelines to the digital family safety talk:
Descriptions of brothers, sisters, family names, etc. Scammers, hackers and other criminals are supremely intelligent, they can piece together the smallest pieces of information to quickly come to conclusions about where we live, where we’ll be at a certain time, or even when we won’t be home.
For instance, a young girl discussing her brother’s football game on Friday night and how the whole family goes, can easily give enough information to anyone looking to rob a home.
Details. While we have covered this before, it’s important to revisit this again, because the danger is in the details. All messages should be vague. Conversations over text could easily be done over a service such as SnapChat to save yourself from worry. We do not recommend using this application, but if you also use the Kidtrack™ Mobile app, you can set up alerts for words you do not want used on this kind of application so that you can be warned about its misuse. Kidtrack™ will also monitor and display images that have been sent as well as whether this application has been used at what time and for how long.
SnapChat is a service that allows one user to send messages or pictures to another. As soon as the receiving party gets the message and reads it, it self destructs. You’ll no longer have to worry about your child’s friend keeping copies of their conversations on a phone they lose. We do NOT recommend the use of Snapchat. See our post about Sexting.
Use Passwords. Along with being extra careful about details that help identify your family members, a cell phone is the ultimate place to get all of the information necessary to steal identities, max charges, make obscene phone calls and more. Your child’s phone should have a security password in place, along with software that makes it easy for you to locate it when it is lost.
While this will make it difficult for a parent to ‘hack’ into their child or teen’s phone, this is a safety measure that affects the entire family and really is the best for everyone.
Stronger Passwords. Even when you’ve told your child everything you can about online safety details will slip through the cracks. It happens, but there is another line of defense; stronger passwords.
A study was done in 2013 that showed that up to 10% of passwords on teens’ phones included the word love. Obviously this makes hacking into a phone much easier.
By teaching your child about passwords that are less easy to guess and more advanced we give them another tool to keep us all safe.
On many sites you now have to use a password with 8 characters including a capital, lowercase, number and even a symbol. It’s hard enough for us to remember these passwords but they are much more difficult to crack for other people.
Clean Out Their Phones. When it’s time to get a new phone make sure you clean out their phone and reset it to factory settings. Even then there may be other options you can use to make sure all personal data is thoroughly erased. Be sure to search for their phone model on Google to learn what you need to know about erasing data.
The world is a scary place and it’s difficult to keep our kids safe now more than ever. Sit down and talk to them to make sure they understand how these things happen to people just like you.
Remind them often to stay safe online and off. And in the mean time if you have tips for other parents about family safety leave them in the comments, we’d love to hear from you.
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Why Are Smartphones Good for Teens?
Have you gone to a restaurant lately? It seems that every table has a hand full of people who can’t detach themselves from cell phones or tablets.
We live in this uber-connected world, but not in real life. So why on earthy would parents want to buy their teenagers smartphones that give them even more reason to detach?small_8744409918
Just like parents thought almost 20 years ago when computers started entering the homes, kids/teens don’t NEED these things. But is that true?
Maybe for now, but if you consider how computers in the home have grown, and their attachment to education, you can easily see that smartphones and/or tablets won’t be far behind. To start with, today it’s beneficial for teens and kids to have smartphones, but how?
Look up facts? Remember when we had to go to the library for hours a week just to work on a school project?
A smartphone lets our kids have the entire world of knowledge right in the palm of their hands, just about any fact they want to look up is available, in seconds. There’s no reason for them to skimp out on school work because they have entire libraries on their phones.
Stay in touch with YOU. No matter where your child is, they should be able to call you, and you them. That’s one of the major benefits of a smartphone.
Reception with a smartphone is so good that it should work just about anywhere, as long as the battery isn’t dead. There isn’t much of an excuse to miss your call, or at the very least return it immediately.
Safety Sakes- It’s a fact the world has changed a LOT in the past 30-ish years alone. As kids you probably ran down the street to your friend’s house and were pretty safe.
It was a much more interconnected world, where neighbors actually spoke to one another and watched each others’ kids. It isn’t like that anymore, people are so focused on what they are doing they don’t have time to watch out for anyone else.
But with a cell phone your child can call 911 from anywhere, making them a bit more safe in the world.
Where Is My Child?- A major difference between cell phones and smartphones is the ability to track with GPS.
Kidtrack offers this feature, and there are other programs that once installed as apps will allow you to see approximately where your child is in the world based on their phone’s GPS. Are they driving around with friends, going to parties they shouldn’t be at? -Now you can find out.
Digital Footprints- A smartphone allows you as a parent to see more of what your child is doing, who they are talking to, and what they are saying.
While for some that might be a privacy issue, for others it is imperative to understand teenage depression, bad behavior, etc. The KidTrack Mobile program even allows you to target certain words they mention in text conversation.
School Scheduling/ Homework Lists- Most schools provide students with planners that help them keep track of assignments, but nothing like a smartphone. With a smartphone they can take typed and recorded notes, keep track of assignments and schedules, and plan their calendars.
As parents we can either give our children smartphones and teach them how to use them responsibly, or we can continue arguing with them until they can afford to buy them. But, at some point our kids and teens will have smartphones and thankfully there are many benefits that make them a worthy investment.
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5 Guidelines To Help You Monitor Your Child’s Online Safety
Your teen has probably told you many times “It’s none of your business!” but is that really true? At some point parents need to let go of their children and let them have their privacy. But when is that time?
This question has been plaguing parents for the last couple of decades as mainstream devices make it easier for children to have conversations, meet people and do things they know they shouldn’t. At what point should you, as a parent, step in? These suggestions should help guide you through deciding.small_749317332
Age– There is no definitive age that says a parent needs to monitor what a child is doing because every child is different at different ages and every household has their own acceptable standards for behavior.
But based on your child’s age you should be able to decide if they are old enough to participate in certain activities.
For instance, Facebook’s terms of service suggest no child under 13 may have an account without parental permission. That doesn’t mean that once a child reaches 13 they should be able to have an account, nor does it mean that at 9 they aren’t responsible enough.
Ages are guidelines, and in your family, you should come up with appropriate ages for different activities.
Privacy– Texting is a fairly private conversation between two people, and while it should be monitored for the context of the conversation, it’s more acceptable for a 10 year old to text his best friend about video games, than to use social media accounts to do the same thing.
Social media is easily accessible by thousands of people, or fewer under the appropriate settings, while texting involves two phone numbers no one else (ie: the public) can not access.
Maturity– Two 13 year old teens can be miles apart when it comes to maturity. Their gender, life experience, exposure to different topics, and social skills all play a role in how mature they are at certain ages.
In a lot of families the oldest is the most mature, not simply because of age, but because of years of needing to set the example.
Your Knowledge– Do you have social media accounts, smart phones, a laptop, or a tablet? When your child has devices and accounts that you don’t, you most likely can’t fathom the trouble children and teens can get themselves into if you aren’t active on the same devices and websites they are.small_8553474140
In those cases, it’s a good idea to do some research to find out privacy settings, monitoring tools, and other options to keep kids safe.
School– Another important place that has, or may have, a say in what your child does is school. Most schools have rules in place that students need to follow to keep their phones and tablets in class. As a parent it is your responsibility to make sure they understand these rules and follow them.
On top of their own devices, schools have computers that students access and there are privacy settings you should probably understand about what kids can access, what information of the student’s other people can access, and what responsibilities your child has when using the computers and internet.
40 years ago it wasn’t a major concern what your child was writing in their diary or journal, whatbooks they could access from school, etc. But today millions of people have access to your child, if they have an online profile of any kind, and that is something parents really need to consider before coming up with rules for their kids to use certain devices and websites.
Take the time to sit down with your family and think about how each of these things affect your kids, their privacy and most importantly their safey.
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Sunday, March 2, 2008
Sunday is the day of the week between Saturday and Monday. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition it is the first day of the week, but from mid-20th century it is often counted as the seventh day of the week. Sunday is named after Sunne (Sól), Germanic goddess of the sun, from which the word sun is also derived, although ultimately all English days names are derived from Roman or Greek mythology, in this case dies solis, respectively hêméra Hêliou. The practice of naming the seven days after the then known "planets" goes back to Babylonian or Egyptian times and was adopted by Greeks and Romans.
Sunday is considered a holiday in many countries of the world and as part of the weekend. Predominantly countries influenced by Islamic (or Jewish) culture often have Friday (or Saturday) as a weekly holiday instead.
In the folk rhyme Monday's Child, "... the child that is born on the Sabbath Day is bonny and blithe and good and gay."
In Thailand, the color associated with Sunday is red.
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breaking news and current affairs
The evolution of cultural trends and their impact on society
Costume festival in Houston. These attendees dressed as ShakespeareansFile photo by Joseph Earnest
by Joseph Earnest March 20, 2015
Newscast Media HOUSTONAs Spring Break is underway, several students across the country have made preparations to travel and experience the wild side of life after being immersed in academics since the beginning of the year.
An annual American tradition, the Spring Break calendar varies, but the hiatus usually lasts one week before school commences in time for the summer holidays.
Some schools have it between March 7-March 14, others have it between March 14-21, while others may have it between March 21-28 or March 28-April 4.
While college life shapes how students adapt to society, it is actually "culture" that plays a determining role in shaping each generation. We will take a break from the Spring Break narrative, and return to it after exploring other aspects of cultural trends and their impact on society.
If we look back to the 50s and 60s, we see an era where society used the little it had to make the best out of every situation. Poor people were able to blend into society without even being aware that they were poor because during that time, the people had a collectivist mindset. Neighbors trusted each other and even though it was a period that highlighted racial tensions, people had time to set their racial differences aside and celebrate their similarities, while attempting to embrace their differences.
In regard to fashion, which is also part our cultural trend, perhaps the best dressed generation was between the 50s and the 70s where both men and women put a lot of thought in the clothes they wore. Looking at photos of that era, one can see how classy the women were who loved wearing lace, while the men wore mostly double-breasted high-waisted suits with prominent pleats and suspenders.
One big influence was the jazz and Motown cultural phenomenon that consisted of sharply-dressed performers, who imparted a sense of style upon that generation. The mob, primarily Italian migrants, also shaped the way non-Blacks approached fashion, inasmuch as they too brought their fashion sense from Europe into America.
Yet there was a counter-revolution during that time that started in the 1960s, sometimes referred to as the "hippie generation." It was a time when men let their beards and hair grow long, women had thick eye brows and preferred to stay "natural" in the full sense of the word. The idea of having a bikini wax was pretty much non-existent to that generation. The clothing was characterized by flowery shirts and bell bottomed pants that eventually ushered in platform shoes. Rather than button and tuck in their blouses, women preferred to leave about three of the bottom buttons open, and then tie a knot with both sides of the blouse above the belly button to expose the new-growth of public hair above the stomach as a sign of emancipation from the norms of society.
With popular artists like Janis Joplin, the Mamas and the Papas, Fleetwood Mac and also the influence of Woodstock, the sex revolution was birthed through this hippie generation. The elite, not wanting their kids to be part of the growing cultural phenomenon of the time, sent their kids mostly to Africa, either on mission trips or to work as volunteer teachers.
While the news of Jimi Hendrix's death due to an alleged drug overdose made national headlines, it did not prevent drugs from infiltrating that generation. Some did drugs for recreational purposes, as another cultural era arose in which it was determined that it was possible for one to have fun without having to do drugsit was the disco era.
Afros were the rage in the 70s that even white people would shape their hair in such a way to simulate the Afro. Groups like the Beatles and Rolling Stones that had previously dominated found themselves having to compete with disco artists whose music emphasized a catchy dance beat meant to send the listener to the dance floor.
With both men and women sporting feather boas, tilted hats and platforms, this was an era that would shape the music industry in America and across the world. Jeans, which this writer has always said will never go out of fashion, were worn in such a way that the thighs were tight, while the lower end spread out like a bell covering most of the shoes. Long dog-eared collars were common place, as for suits, the neck-tie was usually missing since the collars were worn to sit on the collars of the jacket. It was also fashionable for men during this time, to open the first two or three buttons of their "colorful" dog-eared-collared shirts to either expose their shinny jewelry or hairy chests. This period went on until the early eighties, and Al Pacino in the movie Scarface, typifies the way most men dressed during that time.
Just like the hippies' generation grew their hair long as a form of rebellion, in the Black culture, the resistance was expressed through Reggae music that was dominated by Rastafaris who had their own movement. Reggae music highlighted the injustice and oppression Blacks faced in America and throughout the colonial era. Smoking "Mary Jane" as they called it (weed) became part of the Rasta experience, just as cocaine and heroine were part of the hippie movement.
Meanwhile, on the East coast, a Caribbean immigrant who gave himself the street name of "Grandmaster Flash" had developed a technique that would be borrowed and incorporated into an impending cultural wave that would soon sweep the nation, and to this very day, has been able to endure. The technique is called "scratching" in which a vinyl record is spun in reverse to produce what is referred to on the streets as the "wiki-wiki" sound, most famously rapped about in the song "Jam On It" performed by Newcleus.
Street acts started popping up particularly in Los Angeles when rap music was gaining popularity. The most famous act was poppin' that is associated with LA while "B-boying" was associated with New York. The latter involved ground moves while the former concentrated on waves, pops, locks and gliding moves that were invented by former Shalamar member Jeffrey Daniel wrongfully referred to as Jeffrey Daniels.
Despite Michael Jackson being crowned perhaps the dance king of pop, it was actually Michael Chambers also known as Turbo or Tony in the movie Breakin' and Jeffrey Daniel who taught MJ everything he knows about dance. The music of the time was wholesome. In his Thriller video, Michael Jackson even portrayed dead folks popping, which is actually some of the best popping ever demonstrated to date. In our time, the best popper, in this journalist's opinion, is Poppin John who is also a master of the "dub step" dance style. Dub step combines robotic moves with pops and waves.
If you're unfamiliar with Poppin John, the video below is just a sample of some of the sickest moves he has created. Amazingly, he's been around for so long, yet he really hasn't received the recognition he deserves.
Poppin John doing his thing solo displaying raw talent
One of Poppin John's most impressive collaborations
From the early to the late 80s leather jackets were in vogue and also the Jheri or Jelly curl. Even during this time, people still had a common sense of decency and avoided doing shameful acts in public. Lyrics were intelligently written with correct grammar and sentence construction. Songs had story lines. Movies did not concentrate on pushing a particular agendathe writers focused on a plot and developed it from there without attempting to corrupt or poison the minds of their audiences. Today, almost every movie has a hidden message that is meant to influence the minds of the audiences using subliminal themes. It is the reason movies have ratings like PG-13 and so forth, yet today's PG-13 is equivalent to an R-rated movie of the mid-90s.
The media, no doubt, is the most powerful medium in shaping our culture because the messages are crafted by the most dangerous people on earthbehavioral scientists. These people, while one would expect them to work in the field of Psychology, are in the fields of advertising, to get you addicted to their products, they are in the media, to desensitize the minds into accepting that which was unacceptable decades ago and they are also in politics controlling the message delivery of those they handle. What once was abnormal is slowly becoming normal. Where people were once embarrassed, they are now losing their shame because television, the movies, Internet and ads craft very clever messages, that over time become acceptable to even the most educated mind, unaware that it is being manipulated using what is referred to as "neurolingusitic" programming.
Any graduate of Psychology will tell you that if you want to get someone addicted to something, expose it to him or her for 30 straight days. Even a nun who is exposed to pornographic images for this amount of time, will eventually be drawn to such images once the material is withdrawn from her and put in a different room. Likewise, if one watches a sitcom that for 30 straight days that shows a behavior that is deemed unacceptable being glorified, the viewer will embrace rather than condemn such behaviorand left to his or her own devices, may actually indulge in it.
It is the reason why parents should be careful about exposing their young ones to violent video games because acts like bullying or hurting small animals will emanate from the child's exposure to prolonged acts of violence. Eventually as an adult, these people become oppressive toward others as a result of a learned behavior that was acquired during childhood.
As people enjoyed an age of innocence in the 80s, the artistic burst of creativity continued to soar and around the late-80s the "New Jack" culture was born. Some people thought that dance had reached its zenith between the early to mid-80s, but with the New Jack culture came New Jack Swing music. This was perhaps the most culturally creative period for Blacks in America. The Black American became the most imitated person in the whole world since Blacks became trend setters in fashion and entertainment. Blacks had already invented "cool" that has evolved into "swag" and even on Ivy League campuses, students dressed fashionably to avoid being called "geeks" or "nerds" because they wanted to fit in with the cool crowd.
The hairstyles that came from the Black community ranged from crew cuts, to high-top fades, or even German dishes (a Tin Tin-like haircut in which the hair slopes upward from the back, made famous by Glenn Goldsmith in the song Dreamin').
While overalls were looked upon as outfits mostly worn by farmers and old men, Blacks made them fashionable in London, Africa, New York and across America. Combat boots that were mostly worn by soldiers and police, all of a sudden became in vogue, and to this very day they have retained their popularity. With brand names like Doc Martens, Timberland and Harley Davidson capitalizing on the phenomenon, it is evident that the culture of the time had a cross-over effect in the non-Black community.
Across the pond in England, Pete Waterman and Stock Aitken were cooking up something that was a cross between house music, techno and disco that was referred to as "Eurotechnodisco" to counter New Jack. Acts like Kylie Minogue, BlackBox, Sonia, Sinita and many others released a string of dance music with memorable baselines that sent New Jack into oblivion.
Songs like "Pump Up The Jam" by Technotronic were played at basketball games in America, giving rise to domestic acts like "Snap" famous for The Power, and Oops up! There was also C&C Music factory (Gonna make you sweat) Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam (Let the beat hit 'em), Samantha Fox who was produced by Full Force was famous for two catchy hits: Naughty Girls Need Love and I Wanna Have Some Fun, and many other dance acts that kept one on one's feet. Girl bands like Seduction, Sweet Sensation, Expose and Cover Girls released some incredibly sensational tracks that can still be used today as "workout music" to get one hyped up for exercise.
Even with house and techno, there were still acts on the hip-hop scene that countered house music in the early 90s with something called "hip-house" which is basically hip-hop fused with house and can be danced to. This era was led by the group Kid 'n' Play, and if one wanted to learn how to dress or was looking for an idea for a fancy haircut, all one had to do or has to do is watch the movie House Party. Virtually every imaginable haircut is in that movie. Even eyebrows were styled with lines to make one look hip.
As we exited the early-90s, the entertainment industry saw how much of an impact the performing arts were having on our culture and it was time to destroy that positive image by introducing gangsta rap.
If there is one society that knew how to use culture to bring about change in society, it was the Romans. As Rome was declining, an emperor by the name of Diocletian rose to the throne on November 20, 284 A.D. and realized the empire was too vast for one man to rule effectively.
Diocletian did the unthinkablehe decided to break Rome apart in order to save it. He split it into the eastern and western realms ruled by a Tetrarchy (rule of four). These included two Augusti, and two Caesers. Diocletian himself was to be addressed as Dominus or "Lord and Master."
In the East, the enlightened Emperor Constantine concentrated on spreading Christianity by issuing the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. This legalized Christianity which spread like a wildfire. He then built what was referred to as Constantine's "polis" or Constantinople which became the capital of Byzantium, and is currently called Istanbul. While the western part of the empire was self-destructing in decadence, the East used its culture to influence the generations of that day.
Perhaps the most influential ruler next to Constantine, was the Emperor Justinian whose goal was to build the largest edifice in Christianity, that would exalt the Christian doctrine throughout posterity. To build the greatest edifice in Christendom he did, and called it the "Hagia Sophia" or the Holy Church of Wisdom. That edifice still stands today in Turkey as the greatest of its time, but has since been converted into a mosque.
What made Justinian an important cultural figure was not so much the architecture or doctrine he supported—it was the collection of codes he gathered that he named the "Justinian Code". From this code arose the laws that are used in modern courtrooms across the world today, simply because one manJustinian, understood how important it was to affect a generationnot politically, but culturally, in order to bring enduring transformation.
When one reads opinions of seasoned judges or motions of effective lawyers, one can see the Roman influence in modern law by the use of Latin phrases embedded in the opinions. Phrases like ab initio (from the beginning), sua ponte (on one's own) respondeat superior (let the master answer) de novo (starting afresh) and many others are derivatives of Latin which was a Roman "code language" Christians used to prevent those outside the church from understanding them. The fact that this old language is still used in courtrooms, speeches and church services in our day, shows how the Roman culture penetrated society and even an entire continent called "Latin America" that is named after the language and the influence Catholicism has had on that particular region.
Roman culture also affects modern Mathematics and language with the use of Roman numerals and italics. It affects our chronology because the Vatican determines when certain seasons like Easter will be celebrated.
While the modern calendar we use is called the Julian calendar named after Julius Caeser, it was actually introduced by Africans but had 365 days. During his affair with Cleopatra, Julius Caeser became fascinated with the way Egyptians mapped time and adopted the African calendar, but made his a little more accurate with 365 and a quarter days. It wasn't until Pope Gregory perfected it to the current calendar we use that all seasons were in perfect harmony with the science called Astronomy which is the study of the planets.
Great minds like Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and later Voltaire, used Astronomy to determine that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe, and the planets revolved around it, not the other way around. This science, Astronomy, should not be confused with Astrology, which is the worship of the stars that involves divination and witchcraft often used by wizards and fortunetellers.
Hollywood understands the same reality about culture. Impose it on people and get them to accept iteventually it will shape their mindset. Gangsta rap glorified pimping, violence, illiteracy, disrespect, lack of protocol and being locked up in jail or prison. It gave what has been referred to as "street cred" meaning one had credibility and respect among his or her peers for having a checkered record. Because this lifestyle became glorified in rap videos, Blacks who were once trend setters, started to lose influence in the culture war. The sense of fashion and style including the creativity evaporated gradually. Placing importance on getting a quality education became secondary because Black women in America bypassed the college-educated for the street thugs, giving rise to the brokenness we see in Black America.
While Whites have the justice system on their side and can escape even the most violent crimes they commit simply because of their race, Blacks have been ensnared by the culture of violence, and Bill Clinton made it worse with his "Three strikes you're out" rule. Moreover, as Black American women were exposed to the gangsta lifestyle through the media, they actually falsely believed it was glamorous to be in relationships with men who had reputations of criminality, and the result is self-evident in Black America.
When the new millennium rolled around, the Internet created its own culture called the "dotcomers". These were people who were considered "geeks" and "nerds" and rejected by their peers, but had since found a new way to use information technology to benefit themselves financially. As Tony Montana played by Al Pacino said in the movie Scarface, "In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women."
Internet savvy men and women saw an avenue that gave them not only access to money-making ventures, but also through dating sites, people could pick and choose the qualities they wanted from a mate. Online dating has since created a distorted view of relationships, and most women or men have complained that they find out quickly after meeting the other person, that he or she lacks interpersonal communication skills to sustain a substantive conversation or relationship.
eBay, the first and oldest social network, gave way to others like MySpace and LinkedIn, which is actually a social network where professionals connect with each other. We then got YouTube, Facebook and other social applications like Skype that allow people to connect in real time. This is currently the culture that we are in, also called the digital age. It has the ability to influence political undertakings, a person's reputation—for better or worse, or to even create revolutionary movements whether they are harmful or productive.
Social media also gives people a false sense of identity. These days there aren't any ugly people anymore. An ugly woman posts a picture on her wall, and immediately all the thirsty men compliment how great she looks, hoping that somehow this flattery will help them get lucky after going through a "dry spell." These absurdities have caused people to have a sense of entitlement based on a false narrative that they are being fed.
This is why I would now like to return to the aspect of Spring Break. While the digital age creates virtual relationships that are superficial and shallow, what Spring Break does is recapture the human aspect of building and celebrating relationships, if people approach such occasions with objective and mature minds. Yet some have abused Spring Break to indulge in secular humanistic activities.
Some of these activities have included "girls gone wild" in which women, especially White girls, were at the time being encouraged to act like whores while being taped. The mastermind of girls gone wild was eventually prosecuted for corrupting the youth. Blacks had their own version called "Hedonism" which is some sort of a cruise whose final destination is the Caribbean. Every year you have Hedonism I, Hedonism II and so is still unclear whether after "girls gone wild" was shut down, "Hedonism" suffered the same fate.
Even when you look at regions like Africa, Western culture is quickly replacing the native culture, partly because of an apathy toward the local visual and performing arts in Africa, and also because the leadership is too busy robbing the citizenry that the native culture is being allowed to disintegrate and implode instead of expanding and being exported overseas to attract tourism.
While it is most true that scientists (political, behavioral, medical, information technology) make the best politicians since they are constantly applying critical thinking to their professions, embracing and respecting traditional and cultural constructs makes for a well-rounded individual.
As the picture above depicts the attire that was worn particularly in the Shakespearean era where clothing made the manfashion, music and the liberal arts which are: Grammar (the science of language), Oratory (the science of rhetoric), Dialectic (the science of logic), Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and Astronomy, will continue to shape our culture and its influence on society—as opposed to politics. Add Comments>>
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Friday, September 2, 2016
Communist Censorship Past & Present
In discussing censorship of literature, film, and protests this week in the Humanities' projects, I realized a connection between the Communist party's influence in Russia during the 1940's and China present-day. In several groups' presentations, the Russian party was depicted as being an oppressive force over Czechoslovakia after their liberation from German forces. This led to the resentment of Communist leaders (Stalin) during the time because they were initially seen as "heroes" to the Czech people, but quickly became as dominant and controlling as Hitler and the Germans. However, propaganda distorted the reality of the situation in Czechoslovakia which connects to Kundera's portrayal of kitsch in his novel. Present-day, this relates to the Communist party in China regulating the content of social media outlets to "squelch news that might put its governance in an unfavorable light." See the attached link for the full article on China's restrictions of their internet.
Savannah Watermeier said...
I have also thought about present day communism in China while doing this unit. However, I don't think China is as extreme as the Soviets were. Yes, China does enforce some censorships and their government is rather controlling, but they do not kill people for what they post. It is well known that Stalin was a mass murderer, but China is not. In China, there are even ways to get around the censorships. The Chinese students at STM have taught me how. They don't have Instagram, snapchat, or a game called slither. However, they have their own versions of these apps. They can still communicate with their friends and even with people back in the US, just with a different version of the app. I definitely see the similarities between China and the Soviet, but there are also differences too.
Rickeia Coleman said...
I think it's interesting to see how we usually think of censorship and times of oppression as things of the past most likely because we don't deal with such hardships living in America. However, the burden of censorship is true for many people in this day and age including China and also North Korea and many other places. North Korea has one of the most dictatorial governments in the present day where the people are forced to hang pictures of their leader in their houses while they must also have a government radio in each home and the citizens cannot turn off the radio and speaking against the government is punishable by death. Although the Soviet army maybe never reached extremes such as North Korea they were still brutal to the Czech people they ruled over and could have definitely headed in that direction. Both peoples were/ are oppressed and not allowed to express themselves due to the harsh censorship in place and speaking against such censorship could very well end your life.
Luke Jeanfreau said...
I can definitely attest to the large amount of censorship in China. While I was there, it was very hard for me to access the media I was accustomed to. During that time, a lot of important events were happening in the United States and it was hard to stay informed. The vast majority of American news sites as well as all western social media were banned at the time. The thing that surprised me was how different age groups viewed the censorship. Many of the teens I met there had workarounds to the great firewall and thought that the censors were ridiculous. But most of the elderly didn't even know they existed.
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Winter Storms and Extreme Colds
Areas that generally experience mild winters can be battered with a major snowstorm or extremely cold weather, immobilizing the whole area. Winter storms can result in flooding, storm surge, closed highways, blocked roads, downed power lines and hypothermia.
Know the Terms:
Freezing Rain: Rain that freezes and creates ice as it hits any surface on the ground.
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Blizzard Warning: Sustained winds or frequent gusts to 35 miles per hour or greater and considerable amounts of falling or blowing snow are expected to subsist for a period of three hours or longer.
Frost/Freeze Warning: Below freezing temperatures are expected.
Take Protective Measures
What can I do Before Winter Storms and Extreme Cold?
Include the following in your disaster supplies kit:
Rock salt to melt ice on walkways
Sand to improve traction
Snow shovels and other snow removal equipment
Prepare for possible isolation in your home by having sufficient heating fuel; store a good supply of dry, seasoned wood for your fireplace or wood-burning stove, as any regular means of fuel could be cut.
Winterize your home to extend the life of your fuel supply by insulating walls and attics, caulking and weather-stripping doors and windows as well as installing storm windows.
To winterize your car, attend to the following:
Ensure antifreeze levels are sufficient to avoid freezing
Ensure the heater and defroster work properly
Check and repair windshield wiper equipment; ensure proper washer fluid level
Ensure the thermostat works properly
Check lights and flashing hazard lights
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Check oil for level and use lighter oil weights
Consider snow tires, snow tires with studs or chains
Replace fuel and air filters
Dress for the Weather:
Wear several layers of loose fitting, lightweight and warm clothing rather than one layer of heavy clothing
The outer garments should be tightly woven and water repellent
Wear mittens
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Cover your mouth with a scarf to protect your lungs
What do I do During a Winter Storm?
Listen to your radio or television for weather reports and emergency information
Eat regularly and drink ample fluids
Avoid overexertion when shoveling snow
Watch for signs of frostbite. These include loss of feeling and white or pale appearance in extremities such as fingers, toes, ear lobes and the tip of the nose. If symptoms are detected, get medical help immediately
Conserve fuel by keeping your residence cooler than normal
Temporarily close off heat to nonessential rooms
Drive only if it is absolutely necessary
Stay on main roads if you must go out
Pull off the highway
Remain in your vehicle where rescuers are most likely to find you
Do not set out on foot
When the engine is running, open a window slightly for ventilation. This will protect from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Periodically clear snow from the exhaust pipe
Exercise to maintain body heat, but avoid overexertion
Huddle with passengers and use your coat for a blanket
Drink fluids to avoid dehydration
Be careful not to waste battery power. Balance electrical energy needs - the use of lights, heat and radio - with supply
Turn on the inside light at night so work crews can see you
What do I do After a Winter Storm?
Follow the instructions for recovering from a disaster
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Winter blues: food that will keep you warm | india | Hindustan Times
Today in New Delhi, India
Jun 29, 2017-Thursday
New Delhi
• Humidity
• Wind
Winter blues: food that will keep you warm
High-protein foods such as eggs and poultry cause higher thermogenesis, and are suitable in winter, but in moderation. Chicken soup helps relieve colds and flu. There are many more food items that can help you stay cosy without putting on kilos.
india Updated: Jan 01, 2013 16:01 IST
Petrina D’Souza
It’s winter. And while it isn’t exactly freezing outside, it’s cold enough for your body to feel the difference and want to consume more calories. Why? Winter and hunger have a connection, says Shraddha Gaddit, nutritionist at Gold’s Gym. “When temperatures drop, our body temperature drops too. The body needs to burn more calories to keep warm, so there is a need to eat more,” Gaddit explains.
“The warming effect of food, or diet-induced thermognesis, is due to energy release during digestion that helps raise body temperature,” says Ishi Khosla, clinical nutritionist and director, Centre for Dietary Counseling.
But don’t go randomly rummaging in the fridge for chocolate and leftovers. Here’s what to add to your winter meals.
Millet (bajra)
“Millet is considered the least allergenic and the most digestible grain. It helps heat the body during cold and rainy seasons,” says Gaddit. Khosla adds, “A diet rich in whole grains is associated with other health benefits, including reduced risk of cancer, diabetes, obesity and several chronic diseases.”
Owing to their fatty acid content, nutritional properties and bioactive constituents, almonds and peanuts prevent several disorders and keep the body warm. “Peanuts are a good source of Coenzyme Q10, which protects the heart during lack of oxygen during winters,” says Gaddit.
Sesame seeds (til)
Both black and white sesame seeds provide heat. “Therefore, snacks and sweets use sesame seeds during winter. Sesame seeds also ward off common winter illnesses,” says Gaddit. “They boost immunity, prevent serious diseases and have an excellent ratio of mono and polyunsaturated fats,” adds Khosla.
Spices and condiments
Ginger, garlic, cinnamon, turmeric, black pepper and cloves also have a warming effect. “Ginger has long been used to treat seasonal colds and flu. It also helps digest fatty foods by breaking down proteins,” says Gaddit. “Bronchitis and asthma get aggravated during winter. Due to its antibacterial and antiviral properties, garlic helps fighting chest infection,” explains Gaddit, adding that the sweet and warm taste of cinnamon makes it a perfect addition to beverages. “Use cinnamon sticks with soymilk and honey,” she says.
Green leafy vegetables
Mustard greens and fenugreek (methi) are good sources of iron and folate, and help maintain good hemoglobin levels while protecting you from infection and colds. “Include at least one or half a serving of a dark, green leafy vegetable in your diet,” advises Gaddit.
Fish is rich in zinc and omega-3 fatty acids, both of which keep you healthy during winter. Zinc increases the production of white blood cells, which fight infection. It also helps control cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of heart diseases.
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This instructable will teach you how to make a simple beanbag and things you can do with it. Sounds boring doesn't it? Well, turns out, there are many exciting things you can do with a beanbag. You can throw them at people, play the beanbag toss game, turn them into beanbag chias, or make a beanbag monster.
Step 1: What You Will Need.
For beanbag or beanbag chia:
1. 2 square peices of any kind of cloth
2. a sewing machine or thread and needle
3. beans
For beanbag monster
1. 2 peices of square cloth
2. A sewing machine or a thread and needle
3. small felt peices or buttons for eyes
4. a felt mouth
5. A hot glue gun
Step 2: Beanbag Monster
If you are making a beanbag monster,
sew or hot glue the eyes and mouth on
Sorry I don't have a picture for this step, I kept mine as a regular beanbag, and if I can edit this after it is published, I might make a second beanbag and make it a beanbag monster.
Step 3: Start to Sew!
If you are making a monster you can either
a) sew the face on the inside and make the sides look neat or
b) Sew the face facing out and make the edges look a little messier
For chias or regular beanbags:
Sew three sides of the beanbag and then turn it inside out or leave it right side in if you want the outside edges to look messy.
Step 4: Fill It in With Beans
just estimate on how much beans to put in, i would say make it about three quarters full, but that's just a guesstimate.
Just make it to the squishiness you want : ]
Step 5: Sew the Rest
Sew the last side and you have a beanbag!
Follow step six for a Chia.
Step 6: I Really Haven't Done a Chia So...
I don't really know if this works, but my dad told me it did.
Leave the bean bag out in the rain, or if you live somewhere without rain, then just water it. The beans should grow out through the fabric and then, once its roots start to grow, you can plant it, even though it will look weird for home decor.
About This Instructable
More by gnomination:How to make a beanbag, beanbag monster, and beanbag chia.
Add instructable to:
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A Guide to Time Management
Issues with Concentration
Time Planning Issues
Some of the most common problems students experience with concentration are related to the way they plan their time. Take care that your time planning isn't creating or exacerbating these problems with concentration.
A major issue for many is their concentration span, or lack thereof. Students often complain that their minds begin to wander only 10 or 15 minutes after sitting down to work, or that they read the same page over and over again and still don't know what's on it. In our experience these students have unrealistic assumptions or beliefs about how long they should be able concentrate. For example, they'll spend hours at a time on the same type of task (like reading), and then, at the end, feel frustrated and worried when they can't remember much, if any, of what they've just read. Like other academic tasks that require intense focus and an active approach to learning, "study" reading (as opposed to reading a novel for pleasure) is more effective when done in short, distributed amounts. See Break It Up for details on how to plan in this way. Very few students can sit down for hours at a stretch with a dense, complex, academic text and remember the material in any detail.
It's important to realize that your concentration span can vary tremendously depending on the type of task, your motivation to do the work, your interest in the subject, how tired or ill you're feeling at that point, what else is happening in your life that you may be thinking about, etc. It's not much use to try to force yourself to concentrate for X number of minutes or hours because you think you should be able to. Rather than struggle against your ability to concentrate, it's essential to work with it. If you find that your mind begins to wander after 10 or 15 minutes of reading, then stop and take a 5 minute break. Get up and stretch, jog on the spot to get your blood flowing, throw some cold water on your face, get a breath of fresh air, get a coffee (but watch the caffeine) and go back to work. Try a reading approach like SQ4R to help you to focus. Monitor your concentration instead of counting how many pages are left in the chapter.
If you take a 5 minute break every 15 minutes, by the end of 60 minutes you'll have done 45 minutes of solid reading. If you sit there after 15 minutes and wonder why you can't concentrate and then scold and berate yourself for not being able to focus, you'll probably spend a lot more of the next 45 minutes fretting and guilt-tripping yourself than you will reading. The point is not to worry about how long you "should" be able to concentrate. What matters is that you pay attention to your learning and work with your ability to concentrate on that particular day, under those particular circumstances.
For some concrete strategies for enhancing your concentration, particularly when you’re distracted by a personal issue, see the Internal Study Environment in Managing Distractions.
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Why Can't Rome Protect Its Cultural Treasures?
Click the image to view a gallery of 100 endangered places around the globe.
The Roman Coliseum is not only one of the world’s most visited monuments; it is also one of the most threatened. The outer walls are stained black by exhaust fumes from buses, mopeds, and cars that whiz around the ancient amphitheater as if it were a traffic circle. Reverberations can be felt from the subway trains far below the cobblestones. Permanent scaffolding shores up the subterranean corridors where gladiators and animals once waited to fight to their death. Four stories above street level, rusting metal braces and giant bungees hold the ancient travertine blocks in place.
So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when, just before dawn Sunday morning, three chunks of Roman mortar fell from an arched ceiling, crumpling the safety netting meant to catch such debris. Had the ceiling collapsed a few hours later, it could have easily killed a tourist. Weeks of rain and subnormal temperatures were blamed, but the reality is that the Coliseum, like many of Rome’s ancient treasures, is falling apart because no one seems to care.
Rome faces the daunting problem of how to maintain its rich history without sacrificing the needs of its modern citizens—and, in recent years, budget cuts (and the demand for modern infrastructure) have won out over preservation and arts. The culture ministry has cut a third from its entire budget, and not just from the monuments and museums. Opera singers and theater workers went on strike this week in protest cuts that may close opera houses. The monuments will ultimately fare worse. Instead of shoring up obvious fractures before something happens, city workers spend the bulk of their time reacting to emergencies like last Sunday’s. Funds earmarked for preservation are often spent in a panic, literally picking up the pieces. In the last year, ceilings and walls have collapsed at other important monuments, including Nero’s Golden Palace and the Palatine Hill. Parts of the Aurelian Wall are now propped up with wooden support beams. Sections of the Roman Forum are cordoned off with red and white tape, deemed too dangerous for tourists to visit. Since ticket proceeds go entirely to the maintenance of each monument, closures are financially devastating, making the dangers that closed the sites even harder to fix.
At the Coliseum, which attracts nearly 4 million visitors per year, pathetic preservation measures like flimsy safety netting and metal braces put in place almost 30 years ago are now inadequate. And a more recent effort—to sandblast the traffic soot off the porous exterior walls in 1992—was abandoned after the city and key sponsors ran out of money. In the meantime, decades of traffic, vandalism, and neglect have taken their toll. “The Coliseum suffers from its 2,000 years of history,” says Adriano La Regina, superintendent of Rome’s antiquities. “It needs constant, intensive surveillance and intervention; it is like a cancer patient with a bad prognosis.” The structure has an annual maintenance budget of just $867,000—half of what the Ministry of Culture says is necessary to save it. Now an emergency restoration plan by the culture ministry is in place, at a cost of $8.4 million. No one knows yet where the money will come from.
The ambitious project, set to begin later this month, again includes a much-needed exterior cleaning and replacement of key support structures—including new metal bands that hold some of the marble in place. Stone archways will be reinforced and safety netting under the fragile ancient ceilings will be updated. The area around the Coliseum will also be cordoned off, and pedestrian traffic near the monument will be restricted in case of further collapse during the work. In 2000, the city of Rome installed a gladiator exhibit on the second tier, complete with an elevator and gift shop. Now, the museum and elevator will likely be removed, and parts of the ancient amphitheater will be permanently closed to the public. Plans to open the third tier and the subterranean tunnel system to attract even more visitors were also in the works before last Sunday’s collapse. Those areas will likely now never be accessible to the public.
The Coliseum is open again, but a quota system is now enforced to control the number of visitors who are in the ancient amphitheater at any given time. This week the city will consider an emergency measure to limit traffic on the busy throughway that passes within a few hundred feet of the building, turning the entire area into a pedestrian island and diverting thousands of cars and buses that pass by each day.
In recent years, the city of Rome has rented out the Coliseum as a venue for special events like concerts to help offset the maintenance costs. But after Sunday’s collapse, all events scheduled for the busy summer season were canceled or moved to other venues. The vibration from loud speakers is simply too risky, according to La Regina. Smaller indoor events were also canceled, including boxing matches in the ancient underground cages and private VIP dinners and fashion shows, which were scheduled to be held on a wooden floor erected above the subterranean tunnels. The lost revenue from renting out the Coliseum will now have to come from other sources.
According to an archeologist for the culture ministry, Francesco Maria Giro, the priorities have now changed. “Sunday’s event was small, but it is yet another wake up call and confirms the need to study the ancient monuments of Rome,” he said during a walking tour of the Coliseum on Wednesday. “A plan of intervention and ongoing maintenance now supersedes everything else.” But until the government realizes that increasing, not cutting, its culture budget should be the real priority, saving Rome’s cherished symbols will be a race against time.
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