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Why is it so much easier to use computers in films?
Because if the computers in films were like the ones in real life, people would be endlessly turning them off and on again and standing around staring at the ceiling while they waited for a progress bar to inch across the screen. In short, it would be boring as hell. After all, the only time you call people to come and watch things happening on your computer is when you've found a video of someone playing the national anthem with their armpit, isn't it?
But the filmmakers' dilemma is that computers have become essential plot devices: nobody would believe that you could have a giant corporation where the secret plans to overthrow the rule of law weren't kept in a password- protected folder marked MOST SECRET. (That's where we keep all our plans for world domination, even the out-of-date ones.) A film world without computers is almost unthinkable, since they're a sort of white-collar gun - able to exert immense power at vast distances through minimal effort by the protagonist. Yet the film reckoned (by geeks) the most realistic depiction of computer use, Antitrust, garners one review at imdb.com suggesting "No script, no plot, horrible acting ... Take your money and go home and avoid this dung heap at all costs."
Now the usability expert Jakob Nielsen has done an analysis of the top 10 usability "errors" in films, (tinyurl.com/y7erul) and points out that they fall into a pretty small group: the hero can use (and crack) any computer which can talk to absolutely any other computer, though often only after negotiating a series of frustrating but usefully huge-fonted "ACCESS DENIED" notices; computers can talk and understand you, when required; time travellers from the past and future can use our computers (at which Nielsen fulminates "taken back in time to the Napoleonic wars and made captain of a British frigate, you'd have no clue how to sail the ship: you couldn't use a sextant and you wouldn't know the names of the different sails, so you couldn't order the sailors to rig the masts"). Nielsen adds that "it's highly unlikely that anyone from 2207 would have ever seen Windows Vista screens."
(Note how he says unlikely. Does he think it'll take Microsoft 200 years to produce the next version of Windows? Even scarier, has some time traveller visited him and said, "Oh, Vista"?)
As for talking computers, which so many people think would be a great idea, those are an "audience interface" rather than a user interface. And imagine the chaos of an office full of computers babbling: "Alert. You have new mail." Though in films, your email is never, ever spam; it was never explained how in You've Got Mail neither Tom Hanks nor Meg Ryan, ostensibly AOL users, didn't have to wade through messages offering to enhance their body parts to reach their billets doux.
Nielsen is also dismissive of three-dimensional interfaces, made most impressive in the film Minority Report (from the short story by Philip K Dick, which didn't itself contain any computers at all). There, Tom Cruise waves his hands about to shove data around and find the about-to-be-baddie. In reality, says Nielsen, "it's very tiring to keep your arms in the air while using a computer"; in short, he says, "3D is for demos. 2D is for work."
The most marvellous and jawdropping plot device, of course, remains that from Independence Day, when Jeff Goldblum uploads a virus from a Mac to the aliens' starship, crashing it (and the aliens to the ground). Probably - we hope - this represents the nadir of computer-driven plotting, bottoming out the path traced by Jurassic Park (in which the young girl exclaims "This is Unix, it's easy!"). Let's just turn that one off - and not turn it back on again.
| <urn:uuid:2fd686dd-cc4d-4148-8a43-a03ada87a443> | 2 | 2.171875 | 0.936325 | en | 0.963028 | http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/dec/21/guardianweeklytechnologysection1 |
A Holocaust-themed cartoon in an Argentinean newspaper has brought the country’s Muslim and Jewish residents closer together.
In a new letter to the Jewish community, the Islamic Center of the Argentinean Republic has expressed its “emphatic rejection of the supposedly humorous” comic strip, in which Hitler tells a DJ at a Nazi concentration camp to play relaxing music “so the soap will turn out better.”
Pagina 12, the newspaper that published the cartoon, released an apology last week following protests by Buenos Aires’ Jewish community, while a group of 140 artists released their own letter expressing support for cartoonist Gustavo Sala and claiming the protests were an attack on free speech.
The letter from the Islamic group, signed by its president and general secretary, called the cartoon “grotesque and perverse,” claiming it reflected its creator’s “sick and dangerous mind.”
The letter praised Argentina as a place where “Jews, Christians and Muslims have always lived and [still] live in exemplary co-existence.” | <urn:uuid:ab93eca4-c8d9-4fea-9926-dd7daf81aaf6> | 2 | 1.632813 | 0.14832 | en | 0.958944 | http://www.timesofisrael.com/argentinas-muslims-denounce-holocaust-cartoon/ |
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msnbc.com contributor
updated 7/10/2009 9:53:17 AM ET 2009-07-10T13:53:17
“Disco sucks!”
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It was a catchphrase you couldn’t avoid hearing three decades ago when a backlash started to develop against the ’70s dance music genre that dominated Top 40 radio stations. The resentment culminated in an unexpected riot July 12, 1979 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. It was there fans charged onto the field during a promotional event called “Disco Demolition Night,” after Chicago DJ Steve Dahl blew up a box of disco records.
Smashing up disco records was a stunt Dahl did at area bars, but he got to bring his shtick to a wider audience when White Sox management started arranging publicity stunts to boost attendance. Over the years, the event has come to signify something larger in the culture — a point at which the implicit musical divide between whites and African-Americans became uncomfortably explicit. It also helped kill disco as a viable genre.
The hostility towards disco came to a head less than two years after the movie “Saturday Night Fever” was released, mostly because radio listeners grew tired of how dominating disco had become. Additionally, the music got associated with the lifestyle of the rich and famous because of its connection with New York’s swanky disco Studio 54. That’s ironic, because disco was forged much the way rock music was — by people who were considered outsiders.
“Disco was gay, black and Latin in spite of the fact that probably many of the people who made it happen in a very big way were white,” says Vince Aletti, the first music critic to write about disco. “Many, many people perceived it as a kind of undermining force, like rock ’n’ roll was, in a way.”
The music evolved in New York clubs (“disco” being an abbreviation of the word discothèque), where DJs would get crowds moving with exotic import records. When early club hits like Manu Debango’s “Soul Makossa” crossed over to the pop charts, a trend began to emerge. Before long American artists picked up on it and crafted music to fit the new market. One such artist was Gloria Gaynor, who had two of the first disco hits with “Honey Bee” and “Never Can Say Goodbye.”
“(Those records) were a conscious decision to supply the up-and-coming disco market,” explains Gaynor. “I was working in clubs up and down the East Coast and Midwest, and I was seeing these cabarets being turned into discothèques.”
Studio 54 fever
Soon, white artists picked up on the music. The underground rose to the mainstream when artists like KC and the Sunshine Band and the Bee Gees got Middle America to put on its boogie shoes. Even the sedate Barry Manilow was shaking it at the “Copacabana.”
“When black people dance, that’s regarded as normal, when white people dance it’s regarded as a phenomenon,” explains rock critic Dave Marsh. “Disco isn’t listening music. Disco is active dancer music. That’s what it’s for.”
With the release of “Saturday Night Fever” in late 1977, the trend became a craze. About the same time, Studio 54 became a tabloid fixture when it became the playground of celebrities like Jerry Hall and Andy Warhol and also barred non-beautiful people from entering. Disco was now being associated with social climbing and posh fashion — not exactly the qualities that brought smiles to the faces of metal heads or punk rockers.
According to Paul Natkin, who was assigned to photograph Dahl on Disco Demolition Night, disco became “a lifestyle thing — guys in white suits with their gold chains around their necks. Rock 'n' roll was kind of T-shirts and jeans.”
But Dahl (who did not respond to interview requests for this article) also had a personal stake in the matter, Natkin and Marsh note. He had been fired from his previous DJ job at a rock station when it changed to a disco format. “Here he was out on the street on Christmas Eve,” Natkin explains. “That’s the reason he hated disco as much as he did.”
In other words, one guy with a grudge changed the face of pop music in one night. And yet, radio stations that went disco were just pleasing the public. The “Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack” album sold 11 million copies and the Bee Gees scored four number one hits from it.
Shakedown, 1979
By the summer of 1979, disco was being supplanted as the music of choice among younger listeners by heavy metal, punk rock and new wave. The year started with disco hits by Gloria Gaynor, Rod Stewart, Blondie and Donna Summer holding the top spots — and it seems significant now that the Bee Gees scored their last-ever number one on June 9, 1979, with “Love You Inside Out.” Around this time, radio stations started advertising “Bee Gees-free weekends.” Discontent was in the air(waves).
A changing of the guard seemed to happen in late August when new wavers the Knack took “My Sharona” to number one for six weeks. It also became the top song of the year. Heralding this change was Dahl, who Natkin says used to hold promotional events in bars where he’d dress in a mock Army uniform and break disco records over his head.
The reason for the Disco Demolition Night promotion, Natkin says, is that the two worst teams in the American League were playing a doubleheader and stadium owner Bill Veeck wanted to attract more than the usual 6,000-person crowd. He got his wish. “We pulled up and there were lines around the block,” says Natkin.
After the first game, Natkin says, Dahl went onto the field, “gave his little speech” and offered a box of disco records to be blown to bits. After the explosion, “the whole place went nuts,” Natkin remembers. Fans charged out from the stands, wrecking the field and causing the cancellation of the second game (the first time a game was canceled due to a factor other than weather). Eventually, police were called in.
Dahl, says Natkin, thought the event might make the front page of the local papers the next day, but Disco Demolition Night ended up national news — and controversial news at that. Dahl’s intent might have been to mock the “disco lifestyle,” but his stunt was perceived as having racist overtones. Chic’s Nile Rodgers (who would go on to produce Madonna) later likened the event to “Nazi book-burning.”
“I was appalled,” remembers Marsh. “It was your most paranoid fantasy about where the ethnic cleansing of the rock radio could ultimately lead. It was everything you had feared come to life. Dahl didn’t come from Top 40 radio, he came from album rock radio, which was fighting to heighten its profile.”
Gaynor, whose “I Will Survive” had become a disco anthem earlier in the year, agrees: “I’ve always believed it was an economic decision — an idea created by someone whose economic bottom line was being adversely affected by the popularity of disco music. So they got a mob mentality going.”
Disco’s decline was steep. Aletti remembers working at a record label around that time, and his entire department getting renamed: “We became the dance music department. Disco became a dirty word.”
Renaming disco didn’t kill it, of course. Donna Summer still had hits, as did Michael Jackson, Lipps, Inc. and others. But an era had ended. By July 1981, the new wave magazine Trouser Press noticed disco had caught on amongst the English bands that would soon dominate the newly-created MTV. “I hate to break the news, but disco isn’t dead yet,” wrote Robert Payes in a Spandau Ballet review. “It’s just changed owners.”
These days, disco’s echoes can be heard in the work of artists like Lady Gaga, Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head and countless songs. It’s also referenced in seminal works of art such as the Beastie Boys’ “Paul’s Boutique” and the films “Boogie Nights” and “The Last Days of Disco.” As for the music itself, Gaynor says one reason people still take to disco is that it delivered on the egalitarian ideals that early rock ’n’ roll only promised.
“Disco never got credit for being the first and only music ever to transcend all nationalities, race, creed, color, and age groups,” Gaynor observes. “It was common ground for everyone.”
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Quality Management
Quality Circles
To develop and constantly improve the awareness regarding quality related topics in the company Tropiflora Sri Lanka introduced Quality Circles. The members of this circles are responsible for all involved branches of the supply chain. As an example field officers, graders, packers, export manager and quality responsible are discussing implementing actual issues of the daily business to constantly improve the production and export-process.
Product Specification
Product specifications are essential for calculation, incoming goods inspection, communication, vase life test etc. Their function is the technical description of a living product to achieve an extensively standardisation, which can be controlled through the entire supply chain. In an international business they ease the communication and assure that customer and supplier speak the same language regarding product features in the daily business.
Quality Slip
All the boxes exported by Tropiflora contain a so called “Quality Slip”. This paper carries number and signature of the person responsible that the box contains only products which meet the product specification. This slip allows to trace a product back to the field and allows a profound analysis in case the customer is not satisfied with the product. In addition this item underlines the responsibility of farm employees regarding the quality process.
Temperature Monitoring
The temperature development inside a box during the transport is basically related to following factors: Provenience, time and route. Provenience and time can be considered as given. The route can be influenced by selection of the appropriate airline and freight agent.
To find out more about the temperature development on our routes Tropiflora adds temperature control devices to shipments. After arrival of these shipments the data is analysed and used in negotiations with our freight partners regarding improvement of the conditions. The method is as well very useful when it comes to evaluation of new routes. | <urn:uuid:75af9a22-d535-4d0a-a1d2-757235e402fd> | 2 | 1.539063 | 0.018565 | en | 0.901807 | http://www.tropi-flora.com/index.php?id=at_supply_chain_quality_management&language=EN |
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planet earth
Filer's Files
By George Filer
MUFON Eastern Region Director
April 24, 2001
George Filer:
See all the photos at:
UFO WAVE IN MIDWEST -- UFOs were seen in Florida, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Alaska and Chili.
Maryland MUFON researcher George Reynolds reports that he is monitoring high magnetic activity in the earth's field around his home in Maryland with his magnetic anomaly detector instruments. Ed Stork of Denver, Pennsylvania designed and built the instruments. On April 11, 12, 13, and 14 both instruments located 40 miles apart were very active measuring considerably higher than normal readings. The units were designed to pick up UFOs, but have been reliable in predicting both UFOs and earthquakes. Their research has discovered that earthquakes often follow high magnetic activity. In recent weeks there has been unusually powerful coronal mass ejections or solar storms that often cause high magnetic activity on Earth as well as in space. This intense solar storm activity appears to create an increase in reports of huge 'motherships' aircraft carrier size craft that take refuge in our dense atmosphere or underwater. The following Midwest wave of reports indicate a mothership may have moved into the Lake Michigan area. This was followed by numerous sightings of disc shaped UFOs often seen departing and moving into the large motherships.
ORLANDO -- A very large dark UFO with two red lights hovered over the Deseret Ranch, just east of the city on Thursday night, March 28, 2001. According to the eyewitness, "I observed two slow-flying red lights that appeared to be hundreds of yards away, just above the tree line. The two red lights were moving very slowly from east to west." The lights moved in a very exacting detail, as if they were connected to each other, which would have made it one extremely big object if we could have seen the superstructure." " The object made no sound as it passed. This was observed at the Deseret Ranch, just east of the Orlando International Airport." The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormons owns the ranch. A new Mormon Temple is being built. Thanks to Rev. Billy Dee
CHARLOTTESVILLE -- On April 3, 2001, I was walking my dog at 8:30 PM when I looked up and almost directly above was some type of craft with five rounded sides, with a light at each of the five points. It was a bit like a pentagon, but rounded enough to say that it was round - with five distinct edges. The lights were yellowish in color and not very bright. The craft was low to the ground compared to the air traffic. The craft was moving slowly to the east/northeast. There was a large cloud in its flight path, and as it disappeared behind the cloud, I stood there to watch it come out the other side. Given its speed and the size of the cloud, I expected to see it come out the other side relatively quickly. When it did not, I looked around, and saw the craft now moving in a south/southeast direction, looking like it made a 90-degree turn when the cloud hid it. The lights lit the craft enough to make the five sides clearly visible. I am a professional and student in my late 20's. I've never seen anything like this before, and was not under the influence of any substances - it was a fascinating experience. Thanks to Peter Davenport Director or National Reporting Center NUFORC
BALTIMORE -- Researcher Bill Bean sent me a video of unusually fast moving craft flying moving over the city on March 28, 2001. The actual craft could not be seen, but it was at the beginning of a developing contrail that flew probably twice as fast as other jet aircraft from north to south at 3:19 PM. Its altitude is estimated 35,000 feet. No structure could actually be seen as it created a new contrail across the sky. Perhaps even more remarkable it flew beneath a contrail that had expanded and clouded up a huge five mile wide and hundreds of mile long contrail with thick clouds. Both contrails with quickly forming clouds were very strange. Thanks to Bill Bean
NEW BRUNSWICK -- The witness reports seeing four flying objects flying east on April 7, 2001, that suddenly reversed direction during flight. They looked bluish when spotted at 8:21 PM. The weather was cloudy and I could not see the shape very clearly, but they looked round. They were flying low just above ground. The witness stated, "The reason I think they were UFO is because of the way they changed flying direction. They suddenly reversed their direction and the acceleration was just not possible for any known man-made machine." They seemed to play with each other for about two minutes. When I went inside to get a cam recorder and to record them, they were gone. As a scientist who majored in Physics, I must admit those UFOs I saw could be lighting. However, I have never seen any lighting like that! Thanks to Peter Davenport NUFORC
FRANKLIN -- While patrolling the campgrounds where he works at 11:47 PM on April 4, 2001, the witness saw the same disc shaped object he had reported last summer on July 11, 2000. The disc was just over the tree line again--but a little farther away in the same area. It hovered in place for about five minutes, and then sped over ten miles to the west and hovered for another fifteen minutes. The witness stated, "It then shot straight up, and I lost all sight of it." Thanks to NUFORC Peter Davenport Director of the National Reporting Center.
WESTVILLE - A retired Chicago teacher who taught for 35 years and lives on a small farm reported she saw a very bright light in the eastern sky traveling straight west on April 4, 2001. It passed almost directly over the teacher at approximately 11:30 PM, and continued in a straight westward path until the trees obscured it from view. The witness states, "The light was like a motorcycle headlight, - single, not double as an airplane's." There was no accompanying jet noise or airplane motor noise - only a soft after" hum" - like a furnace running, or wind through trees. This craft did not have red and green running lights. I saw four distinct lights arranged in a diamond shape (or a triangle with a tail). There was also the suggestion of a few smaller lights around the back of the craft. The front and rear lights were cream colored, while the sidelights were amber and chartreuse. It was traveling rapidly - from initial sighting to the point where I lost it in the trees. It took less than 30 seconds to cover 3/4 of a mile. The sky around my farm usually has many moving lights - all attached to regular aircraft. The speed of this craft astonished me, making me realize that it was not one of the "regulars."
Editor's Note: I spoke with Peter Davenport Director of NUFORC who had interviewed the witness at length. He found her to be quite credible, sober-minded witness. It was totally silent. Thanks to Peter Davenport. NUFORC
CANTON -- The witness spotted a large egg shaped craft that had a strange blue glow that he observed on April 7, 2001. There were three traveling very fast in circles, up and down, side to side at 5:00 PM just before sunset. They just sat there and hovered. One of the large UFOs had four smaller objects fly out of it. The first three large egg shaped UFOs disappeared completely, while the smaller four took off extremely fast. Before they left, all the battery clocks in my house, such as my watch stopped working at the same time. After the UFOs departed, the clocks worked again.
MIDDLEFIELD - A week later while driving westbound on State Route 87 by the Geauga and Trumbull County line on April 13, 2001, another car was approaching towards the east at 11:37 PM. A bright beam of light appeared in between our two cars, and suddenly both vehicles lost power. My engine, lights, etc. cut out immediately. At first I thought it was a problem with my truck, but then noticed that the other car was "dead," too. This lasted for approximately three minutes. There was just bright light with no sound at all. Then, the light disappeared and electrical power turned back on in both of our vehicles. Nothing major happened, just lost radio presets and the clock. Now, neither seems to want to be reset. Thanks to NUFORC
EVANSVILLE -- It was like seeing a fleet of plates all gray except for the lights flying through the air on April 13, 2001. We saw the visitors real early in the morning at 2:37 AM. The discs were hovering there for about twenty seconds then they took off toward the north. They had numerous lights on the bottom that were a reddish color and turned green when they left. They had many weird looking fins that were in the shape of a spiral that led into the center, which constantly opened and closed. . They were very quiet except when one dropped a few hundred feet and that only sounded like a jet engine far in the distance. NUFORC
WARREN - It seemed as though heaven spilled a bucket of fireflies according to the witness. On March 22, 2001, he first saw a wave of lights traveling west and breaking into separate 'V' shaped formations. At 8:10 PM, they were moving at about the speed of a passenger jet at altitude. I heard the roar of jets north of them probably coming from Selfridge National Guard Air Base. A neighbor who thought the world was ending also witnessed the spectacle. After he settled down, he stated, "As they were descending they seemed to see the police chopper on its rounds and slowed till it passed. This occurred behind me as I was turning to look at the chopper (which is why I saw the UFOs) so I cannot confirm this. This I can confirm as they traveled west and became distant I could see clearly that the assembled on an even place, prior they were at varying heights. They didn't speed up or slow down they moved constant. Then they vanished at light speed once they were all in a nice little row.
EAST LANSING -- I was walking around my town at night around 10:30 PM on April 13, 2001. I glanced up in the clear sky and saw a triangle formation of 3 saucer shaped objects. The saucers flew overhead silently and very quickly. I have seen these saucers more times than I can remember in East Lansing. They seem to be a common occurrence. They always fly silently, but at varying speeds. Sometimes they fly so fast it seems impossible. Thanks to NUFORC
RIVERVIEW -- My two friends and I were standing outside at 1:00 AM on April 11, 2001, when we observed ten saucers flying close to the ground, rapidly switching places with one another. We were swinging on my old swing set when all of the sudden, my friend pointed into the sky. There were ten bright orange colored saucers. They weren't all that far from the ground only 100 to 300 feet. We stood in awe of them. They moved fast, constantly switching places with each other. When we went inside, it was still 1:00 AM. We are three, thirteen old girls. We come from a rather normal upbringing, although my parents passed away and I fear aliens and UFOs to the extreme, but I never talked about it before.
GAYLORD - The witness reports they are located at 45 degrees North Latitude in Northern Michigan. They were sitting in their hot tub at 10:15 PM, looking at the sky on April 14, 2001. The witness said to her husband, pointing "Is that Cassiopeia? As I was looking, I saw what I at first thought was a shooting star. But as I watched, it didn't fade like most shooting stars." As I focused on it, I saw a cluster of four "lights" and a cluster of three, both in a "V" format on, moving swiftly across the sky, east to west, not fading. I thought, as they approached the rooftop of my house, that they seemed to move closer together, but the light from them never dimmed. There was no sound. While watching, I immediately stood up so that I could see them longer. Thanks to Peter Davenport NUFORC .
DePERE - The witness reports a disc approached from south to north flying over us and then made a hair pin 180 degree turn above us heading south again on April 11, 2001. The disc passed less than 300 feet above us. We could see it was darker than background night sky. It was out lined with many small red lights. The craft made no sound, but we could feel its presence getting stronger as it came closer and diminish as it left.
ROTHSCHILD -- An object with four lights was seen hovering and when approached it sped away at an extreme speed on April 13, 2001, at 12:00 AM. The object had four bright lights on it and it appeared to be hovering about 100 feet above the ground as we approached. When we got close the object sped away. We tried to pursue it but as we did the object speed was too fast and within seconds it was out of sight. A second witness describes probably the same craft. We were driving home Friday night April 13, 2001, and when we got near our house in Rothschild we looked up and saw four bright lights that resembled stadium lights. The lights were hovering over a bunch of trees at 12:00 AM. As we turned the corner the UFO made rapid movements and suddenly disappeared. We tried to follow and find it but it quickly disappeared. NUFORC
CANTON -- On April 7, 2001, we were outside eating at 7:00 PM since it was so nice. We were looking up, but the stars were not out yet but something caught my eye. I pointed it out, so we all looked and saw a flying triangular ship like thing. It was flying with four or so lights spinning they were red lights! Then there was smoke like stuff near it, like from an engine. Thanks to NUFORC
WASHINGTON -- While driving north on Jefferson Street through town, my 9-year-old daughter noticed an object in the sky on March 29, 2001, during daylight hours around 3:30 in the afternoon. She said, "Dad what is that? It's really shiny." I looked and couldn't see it at first, but she continued to talk about it and soon after I spotted it too. I pulled the car over and got a very good look at it. The object was square from a frontal view, but thin from a side view. The front of the object, while square, contained 4 circular shapes within it (like 4 dinner plates placed side by side, two across, two down, to fill the square.) The front was "chrome-like" and extremely shiny. The backside of the object was black and flat with no other markings. The object was on end and slowly spinning horizontally, so that to look at it while spinning was to see the shiny side of the square, then the thin, then the black side, and so on; a pattern of thick & thins. While spinning, the object traveled north towards downtown at 125 feet, then made a turn to head west near Busch Creek. The craft's speed was varying from 10 to 25 miles an hour. The overall size estimate would be 5+ feet with the thinner side maybe 1 foot thick. We tried to follow, but it vanished.
ST.LOUIS -- On April 5, 2001, the witness and his son saw a flying object in the night sky at 9:56 PM. At first there was a very large bright oval shape light coming words them from the southeast. The light was much brighter than any airplane I had ever seen before. So, I called for my son to come and join me outside as I thought he might know what type of aircraft it was. By the time he arrived outside the craft was over our heads. Neither he nor I had any idea as to what type of aircraft it was. We live close to an airport so we see many airplanes and jets but we have never seen anything like this before. The object was very large; perhaps two or three full moons in size. There was a large bright oval shaped light in the front of the craft and several other lights forming what appeared to be a triangular shape craft. In the center of the object was a red light, none of the lights flashed. The object was very large but made a little soft humming sound. It wasn't until the object was overhead that we heard a sound. It seemed to be gray or black in color, moving rather slowly for we were able to view it for about three minutes. There was haze around it, perhaps due to the brightness of the front light. It flew over our heads heading in a N.W. direction. ((NUFORC Note: We have spoken with the two witnesses on several occasions now, and they seem to be very good observers, and they seem quite insistent that what they witnessed on this night was not an aircraft. They live not far from Lambert Field in St. Louis.
ST. LOUIS -- On April 21, 2001, I received a report from a witness. It was approximately 8:10 PM (Central) and I was looking to the northwest from Southern St. Louis. I saw a light coming from over the tops of the trees. It looked strange with three to five lights on the front of the craft. The lights were closer together than an airplane's and they were not blinking at all. It made no sound as it approached straight toward me. As it came closer and was almost overhead I saw a circular outline of the craft. It was definitely not an airplane shape. It flew directly over me, and behind the building I was in. There was never any sound, and my windows were open. The craft was flying lower than any airplane should have been, but I cannot guess the altitude. I would say it was a bit smaller than a commercial airplane, as well. The weather was cloudy and there was a mild thunderstorm approaching from the southwest. If anyone could please let us know if they happened to see this object on 4-21-01 Thanks to Nancy @
SADDLEBACK BUTTE -- Bill Hamilton wrote: My anonymous witness sent the following information concerning sightings of on March 28, 2001. These sightings are very low altitude and on the average 10 to 15 minutes in duration. The objects always come from the Edwards Air Force Base area. I noticed that before the object is observed there are a number of small Cessna type aircraft and sometimes helicopters that fly in the area, originating from the base. Then all is quiet, and after a half hour two an hour the object reappears. There is never any sound, although the sound of the aircraft or especially helicopters is always quite audible. The normal farthest southern distance traversed before returning is in the area of Saddleback Butte. The only name I have found for this butte is Blue Rock. There is a large water tank on the northern end of it. The sightings themselves have been very erratic, sometimes two a month and usually less. Due to the close proximity of Edwards, I have a hard time believing that they are not aware of this." See image drawing on at: Thanks to Bill Hamilton Director Skywatch International, Inc.
SEWARD -- J. Glen Harper, the Alaska State Director reports that on April 18, 2001, he drove to Seward to investigate reports originated from Robert Mackey ( of massive nightly sightings of black triangle shaped, battleship sized, UFO's. I talked by phone with Mackey at 9:30 PM on Tuesday, April 17. He assured me he was "seeing things" nightly. Therefore, I told him I would be in Seward between 12:00 and 1:00 AM. I drove the 125 miles from Anchorage and knocked on his door at 12:15 AM. I did not persist in knocking because I knew he had a child and a wife, presumably trying to get some sleep. I waited outside in the parking lot next to his apartment on Third Avenue. The lights were on but no one appeared to be home. I stayed there an hour looking toward the southwest, but also in all directions. I was hoping Mackey might come out. I saw no planes and no UFOs, there was nothing flying over Seward. I am a pilot and I have flown all over this area. The visibility at the surface was very good. In Alaska, that means 80 miles plus and often 200 miles visibility. There was a high haze. I could see all of the mountaintops around Seward, which range from 5 to 8000 feet. The temperature was around freezing. The stars of the major constellations were visible. I had 7X50 binoculars that zoom to 29 power, a 35 mm camera with night film, and a Sharp 8 mm video. At 1:30 PM. I drove to an all night Texaco and got coffee. I drove around the town for the next half-hour. I would see another car about every minute but I did not see anyone looking up or stargazing. I estimate that one hundred people were awake and outside that night. Seward is a town of several thousand residents with a small boat harbor with several hundred yachts and fishing boats.
At about 2:00 AM, I parked my car in an empty RV park next to the waterfront by the small boat harbor. This was a large area, several acres, away from buildings and streetlights, so that I could focus on the dark sky. I constantly scanned the sky by eye and with binoculars for the next several hours. I saw nothing move in the sky. With the binoculars on the widest setting to enhance available light, I could clearly see the mountain ridges and other major features in the dim light. I believe I would have seen any small-unlit aircraft within five miles in all directions. I saw nothing move in the sky. After that, I dozed off for the rest of the night, but awoke about every 20 minutes and had a good look for several minutes each time in all directions. I saw nothing move in the sky. It became light around 6:00 AM; I stayed in town until noon. I waited until 11:00 AM to call Mackey, because I assumed he slept late. His wife answered the phone, said she would get Robert, and then asked me to call back in five minutes. I called every ten minutes for the next hour but the phone was busy. I then drove back to Anchorage and checked my e-mail. I was forwarded a copy of an e-mail Mackey wrote last night. Mackey reports that between midnight and 1:30 AM. Quote [sic]: .."Military aircraft here tonight for the first hour kept flying back and forth across the bay, however sightings were meager the first hour then boom here it comes.... A large UFO out of the southwest moving north west another UFO smaller coming from south to north west area they met and merged in the sky together then headed west." In summary, I didn't see any of it, and I was looking. Thanks to J. Glen Harper, the Alaska State Director (glen Harper)
ANGOL -- On April 22, 2001, the newspaper Diario Au ANGOL stral de Temuco carried a story about Alien Beings written by P. Aburto and P. Santolaya. The city's scenic lookout has become an attraction to those devoted to studying close encounters of the third kind. According to researchers, on February 28 two massive balls of light were seen roaming over the hill before vanishing before the expectant eyes of twenty witnesses. On March 16, three figures standing two meters tall, with red lights on their hands and a humanoid appearance were allegedly seen by five persons at the Las Piñas Scenic Lookout. The latest developments have been kept confidential because spectators have refused to comment on their sightings. The beings were standing behind some vegetation; appeared to talk among themselves, turned around and disappeared. They had arms and legs, " said Ernesto Escobar, head of the field research team. Escobar notes that the witnesses made drawings of what they had seen and that samples were taken of the soil on which the figures had allegedly been standing. "I cannot tell you what they were. I don't know if they were ghosts or extraterrestrials, but we're interviewing and making videos," he added. It is a well-known secret that strange events have transpired at the scenic lookout and that people are increasingly visiting the spot in hopes of seeing something weird. "Everything happens at a gate with two decorative metal wheels, and that's where the creatures appear. Thanks to S. Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology and Rodrigo Cuadra, Tecnologia, Ovnis y Ciencia (TOC)
George A. Filer and
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Hey C Bass, where's your banjo?
by Matt Bruce October 06, 2006
6 more definitions
Top Definition
by far the coolest kid around. Has great talent in all he does, especially ssbm.
Damn! i wish i was more like cbass
by Anonymous October 28, 2003
1. A unique member of human species most commonly found Hesseville, Indiana who is known for it's natural hypnosis abilities that are activated upon speaking. Side effects of the hypnosis often include,1) Wanting C-Bass to dumb it down, 2) "C-Bass, you're fucking insane". or 3) "I Love You C-Bass, you crazy fuck"!
2. In regards to Definition 1; C-Bass also exhibits Much Clown Love, mother fucker. Thus, we are led to assume C-Bass also classifies under the Juggalo species.
(If you come in contact with C-Bass, receive Psycho-Logical advise from him, and offer it a cigarette, you'll get plenty from the creature upon further association.
C-Bass, is going crazy again, let's get him to chug another one.
by Bruce Ulrich May 23, 2008
You take this drug through your anus. Then after fifteen minutes you will see your lord and savior in a fish bowl swimming around. Then you will come down with the worst Cluster Headaches. Then commit suicide. This all happens within fifteen minutes of using this drug.
Dude I took some Cbass now I'm tripping fucking bawls. Dude I took some Cbass and i was gone bro.
by hireach May 06, 2013
very scientific definition:
a type of ugly "sea bass" (fish). usually ginger in color, its scales are simply flaky spots of acne.
c-bass is known to be an antisocial species, and will hide away from humans if seen. rarely caught in fishing nets, it will bite its way out if caught in such a situation, with its ginger fangs.
swimming in the ocean, they often like to think of themselves as "surfing the net", since they like to go on the computer and look at pictures of other c-bass like them, which is a rare event for a c-bass, since it usually cowers away from seeing other individuals.
if kept in captivity, special precaution should be taken to ensure a c-bass does not see a mirror, or it will die.
renowned worldwide for their impressive ginger color, they are often mistaken for goldfish. however, close inspection will reveal the acne, which forms the basis of differentiation between the two species. fish-owners should not keep goldfish and c-bass in the same tank, as c-bass have been reported to rape the fish, as c-bass like fishy sex, and may often go to tesco's just to buy fish there for the purpose.
a c-bass's main diet consists of ginger-nut biscuits, ginger bread, and ginger beer. this should be fed in large doses, because c-bass need a lot of food to keep up their large weight.
care should be taken when handling inviduals, as they are known to bite. whilst the bite itself is notpoisonous, the c-bass is highly contaminated with acne, and uses it as a contagious defense against predators, and unless treated with "anti-cbass" before 24 hours, an acne outbirst may spread across the entire body, along with genital worts.
due to the antisocial habits of the c-bass, breeding is very difficult, and for this reason, we at HornyFish4U Ltd. do not recommend males and females (or males and males for gay c-bass, or females and females for rugmuncher-bass) be kept together, as they may even end up eating eachother.
"oi m8, ma fkin c-bass ate his sister the otha day"
in the words of a c-bass himself:
"it ent 'once youv had black, youll never go back', its 'once youve had c-bass, youll turn around and give him your ass' coz i is one sexy ginger-munch!"
in the words of another:
"ginger is the new black. fat is the new hot. and c-bass is your new fuckbuddy"
by gingerminge September 04, 2008
Cbass, an extremely cheap-ass ssbm, who predictably plays as ONE character. Incredibly gay and incredibly funny. His driving skills are second to none. Can also refer to someone's actions.
Going through a red light, trash talking as you lose in a game, and quick trips to McDonald's.
by la Morsa December 11, 2003
Can be seen swimming on Moreton shore in the Summer seasons.
by T Holmes October 21, 2004
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Top Definition
someone who is stupid or acts dumb or immature. basically another version of a retard.
Ricky: so he says "we don't sell eggs here"
*everyone laughs except Ben*
Ben: but i don't get it.
Ricky: geez ben, you're such a fawntard.
by Witty Woodstock August 22, 2007
7 Words related to fawntard
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Top Definition
A (usually male) person attracted to (usually MTF) transsexuals. The transsexuals usually have been on hormones for an extensive period of time and have a mostly female body shape (and gender identity), except that they also have a penis. Transsensuals are sometimes referred to pejoratively as tranny-chasers.
See transsexual, transgender, shemale.
Mike likes shemale porn, Bob loves penises and is dating a MTF transsexual who also loves her penis. Mark and Bob are both transsensuals.
by Transsexual Transsensual August 30, 2005
1 more definition
Increasingly used to describe <i>anyones'</i> attraction to <i>any</i> trans-person, primarily referring to transsexuals (M2F/F2M), though many forms of gender variant may be spoken of.
Serviceable, but not currenty considered "the final solution" in describing attraction to trans-persons, largely due to its vague inability to describe what it means <i>without</i> someone explaining its definition, as well as the "tranny-chaser" connotations surrounding the word.
This word, along with transsexual, are frequently being spelled "transensual," and "transexual," as a vestige of earlier trans-person reclamation attempts.
I'm a <i>transsensualist</i>, I enjoy dating gender-queer persons.
Oh, I'm a <i>transsensual</i> transexual. I only date other trannies.
by Demi Ma November 09, 2006
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Celebrating the joys of math can be as easy as pie.
Today is Pi Day, a day to celebrate the joys of the mathematical constant of 3.14159 or a slice of baked deliciousness.
If the term "pi" doesn't ring any bells, let's review a little high school geometry. Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter and is represented by the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet ("π") and is often written simply as "pi."
According to PiDay.org (yes, this website actually exists), the number's "infinite nature makes it a fun challenge to memorize, and to computationally calculate more and more digits."
So why celebrate pi on Thursday? Because it is March 14 (3/14).
Here are five ways to get the math party started:
(1) To eat or not to eat pie is not a question on Pi Day. Bake or buy a whole pie (here's one scrumptious recipe). You can calculate the circumference of the pie by measuring the diameter and then by multiplying it by pi, or simply satisfy your sweet tooth with several bites. Share the rest and you can count the number of co-workers who will love you.
(2) Wow your friends with a few strange facts about Albert Einstein. Why? The German-born physicist shares his birthday with the first three digits of pi. Here's one strange fact: Not only did Einstein develop the general theory of relativity, but his second wife was his cousin. You can also get to know the genius better by exploring the interactive Einstein Brain Atlas app.
(3) Send infinite wishes to your loves ones with a pi e-card! 123greetings.com has some fun ones, including a pi rap card.
(4) Calculate how much you can save with Pi Day deals, like this one at the Microsoft store, which is offering 3.14% off a Dell tablet.
(5) Relax with pi. Watch a good pi movie or read a good pi book. Yann Martel's Life of Pi is a transformative novel about Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, a boy, who survives after being stranded on a boat with a Bengal tiger for 227 days. The book was adapted into a 2012 Oscar-nominated movie directed by Ang Lee.
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The settlement in Toila Parish was first mentioned in the pages of the Danish Land Book in 1241.
The Oru park and castle were established in 1897-1901. In 1934 three Estonian industrial works bought the Oru castle from Jelissejev and gave it to the first president of Estonia, Konstantin Päts, who made it his summer residence.
Nowadays Toila is a popular place for weekend breaks and holidays, especially with Estonians from Ida-Virumaa County. The main attractions are splendid nature, hiking trails, the sea, the port, Oru Park and palace, the singing area, a recreation centre and restaurants.
Toila Oru Park and its palace have become popular for walking and enjoying the many outdoor events that take place there.
Nearby attractions include Jõhvi town, Saka viewing tower and camping track, Ontika precipice and Varivara’s (Vaivara) hiking trail. The air rich with ozone contributed to Toila`s title as an ozone resort.
Legend. The Toila port goes along the river named Pühajõgi or Holy River. There is the following story told about how the river received its name: if a girl had no success with boys, all she needed to do was to come to the river and to bathe herself in its waters under a full moon, and then she would turn into a beauty. | <urn:uuid:5ccf6e2b-d3b5-4ee3-838c-8f6036706dac> | 2 | 1.828125 | 0.045061 | en | 0.973435 | http://www.visitestonia.com/en/holiday-destinations/the-coastline/toila |
Is the Network-Connection "healthy" ?
One of the Windows95-command-line utilities allows to check, whether the network is "healthy" or not, by analyzing network statistics:
You are prompted for the computer name , just hit <Enter> for your local system. If you have multiple network boards (and a Dialup-Adapter does count as a network-board) you are prompted to select one of the Network-numbers (in my configuration, 0 is the Dialup-adapter, 7 the NE2000 Ethernet-board):
The report then shows:
- how long was the network adapter operational (in my case: 5 min )
- network packets transmitted and received
- retransmittions (circled in green)
- collisions (circled in red)
Ethernet is often also described as : CSMA/CD network
Carrier Sence - Multipe Access /Collision Detection
Connected stations listen to the network-wire for a valid "carrier Signal".
If there is no communication in progress, station are allowed to access the network, where is can now happen that multiple station try the access at the same time, causing a signal collision, which is then detected and avoided by retrying to transmit after a random delay.
Therefore, there will always be some collisions on a network, as long as more than 1 system is using the network. As long as the ratio of collisions to transmitted packets is just a few percent, don't worry.
However, if that the ratio of collisions to Transmitted packets goes above 10%, then your network cable is simply too busy, you need to rethink your network layout by adding more cable-segments, multiple network boards into your servers and bridges, filtering network traffic between cable-segments.
This number should be very low, because retransmittions indicate a problem on the network: that the signal/packets gets damaged during transmission, so that it does not get recognized by the destination system and has to be (after a time-out period) to be retransmitted). This is usually causing a network slow-down (see also The Network is slow !).
Check your network : cable-length, T-connectors, Terminators.
See Also
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14 Dumb Things Holding You Back From Losing Weight
by Tara Struyk on 17 June 2014 0 comments
Or… maybe not.
1. You Have the Wrong Genes
When it comes to carrying extra weight, research suggests that how easily we gain and lose weight is largely genetic. That isn't to say that diet and exercise won't work for you, and working to stay at a weight that keeps you feeling good and that falls within what your doctor says is healthy is still important. However, if big bodies (or, in my case, feet), run in your family, striving for a completely different physique may be unrealistic — and unhealthy. Unfortunately, this is one dumb impediment to weight loss that you can't do much about.
2. Your Plates Are Too Big
At some restaurants, the plates are so big the server can hardly fit two of them on the table. It looks impressive, it feels generous… and it's really really bad for your waistline. That's because, according to research by Cornell University Food Lab, most people aren't very good at judging portion sizes. So, if we usually fill a small bowl with cereal, we are just as likely to fill a much larger one and assume that the portion size is about the same. In other words, bigger plates tend to lead to bigger portions.
If you're struggling with weight gain, getting smaller dishes might be a great way to enjoy a full plate — and a smaller portion size.
3. You're More Sedentary Than You Think
Exercising regularly — even daily — may not be enough if you have a sedentary job. That's because long periods of sitting can essentially undo many of the benefits of exercise, and have negative effects on your cardiovascular health, risk for diabetes, and waistline. If you work at a desk, that probably won't change. What you can do is try to get up more and add more exercise into your everyday routine. Take a walk or a yoga class during your lunch break. Get a standing desk. Walk to speak to a co-worker instead of emailing. Take the stairs to use the restroom on the next floor.
4. You're Eating Less Instead of Eating Right
The old adage of weight loss is "calories in, calories out." But while that's true to an extent, more recent research shows that what we eat and the quality of our diets is actually tremendously important, and may even have a greater impact on weight loss than the number of calories we consume. A study released by Harvard researchers in 2011 found that potato chips were more strongly associated with weight gain than any other food (betcha can't eat just one!), while those who ate more servings of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and yogurt, gained the least weight over time. The lesson? Focus on quality first.
5. You're Exercising Too Much
Have you ever gone out and burned about a zillion calories exercising for hours only to come home and spend the rest of the day devouring everything in sight? It happens. And for some people, the hunger that a lot of exercise produces is so intense, they fail to lose weight — and might even gain some. This isn't to say that you shouldn't exercise. It's good for you! But if a long run makes you ravenous, exercising even more might not be the key to weight loss for you.
6. You Aren't Sleeping Enough
7. You're Eating Too Fast
8. You're Too Stressed Out
9. You're Dieting
Just about every bit of research out there shows that when it comes to long-term weight loss, extreme diets are bad news. As it turns out, starving yourself not only makes you hungry (and possibly homicidal), it also sets your body up for failure. That's because the faster you lose weight, the more likely you are to lose a lot of muscle, and it's muscle that helps keep your metabolism high. So, once you quit your diet, your body will actually be less efficient, making you more likely to gain weight — and even gain more weight than you lost. Small changes and slow, steady weight loss are best.
10. You're Snacking
Ask your grandparents how they ate growing up, and chances are they'll tell you that they ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And, for the most part, that's about all. Snacks are a relatively new phenomenon. And it doesn't help that most typical snack foods are little more than processed junk. That's why it might just be better to skip snacks altogether; a recent Dutch study found that eating three larger, well-balanced meals a day may help reduce the accumulation of abdominal fat.
11. You're Watching TV
Maybe there's a reason we tend to use terms like "binge watching" and "couch potato" to refer to habits around TV; while the latest season of "Game of Thrones" may be calorie-free, watching can still have a negative impact on your waistline. In fact, research shows that watching TV has more links to weight gain than any other sedentary activity. That means swapping TV time for just about any other activity may have a positive effect when it comes to weight loss.
12. You're Not Taking Care of Your Intestines
Yes, your intestines. You probably don't give much thought to that squiggly mess of an organ, now do you? Recent research suggests, however, that keeping things just right in there can really affect our overall health — and determine our success at maintaining a healthy weight. A study released in January found that regular consumption of probiotics (bacteria that's good for your gut), can help accelerate weight loss in women. Foods like yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, and just about anything that's fermented contains healthy bacteria that helps keep your digestive system — and metabolism — going strong. You can also take a supplement.
13. You're a Woman
Sorry, ladies, but there is some evidence to suggest that weight loss is harder for women than it is for men, at least initially. That's because men tend to have more lean muscle tissue, which helps them kick-start their weight loss more quickly. But there's another reason too: Women are designed to have more body fat, particularly on our lower bodies. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. According to Dr. David Katz, founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine, the fat women find it hardest to lose is generally the least harmful to health.
14. You Need to See a Doctor
In some cases, weight gain doesn't just indicate a change in exercise or dietary habits, it can signal a health problem. Thyroid problems, hormone imbalances, food intolerances and certain medications can all contribute to weight gain. If you think a medical problem could be the reason you're gaining weight, see your doctor. Being treated for the problem might help you lose a few pounds — and feel a whole lot better.
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Skip to definition.
Verb: shut away
1. Place in a place where something cannot be removed or someone cannot escape
- lock in, lock away, lock, put away, shut up, lock up
Derived forms: shut away, shuts away, shutting away
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Culture > Notable Books
A Bound Man
Barack Obama appeals to white voters because he seems to transcend race. Yet, as Steele points out, Obama has consciously chosen to emphasize the black side of his identity, joining (for instance) a black nationalist church. Steele contends, "Today's politicized black identity exacts too high a price for belonging. It wants too much disregard for what is universal and human in us."
Steele, himself an African-American, writes that blacks navigate mainstream culture by bargaining or challenging, either way manipulating white guilt to black advantage. The challenge for Obama is to become his own man, not beholden to either community, but Steele doesn't think he can do it: He "can't serve the aspirations of one race without betraying those of another."
Come On People
For the past several years the authors have toured urban centers, doing call-outs to the black community. They've compiled the contents of their talks-part cheerleading, part scolding, part history, and part practical advice on parenting, health, and education-along with audience comments. Cosby: "I have seen enough to know that, no matter what people tell you, this mayhem is not a part of our culture in the way our music is. This violence is not a part of our culture the way our literature is. And this vulgarity has never been part of our culture before."
The authors acknowledge the obstacles to black achievement, but they argue that blacks have to "accept personal responsibility and embrace self-help," especially when it comes to fatherhood.
The Bond
The Three Doctors, as they call themselves, were inner-city kids from Newark, N.J., who grew up to be doctors and mentors to young fatherless boys. Each doctor recounts his childhood and the yawning void left by an absent or indifferent father and gives advice for changing the future. Jenkins writes of several friends who had an intact family: "It's like an intangible, invisible heirloom that fatherless children will never inherit." The dads also tell their stories, and it turns out they never really knew their fathers, either.
Because The Doctors recalled "how much it hurt to be a boy wishing for a dad," they've assembled a book that is practical and inspirational.
My Dearest Friend
John and Abigail Adams wrote to each other throughout separations caused by war and presidential duties. This comprehensive collection of their letters shows them to be affectionate, playful at times, concerned about both national and personal matters, and literate-although the spelling and grammar present a challenge.
Their letters often crossed. Sometimes months went by without hearing. John admonishes Abigail to economize. She worries about his health and reputation. She tells him news of the neighborhood, including the death of parents and a stillborn daughter. The letters provide a unique perspective on people and events and allow us to appreciate the great sacrifice they made in service to the country.
A month that offers a Presidents Day and celebrates other American notables is a good time to stock up on good biographies for children. Paperback biographies of Washington, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King published by Dorling Kindersley (DK) are colorful and well-written. The wonderful Landmark books are now available in paperback and well worth adding to your library. Simon and Schuster's Childhood of Famous Americans series comes in an early reader version, but the "Ready-to-Read" books are heavy on pictures and light on the text and charm of the originals.
Jon Scieszka, author of The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs and The Stinky Cheese Man, is the nation's first National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Scieszka, a former teacher, knows something about reluctant readers, and his job is to promote children's books and literacy at a time when research shows kids reading less. His program, Guys Read (, promotes books that appeal to boys. He will receive a $50,000 stipend for his two-year appointment, funded by Cheerios and various publishers.
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Urban pregnancy centers are reaching women in communities where… | <urn:uuid:017c342b-5371-4ae3-b5eb-00ae820dd821> | 3 | 2.65625 | 0.027344 | en | 0.961059 | http://www.worldmag.com/2008/02/notable_books |
China, North Korea Tout Ties as Kim Exits
SEOUL—North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il met Chinese President Hu Jintao during his five-day visit to northeast China, the Chinese government confirmed Monday night as Mr. Kim left the country, in a surprise get-together that underscored the two nations' bond as they cope with pressure from the U.S. and others to act more responsibly.
The meeting wasn't expected to lead to any substantive change in North Korea's isolationist behavior. Instead it highlighted Mr. Kim's dependence on China, his country's chief political ally and economic benefactor, as he pursues more time and money for his regime—and the possibility of transferring power to his son—while dealing from a position weakened by his own illness, internal strife and international condemnation over weapons testing and other provocations.
The announcement that Messrs. Kim and Hu had met led what appeared to be a coordinated public-relations push by China on Monday, with stories in several media outlets praising the China-North Korea relationship while also saying Beijing shouldn't be held responsible for Pyongyang's actions.
Kim Jong Il's China Trip
The meeting happened Friday, though China, as has been its practice with Mr. Kim's previous visits, waited until the North Korean leader left to say he had been in the country at all.
In reports of the Kim-Hu meeting, China's state media said that Mr. Kim wanted a resumption of the six-nation talks aimed at persuading North Korea to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The reports also hinted that Mr. Kim was interested in the economic overhauls that opened China to the world, though they didn't say he endorsed or would follow them.
Details of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's visit to China spill out as his train crosses the border to return home. Video courtesy of Reuters.
Mr. Kim for years has resisted requests of Chinese leaders to open up North Korea's economy. Late last year, his regime tried to clamp down on market activities, such as North Koreans running food stalls and other small businesses, but halted the effort when the government couldn't feed people.
Mr. Hu, in turn, said on state TV that China should expand its economic cooperation with North Korea. Since Mr. Kim's entourage was spotted in China on Thursday, analysts have speculated that one reason he made the trip was to seek more money and assistance for the impoverished North. In addition to chronic food shortages, summer floods hit extra hard this year.
Analysts also speculated that Mr. Kim brought his heir apparent, son Kim Jong Eun, to meet Chinese officials ahead of a political meeting in Pyongyang next week that may be the son's public debut in North Korea. The Chinese news reports about the visit didn't mention the son, however. Mr. Kim began pursuing a succession scheme after suffering a stroke-like illness two years ago.
Mr. Kim's entourage twice during the trip stopped in places associated with his father, North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, in moves that were likely intended to highlight the importance of the Kim family as another potential succession looms.
For outside diplomats, the greatest significance of the trip is the symbolism of Messrs. Kim and Hu going to great lengths to meet each other in the aftermath of criticism both countries faced following the sinking of a South Korean naval ship this year, an incident that South Korea, the U.S. and others blame on a North Korean attack.
By Road and Rail
The route of Kim Jong Il's surprise trip to China
China has refused to blame North Korea publicly for the sinking, which killed 46 South Korean sailors, or to examine the results of the South Korea-led investigation.
Instead, North Korea and China have, since late May when the probe first produced the accusation against North Korea, called for the resumption of the six-party denuclearization talks, which Pyongyang formally walked away from last year.
Japan, South Korea and the U.S. have said North Korea damaged the potential for the talks with its attack on the South Korean ship. As well, the U.S. wants North Korea to live up to the agreements it previously made in the talks.
"Vague references to the six-party talks have little persuasive power from a U.S. perspective," says Gordon Flake, a Korea specialist and executive director at the Mansfield Foundation, an independent organization in Washington that promotes dialogue between the U.S. and Asian countries.
Mr. Flake said Mr. Kim's regime, in statements made in its internal media, defines the denuclearization effort differently than the other countries in the talks. In a stance that Washington rejects, North Korea wants recognition as a nuclear power and wants the talks to cover America's own disarmament and the removal of U.S. protection and troops from South Korea.
Some observers have little hope that China will change its approach to Pyongyang. "China is backing this regime to the bitter end and then supporting the transition to Kim's successor to ensure China's interests," says Victor Cha, a former U.S. negotiator in the talks who is now a professor at Georgetown University.
Others note time is on North Korea's side since diplomats generally prefer talks to no talks.
"The bar for diplomacy in other regions is performance. In Northeast Asia, attendance, just getting the parties together, is achievement itself," said John Park, Asia analyst at the U.S. Institute for Peace, a government-funded research center in Washington. He said, "We're very, very far away from denuclearization."
The message to restart the talks was also given last week by a different North Korean official to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter when Mr. Carter went to Pyongyang to retrieve a U.S. teacher who entered North Korea illegally in January. Mr. Kim skipped the chance to meet Mr. Carter to go to China instead.
Mr. Kim's trip was unusual for the secretive leader, who, before a trip to China in May, hadn't ventured from North Korea since 2006. He doesn't like to fly and travels by a train that is easily monitored by satellite by foreign governments. His entourage is typically tracked on the ground by reporters who follow the highly visible security cordons that go up along his route.
On Monday, South Korean and Japanese news agencies reported the action as Mr. Kim's train traveled from Harbin, the capital of China's most northeastern province, Heilongjiang, to a smaller city called Mudanjiang and then down to the border crossing at Tumen.
Mr. Kim called himself a "witness" to the success of China's "reform and opening," Chinese television reported, but it was unclear whether that meant the North would follow that model. Last year, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, in a visit to Pyongyang, proposed development projects valued at several billion dollars to North Korea, but none have gotten off the ground.
Monday, Chinese state media rang with praise for North Korea and .one nationalist newspaper, the Global Times, in an editorial called the China-North Korea relationship both "special" and "normal."
The state-run Xinhua news agency published a commentary talking about Chinese men who sacrificed their lives for North Korea, during the Korean War of the 1950s and afterward. Its latest example was the tale of a Chinese man who drowned this month after rescuing three North Korean girls adrift at sea.
The man's "sacrifice led us again to recollect the long history of friendship between the two peoples," Xinhua wrote.
"The biggest negative impact the China-North Korea relationship has on China is that the U.S, Japan and South Korea all request that China be responsible for North Korea's 'irrational behaviors,'" the newspaper wrote. "However, China has no ability to shoulder such responsibility."
—Kersten Zhang and Bai Lin contributed to this article.
Write to Evan Ramstad at
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Getting in Shape: Exploring Two-Dimensional Figures
Through a series of hands-on investigations, students first explore some properties of angles and triangles, including the Triangle Inequality Theorem. Next, students analyze properties of regular polygons and develop formulas for area and sums of interior and exterior angles. They then explore circles and develop circumference and area formulas.
NCTM Standard: Geometry
NCTM Standard: Measurement
Primary Mathematical Goals | <urn:uuid:13b68e5a-0118-4c54-b2b5-605db9fcaede> | 4 | 3.9375 | 0.102553 | en | 0.808769 | http://www2.edc.org/Mathscape/7th/gis.asp |
About Ruler Markers
An NSRulerMarker object displays a symbol on an NSRulerView object, indicating a location for whatever graphic element it represents in the client of the ruler view (for example, a margin or tab setting, or the edges of a graphic on the page). A ruler marker comprises three primary attributes: the image it displays on the ruler view, the location of that image, and the object it represents. The setImage:, setMarkerLocation: and setRepresentedObject: methods set each of these attributes, respectively. In addition, a ruler marker records an offset for the image, allowing it to be placed relative to the marker location much in the way a cursor’s hot spot relates a cursor image to the mouse location; the setImageOrigin: method establishes this offset.
Most of these attributes are set upon initialization by the initWithRulerView:markerLocation:image:imageOrigin: method. New ruler markers don’t have represented objects; the client typically establishes the represented object in its rulerView:didAddMarker: method. A new ruler marker can be moved around in its ruler view, but not removed from it. The setMovable: and setRemovable: methods alter these default settings.
Represented objects allow the ruler view's client to distinguish among different attributes of the selection. In the ruler view client methods, the client can retrieve the marker’s represented object to determine what attribute to alter. Generic attributes can be represented by string or other value objects, such as the edge names “Left”, “Right”, “Top”, and “Bottom”. Attributes already implemented as objects can be represented by those objects. For example, the text system records tab stops as NSTextTab objects, which include the tab location and its alignment. When an NSTextView object is the client view of a ruler, it simply makes the NSTextTab objects the represented objects of the ruler markers. | <urn:uuid:639a84b0-c359-4724-a451-8526c179cf5b> | 3 | 2.953125 | 0.141441 | en | 0.901445 | https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/Rulers/Concepts/AboutRulerMarkers.html |
Bad boy (archetype)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The bad boy is a cultural archetype similar[citation needed] to the historic terms rake or cad: a male who behaves badly, especially within societal norms.
One article in The Independent compared the term "bad boys" with men who had a particular combination of personality traits, sometimes referred to as a "dark triad", and reported that a study found that such men were likely to have a greater number of sexual affairs.[1]
The stereotypical "bad boy" was described by Kristina Grish in her book Addickted as "the irresistible rogue who has the dizzying ability to drive women wild" with a "laissez-faire attitude about life and love".[2] Kristina Lloyd, author of Split, says that "we [are] meant to take what we want from the twenty-first century's kinky candyshop of sex", and that at the end of the day many will "prefer bad and debased over naughty but nice".[3] Frances Cohen Praver, author of Daring Wives, claims that "Women tend to split off their detested parts like hate, envy, and bad-girl aspects", so that "bad-girl parts stay behind closed doors, only to come out to play with bad-boy lovers".[4] Praver says that there is "a split between love for men they see as good, dependable and reliable, and desire for men they see as exciting, reckless, and dangerous...bad boys".[5][full citation needed]
See also[edit]
1. ^ Connor, Steve (June 19, 2008). "Why women really do love self-obsessed psychopaths". The Independent (London). Retrieved April 26, 2010.
2. ^ Kristina Grish, Addickted: 12 Steps to Kicking Your Bad Boy Habit (2007) p. xiii
3. ^ Kristina Lloyd, Split (2007) p. 160
4. ^ Frances Cohen Praver, Daring Wives (2006) p. 60
5. ^ Praver, p. 56-7 | <urn:uuid:32af7dbb-e641-4c8c-a980-5a850bd69216> | 2 | 1.820313 | 0.018774 | en | 0.929963 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_boy_(archetype) |
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Simple, robust and performant Erlang web server
elli - Erlang web server for HTTP APIs
Travis CI
Elli is a webserver you can run inside your Erlang application to expose an HTTP API. Elli is a aimed exclusively at building high-throughput, low-latency HTTP APIs. If robustness and performance is more important than general purpose features, then elli might be for you. If you find yourself digging into the implementation of a webserver, elli might be for you. If you're building web services, not web sites, then elli might be for you.
Elli is used in production at Wooga and Game Analytics. Elli requires R15 or newer.
Here's the features Elli does have:
• Rack-style request-response. Your handler function gets a complete request and returns a complete response. There's no messaging, no receiving data directly from the socket, no writing responses directly to the socket. It's a very simple and straightforward API. Have a look at src/elli_example_callback.erl for examples.
• Middlewares allows you to add useful features like compression, encoding, stats, but only have it used when needed. No features you don't use on the critical path.
• Short-circuiting of responses using exceptions, allows you to use "assertions" that return for example 403 permission denied. is_allowed(Req) orelse throw({403, [], <<"Permission denied">>}).
• Every client connection gets its own process, isolating the failure of a request from another. For the duration of the connection, only one process is involved, resulting in very robust and efficient code.
• Binaries everywhere for strings.
• Instrumentation inside the core of the webserver, triggering user callbacks. For example when a request completes, the user callback gets the request_complete event which contains timings of all the different parts of handling a request. There's also events for clients unexpectedly closing a connection, crashes in the user callback, etc.
• Keep alive, using one Erlang process per connection only active when there is a request from the client. Number of connections is only limited by RAM and CPU.
• Chunked transfer in responses for real-time push to clients
• Basic pipelining. HTTP verbs that does not have side-effects(GET and HEAD) can be pipelined, ie. a client supporting pipelining can send multiple requests down the line and expect the responses to appear in the same order as requests. Elli processes the requests one at a time in order, future work could make it possible to process them in parallel.
• SSL using built-in Erlang/OTP ssl, nice for low volume admin interfaces, etc. For high volume, you should probably go with nginx, stunnel or ELB if you're on AWS.
• Implement your own connection handling, for WebSockets, streaming uploads, etc. See src/elli_example_callback_handover.erl
From operating and debugging high-volume, low-latency apps we have gained some valuable insight into what we want from a webserver. We want simplicity, robustness, performance, ease of debugging, visibility into strange client behaviour, really good instrumentation and good tests. We are willing to sacrifice almost everything, even basic features to achieve this.
With this in mind we looked at the big names in the Erlang community: Yaws, Mochiweb, Misultin and Cowboy. We found Mochiweb to be the best match. However, we also wanted to see if we could take the architecture of Mochiweb and improve on it. elli takes the acceptor-turns-into-request-handler idea found in Mochiweb, the binaries-only idea from Cowboy and the request-response idea from WSGI/Rack (with chunked transfer being an exception).
On top of this we built a handler that allows us to write HTTP middleware modules to add practical features, like compression of responses, HTTP access log with timings, a real-time statistics dashboard and chaining multiple request handlers.
Aren't there enough webservers in the Erlang community already?
There are a few very mature and robust projects with steady development, one recently ceased development and one new kid on the block with lots of interest. As elli is not a general purpose webserver, but more of a specialized tool, we believe it has a very different target audience and would not attract effort or users away from the big names.
Why another webserver? Isn't this just the NIH syndrome?
Yaws, Mochiweb, Misultin and Cowboy are great projects, hardened over time and full of very useful features for web development. If you value developer productivity, Yaws is an excellent choice. If you want a fast and lightweight server, Mochiweb and Cowboy are excellent choices.
Having used and studied all of these projects, we believed that if we merged some of the existing ideas and added some ideas from other communities, we could create a core that was better for our use cases.
It started out as an experiment to see if it is at all possible to significantly improve and it turns out that for our particular use cases, there is enough improvement to warrant a new project.
What makes Elli different?
Elli has a very simple architecture. It avoids using more processes and messages than absolutely necessary. It uses binaries for strings. The request-response programming model allows middlewares to do much heavy lifting, so the core can stay very simple. It has been instrumented so as a user you can understand where time is spent. When things go wrong, like the client closed the connection before you could send a response, you are notified about these things so you can better understand your client behaviour.
"Hello World!" micro-benchmarks are really useful when measuring the performance of the webserver itself, but the numbers usually do more harm than good when released. I encourage you to run your own benchmarks, on your own hardware. Mark Nottingham has some very good pointers about benchmarking HTTP servers.
To use elli you will need a working installation of Erlang R15BXX (or later).
Add elli to your application by adding it as a dependency to your rebar config.
% rebar.config:
{deps, [
{elli, "", {git, "git://"}},
% ...
Afterwards you can run:
$: ./rebar get-deps
$: ./rebar compile
$: erl -pa deps/*/ebin ebin
% starting elli
1>: {ok, Pid} = elli:start_link([{callback, elli_example_callback}, {port, 3000}]).
Callback module
The best source of documentation for how to write a callback module is src/elli_example_callback.erl. It has a bunch of examples used in the tests.
A minimal callback module could look like this:
handle(Req, _Args) ->
%% Delegate to our handler function
handle('GET',[<<"hello">>, <<"world">>], _Req) ->
%% Reply with a normal response. 'ok' can be used instead of '200'
%% to signal success.
{ok, [], <<"Hello World!">>};
handle(_, _, _Req) ->
{404, [], <<"Not Found">>}.
%% @doc: Handle request events, like request completed, exception
%% thrown, client timeout, etc. Must return 'ok'.
handle_event(_Event, _Data, _Args) ->
Supervisor Childspec example
To add elli to a supervisor you can use the following example and adapt it to your needs.
start_link() ->
init([]) ->
ElliOpts = [{callback, fancyapi_callback}, {port, 3000}],
ElliSpec = {
{elli, start_link, [ElliOpts]},
Something went wrong with that request. Please try again. | <urn:uuid:c569dcab-80b7-4260-9c5a-15d7cfa7620a> | 2 | 1.757813 | 0.041057 | en | 0.866474 | https://github.com/knutin/elli |
The dignity of a living wage
One response
1. Back in 1992, Ross Perot predicted the loss of jobs in this county. He was roundly ridiculed for his “giant sucking sound” analogy. The media portrayed him as a foolish, but entertaining character, despite the fact that we was a self-made billionaire and that he had the integrity and courage to rescue his staff in Iran.
Unfortunately, most people don’t have the time/energy/intelligence/independent thought to see beyond what is spoon-fed in the media. For decades, American corporations took advantage of third-world countries to maximize profits and minimize people (reading “The Shock Doctrine” was truly shocking). Now, they are freed to treat American citizens the same way.
What does it take for people to change? We have wonderful third-party opportunities, but most people won’t “throw away a vote” on somebody who has integrity, makes sense, cares about people, is successful, etc. So the entrenched powers remain entrenched while the giant sucking sound gets louder and the American economy falters.
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%d bloggers like this: | <urn:uuid:3e0af237-fc9f-4143-ab7c-f5c4cbf724a2> | 2 | 1.78125 | 0.112251 | en | 0.945032 | https://newworkplace.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/the-dignity-of-a-living-wage/ |
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Oryza sativa - Köhler–s Medizinal-Pflanzen-232.jpg
Oryza sativa
Scienteefic classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Liliopsida
Order: Poales
Family: Poaceae
Genus: Oryza
Rice is a kind o scran. It is grown in warm parts o the warld, mainly Asie, Africae, northren Italy, an the Wast Coast o North Americae. Rice uised tae be the main diet in mony kintras. It isnae eaten raw; uisually it is cuiked or biled. In some areas, sic as Spain, rice is first fried in olive ile or butter, then cuiked wi watter or soup. In ither areas, sic as Indie, rice is aeten wi sauce or curry. Rice can be uised for tae mak alcohol, sic as Japanese sake forby. Rice is tocht to have been first grown in auncient soothren Cheenae an Indie. Rice growin was brocht tae Japan mibbie in the 1st century BC, an became popular during the 2t century an the 3t century. Frae Indie, rice spread tae soothren Europe an Africae. Rice is uisually plauntit in a flet field droukit wi watter. Afore croppin, the watter is drained frae the field. Afore fermers developed a guid fermin system an fertilisers, they uised tae let launds reist for 1 tae 2 years while ferming in ither launds. In some hot areas, nearhaund the equaetor, fermers dae dooble-croppin which means raisin twa crops a year.
Ither wabsteids[eedit | eedit soorce] | <urn:uuid:fb2af703-e85f-4ec5-8139-1496226ee4f6> | 3 | 2.90625 | 0.1731 | en | 0.81373 | https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice |
I am very new to OpenCL and I have a question about how samplers are dealt with.
I am dealing mostly with 3D images and as I understand it, I have to do the following:
- Create an image with createImage3D and then say all I want to do is interpolate the image using some transformation, then I create a sampler object and associate it with this 3D image and I can have continuous indexing.
I am guessing on the GPU, the sampler object binds the image to a texture and can use the hardware accelerated interpolation operations available on the GPU. But what does OpenCL do when the underlying hardware is a multicore CPU? Can a sampler image be even used? I cannot test it at the moment as my OpenCL code crashes on my Macbook Air
Also, another question that does the sampler object have a lot of memory overhead (does it replicate the data). I am trying to design an abstract image class where once the user creates an image there will be a sampler automatically associated with it, so that the resampling can be done. However, i wonder if i should create the sampler as needed and then release it.
These questions might be quite n00b and I am sorry for that. However, i would be really grateful if someone can help me with these doubts.
Many thanks, | <urn:uuid:e8855bce-6450-4063-902c-84b4dda7436c> | 2 | 1.734375 | 0.517368 | en | 0.949594 | https://www.khronos.org/message_boards/showthread.php/8417-Question-about-OpenCL-samplers?p=27565&mode=threaded |
Henry VI, Part 3 Scenes
Scene 4
Another part of the field of battle between Sandal Castle and Wakefield.
(Richard Duke of York; Queen Margaret; Clifford; Northumberland; Prince Edward; Soldiers)
York, alone, abandoned by his fleeing soldiers, his strongest defenders dead, is overtaken by the Queen and Clifford. They mock at him, falling from so high an ambition, torment him with Rutland’s death, and place a paper crown on his head. He proudly replies to the king, reproaching her for her cruelty, and his tears for his dead son move even Northumberland. Clifford and Margaret stab him, and the Queen orders that his head be set up on the gates of York. (180 lines)
Alarum. Enter Richard Duke of York.
The army of the Queen hath got the field:
My uncles both are slain in rescuing me;
And all my followers to the eager foe
Turn back and fly, like ships before the wind,
Or lambs pursu’d by hunger-starved wolves.
My sons, God knows what hath bechanced them;
But this I know, they have demean’d themselves
Like men born to renown by life or death.
Three times did Richard make a lane to me,
And thrice cried, “Courage, father! Fight it out!”
And full as oft came Edward to my side
With purple falchion, painted to the hilt
In blood of those that had encount’red him.
And when the hardiest warriors did retire,
Richard cried, “Charge! And give no foot of ground!”
And cried, “A crown, or else a glorious tomb!
A sceptre, or an earthly sepulchre!”
With this we charg’d again; but out, alas,
We bodg’d again, as I have seen a swan
With bootless labor swim against the tide,
And spend her strength with overmatching waves.
A short alarum within.
Ah, hark, the fatal followers do pursue,
And I am faint, and cannot fly their fury;
And were I strong, I would not shun their fury.
The sands are numb’red that makes up my life,
Here must I stay, and here my life must end.
Enter the Queen Margaret, Clifford, Northumberland, the young Prince Edward, and Soldiers.
Come, bloody Clifford, rough Northumberland,
I dare your quenchless fury to more rage.
I am your butt, and I abide your shot.
Yield to our mercy, proud Plantagenet.
Ay, to such mercy as his ruthless arm
With downright payment show’d unto my father.
Now Phaëton hath tumbled from his car,
And made an evening at the noontide prick.
My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth
A bird that will revenge upon you all;
And in that hope I throw mine eyes to heaven,
Scorning what e’er you can afflict me with.
Why come you not? What, multitudes, and fear?
So cowards fight when they can fly no further,
So doves do peck the falcon’s piercing talons,
So desperate thieves, all hopeless of their lives,
Breathe out invectives ’gainst the officers.
O Clifford, but bethink thee once again,
And in thy thought o’errun my former time;
And if thou canst for blushing, view this face,
And bite thy tongue, that slanders him with cowardice
Whose frown hath made thee faint and fly ere this!
I will not bandy with thee word for word,
But buckler with thee blows, twice two for one.
Hold, valiant Clifford! For a thousand causes
I would prolong a while the traitor’s life.
Wrath makes him deaf; speak thou, Northumberland.
Hold, Clifford, do not honor him so much
To prick thy finger, though to wound his heart.
What valor were it, when a cur doth grin,
For one to thrust his hand between his teeth,
When he might spurn him with his foot away?
It is war’s prize to take all vantages,
And ten to one is no impeach of valor.
They lay hands on York, who struggles.
Ay, ay, so strives the woodcock with the gin.
So doth the cony struggle in the net.
So triumph thieves upon their conquer’d booty,
So true men yield, with robbers so o’ermatch’d.
What would your Grace have done unto him now?
Brave warriors, Clifford and Northumberland,
Come make him stand upon this molehill here
That raught at mountains with outstretched arms,
Yet parted but the shadow with his hand.
What, was it you that would be England’s king?
Was’t you that revell’d in our parliament,
And made a preachment of your high descent?
Where are your mess of sons to back you now,
The wanton Edward, and the lusty George?
And where’s that valiant crook-back prodigy,
Dicky, your boy, that with his grumbling voice
Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies?
Or with the rest, where is your darling, Rutland?
Look, York, I stain’d this napkin with the blood
That valiant Clifford with his rapier’s point
Made issue from the bosom of the boy;
And if thine eyes can water for his death,
I give thee this to dry thy cheeks withal.
Alas, poor York, but that I hate thee deadly,
I should lament thy miserable state.
I prithee grieve, to make me merry, York.
What, hath thy fiery heart so parch’d thine entrils
That not a tear can fall for Rutland’s death?
Why art thou patient, man? Thou shouldst be mad;
York cannot speak unless he wear a crown.
A crown for York! And, lords, bow low to him;
Hold you his hands whilest I do set it on.
Putting a paper crown on his head.
Ay, this is he that took King Henry’s chair,
And this is he was his adopted heir.
But how is it that great Plantagenet
Is crown’d so soon, and broke his solemn oath?
As I bethink me, you should not be king
Till our King Henry had shook hands with death.
And will you pale your head in Henry’s glory,
And rob his temples of the diadem,
Now in his life, against your holy oath?
O, ’tis a fault too too unpardonable!
Off with the crown; and, with the crown, his head,
And whilest we breathe, take time to do him dead.
That is my office, for my father’s sake.
Nay, stay, let’s hear the orisons he makes.
Whose tongue more poisons than the adder’s tooth!
How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex
To triumph like an Amazonian trull
Upon their woes whom fortune captivates!
But that thy face is vizard-like, unchanging,
Made impudent with use of evil deeds,
I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush.
To tell thee whence thou cam’st, of whom deriv’d,
Were shame enough to shame thee, wert thou not shameless.
Thy father bears the type of King of Naples,
Of both the Sicils and Jerusalem,
Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman.
Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult?
Unless the adage must be verified,
That beggars mounted run their horse to death.
’Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud,
But God he knows thy share thereof is small.
’Tis virtue that doth make them most admir’d,
The contrary doth make thee wond’red at.
’Tis government that makes them seem divine,
The want thereof makes thee abominable.
Thou art as opposite to every good
As the antipodes are unto us,
Or as the south to the septentrion.
O tiger’s heart wrapp’d in a woman’s hide!
How couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child,
To bid the father wipe his eyes withal,
And yet be seen to wear a woman’s face?
Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible;
Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.
Bid’st thou me rage? Why, now thou hast thy wish:
Wouldst have me weep? Why, now thou hast thy will:
For raging wind blows up incessant showers,
And when the rage allays, the rain begins.
These tears are my sweet Rutland’s obsequies,
And every drop cries vengeance for his death
Beshrew me, but his passions moves me so
That hardly can I check my eyes from tears.
That face of his the hungry cannibals
Would not have touch’d, would not have stain’d with blood;
But you are more inhuman, more inexorable,
O, ten times more, than tigers of Hyrcania.
See, ruthless queen, a hapless father’s tears!
This cloth thou dipp’dst in blood of my sweet boy,
And I with tears do wash the blood away.
Keep thou the napkin and go boast of this,
And if thou tell’st the heavy story right,
Upon my soul, the hearers will shed tears;
Yea, even my foes will shed fast-falling tears,
And in thy need such comfort come to thee
As now I reap at thy too cruel hand!
Hard-hearted Clifford, take me from the world,
My soul to heaven, my blood upon your heads!
Had he been slaughter-man to all my kin,
I should not for my life but weep with him,
To see how inly sorrow gripes his soul.
What, weeping-ripe, my Lord Northumberland?
Think but upon the wrong he did us all,
And that will quickly dry thy melting tears.
Here’s for my oath, here’s for my father’s death.
Stabbing him.
And here’s to right our gentle-hearted king.
Stabbing him.
Open thy gate of mercy, gracious God!
My soul flies through these wounds to seek out thee.
Off with his head, and set it on York gates,
So York may overlook the town of York.
Flourish. Exeunt.
Get the Shakespeare Pro app | <urn:uuid:7f5769e2-1e8a-4f9f-8b97-cb71c72ecdc6> | 2 | 2.421875 | 0.036358 | en | 0.913552 | https://www.playshakespeare.com/henry-vi-part-3/scenes/729-act-i-scene-4 |
A workhorse of both social psychology and behavioral economics research that you’ve probably encountered already in the PT blogs, including this one, is the trust game. Individuals A and B are each given $10, A is invited to choose any amount ($0, $1, …, $9, $10) to send to B, the experimenter (as pre-announced to both A and B) triples anything A chooses to send (for instance, $3 sent by A becomes $9 received by B), and finally B decides whether to send anything back to A. Thanks to the experimenter’s tripling move, both A and B can make money by cooperating. But if A expects B to be selfish and keep every dollar he receives, A is better off holding onto all of her $10. So each earns $10, whereas each might have earned $20 (or $15 and $25, or $17 and $23, etc.). Lack of trust = money forfeited.
When introduced, the game was called The Investment Game because it mirrors situations in which B might have a productive investment opportunity (say, a start-up business plan) but need to borrow some capital to get it off the ground. The idea has many applications for economic and social interaction. A core insight: Societies that fail to foster norms of trustworthiness will see many potentially beneficial opportunities for mutual benefit pass them by. This is because the means through which financing can be protected by third-party enforcement mechanisms are always at least somewhat imperfect, so trust and trustworthiness are necessary lubricants of finance and of many other forms of commercial interaction.
Weakness of trust has been identified as a key factor perpetuating the cycle of poverty for the working and self-employed poor of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. Millions of farmers accept low prices from middle men because they can’t afford to wait or to pay the cost of transporting their crops to market when prices are higher, given the debts they must pay back now. Millions use inferior seed or insufficient fertilizer because they can’t obtain the funds to buy these things now and repay after their harvest. Waves of copy-cat suicides by farmers unable to repay their debts to local money-lenders have made headlines in India. For each such suicide, many thousands more leave the desperation of the farm in hopes of a better life in the city, but millions of them end up working for close to nothing in “informal” jobs because they can’t afford to buy the equipment with which to be in business for themselves.
It’s been almost forty years since a young Bangladeshi economist with a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, Muhammad Yunus, began his experiments with loaning small amounts of money to women engaged in craft production in a village near his university town of Chittagong. This wasn’t charity, because Yunus was asking the women to pay him back with interest. The hint of kindness here was that the interest rate he specified was well below those that the women were used to paying to local money-lenders. Yunus was gambling some of his own pay to test the theory that, despite lack of collateral and bank accounts, the women would be a good credit risk. The rest is history Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, which Yunus founded, has loaned some $11.35 billion, recorded a 97 percent repayment rate on loans, and become the inspiration for a global microfinance movement that includes microfinance institutions in more than 60 countries giving loans to some 130 million people, according to the World Bank Group. In 2006, Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for showing that “even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development.”
So what’s next for microfinance? eBay founder Pierre Omidyar gave the movement a small shot in the arm in 2005 when he donated $100 million to his alma mater, Tufts University, with the condition that the funds be invested in microfinance projects. In the same year, two Americans inspired by a lecture Yunus had given at Stanford Business School launched Kiva, a non-profit organization that allows people to lend money to micro-entrepreneurs in a large number of less developed countries through dozens of partner organizations including locally based micro-finance institutions and social businesses. At kiva.org, residents of affluent countries like the United States can make their spare cash available to struggling micro-business operators in countries like Bolivia, Kenya, India, and Cambodia, with a few proverbial clicks of the mouse or taps on their smartphone screens. So far, more than $400 million in loans have been made through the site by almost a million lenders to a similar number of recipients.
But $400 million in seven or eight years isn’t that much money considering that ordinary Americans keep hundreds of billions in low-interest checking and savings accounts, and that at least a few tens of billions of those dollars probably belong to better-off individuals who could afford to take small risks. If the opportunity to put their money at the disposal of individuals working to help themselves through operating small sewing, craft, retail, animal husbandry, and other businesses in poor countries, were placed conveniently enough before them, might not a few billion dollars more flow to microfinance?
That’s the premise of an experiment that one of the students in my department’s Ph.D. program is now commencing. Josie, from Taiwan, will offer experiment participants the opportunity to lend money to the kinds of micro-entrepreneurs who borrow from Kiva’s partner organizations. Those who get funded are expected to repay the lending organizations both the principal and the (below money-lender) microfinance interest rates in eighteen months or less. The interest will be kept by the organizations to cover their operating expenses, and the principal will either come back to be re-loaned or cover expenses of Josie’s research project, or in some conditions be paid back to the participants in the experiment.
Because the experiment multiplies the money participants choose to lend (as in the trust game) and because the experiment varies whether repaid funds are returned to them, Josie will be able to study how the prospect of a financial return affects decisions on whether to support borrowers. This way, she can begin to get a handle on whether online microfinance lending could bring in more money by sharing interest with the lenders, or whether doing so would on the contrary reduce lending by repelling lenders motivated by philanthropic impulses. She’ll also be studying the impacts of ethnicity, gender, and other factors, by varying the gender and ethnic/racial identities of the potential borrowers (who will be from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, or East and Southeast Asia), by inducing participant decisions through which to gauge their degree of risk aversion and preference for immediate over later rewards, and by collecting information on the participants’ personal characteristics (family background, ethnicity, religion and religiosity, exposure to poverty) in post-decision questionnaires.
One hurdle Josie faces, much like the micro-entrepreneurs she hopes to aid, is the lack of funding for undertaking her research on a sufficient scale. Applications for funding submitted to two promising sources were turned down. She has seed money from an international studies center, but needs several thousand dollars to conduct the experiment on an adequate scale.
If you have funds you’d like to lend to a micro-business operator in the developing world, you can open your own account at kiva.org. If you don’t need your money back and you want to help Josie to complete her study, you can follow the steps below and purchase one or more $25 gift cards that you can place in Josie’s Kiva account. You’ll be simultaneously helping the micro-entrepreneurs funded by Kiva’s partners, since every dollar put in her account will be lent to a small entrepreneur in one of the regions mentioned, and up to half of it will be lent multiple times. You’ll also be helping social scientists to understand the potential to scale up one-to-one lending to capital-constrained individuals in the developing world. If enough funding is obtained, the experiment may be expanded in scale and carried forward by other researchers.
Here’s how to help:
Step 1.
Go to http://www.kiva.org/lender/josie2004
Step 2.
Choose "send a kiva card". You’ll be directed to a web page where you can fill in the amount you would like to give Josie.
Step 3.
Fill in the optional personal message, choose the card value, then click "add to basket and check out". Note that the amount you give must be a multiple of $25. If you’d like to receive information about how to follow the experiment’s progress, participate in a survey, or even possibly take part in the experiment, leave your email address in the optional message area. If you’d like to receive a scenic Taiwan postcard with personalized bilingual message as a small ‘thank you’ from Josie, leave your mailing address.
Step 4.
Fill in the payment information.
For further information on how you can support Josie’s project, contact: [email protected].
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An experiment may reveal the key to building cooperation in society. | <urn:uuid:080be45d-4c97-4cdd-9d2b-a57b7e31ea51> | 3 | 2.890625 | 0.022788 | en | 0.952578 | https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-good-the-bad-the-economy/201307/giving-credit-where-credit-is-due?tr=HdrQuote |
B-to-B Teleprospecting: Capacity Planning and Load Balancing
The core curriculum of most MBA programs includes operations courses that introduce concepts like throughput, kanban and capacity planning. These concepts were designed initially for manufacturing applications to ensure optimal utilization of resources to meet production goals. That said, they can be applied to marketing and sales functions as well, including teleprospecting functions that operate between the marketing functions that feed them, and the sales functions they serve.
Unfortunately, many organizations fail to integrate capacity constraints and load balancing into their marketing and sales planning processes. Too many companies isolate these functions from one another. Often, a marketing function is responsible for running demand creation programs for a specific product line, but has no control, or even visibility, into the receiving function’s capacity to handle the volume of leads that it creates. Time and again, we see marketers generate inquiries and leads, only to be stymied by followup processes that are delayed for weeks and an insufficient touch coverage model.
For teleprospecting functions, capacity planning and load balancing are critical. Key points to remember about each of these concepts include:
• Capacity planning. For teleprospecting, capacity planning involves modeling the human resources required to meet specific objectives. In b-to-b, this means working backward from revenue or bookings goals to reverse the demand waterfall and determine the number of qualified leads required from a teleprospecting team to fill the pipeline and generate closed business. To generate this quantity of leads, planners must determine the number of conversations, connects, dials and emails required. Divide the total amount of activity required by the activity expected over a normal workday to determine the number of agents needed to meet revenue goals. From this baseline, factor in additional considerations, namely seasonal (or event-driven) fluctuations in demand, attrition (to account for normal and expected turnover on the team) and ramp time to develop newly hired agents into productive resources. Include reasonable downtime or excess capacity to account for fluctuations.
• Load balancing. This exercise reconciles inputs (number of leads) with available resources (agents) and planned treatments (touch coverage model over a given time period). The intent is to optimize the workflow and maximize output while remaining on schedule, without a backlog or queue of leads developing. Of course, disruptions will occur, necessitating changes to the variables to return to a steady state. For example, establish dynamic lead scoring thresholds to adjust the flow of leads that enter the teleprospecting workflow. Another option is to increase the number of resources to handle the workload. Recruiting player-coaches or team leads to work the phones, augmenting internal resources with outsourcer partners, eliminating meetings to increase call volumes – all are strategies for temporarily adjusting the number of available resources to manage workload fluctuations. The final lever to consider is treatment: In times of overloaded capacity, consider a more stringent prioritization schema on whom to call, or institute a lead-tiering system and reduce total call and email volume for lower-tier leads.
Speed of responsiveness can greatly impact conversion rates through the top stages of the demand waterfall. It’s difficult to maintain responsiveness levels without proper capacity planning and load balancing. So, if you don’t have an operations skill set in your teleprospecting organization, either develop it or consult with your outsourcing partners to develop a reasonable plan that allows you to execute in a more predictable and controlled fashion.
comments powered by Disqus | <urn:uuid:dc0eec96-fd59-4741-95e2-5f68e0894be5> | 2 | 2.125 | 0.022987 | en | 0.92507 | https://www.siriusdecisions.com/Blog/2013/Feb/BtoB-Teleprospecting-Capacity-Planning-and-Load-Balancing.aspx |
All in the Family: Where Does Incest Begin?
Danielle Heaney and Nick Cameron were convicted of incest, and the half brother and sister were sentenced to nine months' probation. As a compromise of sorts, the courts in their native Scotland allow the couple to live together but not sleep together.
If the couple moved to France, where Napoleon abolished incest laws nearly 200 years ago, their relationship wouldn't be criminal. If they lived in Idaho, however, they could face up to 10 years in prison.
While there is a widespread cultural taboo against incest, there appears to be no modern consensus on whether all such relationships should be banned or how close is too close when it comes to familial relationships. All U.S. states and most countries bar marriages within the nuclear family, but American cultural mores aside, there is far less agreement about half siblings or first cousins.
"In many parts of the world, it's a legal and even preferred form of marriage," said Robin Bennett, a genetics counselor at the University of Washington and the former president of the National Society of Genetics Counselors, referring to marriages between cousins.
There have been a number of justifications for anti-incest laws, which historians trace at least as far back as the Bible, the book of Leviticus, which bars sexual relationships between certain family members.
The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss theorized that forcing men to look outside their families for a mate would foster the exchange of members among groups, the building of alliances and, ideally, the avoidance of conflict. And, there is the well-known propensity toward genetic disorders among children of incest.
Some geneticists and sociologists, however, question whether these are reasons to ban all relationships among relatives, even half siblings like Heaney and Cameron.
Bennett said that while there is a higher risk of birth defects from marrying half siblings, that does not mean the risk is so high that those marriages should always be banned.
Bennett is co-author of a 2002 study that showed that first cousins can have children together without a great risk of genetic defects. Children of first cousin marriages -- banned in about half of the U.S. states -- have serious genetic disorders or mental retardation about 1.7 to 2.8 percent more often than children of unrelated parents, the study found.
"It's an obvious form of genetic discrimination," she said of laws banning cousins from marrying or that allow marriages only on the condition that the husband and wife undergo genetic counseling or won't have children. "We don't forbid other people with a high risk of other genetic problems from having a child."
In parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia, marriages between cousins are commonplace.
Several recent highly publicized cases put the spotlight on so-called genetic sexual attraction. "There is a consistent and necessary need to be close to each other physically," Cameron told "Good Morning America." "To actually feel each other close."
Cameron and Heaney share the same mother but grew up apart. Cameron was put into foster care when he was just a toddler while Heaney was raised by their birth mother.
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Big Bird's Ruffled Feathers
"Sesame Street" character breaks silence as Americans on main street react to debate over PBS.
3:00 | 10/07/12
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Transcript for Big Bird's Ruffled Feathers
just days till the vice presidential debate, and we're hearing for the first time what someone brought up though at the last debate. Big bird speaking out about that unexpected moment. Here's abc's reena ninan tonight. Reporter: Big bird took the high road on "saturday night live" last night. Any political statement you want to make. No, I don't want to ruffle any feathers. Reporter: But plenty of feathers were ruffled as he was thrust into the presidential campaign. I am going to stop the subsidy to pbs. I like big bird and I like you too. Somebody is finally getting tough on big bird, elmo, you better make a run for it. Reporter: Campaign surrogates making a run for it today. He's taking the battle straight to "sesame straight" and let waum run hog wild. targeting america's favorite yellow bird? It wasn't a targeting it was a just pointing to one example that big bird is a pretty commercially successful entity. Reporter: But the truth is the show relies on less than 0.1% of funding from federal dollars. After the debate some 17,000 tweets per minute came in about #bigbird. Welcome to the middle class, big bird. Despite or because of it, big bird has helped the romney campaign to raise $12 million in the 48 hours after the debate. How did you find out that your name had been mentioned in the debate? I got a million tweets. Okay. So you're on twitter. No, I'm a bird. Tweeting is how we talk. Okay. Reporter: What's also talking are the sales here at sullivan's toy store in washington, d.C. They say they're selling more big bird items than they have in weeks past, proving just how profitable one yellow bird can be.
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Directable Physics Engine recreates 2D anime stylizations in 3D
"For example, suppose you wanted to make a rabbit's ears sway through physics computation. If you were asked to make them look like this when seen from the right, with an ordinary physics engine, you couldn't do it. But using our technology, you can do physics computation while meeting specific conditions, such as wanting this shape when the object is seen from that angle."
"This example involves what's called 'ahoge' (foolish hair), which is often seen in Japanese animations. For example, if you want the 'ahoge' to keep pointing in the same direction, that's hard to do with an ordinary physics engine. But our engine can compute how to move the hair while keeping it pointing in the same direction."
"In this example, the inside of the skirt is kept hidden, even if you try to look underneath it. When the camera looks in from below, the skirt becomes firm and sticks closely to the body, so you can create an effect called the 'impenetrable skirt'."
"In Japan, 2D anime culture is very attractive. Recently, 3D technology has reached a high level, and we think it would be great to produce movies that combine the merits of the two. So, we've developed this Directable Physics Engine as a technology to help achieve that."
The Directable Physics Engine runs on the Unity cross-platform game engine, and the source code is available from the lab's website.
Source by:
The University of Tokyo | <urn:uuid:25e5f686-fba7-4e57-8511-ecb66f68b1e4> | 3 | 2.9375 | 0.653983 | en | 0.955667 | http://akihabaranews.com/2013/11/19/article-en/directable-physics-engine-recreates-2d-anime-stylizations-3d-1838128924?page=1 |
Exhibits and Planes
In 1933, Stearman Aircraft began production of the Kaydet and it didn't end until 1945, after some 10,000 had been produced in a variety of forms. Still in use today, usually as crop dusters or week-end pleasure craft, the Kaydet was a rugged 2-seat Primary trainer for the military. It was the first plane student pilots flew solo during their 60 hours of primary instruction.
The PT-17 biplane trainer donated by Al Johnson, a local aerial sprayer, was restored using pieces from several aircraft and hand fabricated replica parts. | <urn:uuid:b5ff6c5f-e4b0-4644-a42f-b5cf02142dac> | 3 | 2.890625 | 0.677099 | en | 0.975809 | http://amcmuseum.org/exhibits_and_planes/pt-17.php |
• My Beef With MyPlate
Kristin Wartman
Food Writer
The USDA finally did away with the much-maligned Food Pyramid and replaced it with MyPlate. Many in the food world are calling it progress. It's certainly a clearer and more concise image and deserves some credit for the fact that half of the plate is comprised of fruit and vegetables.
"This is a step in the right direction," Marion Nestle wrote in an email. "It's the best they could come up with and some education needs to go with it, as always."
The five food categories indicated in the image are: Fruits, Vegetables, Protein, Grains, and Dairy. At first glance the MyPlate image appears to eliminate many problematic sugary, processed foods, but when you actually click on the categories a host of unhealthy foods are revealed.
For example, the fruit category includes fruit juice which should be considered a "sugary drink" something the recommendations say to drink less of. There are 15 grams of sugar in one small four-ounce juice box of Mott's 100 percent apple juice and an eight-ounce glass of Tropicana Orange juice has 22 grams of sugar--depending on how many ounces consumed, these fruit juices approach or even exceed the amount of sugar found in sodas.
There's no doubt that fruit juice is a step up from soda, but in a country where 26 million people have diabetes and many other people exhibit signs of insulin resistance (the precursor to diabetes) liquid sugar in any form is detrimental. This is why the fruit category should be strictly whole fruit -- whole fruit contains fiber to help balance out the sugar content and thus has a lower glycemic load. Whole, fresh fruits also contain many vital vitamins, nutrients, and minerals not found in the processed juice version.
But many Americans don't have enough access to fresh fruit -- and the emphasis on drinking fruit juice appeals to food corporations who profit on fruit juices and other processed fruit products. Indeed, on the Web sites for Mott's and Tropicana, you find out that your apple and orange juice provide the required fruit recommendations by the USDA.
When you click on the dairy category you find that chocolate and strawberry flavored milks are included -- more examples of "sugary drinks" inexplicably deemed acceptable by the USDA. Flavored milks, regularly served in school lunch cafeterias across the country and subject to much debate, contain loads of sugar. A serving of strawberry milk contains 27 grams of sugar, equal to the amount of sugar in eight ounces of Coca-Cola. (Flavored milks were just banned by the Los Angeles Unified School District).
Meanwhile, the grains group remains amorphous. The guidelines do say to keep half of the grains you consume whole, but that's not indicated in the graphic. Again, this group is far too inclusive and leads the consumer to believe that many highly refined ready-to-eat breakfast cereals, white buns, breads, and rolls are part of a healthy diet. Given these vague guidelines one could eat Lucky Charms for breakfast, a Subway sandwich on a white bread roll for lunch, and a few slices of Domino's pizza for dinner and consider these processed grain-filled options as part of the healthy MyPlate meal.
Much on the MyPlate Web site is based on outdated science. The low-fat and fat-free dairy recommendations are based on the premise that saturated fats are harmful (see my article on fats for more on this) and that Americans should cut down on these calories -- but the truth is Americans are not getting heavier due to the fat in dairy products but rather due to the overconsumption of sugars and refined carbohydrates.
As is illustrated in this infographic, while obesity rates have soared since the 1970s the amount of calories consumed in the form of dairy, meat, and nuts has remained mostly stable. On the other hand, the amount of calories consumed in added sugars, added fats (the type of fats are not indicated in this graphic but I would bet they are in the form of highly processed vegetable oils and trans-fats) and grains has also soared. This suggests that the fats found in real foods like dairy are not the cause of our nation's massive weight gain.
The underlying issue is quality of food not just quantity. But this won't be addressed as long as industrial food corporations hold sway over the dietary guidelines. Discussing quality gets to the root problem of access to healthy, whole foods in this country. Quite simply, the USDA cannot insist that people eat only high quality foods while many don't have access to them. Herein lies a conflict of interest for the USDA since it has the dual role of promoting the business of industrial food production and simultaneously advising Americans on healthy eating.
Indeed, the MyPlate recommendation to, "Enjoy your food but eat less" is hardly helpful when the goal of the industrial food industry is to encourage Americans to eat more. Industrial food corporations are great at filling bellies with highly caloric yet nutritionally void food -- and sugar and refined carbohydrates are the main culprits. If the USDA truly wanted to endorse healthier eating, it would focus on promoting nutrient-dense foods. Switching to a nutrient-dense diet goes a long way in addressing portion control -- it's difficult to overeat a real food diet.
The ideal image would be more exclusive-that is to say, many foods now endorsed by the USDA as part of MyPlate would be eliminated. The fruit group would be strictly fruit, the vegetable group strictly vegetables. The protein group would include dairy (the fact that dairy is a separate category highlights the influence of the powerful dairy lobby) and would eliminate the many processed foods now listed as part of these groups: Flavored milks, processed cheeses, processed deli meats, and processed soy products. The grains group would eliminate refined and processed grains and reserve these to be used minimally in the form of treats. The same applies to all sugary foods and sugary drinks.
As Michele Simon rightly points out in her recent post, what's really needed to affect change are policy changes. She writes, "It's going to take way more than a measly $2 million educational campaign to get Americans to fill up half their plate with fruits and vegetables. It's going to take a massive overhaul of our agricultural policies."
And this is why we'll never see a real food MyPlate. As long as our current agricultural policies and farm subsidies remain the same, the government can't offer much else in the way of recommendations. What they've recommended is what's available to most of the American population--processed and packaged foods subsidized by government policies.
MyPlate is simply a cleaner graphic image with mostly the same old information. I can think of a much better way to spend that $2 million dollar budget: Fund urban farming projects so more Americans can actually fill those plates with fruits and vegetables. Now that would be real progress.
Originally published on Civil Eats
Follow Kristin Wartman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kristinwartman
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Homeless Man May Change Law
On His Behalf, The Aclu Filed A Suit Challenging An Orlando Rule Against Sleeping In Public.
June 2, 1999|By Susan Clary of The Sentinel Staff
On a recent night, James Joel sat on the cold concrete of Wall Street Plaza in Orlando, smoking a cigarette and watching diners enjoy drinks at a nearby cafe.
The soles of his black-tasseled shoes were worn down, revealing his swollen feet. As the hours wore on, he fought to stay awake.
Joel, 40, knew that if he fell asleep in the downtown plaza he could spend a night in jail. A city ordinance prohibits sleeping in public.
Joel has been arrested twice for ``camping,'' as the offense is called. The second time, the American Civil Liberties Union came to his rescue.
The group filed suit on his behalf in Orlando federal court, claiming the city ordinance violates Joel's civil rights and unfairly targets the homeless.
Sometime this fall, a judge is expected to decide.
``It's an awful feeling,'' Joel said of the arrests. ``Not just a feeling of rejection, but worse, being considered useless.''
A person must do more than fall asleep in public to violate the ordinance. He must be on public property, be asleep atop materials or inside some temporary shelter, have built a campfire or volunteer he has no other place to live.
ACLU attorney Steven Mason, who represents Joel, said the ordinance is vague and unfair and that police officers apply it disproportionately to the homeless.
``We're a tourist mecca, and we have a wonderful, beautiful city, but we are talking about the fair treatment of a fellow human being,'' Mason said. ``You can't just enact laws just because someone is unsightly.''
Helaine Blum, with the Legal Aid Society, said most cities have similar ordinances.
``Everybody tries to get the homeless off the streets,'' Blum said. ``It's difficult to try to balance the public interest against the rights of the people.''
Orlando officials contend that while the homeless are more likely to be arrested under the ordinance, it does not target any group of people.
``I would say the ordinance targets a particular act, said City Attorney Scott Gabrielson. ``By its nature, a certain segment of society is most likely to commit that act.''
Gabrielson said the ordinance protects everyone. It is not safe or sanitary to sleep on the streets, he said. In addition, business owners, residents and tourists should feel comfortable downtown. He said the homeless are welcome at the Coalition for the Homeless shelter.
``I think we have created a good substitute to sleeping on the street,'' Gabrielson said. ``The ordinance serves a valid purpose.''
Hitting the skids
Joel was arrested twice in 1998 near the old courthouse. The first time he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served.
The second time, Assistant Public Defender Cindy Schmidt, tired of watching the homeless constantly arrested for sleeping, asked Joel whether he wanted to fight his charges.
Joel was the first person to plead not guilty under the camping ordinance. Twelve days later, the city dismissed the charges.
``Their right of being left alone far outweighs the city's right not to look at them,'' Schmidt said. Schmidt called Mason, who called the ACLU, and funding for the lawsuit was approved.
Joel hasn't been homeless his entire life.
Born in Pennsylvania, he lived in Daytona Beach and St. Augustine and drove a frozen-food truck. But a combination of a knee injury and depression sent him to the hospital and he lost his job. He was never able to return to work.
``I couldn't work again and I didn't have much money,'' Joel said. ``I just hit the skids.''
Joel found his way to Orlando. He lives on the streets and makes occasional money performing odd jobs. His clothes come from a local church.
Joel said he sometimes doesn't have a dollar to stay at the coalition shelter or can't get there by the time it closes, and that he doesn't feel safe there. He wants his independence.
``I don't think the system understands,'' Joel said.
Tom Allison, president of the coalition, said the shelter is flexible. Visitors can do chores to cover the $1 fee, and although the facility closes at 7 p.m., people are accepted at all hours.
Although the ordinance says that being asleep in a public place is not sufficient for an arrest, a study has shown differently.
What the study found
Randy Fisher, professor at the University of Central Florida, studied Orlando arrests for camping between 1995 and 1997 at Mason's request.
He found that about 32 people a month are arrested for sleeping in public, most between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. All have been homeless. In recent years, the number of arrests has increased.
``It is difficult to believe that this ordinance was not crafted specifically to target the homeless, since no one with a home is likely to be sleeping in the outdoors on public property,'' Fisher wrote.
City officials maintain that police officers would rather not make arrests for camping. They would rather see the homeless go to a shelter, but many homeless people know about the shelter and choose not to go.
``Getting folks to go to the coalition rather than sleep on the street is a good thing to accomplish,'' Gabrielson said. ``The hope would be that you get the folks to a whole network of services so they can improve their lives.''
Fighting City Hall
If a judge decides to abolish the city ordinance, it will likely affect only Orlando and Central Florida, Blum said.
Joel said he has felt harassed by the police, so he hopes a judge will decide in his favor. But he admits that some days he is not sure he wants to fight City Hall.
``I would rather sit on the bench outside and watch the birds,'' he said. ``It's better than being bothered with an attorney.''
Orlando Sentinel Articles | <urn:uuid:292fdb0a-169d-4acd-84d9-6fabd404e6b4> | 2 | 2.015625 | 0.046012 | en | 0.969715 | http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1999-06-02/news/9906020115_1_joel-city-ordinance-camping-ordinance |
The Facebook Society
The Paypal Mafia is the most famous example, but Silicon Valley greats tend to leave a host of successful entrepreneurs in their wake. Historically, this has stemmed from employees inside the mothership learning as they helped create a juggernaut. Today, we're seeing a new trend start, where the "successful alumni" are starting to include people who were never really alumni to start with.
The harbringer of this trend is Facebook. Facebook Alumni have already started leaving to found some companies that are attracting massive attention: Path, Asana, Jumo, and Quora have a combined valuation of well over 100 million dollars, each are less than 24 months old. Dave Morin (CEO at Path) has suggested we call this alumni group "The Facebook Society." Which may someday become widely-known in silicon valley, as both Xoogler (Google alumni) and The Paypal Mafia (Paypal alumni) have.
But Facebook has created a platform where 2.5 million developers are claiming loads of value, including billion dollar companies like Zynga and LivingSocial, and a dozen additional companies that are growing massively. Take Zoosk for example, which now has more uniques than Match.
The founders of Path, Asana, Jumo and Quora all started at Facebook before the end of 2006, while companies that have built massive businesses atop Facebook Platform, didn't really get moving until 2008 and are generally in hyper-growth right now.
Therefore, in the next year or two you will start to see another group of "Facebook Alumni" start founding important companies. This group will have learned social design by building on Facebook for Facebook users, but they will have learned those lessons at companies like LivingSocial, Zynga, Causes, fbFund companies, and others.
So when it comes to The Facebook Society, I suggest we include both the people who learned social design at Facebook, and also people who learned social design because of Facebook.
Facebook might be the first place this is happening, but this trend will continue to take place. Today's juggernaut companies are being built with the help of others. Betaworks and Borthwick have done more than anyone else to show us this. That means that many of the lessons learned building massive businesses, are now also being learned by ecosystem partners.
So as companies like Twitter start to send members of the flock into the wild to start their own nests, you'll probably also see a few birds that originated from Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Bit.ly and other partners getting mentioned alongside companies like Square in New York Times articles.
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I understand that it's feasible the bacteria within the gastrointestinal tract originate from the food we eat and air we breath, but where does this population of microbes originate from?
share|improve this question
Actually, the bacteria in the human gut originate from the birth canal. There are vast differences in the gut microbiome between kids born vaginally and those born by C-section, and these differences can have health consequences later in life. – Larry_Parnell Mar 24 '12 at 0:02
That's an interesting difference you point out, but ultimately, from where did the bacteria from the birth canal? Is it even known, or just a symbiosis that has existed before homo sapiens evolved? – leonardo Mar 24 '12 at 0:13
@Larry_Parnell do you have any reference? It seems really interesting! – Zenon Mar 27 '12 at 16:51
One of the Potential and major cause of vaginal infections and micro-flora is due to the hygienic habits are not followed during cleaning ass after defecation. There are certain important rules to clean the region appropriately. – VAR121 Sep 26 '12 at 4:36
@VAR121 Can you provide citations for this? – leonardo Oct 23 '13 at 21:30
2 Answers 2
up vote 10 down vote accepted
Most of the initial colonisation is said to be coincidental ('happenstance' as the textbook puts it!) exposure.
It's then fairly predictable depending on:
• type of delivery (as Larry commented);
• feeding; and
• receipt of antibiotics.
In terms of feeding, there are differences in flora between babies fed human milk and those that are given cow's milk.
There's a section called 'Establishment and Composition of Normal Flora' in chapter 187 of Principles and Practice of Pediatric Infectious Diseases (3rd ed) by Long which discusses the above.
It's also said that hormones may influence indigenous flora. For example, premenarcheal and postmenopausal vaginal flora are very different to those present during the childbearing period.[1].
1. Mandell, Douglas, and Bennett's Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases. 7th ed. 2009. Churchill Livingstone.
share|improve this answer
There is some interesting information here from the Human Microbiome Project, but no details regarding the source of vaginal microflora. I would say that the sources would be gut and skin.
Ethical issues of manipulating a baby's microbiome are brought to light here.
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:11b2f6a8-76fc-413d-88d1-d84db9d1681f> | 3 | 3.109375 | 0.735948 | en | 0.922847 | http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/1542/where-do-the-bacteria-within-the-vagina-originate-from?answertab=votes |
Loren Steffy
A business blog
Candidates give few answers on gasoline prices
Energy came up early in tonight’s presidential debate between President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Unfortunately, the question that touched off the discussion was about gasoline prices, and so the questioner really didn’t get an answer.
Gasoline prices have, of course, been rising this year, but that has more to do with the influences on the global market for crude oil — such as unrest in the Middle East — refining constraints in the U.S., and a slight improvement in the economy. Presidents really have little control over pump prices, but they never like to admit that.
Obama and Romney sparred over their already well-established views on alternative fuels and domestic production. Obama again pointed out that domestic oil and natural gas production has increased in his administration, and Romney countered that the gains have come on private land, not federal leases.
Obama dodged Romney’s question about federal leases, and noted that: “There’s no doubt that world demand [for oil] has gone up, but our production has gone up and we’re using energy more efficiently.”
Obama also pointed out, correctly, that part of the reason gasoline prices were low when he took office was because the economy was in the tank. But the real answer to the question wasn’t one that either candidate was going to give:
Prices for energy, especially gasoline, are going to go up because global demand continues to rise. And any alternative we may adopt to offset our dependence on oil is going to be more expensive and less efficient than oil. Whether we become more energy independent or not, we’re going to pay more for it.
Loren Steffy
9 Responses
1. PayAttention says:
Obama, did, in fact, mention that global demand was high. You must not have been listenning. He did not go on to explain it in detail, but he said it right away. What he did not answer directly was the actual question, which was “is it not a priority of the Department of Energy to keep gas prices low”, and he gave a long winded “no, it is not, it is the priority of the Department of Energy to ensure you can afford the energy you use for the next twenty years, not keep gas prices low this week”, but even that was implied, not said directly.
Romney, on the other hand, implied outright lies that he could get the price of gas down, and it was Obama’s energy policy that inflated the price. Obama’s zinger that Romney would get the price down the same way Dubya did was priceless, whether you agree or not.
2. stkman says:
We should pass a law that simply states no company may export gasoline, nor shall any company use domestically produced oil products including gasoline for export unless the price of a gallon of gasoline is below $1.50 a gallon.
This b.s. about a world market when we are producing our own oil and gasoline is a joke and the oil companies use it to screw all of us. You wanna drill and use U.S. Oil to produce gasoline, fine, just remember it stays here for our consumption, not some Asaian country. Let them buy theirs from the middle east.
• PayAttention says:
You are flat out wrong for two reasons:
1) Such regulations are exactly the kind of actual socialism (as opposed to the fantasy socialism the Tea Party is always on about) that would be bad for everyone involved, because it would reduce, not enhance our energy independance. Gasoline production would simply shut down here.
2) Countries that have acheived energy independance have done so by biting the bullet and paying the price. Rather than take a company’s ability to profit away, take away the incentive to drive a monster truck to work alone in the city instead of taking a bus. THAT is what reduces demand for foreign or domestic energy to within our ability to sustainably produce more than we use.
• stkman says:
@Pay Attention,
sorry but your wrong. By your example everyone should be paying what we are paying for gasoline. If thats the case why is gasoline currently .61 cents a gallon in Saudi Arabia? It’s onlt .09 cents a gallon in Venezuale right now.$1.73 in Egypt,0.88 cents in Kuwait. Explain it if you can. You can’t unless you admit it is all about manipulation, because thats exactly what it is.
We have plentyof our own oil as we are findin gout, but what more important is that we have a huge surplus of refining capabilities to turn that crude into gasoline. We have so much gasoline we are the world number one exporter of it. Funny we export it while we watch the middle class go broke trying to fill up their cars so they can get to towrk to make money to buy gasoline so they can get to work to make money to buy gasoline. Get it?
3. HAPPYDADDY says:
First of all Obama said gas grices were low during Bush’s term because the economy was bad. If that is correct gas should be $0.25 per gallon. Meither canidate can do anything about gas prices over night. The reason we are paying so much at the pumps is because the US dollar has lost half its value under this regime.
4. G. Lienert says:
Gas prices were $1.80 a gallon when Obama took office. Today gas is $4.00 a gallon. I know y’all were listening when Obama stated the reason for the low gas prices when he took office was due to our poor economy, really, that’s what Obama and some of you drunk kool-aid drinkers think. WOW! How does that work because the economy is no better today than it was when Obama took office. As a matter of fact the economy is worse now. We have more people on food stamps and unemployment is the still the same, and if it were not for the fuzzy math unemployment would be at around 11%. Obama just keeps borrowing money from China to keep America going. There is no policy Obama has put place to help our economy (shovel ready jobs..ha). As a matter of fact the reason our economy has remained so stagnant is because business (small and big) don’t trust Obama and his failed domestic policies. Omabacare has also scarred businesses from expanding or hiring new people. Maybe not all businesses, unions and green energy jobs received medical waivers from Obamacare. Now, you kool-aid drunks tell me again why the gas prices are higher now than when Obama took office?
I’ll tell you why. Obama wants the gas prices high, he wants $4 a gallon to be the norm. Obama wants an outcry from Americans about the high price of gas. This allows Obama push his green energy agenda down the throat of Americans like he did Obamacare. The end result of this is Obama wants to make his democratic friends who start green energy companies rich, on the taxpayers dime. Companies like Solyndra and A123 might ring a bell.
• Grant says:
” …..the economy is no better today than it was when Obama took office. As a matter of fact the economy is worse now.”
What are you smoking? Can you remember 2008 and 2009? Dow losing 6,000 points, trading at 6,500? GDP shrinking at a rate of 6.8%. Remember Bear Stearns? Lehman? AIG? 9 million jobs lost? Today things aren’t all sunshine and lollipops but to say things are worse now than Q408/Q109 is ridiculous. | <urn:uuid:0a35ec6c-d8a0-4d6c-af68-bff99ed6e132> | 2 | 1.960938 | 0.657512 | en | 0.973395 | http://blog.chron.com/lorensteffy/2012/10/candidates-give-few-answers-on-gasoline-prices/ |
Real or fake side effects?
Vote 0 Votes
Stress effects people in numerous different ways. Some people deal with stressors as they come while others spend their days worrying about the stressors coming up. There are three approaches to stress discussed in our textbook: stressors as stimuli, stress as a transaction, and stress as a response. Hassles, or little struggles in our life, often cause people to have stress in their daily life. Too much stress can lead to a breakdown, which can happen to anyone who is having trouble coping with their stress.
A specific effect that can occur from stress is the nocebo effect. The nocebo effect is when beliefs can create reality by stirring your emotions so much that they actually come true. This article describes this effect very well. A personal experience dealing with the nocebo effect in my life has to do with my sister. She has anxiety about many things in her daily life and can't control her reactions to her stress very well. For instance, if her friend gets sick with something such as the flu, she will stress herself out so much and make herself believe that she has the flu. She will do this to the extent that she actually gets flu-like symptoms and begins to throw up. It is very sad to watch because she can't help her emotions, which are causing dramatic reactions in her body.
| Leave a comment
That's really interesting. I remember reading about the nocebo effect, but I was not aware of the extent of how it can effect people. I guess I have done the same thing though once or twice. We had family over and they were all sick, and I was convinced I was going to be sick and an hour later I didn't feel very well. On a different note, the picture you have for the stressor example is just perfect. That pretty much sums up my reaction to stress (add in some chips to the picture and the reaction is right on). This makes me wonder though, What makes people act differently than another person during stressful situations? I know my mom loses her appetite when stressed, but my stomach seems to be a bottomless pit when I am stressed.
Yes, stress is a major cause of illness for people especially when they are under chronic stress. And as you mention, some people cope better with stress and it has a less corrosive effect on health.
You mention the nocebo effect and a link to stress. While stress responses may play some role in the nocebo effect, what we typically find is that like the placebo effect, it is the expectations people have when they take a particular drug or receive any other kind of treatment for an illness.
The nocebo effect refers to when we expect the adverse side effects of a drug to affect us. For example, if I was to give you a drug to relieve pain but also mentioned that it has a known side effect of producing heartburn, you may be more likely to experience the heartburn and pain relief even if I gave you a sugar pill!
What you are describing with your sister is actually a kind of social contagion effect, where the thoughts, feelings and interactions with another person can transfer behaviors from one to the next.
Both are interesting phenomena, but quite different from each other
Leave a comment
About this Entry
This page contains a single entry by perei049 published on April 29, 2012 1:05 PM.
The "Correct" Way to Raise Children was the previous entry in this blog.
Let's be rational here... is the next entry in this blog.
| <urn:uuid:0c36342c-80b0-47ac-aaae-6365d4edee3a> | 3 | 2.625 | 0.192062 | en | 0.978471 | http://blog.lib.umn.edu/wlas0006/jhon's_sp2012%20class/2012/04/real-or-fake-side-effects.html |
Monday, August 25, 2008
Training to be a scientist...
Even though I'm an engineer in my daily job, I've never used the equipment that I'll be responsible for once I get down to Palmer. So, for the last couple of weeks I've been training for my job.
First I flew San Diego to learn how to monitor the hole in the ozone layer. Think of the ozone layer as the earth's sunglasses, protecting life on the surface from the sun's strongest ultraviolet rays, which can cause serious problems such as skin cancer and DNA degeneration. In the 1980s is was noticed that human-generated compounds, primarily the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) then used in air conditioners and aerosol and were destroying this layer. At that time, ozone thinning was occuring on a seasonal basis over the whole planet. In 1985 the Montreal Protocol outlawed the further use of the CFC chemicals. In the 20 years since then, the ozone layer has significantly recovered over most of the planet. The exception, so far at least, is over the tip of South America, Australia, New Zealand and Antartica. Over these areas, the ozone hole has remained large with the largest size hole measured in 2000. Who does the missing ozone effect ? Well, almost every species on the food chain.
In plants, as in animals, higher levels of ultraviolet radiation causes DNA damage. A study of plants atTierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America, found DNA damage to plants on days the ozone hole was overhead to be 65% higher than on non-ozone-hole days (Rousseaux et. al., 1999). The effects of increased ultraviolet light on marine life is also thought to be harmful, however studies of the direct effect on shrimp, krill and fish are difficult to carry out. The ozone hole lasts for about 10-12 weeks each year and the probable effect is decreased reproductive capacity and larval development during that time. One study (Smith et. al., 1990) calculates the ozone effect to be responsible for a 2-4% annual decrease in phytoplankton population.
The effects on the human population are significantly easier to measure. In Punta Arenas, Chile, the southernmost city in the world (53°S), with a population of 154,000, skin cancer has risen dramatically. Cases increased 66% from 1994-2000 compared to 1987-1993. This corresponds exactly with the increased ultraviolet radiation levels seem each spring for the past 20 years, when the Antarctic ozone hole has moved over the city. It is exactly this increase in ultraviolet radiation that I'll be measuring once I get to Palmer. And when I do, I'll be heeding the lesson of Punta Arenas and wearing my sunglasses and sunblock !
In the meantime, if you want to monitor the ozone layer for yourself, you can view satellite images at:
Two good sites for learning more are at:
After learning about the ozone hole, I went on a visit that I really enjoyed to the offices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado. At NOAA I learned how to take very precise air samples for the global greenhouse gases network. This is the network, started by Professor Keeling of Scripps Institute in 1958, which identified the trend and cause of global warming. Taking samples of the air in Antarctica is ideal because of its remoteness from cars, people and cities. Trace gases such as carbon dioxide mesured in Antarctica give us a good understanding of their global concentrations.
The website of air sampling network at NOAA describes more about the project and is a great starting point if you want to learn more:
That's all for now. I'll keep you posted as I get closer to deployment. | <urn:uuid:63077e1b-f615-484a-99f5-6745391dc20c> | 2 | 2.390625 | 0.023597 | en | 0.949588 | http://blog.louiseh.org/2008_08_24_archive.html |
Tips To Keep Your Pets Safe This 4th of July!
4th of July Dog
With 4th of July celebrations right around the
corner, we wanted to share some helpful tips and suggested precautions to keep
your four-legged friends and family members safe!
Check your pet’s
ID tag.
they can be returned to you promptly! Each year, many dogs run away trying to escape the commotion of fireworks. Animal shelters across the country are prepared for receiving these “4th
of July dogs.” If
Never use
fireworks around pets.
When curious pets get too close to fireworks, whether
types of fireworks contain toxic substances including arsenic, potassium
can spook pets, leading to anxiety and distress. As previous mentioned, many pets will try to get away
from the commotion so it is best to keep them in a safe and secure place, preferably at
Never leave your
pets alone in a vehicle on hot days, even if it is just for a few minutes.
rise very quickly inside a vehicle and since dogs sweat differently than
health effects, including death. Due to this, many states have made it illegal to leave a
pet in a car during extreme weather.
Keep your pets
on their normal diet.
Human food and drinks should be out of reach of pets.
Always keep
matches and lighter fluid out of pets’ reach
Many types of matches contain
fluid is also very harmful and can cause skin irritation or gastrointestinal irritation and central nervous system depression if ingested. If inhaled,
aspiration pneumonia and breathing problems could develop.
Keep citronella
candles, insect coils and oil products away from pets.
If a pet were to
these oils are inhaled they can cause aspiration pneumonia.
Never apply any
sunscreen or insect repellent product to your pet unless it is labeled
specifically for use on animals.
Ingestion of sunscreen products can result
in vomiting, diarrhea, excessive thirst and drooling. Insect repellents that
contain DEET are especially harmful and can lead to neurological problems.
If needed, take
additional precautions to keep your pet calm.
Even well-adjusted pets can
please consider consulting with your veterinarian on ways to alleviate their
fear and anxiety prior to the 4th of July festivities. There are
people may set off fireworks before dark.
fantastic Independence Day filled with safe summertime fun! | <urn:uuid:e7cd2025-974c-49b4-b32b-c69ba0d82cf3> | 2 | 2.46875 | 0.023742 | en | 0.941779 | http://blog.muttropolis.com/2013/06/28/tips-to-keep-your-pets-safe-this-4th-of-july/ |
Would you need a license to drive a driverless car?
Did Michael Knight need a special license?
Google’s self-navigating cars could be coming to Nevada if the company is successful in winning approval to drive them on the state’s highways. If self-driving cars catch on, that raises a question: Do you need a license to drive one if the car essentially steers itself?
GE’s Txchnologist magazine takes a look:
The cars have carried a two-man crew comprised of a software engineer to interpret the data and a backup driver, who could take the wheel in the case of an emergency.
But now Google wants a jurisdiction that has clear rules to govern the autonomous vehicles. Google is looking to Nevada, a company spokesperson said via email, because it is a state with “forward looking” laws.
The bill, as introduced, would establish an alternative class of driver’s license for the vehicles that would “recognize the fact that a person is not required to actively drive an autonomous vehicle.”
The second part of the bill would require the state Department of Motor Vehicles to come up with standards and regulations governing these autonomous vehicles. The DMV supports the bill, according to spokesman Kevin Malone, and “we look forward to testing in Nevada one day soon.”
So, it sounds like there would be a special class of license if Nevada becomes the Guinea pig. But there aren’t any details yet on what would be required or what the driver’s test would look like.
Google says the automated Toyota Priuses and Audi TT cars “use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to ‘see’ other traffic, as well as detailed maps … to navigate the road ahead. This is all made possible by Google’s data centers, which can process the enormous amounts of information gathered by our cars when mapping their terrain.”
The vehicles have already logged 140,000 miles, according to Google.
Categories: Uncategorized
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Autism FAQ: What does “Executive Functioning” mean?
….and why is it important?
The best way I can answer that question is by giving the example of all the steps it takes to put gas in your car, starting from what side you park on to reach the the tank to closing the tank door and driving away. There are at least 15 steps that all need to be done in the right sequence in order to get the job done. Many individuals on the autism spectrum have a difficult time understanding how all of the details and tasks of life fit into the big picture.
Executive Functioning refers to a set of mental skills that are coordinated in the brain’s frontal lobe. Executive functions work together to help a person achieve goals.
One of the Bay Areas comprehensive Speech, Language and Social Learning providers*Communication Works is bringing one of the nations leading experts in the area of assessment and treatment of executive function deficits to Lafayette March 2, 2013. She is Sarah Ward, M.S., CCC-SLP, and you need to register NOW because she sells out.
Sarah Ward, M.S., CCC/SLP
The workshop is an invaluable resource for Speech and Language Pathologists, parents, regular and special education teachers, Educational Therapists, Psychologists, Occupational Therapists, and professionals who work with individuals with executive function based challenges.
To earn more about Sarah Ward, CLICK HERE.
*Communication Works, by the way, supports families, schools, and communities by providing comprehensive diagnostic evaluations; consultations; and treatment for speech, language, social, self-regulation, sensory processing, and occupational therapy disorders.
To learn more about the work that they do, CLICK HERE.
Read the first three chapters of my book HERE.
You’ll be hooked. | <urn:uuid:49282a18-a8fc-48fe-a48c-ab74b267e0bb> | 3 | 3 | 0.210773 | en | 0.91996 | http://blog.sfgate.com/lshumaker/2012/12/19/autism-faq-what-does-executive-functioning-mean/?gta=commentlistpos |
Hobbits Alive?
By Carl Zimmer | April 29, 2005 1:20 pm
hobbit head-lo.jpg
So here’s the article…
The "Pygmy" Community of Flores
CATEGORIZED UNDER: Hobbits (Homo floresiensis)
Comments (8)
1. Absolutely amazing. This is either a great hoax or a truly amazing find. So what if they really are pygmies, does that really mean the Homo Florisis is not a unique species? How does the social context play into how we define “species”? Scientists, please forgive my layman language, but if they really are pygmies, then isn’t there something broader in the problem of classifying “who” they are in terms of a genetic lineage?
2. spiznet
Finally a story that makes sense. A slightly pathological modern from this or other similar village 13kya. Thanks, Teuku J!!
3. ChL
All this mentioning of negritos in the Philippines and the Andamanes just serves to muddy the waters as far as I can tell. They have been well studied, and if they had any similarity with Flores man, that would have been noticed already, wouldn’t it?
4. bhudson
The original article in Nature describes H.floresiensis as being 1m tall, not 1.3m. Regardless of the height, a more recent article by the excavation team found morphological differences between the Hobbit fossil brain cavity and that of various other hominids (and a chimp). So this pygmy village, if true, doesn’t kill the H.foresiensis claim, though it does weaken it.
5. Dear Mr. Zimmer: I just read your interesting posting of April 29 titled “Hobbits Alive?” I’m not sure what you mean by the term “pygmies,” but I have been studying Asian Negrito foragers for most of the last 43 years. (The term “Negrito” is less problematic than “pygmy,” but perhaps not by much.) I have measured hundreds of adults in the Agta Negrito population in the Philippines, and male adults average 154.4 cm (weight 46.2 kg) and females 143.8 cm (weight 39.3 kg). If you “can’t find a paper to back up [your] recollection at the moment” of a ‘pygmy’ population’s height changes at different times, see John Early’s and my 1998 book, p.118. You can compare Agta heights with those of African Pygmies and other ‘primitive’ and Asian Negrito populations at Table 4 of my 1989 article in the AMER J OF HUMAN BIOLOGY vol 1 p.67. (Ituri Pygmy male heights reportedly average 144 cm and CAR Pygmy males 153.) Homo floresiensis is a fascinating report. So far, I remain skeptical. Thomas N. Headland (www.sil.org/~headlandt/)
6. Jim
Great article.
The “Homo Floresiensis” was actually only 100cm tall, whereas most modern pygmies are 150cm or above. It’s obvious that Floresiensis was a different more archaic form of human. Infact, they can hardly be considered human at all.
There were many different types of human-like beings in the prehistoric Indonesian past. Meganthropus and many large Erectine specimimens displayed a tendency towards giantism.They cannot be considered “modern humans” either, because their physical features are so outside the norm for modern humans. Likewise, Floresiensis was outside the norm of modern humans.
My conclusion is-They were not modern humans.
7. Lee R. Berger
While the discussion of pygmies on flores is of great anthropological interest, it is critical to remember that Homo floresienses is based on not just a single skeleton but several remains dug up at the locality. It is also important to remember that H. floresienses has an extraordinarily small, but non-pathological brain – in fact it is very close to the smallest hominin brain ever discovered – and this includes australopithecines. Thus the species is not just a pygmy sized human – with a human sized brain perched on a small body as the “newly discovered” pygmies on Flores are, but a species showing very different relative cranial capacity (and morphology) from any known early or late hominin species. It is also important to note the contradictions in the arguments of the disputing scientists. Take for example the comment by Etty Indriati concerning human evolutionary adapative capacities “But, for humans, their menu is not just one type of food. Despite being isolated, they will try to find other types of food, so their bodies do not become small,” Clearly not only does H. floresienses violate this rather ill founded comment but the very near pygmy-sized people on flores today violate this argument. My own work has shown that pre-humans can adapt in the oppossite direction – towards giantism – as readily as they adapt to smaller sizes under certain ecological conditions. At present – on morphological grounds – H. floresienses stands.
8. Carl:
Great materials on H. floresensis! However, why keep using the name “Hobbits?” It really cheapens the significance of this find, and the name could lead astray less scientifically inclined minds. I realize that the discovering team used the term first, but isn’t it just a bit too silly and whimsical?
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What it Means That Apple's iPad Crossed The 100 Million Mark
There are several contenders that would like to be platforms but are not currently. Samsung is a good example -- its devices are very good; they'd have to be or Apple wouldn't resort to suing Samsung to suppress them. But Samsung's devices don't create a single customer relationship experience that accrues back to Samsung. I applaud the company's radical moves like the recent jump into low-cost Chromebooks. But there again, the crucial digital customer relationship belongs to Google, not Samsung.
Comcast is the other big player with platform ambitions, but the road to platform-dom is even longer for Comcast because even though it's big, it's not even truly national, much less a global player, and therein lies the rub: Platform power derives in part from platform scale. There is a longer list of potential platform players, one of which is Sony, about which I'll have more to say in the virtual pages of The Economist's Lean Back 2.0 blog soon. But suffice it to say that Sony had all the ingredients needed to be a platform in about 2007. However the company never left its obsession with engineering behind in order to turn toward this new model and, as a result, just announced the layoff of 10,000 more employees around the globe.
Which leads to Apple. Apple was one of the first platform players to matter. Its iPhone (and the nearly accidental embrace of the App Store idea a year later) created the conditions on which Apple is now a raging success. The iPad -- which Apple just announced crossed the 100 million threshold this past quarter -- would have sold a fraction of that if it didn't have the App Store, bringing with it thousands of developers who add most of the value to the device, no matter how elegant and sleek it stands on its own.
The real power of platforms like Apple's is not just manifest in the large number of units shipped. Instead, it's in the range of things people do with it. In our consumer surveys we routinely find that people use their tablets -- the majority of which are iPads today -- to do dozens of different tasks each month, and personal experience suggests each day. There is no other device that has achieved that kind of multipurpose utility (see my post on The Economist about Swiss-army gadgets for more on this). And because Apple ties the experience to its laptops and phones and even its Apple TV, the company builds on its relationship with you to get you to use all of the devices more often than you did before. There is no precursor to this in the world of industry. Massive industries -- like the railroads that rose up at the dawn of the industrial age or the burgeoning healthcare industry that is taking over so much of our economy -- these were or are big businesses, but none of them ever built a platform for expanding customer use and dependence like today's platform companies.
That's why I refer to these platforms in nearly every speech I give and why I'll be talking about them in a few hours on stage at the Forrester Forum. Because these platforms will be necessary foundations on which your business -- whether you develop apps or manufacture cement -- will have to depend. Companies ranging from Monsanto to GM have given into this pressure, with both of them tapping thousands of developers to improve their internal businesses as well as their product experiences by tying into these platforms.
That's why it matters that Apple has reached 100+ million iPads shipped. Because it's the clearest proof I have that platform power is now the central power in the business world. But it's only the beginning, and you had better join.
Question Rises
Apple is earning immensely but I have heard that after steve jobs earning declines. Is that true?
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The Arty Semite
From Shtetl to Stage to Screen
By Renee Ghert-Zand
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“It’s Hollywood in the shtetl.” That’s how playwright Nicholas Wright summed up his new play, “Travelling Light,” now at London’s National Theatre. He pretty much hit the nail on the head with this pithy description as he spoke to the audience in a talkback following the production’s worldwide simulcast on February 9.
Imagine “Fiddler on the Roof,” only with a young man let loose in the village with his early model motion picture camera. Also imagine a pushy producer and a young ingénue in the movie’s leading lady role. Finally, imagine that the young man with the camera runs away to America to become a Samuel Goldwyn or Jack Warner. Motl Mendl of the shtetl morphs into Maurice Montgomery of the studio.
Wright jokingly called himself “an assimilated Gentile” as he sat on stage with the play’s Jewish director Nicholas Hytner and Jewish film critic Jason Solomons. For Wright, the play’s through-line is Motl’s inability to ever fully become Maurice. “He carried the shtetl with him always,” Wright explained.
That may be the emotional core of the play, but its main conceit is that Jewish themes from the shtetls surrounding Vilna (where most of the studio moguls came from) were at the heart of early Hollywood moviemaking. Though it is a fictional idea (in reality the moguls were desperate to assimilate and therefore avoided making overtly Jewish films), it is amusing to imagine that pitches to producers, fights for artistic control, budgetary woes, focus groups, and even the casting couch all hark back to the Pale of Settlement.
Although Travelling Light’s ideas are engaging, its cast is less so. Damien Molony doesn’t quite have enough presence to hold the center as Motl, nor is there enough chemistry between Molony and Lauren O’Neil, who plays Lillian Gish lookalike Anna, to convince the audience of any real attraction between their characters.
The biggest letdown is Antony Sher’s portrayal of Jacob Bindel, the wealthy mill owner who bankrolls Motl’s filmmaking exploits. Wright mentioned that he had Sher in mind all along for the role of Jacob, but the actor ends up overplaying his character, looking like Tevye and sounding like Borat.
While Travelling Light’s production falls short, the National Theatre Live simulcast was fascinating in the way it blurred the line between film and stage. “Travelling Light” is itself a play about film, and the simulcast turned it into a film of a play. Far more captivating than the acting was the faux black and white footage “shot” by Motl, which is integrated into the script and projected in the theater during the performance. Ironically, these moving images, shown in close-up on the movie screen, had a greater impact on audiences hundreds or thousands of miles away than they did on the audience sitting in London’s Lyttelton Theatre.
“Travelling Light” does tell us that films can be “noble, miraculous things.” But it also suggests that behind the onscreen magic is real life. It’s the kind that comes with a lot of baggage, some of which originates — at least metaphorically — back among the mud roads, wooden houses and actual characters of the shtetl.
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There is no shortage of ferment in India’s relations with Sri Lanka. Some of it is manufactured, some of it is genuine and some of it is India’s fault. But compared to the mess it was during the civil war, bilateral relations at the government level are arguably the best they have been since independence. Read more
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There are many arguments made in favour of subsidies, especailly energy subsidies. In a country like India, the most obvious argument is that they give a leg up to a huge mass of poor people who would otherwise find cooking, transportation and whatnot cripplingly expensive. Read more
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There are many, especially in India, who see the Arab spring as a terrible thing. Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak and the like may have been dictators, but they were secular and, at a stretch, represented the first wave of postwar Arab nationalism. Now they are gone, Islamicist groups are capturing power, and the threat to regional stability and the curdling of India’s Muslim ethos is rising. Read more
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It’s been 50 years since Maoist China inflicted a humiliating military defeat on Nehruvian India in the mountain border areas of the Aksai Chin and what is today called Arunachal Pradesh. India’s strategic community has already begun quiet dissections of the war. The Indian political class is too focussed on the crumbling Manmohan Singh government to care.
Much of the Indian debate is about the poverty of the Indian response. This includes Nehru’s naivete about the conduct of dispute diplomacy. It is not that Nehru trusted China, but that he got it into his head that a military response had somehow been ruled out. He was little helped by the likes of Krishna Menon (why does A.K. Anthony rmind me of him?) who believed only Western imperialism was a threat. There is also no dearth of Indian accounts of the mess that underinvestment in military everything, politicized appointments and so on had made of the soldiery.
What continues to interest me is why did Mao Zedong feel the need to authorize such a huge military response to Indian incursions which while provocative were hardly threatening.
Based on what we have since learnt, whether Chinese memoirs, Beijing leaderships’ conversations with foreigners and other declassified sources, Mao did not see India as a threat by itself. And when he authorised Chinese troops to go on the offensive, he wasn’t even sure his troops would win. If we loose, he told his generals, we have only ourselves to blame.
So what made him take such a risk? Let us count the whys.
One, which Zhou Enlai was to tell the Mongolians, India was getting too close to the West and needed to be taught a lesson. A number of scholars have dug up the Beijing Review articles and People’s Daily editorials in the run up to the war making similar warnings. and there is no doubt that the US and India were drifting together — largely because the the democracies shared concerns about China after the conquest of Tibet.
Two, Zhou Enlai also told the Americans that India had become “too cocky” and had to be taken down a notch. This reflects Mao’s concerns that Nehru’s third world leadership ambitions were running interference with his own.
Three, there is evidence Mao wanted to humiliate India to teach the Soviet Union a lesson. Khrushchev had begun wooing India at this point as part of the new Moscow line of “peaceful coexistence.” In 1959, when the first skirmishes broke out, an angry Khrushchev told Beijing to stop undermining Soviet policy and being ” irresponsible.”
Four, the international stars were in alignment in 1962. Moscow gave him a green light against India because it was planning the Cuban missile crisis. He had got word from the US that it would not support a Taiwan invasion of China — which removed Mao’s fear of a two front war. As were the domestic ones: Mao was reconsolidating by then after the disasters of the Great Leap Forward and other socialist nonsense.
A lot of Beijing’s analysis of India is wrong. The border war didn’t stop India from moving closer to the US. In fact, Nehru called for a military alliance which the US rejected. What stopped India moving westward was the US ’s refusal to sign a five year defence cooperation agreement with India after the war. New Delhi went and signed it with Moscow instead. China seemed oblivious to how its own actions in Tibet had led India to tilt against it. Zhou told the Mongolians that Pakistan had been ready to give away Kashmir to India if it hadn’t been for China’s trouncing of India — something that will surprise any South Asian.
Sadly, Chinese knowledge of India is only marginally better today. And Indian understanding of China is about the same.
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Sunday, October 11, 2009
Did an MGM lion really kill its trainer?
: mgm lion killed trainer; volney phifer
Why: On the Cargo Collective project LEARN SOMETHING EVERY DAY:
Other versions say he "ate his trainer and two assistants."
Answer: Probably not! The only things that mention this are the same types of sites, like Factropolis. Don't believe everything you read!
The first lion used for the logo was named Slats. He was used on all black and white films from 1924 to 1928. The lion was a tribute to logo designer Howard Dietz's alma mater Columbia University, whose mascot was the lion. Trainer Volney Phifer taught Slats to growl rather than roar. He is the only MGM lion who you can't hear (silent movies and all) - all he does it look around.
For years, Slats would tour with MGM promoters to signify the studio's launch. During this time, he survived 2 train wrecks, a flood in Mississippi, an earthquake in California, a fire, and a plane crash. Slats died in 1936 at age 23 and was buried on Phifer's farm in New Jersey.
So the MGM lions so far have been:
1. Slats (used 1924-28) - did not kill and eat trainer or assistants
2. Jackie (1928-56) - roar played on a gramophone for silent movie watchers
3. Telly (1927-32) - part of a two-strip Technicolor sequence
4. Coffee (1932-35) - part of a two-strip Technicolor sequence; in one, he roars 3 times instead of twice
5. Tanner (1934-56) - used in all Technicolor MGM films, including The Wizard of Oz
6. George (1956-58) - had two different versions of roaring in different directions
7. Leo (1957-present) - has a smaller mane than everyone else because he was younger when filmed; said to be trained with "affection training" rather than whips and beating, which made him very docile
...none of whom reportedly killed / ate anyone.
Source: Wikipedia, Behind the Curtain, Animal Fair
The More You Know: Another anecdote about an MGM lion... It claims to be the "original," but that doesn't make any sense, so I think it must be about Tanner:
Despite its fine cast, Edward Finney's Queen of the Amazons (1947) was shot on a shoestring budget. Though it featured the original MGM lion, for example, the poor beast was so advanced in years that he had no teeth and producers were obliged to have a false set made. One summer day on the set, the lion was supposed to attack the hero (his trainer) but it was so hot that whenever the director was ready to shoot, the lion would lie down and refuse to budge.
Finally, after several takes, someone opened the soundstage doors to let in some fresh air and the lion stirred; indeed, while no one was looking, he got up and disappeared. He was later found wandering around Hollywood's Western Avenue terrifying pedestrians with his false teeth.
toodvs4u said...
Umm. If Slats died in 1936, how could he be in a movie filmed in 1947?
Carly said...
Anonymous said...
The same lion wasn't in the movie made in 1947; it was a different lion. If you read the rest of the article, it discusses ALL of the lions MGM used.
Anonymous said...
There are FIVE MGM lions. One would conclude the aforementioned lion was Slats' predecessor.
Anonymous said...
Stupid fucks
Anonymous said...
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Brandon Staples lifts his helmet to check on the settings of the electricity transformer as he coaches a classmate through a stick weld during a DMACC welding certification class. The helmets react to the flash of light from a weld by automatically darkening.
October 9, 2013
In the back of a former Harley-Davidson motorcycle shop in Carroll, Jack Thompson forges a vital tool for the manufacturing industry in today's economy - the modern welder.
This fall, Des Moines Area Community College implemented a two-semester welding-certification program to address the rapidly growing need for welders in the workplace, both in the local economy, and across the state and nation.
"Ultimately, we're trying to get them eligible to work so they can finish the program while they work because we know there's a shortage out there," DMACC provost Steve Schulz said of the accelerated program. "The shop isn't overly fancy at this point, but the equipment is quite good. We're trying to send out a well-rounded person."
There are four main types of welding, explained Thompson: metal inert gas (MIG); tungsten inert gas (TIG); stick, a shielded metal arc welding process utilizing a self-contained rod; and oxy-fuel. MIG is the standard weld in production lines, while TIG, which is a cleaner, less-porous weld, is used primarily in the food industry. The tighter TIG weld is better at preventing bacteria buildup. Primarily used with aluminum, the process employs a hand-held gun and a filler rod, making the bead work more tedious than its MIG counterpart, which employs a large machine that runs a continuous feed from a 40-pound wire spool.
The industrial grade MIG welder at the DMACC shop is the same that would be used to build dump trucks at Scranton Manufacturing Co. Inc, located in Scranton, while the TIG is used liberally at Evapco Inc., located in Lake View, for items such as the exhaust fans that run over conveyor belts in food-packaging plants, said Schulz, adding that markets for such products are expanding rapidly in India and Russia.
Students at DMACC practice all four types of welds. Classes include MIG 1 and MIG 2, math for technicians, blueprint reading and prefabrication, which includes structuring metal to build things through bending, shearing, slicing and dicing. Classes also include instruction on the use of hand grinders and plasma cutters. At the end of the course, welds are sent off to be tested for execution and strength.
"A weld has to create a fusion of both metals," Thompson explained. "You're putting in a filler metal that fuses back into the metal as it melts it together. Most times the actual weld is stronger than the original material."
Once approved, the students receive their American Welding Society certification, marking them nationally qualified.
The program currently accommodates 10 people at a time. This fall's class is comprised primarily of nontraditional students, including a lawyer and a retired art teacher who wanted to learn welding as a hobby. Several students are currently employed in the field but want to complete their certification. Others are seeking a change in profession. One such student has worked in salons, at New Hope, and in the Carroll and Kuemper school districts; she joined the welding class following a divorce, viewing the abundance of advertised welding jobs as an opportunity to provide a primary income for herself.
Starting pay for welders in the area generally ranges from $15 to $18 per hour, said Thompson. In union shops, or areas closer to larger cities, this starting salary can jump up to the mid-$20s per hour.
Because welding is an area in which the state has identified a shortage of workers, students who meet certain income-eligibility guidelines can receive GAP tuition assistance, essentially taking the welding classes tuition free.
"There is such a shortage of welders, everybody recognizes it," said Schulz. "That's why everybody is gearing up these programs like we're trying to do here."
DMACC has offered basic welding classes for more than a decade, but as part of the maintenance program, said Thompson, who has been a DMACC instructor for 14 years.
"Maintenance people may need to step into different areas and do different types of welds," he said. "Now we're stepping up to the next level where we can get people in here to do nothing but weld."
"We've had two-year welding degrees, but that's too long," confirmed Schulz. "We want to shorten the time frame up and offer a quicker way into the job market, not only for employees, but for employers, to meet the demand."
Ideally, DMACC hopes to expand its program to reach high school students as well, eventually enabling them to graduate with both the welding certificate and their high school diploma.
"The whole deal now is how do you get young kids interested in welding," said Schulz. "They have to have some experience to get them to take up some of those jobs."
Thompson plans to offer another round of classes in the spring as well. Registration for the program will be open through Jan. 7. For more information on the program, or tuition assistance, call DMACC at 712-792-1755. | <urn:uuid:6073d086-7ce5-4ca1-99f2-7a2303614d3e> | 3 | 2.625 | 0.053187 | en | 0.962513 | http://carrollspaper.com/Content/Local-News-Archive/Local-News/Article/DMACC-expands-welding-program-to-address-needs-of-local-economy/1/1/16615 |
Should London be independent?
A debate is raging about whether London should be separated from the rest of the country. Clarendon weighs up the pros and cons.
Is London really out of kilter with the rest of the UK? While the rest of the country struggles to see the back of the recession, London is bouncing back. It attracts major investment and is home to Europe’s principal financial capital. The truth is London isn’t the same as the rest of the UK.
Property is often the starting point for any conversation about how London stands alone. Property prices have risen by over 15% since the start of the financial crisis. Much of the property rise is linked to its status as a financial hub. International wealth flocks to London, increasing prices and status. That wealth ensured that London didn’t have a recession for as long as the rest of the country. Its economy grew by nearly 12.5% between 2007 and 2011, twice as fast as the rest of the UK.
People in London give more back to the national economy. The Office of National Statistics claims the average Londoner contributes 70% more to Britain’s national income than people in the rest of the country, around £16,000 each a year.
Perhaps it would be better for London to separate from the rest of the UK. Yet it’s true that travellers from around Britain travel to the capital and benefit from its financial status. Travel times and networks are less than across the north of England for example. HS2 will only improve that.
Yet all the wealth in London doesn’t stop it being one of the most expensive places to live on earth. The reason Londoners contribute so much more to the UK economy is because their rates and bills are much higher than anywhere else. Property prices means the average Londoner is unlikely to be able to afford a property until they are well into their 40s or 50s.
As a serviced apartment provider in London for over 25 years, Clarendon has seen the prosperity in the City and a number of business travellers flocking to the Capital in search of serviced apartments in Canary Wharf, the City, the West End and South West London close to where they work. From Clarendon’s point of view, London is unique from the rest of the country and is a separate state on its own and this is demonstrated by how quick it bounced back after the recession, whilst other areas are still suffering.
Yet that status doesn’t mean a moat should be built around the capital to separate it from the rest of the country. Business travellers don’t just come from Europe but from around the country and serviced apartment providers like Clarendon make it easier for them to benefit from London’s powerhouse status and make some much needed money. London should be recognised for the unique status it has within the rest of the UK but it should always be easy for its wealth and success to be spread around the country, especially if it means encourages businesses to come and stay in the capital more often.
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Friday, March 7, 2014
Literary periods, movements, and all sorts of other fun
I'm in the middle of a few reviews which I've had a tough time finishing, for some reason. So, I thought, why not do the meme over at the Classics Club (which I've been neglecting the past few months)?
What is your favorite "classic" literary period and why?
First, a little background on literary periods and movements in general. Some people have mentioned that they don't really know which authors belong to which periods, etc. I wouldn't call myself an expert on literary history, but I've been studying it for over 3 years, so I do know a thing or two about it.
One thing that seems to confuse people is the difference between literary periods and literary movements. So, in case you're wondering, here's my understanding of periods and movements: A period is simply a space in time, but it's often confined to a certain part of the world. So, anyone who wrote during that time period, in that particular place, was part of that period. A movement, on the other hand, is when a bunch of authors decided to write in a certain way at a certain time. So, not everyone in the country at the time is actually part of the movement.
Movements are kind of tricky, at least for me. Some people are very obviously part of a certain movement. For example, Dante Gabriel Rosetti was clearly a Pre-Raphaelite. No doubt about that. Emerson was obviously a Transcendentalist. But what about authors that didn't firmly identify with a particular movement? There are about a million and one authors that have been identified as "realists," it seems. "Modernism" is another sketchy one.
Another problem is that we often lump authors into a certain period or movement and make assumptions about them. Not all Enlightenment writers were all about science, for example. We focus on certain important aspects of the literary period and then assume that these characteristics were shared among all the authors.
For these reasons, I'm a little wary of talking about literary periods. I've never found that there was one literary period, or even literary movement, that really resonated with me. Every time I started thinking about a period I really liked, I'd immediately think, "But wait, I don't like so-and-so from that era very much..."
There are certain periods that I do feel drawn to, though. So, after that long introduction, here's my actual answer to the question:
My first response would be Modernism. I'm positively fascinated by some Modernists, like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Forster, Woolf, and various others. On the other hand, there are Modernists I really dislike, like Faulkner, Joyce, Lawrence, and even *please do not throw stones* T.S. Eliot. I really don't like when Modernists get on their ultra-high horse. And they do. A lot.
I've also always been drawn to the Victorians. I feel like Victorianism is the first time period where the literature felt so genuine and sincere. They told things the way they were and weren't as afraid of taboo subjects. I love George Eliot, Christina Rosetti, Tennyson, Gaskell, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold...and the list goes on. But I feel very lukewarm about Dickens. And I'm not sure that any person who feels lukewarm about Dickens really deserves to be called a lover of the Victorians. (Please tell me I'm wrong!)
Lower down on the list, I'm a little more interested in 18th-century literature than I used to be (Pamela and Evelina had a part in changing my mind), and I've also found more of an interest in the Romantics lately (Romanticism--period? Movement? I don't know anymore!).
Basically, I don't have a favorite literary period. (Yes, it took me this long to actually come to this conclusion. Sigh. Conciseness isn't my strong suit.) I do have some periods I emphatically do not enjoy (Classical, Postmodern, ancient). But, probably like most people, I can find something to like about most literary periods.
P.S. If you're more interested in reading what I think about the authors I've mentioned, please click the links. Aside from the first link to the Classics Club, they are all links to my own past posts, not affiliated sites or anything like that. I'm not trying to make money off you--I'm just trying to make my past content accessible. Thanks!
1. I'm the same; I can usually find something to like in just about every literary period. I think studying literature also helped with that. You get to try reading things you might never have thought of.
I'm also a fan of the Victorians. I don't think it's necessary to love Dickens, though; the period is full of wonderful writers who sometimes get overshadowed by Dickens. :)
2. Hi, I recently discovered your blog, and I love it so far. Lovely and insightful posts that you write :-D.
Very interesting what you said about periods and movements. I think it usually happens that when you delve deeper into any subject you soon realise tags and classifications can only get you so far.
And I can't even begin to tell you how much I agree with you regarding T.S. Eliot, so, no, you won't have me throwing stones.
And of course it's alright not to love Dickens, it just means you have your own (informed) opinion, which is good.
Bye :-).
1. Thank you for coming; I'm glad you like my blog! Definitely true about classifications--there comes a point when they just don't work anymore. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way about Eliot! And thank you for the reassurance about Dickens. :)
3. You don't have to love Dickens :) Personally, I think Dickens is a bit hit and miss. There's some novels which are genius (in my mind), and others that simply don't cut it.
"I feel like Victorianism is the first time period where the literature felt so genuine and sincere" - I love that. Exactly how I feel :)
1. Thank you for that reassurance; I really want to love Dickens, but I just can't find it in me. Maybe someday.
Thank you! I actually feel like I should specify that I was talking specifically about British literature; I don't see as clear a divide of sincerity in other literatures (for instance, I'm not sure that American literature got very sincere until the very end of the 19th century). I guess that's an entirely different subject...
4. I don't love Dickens either! Half the time, I don't even like him much. We can be outcasts together :-)
5. Hello Emily, just wanted to let you know I've nominated you for the Sunflower Blogger Award: | <urn:uuid:63b953b7-a52c-4545-bfe1-f7890b9cf4c5> | 2 | 1.71875 | 0.433542 | en | 0.978237 | http://classicsandbeyond.blogspot.com/2014/03/literary-periods-movements-and-all.html |
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Computer Networking FAQ #18
The 5-4-3-2-1 rule of computer network design
This one gets asked on many entry-level and intermediate-level networking exams.
Q. "What is the 5-4-3-2-1 rule of network design?"
A. The 5-4-3-2-1 rule embodies a simple recipe for network design. It may not be easy to find examples in practice, but this rule neatly ties together several important elements of design theory... (See below)
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"All computers connected by the same length of coax, or by hubs/repeaters, are said to be in the same collision domain. That is, if any two of them transmit at the same time, a collision will occur.
If the collision domain is too large, it would be possible for two machines to transmit at the same time and to finish their transmision before they heard the other transmision. A collision would have occured, but neither of them would know so they wouldn't retransmit. Obviously this is not a good situation, hence the 5-4-3-2-1 rule."
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... . To understand this rule, it's first necessary to understand the concepts of collision domains and propagation delay. Collision domains are portions of a network. When a network packet is transmitted over Ethernet, for example, it is possible for another packet from a different source to be transmitted close enough in time to the first packet to cause a collision on the wire. The total range over which a packet can travel and potentially collide with another is its collision domain.
Propagation delays are a property of the physical medium (e.g., Ethernet). Propagation delays help determine how much of a time difference between the sending of two packets on a collision domain is "close enough" to actually cause a collision. The greater the propagation delay, the increased likelihood of collisons.
The 5-4-3-2-1 rule limits the range of a collision domain by limiting the propagation delay to a "reasonable" amount of time. The rule breaks down as follows:
5 - the number of network segments
4 - the number of repeaters needed to join the segments into one collision domain
3 - the number of network segments that have active (transmitting) devices attached
2 - the number of segments that do not have active devices attached
1 - the number of collision domains
Because the last two elements of the recipe follow naturally from the others, this rule is sometimes also known as the "5-4-3" rule for short.
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Relativity goes to the dogs
Matt Milless
Physics professor Chad Orzel and his dog Emmy go in search of the bacon boson and other scientific mysteries — a quest documented in Orzel's latest book, "How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog."
Teaching relativity to a dog may sound like a hopeless mental exercise, but physics professor Chad Orzel says it actually makes the job of teaching relativity to humans easier.
"It makes the whole thing seem much more approachable," Orzel explains. "If you think like a dog, dogs have fewer preconceptions about how things work."
And Orzel's dog, a German shepherd mix named Emmy, won't let him get away with hand-waving gobbledygook. "A lot of the things that she interjects with, those are points where people reading along would say, 'Wait a minute! That doesn't make sense!'" he said.
Of course, Orzel isn't really teaching relativity to his dog. Rather, Emmy serves as the straight man — er, dog — for a scientific dialogue that makes the equations go down more easily. Such dialogues are standard rhetorical devices that go back to Democritus, Socrates, Plato and all those cats in ancient Greece. It's a technique that Orzel used to crowd-pleasing effect in his 2009 book about quantum mechanics, "How to Teach Physics to Your Dog" — and now Emmy is back for more in the newly published sequel, "How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog."
"If you've already talked about quantum physics, relativity is the obvious way to go," Orzel told me. "It's the other great theory of modern physics."
Orzel, who teaches physics at Union College in New York, said that Albert Einstein's special and general theories of relativity can actually be boiled down to one sentence. "All of the weird stuff you hear about E=mc2, clocks running slow when they move, time moving at different rates near a black hole ... all of that weird stuff is just a consequence of the fact that the laws of physics do not depend on how you're moving," he said.
Basic Books
"How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog" isn't just for dog lovers ... or relativity lovers, for that matter.
And if there's one thing dogs know a lot about, it's moving. So Orzel casts his explanations of the weird stuff in terms a dog just might be able to understand: For example, when he refers to the speed of light in a vacuum as remaining constant, no matter how it's measured in a moving frame of reference, he doesn't use the standard example of moving rocket ships. Instead, Orzel talks to Emmy about bunnies, cats and dogs in motion.
At times, Emmy tries to jump into the driver's seat with her inquiries into the Unified Theory of Critters, or her plans to build the Superconducting Kibble Collider and search for the bacon boson. ("It's responsible for making other kinds of particles yummy," she explains in the book.) Then it's Orzel's job to tug on the leash and get Emmy's head back in the game. And after a chuckle or two, we're ready to press on as well.
"Because of the dog, I'm able to get away putting some stuff in there that I otherwise wouldn't be able to," Orzel told me. "You can put in some heavy stuff and lighten the tone quite a bit."
That's not to say Orzel has turned relativity into a romp in the park. The book still poses quite a few mental agility trials — particularly when it comes to the counterintuitive aspects of relativistic phenomena, such as the famous "twin paradox." But as much as possible, Orzel highlights the concrete, real-world examples of relativity at work, such as the fact that a height difference of just 12 inches has an ever-so-slight impact on timekeeping, due to the relativistic effects of our planet's gravitational field. The same effects have to be accounted for in GPS satellite navigation systems.
"That shows that this isn't purely some incredibly exotic thing," Orzel said. "It's something that happens in everyday situations. It's just that the effects are usually too small to measure."
So now that Chad Orzel and his dog Emmy have run circles around the two great pillars of modern physics — quantum mechanics and relativity theory — what's next?
"We'll have to see what the dog wants to talk about," Orzel joked. "A few people have asked about statistical physics, but I'm thinking I don't know if even the dog wants to do that."
More about Einstein and relativity:
| <urn:uuid:7c492172-0ce0-48cd-8696-f6b41d0b523b> | 3 | 2.578125 | 0.509161 | en | 0.963235 | http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/03/19/10764816-relativity-goes-to-the-dogs |
SQLAlchemy 0.5 Documentation
Release: 0.5.8 | Release Date: January 16, 2010 | Download PDF
SQLAlchemy 0.5 Documentation » SQL Expression Language Tutorial
SQL Expression Language Tutorial
SQL Expression Language Tutorial
This tutorial will cover SQLAlchemy SQL Expressions, which are Python constructs that represent SQL statements. The tutorial is in doctest format, meaning each >>> line represents something you can type at a Python command prompt, and the following text represents the expected return value. The tutorial has no prerequisites.
Version Check
A quick check to verify that we are on at least version 0.5 of SQLAlchemy:
>>> import sqlalchemy
>>> sqlalchemy.__version__
For this tutorial we will use an in-memory-only SQLite database. This is an easy way to test things without needing to have an actual database defined anywhere. To connect we use create_engine():
>>> from sqlalchemy import create_engine
Define and Create Tables
The SQL Expression Language constructs its expressions in most cases against table columns. In SQLAlchemy, a column is most often represented by an object called Column, and in all cases a Column is associated with a Table. A collection of Table objects and their associated child objects is referred to as database metadata. In this tutorial we will explicitly lay out several Table objects, but note that SA can also “import” whole sets of Table objects automatically from an existing database (this process is called table reflection).
We define our tables all within a catalog called MetaData, using the Table construct, which resembles regular SQL CREATE TABLE statements. We’ll make two tables, one of which represents “users” in an application, and another which represents zero or more “email addreses” for each row in the “users” table:
>>> from sqlalchemy import Table, Column, Integer, String, MetaData, ForeignKey
>>> metadata = MetaData()
>>> users = Table('users', metadata,
... Column('name', String),
... Column('fullname', String),
... )
>>> addresses = Table('addresses', metadata,
... Column('user_id', None, ForeignKey('users.id')),
... Column('email_address', String, nullable=False)
... )
All about how to define Table objects, as well as how to create them from an existing database automatically, is described in Database Meta Data.
Next, to tell the MetaData we’d actually like to create our selection of tables for real inside the SQLite database, we use create_all(), passing it the engine instance which points to our database. This will check for the presence of each table first before creating, so it’s safe to call multiple times:
sql>>> metadata.create_all(engine)
Users familiar with the syntax of CREATE TABLE may notice that the VARCHAR columns were generated without a length; on SQLite, this is a valid datatype, but on most databases it’s not allowed. So if running this tutorial on a database such as PostgreSQL or MySQL, and you wish to use SQLAlchemy to generate the tables, a “length” may be provided to the String type as below:
Column('name', String(50))
The length field on String, as well as similar fields available on Integer, Numeric, etc. are not referenced by SQLAlchemy other than when creating tables.
Insert Expressions
The first SQL expression we’ll create is the Insert construct, which represents an INSERT statement. This is typically created relative to its target table:
>>> ins = users.insert()
To see a sample of the SQL this construct produces, use the str() function:
>>> str(ins)
'INSERT INTO users (id, name, fullname) VALUES (:id, :name, :fullname)'
Notice above that the INSERT statement names every column in the users table. This can be limited by using the values() method, which establishes the VALUES clause of the INSERT explicitly:
>>> ins = users.insert().values(name='jack', fullname='Jack Jones')
>>> str(ins)
'INSERT INTO users (name, fullname) VALUES (:name, :fullname)'
Above, while the values method limited the VALUES clause to just two columns, the actual data we placed in values didn’t get rendered into the string; instead we got named bind parameters. As it turns out, our data is stored within our Insert construct, but it typically only comes out when the statement is actually executed; since the data consists of literal values, SQLAlchemy automatically generates bind parameters for them. We can peek at this data for now by looking at the compiled form of the statement:
>>> ins.compile().params
{'fullname': 'Jack Jones', 'name': 'jack'}
The interesting part of an Insert is executing it. In this tutorial, we will generally focus on the most explicit method of executing a SQL construct, and later touch upon some “shortcut” ways to do it. The engine object we created is a repository for database connections capable of issuing SQL to the database. To acquire a connection, we use the connect() method:
>>> conn = engine.connect()
>>> conn
<sqlalchemy.engine.base.Connection object at 0x...>
The Connection object represents an actively checked out DBAPI connection resource. Lets feed it our Insert object and see what happens:
>>> result = conn.execute(ins)
INSERT INTO users (name, fullname) VALUES (?, ?) ['jack', 'Jack Jones'] COMMIT
So the INSERT statement was now issued to the database. Although we got positional “qmark” bind parameters instead of “named” bind parameters in the output. How come ? Because when executed, the Connection used the SQLite dialect to help generate the statement; when we use the str() function, the statement isn’t aware of this dialect, and falls back onto a default which uses named parameters. We can view this manually as follows:
>>> ins.bind = engine
>>> str(ins)
'INSERT INTO users (name, fullname) VALUES (?, ?)'
What about the result variable we got when we called execute() ? As the SQLAlchemy Connection object references a DBAPI connection, the result, known as a ResultProxy object, is analogous to the DBAPI cursor object. In the case of an INSERT, we can get important information from it, such as the primary key values which were generated from our statement:
>>> result.last_inserted_ids()
The value of 1 was automatically generated by SQLite, but only because we did not specify the id column in our Insert statement; otherwise, our explicit value would have been used. In either case, SQLAlchemy always knows how to get at a newly generated primary key value, even though the method of generating them is different across different databases; each databases’ Dialect knows the specific steps needed to determine the correct value (or values; note that last_inserted_ids() returns a list so that it supports composite primary keys).
Executing Multiple Statements
Our insert example above was intentionally a little drawn out to show some various behaviors of expression language constructs. In the usual case, an Insert statement is usually compiled against the parameters sent to the execute() method on Connection, so that there’s no need to use the values keyword with Insert. Lets create a generic Insert statement again and use it in the “normal” way:
>>> ins = users.insert()
>>> conn.execute(ins, id=2, name='wendy', fullname='Wendy Williams')
INSERT INTO users (id, name, fullname) VALUES (?, ?, ?) [2, 'wendy', 'Wendy Williams'] COMMIT
<sqlalchemy.engine.base.ResultProxy object at 0x...>
Above, because we specified all three columns in the the execute() method, the compiled Insert included all three columns. The Insert statement is compiled at execution time based on the parameters we specified; if we specified fewer parameters, the Insert would have fewer entries in its VALUES clause.
To issue many inserts using DBAPI’s executemany() method, we can send in a list of dictionaries each containing a distinct set of parameters to be inserted, as we do here to add some email addresses:
>>> conn.execute(addresses.insert(), [
... {'user_id': 1, 'email_address' : '[email protected]'},
... {'user_id': 1, 'email_address' : '[email protected]'},
... {'user_id': 2, 'email_address' : '[email protected]'},
... {'user_id': 2, 'email_address' : '[email protected]'},
... ])
INSERT INTO addresses (user_id, email_address) VALUES (?, ?) [[1, '[email protected]'], [1, '[email protected]'], [2, '[email protected]'], [2, '[email protected]']] COMMIT
<sqlalchemy.engine.base.ResultProxy object at 0x...>
Above, we again relied upon SQLite’s automatic generation of primary key identifiers for each addresses row.
When executing multiple sets of parameters, each dictionary must have the same set of keys; i.e. you cant have fewer keys in some dictionaries than others. This is because the Insert statement is compiled against the first dictionary in the list, and it’s assumed that all subsequent argument dictionaries are compatible with that statement.
Connectionless / Implicit Execution
We’re executing our Insert using a Connection. There’s two options that allow you to not have to deal with the connection part. You can execute in the connectionless style, using the engine, which opens and closes a connection for you:
sql>>> result = engine.execute(users.insert(), name='fred', fullname="Fred Flintstone")
and you can save even more steps than that, if you connect the Engine to the MetaData object we created earlier. When this is done, all SQL expressions which involve tables within the MetaData object will be automatically bound to the Engine. In this case, we call it implicit execution:
>>> metadata.bind = engine
sql>>> result = users.insert().execute(name="mary", fullname="Mary Contrary")
When the MetaData is bound, statements will also compile against the engine’s dialect. Since a lot of the examples here assume the default dialect, we’ll detach the engine from the metadata which we just attached:
>>> metadata.bind = None
Detailed examples of connectionless and implicit execution are available in the “Engines” chapter: Connectionless Execution, Implicit Execution.
We began with inserts just so that our test database had some data in it. The more interesting part of the data is selecting it ! We’ll cover UPDATE and DELETE statements later. The primary construct used to generate SELECT statements is the select() function:
>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import select
>>> s = select([users])
>>> result = conn.execute(s)
SELECT users.id, users.name, users.fullname FROM users []
Above, we issued a basic select() call, placing the users table within the COLUMNS clause of the select, and then executing. SQLAlchemy expanded the users table into the set of each of its columns, and also generated a FROM clause for us. The result returned is again a ResultProxy object, which acts much like a DBAPI cursor, including methods such as fetchone() and fetchall(). The easiest way to get rows from it is to just iterate:
>>> for row in result:
... print row
(1, u'jack', u'Jack Jones')
(2, u'wendy', u'Wendy Williams')
(3, u'fred', u'Fred Flintstone')
(4, u'mary', u'Mary Contrary')
Above, we see that printing each row produces a simple tuple-like result. We have more options at accessing the data in each row. One very common way is through dictionary access, using the string names of columns:
sql>>> result = conn.execute(s)
>>> row = result.fetchone()
>>> print "name:", row['name'], "; fullname:", row['fullname']
name: jack ; fullname: Jack Jones
Integer indexes work as well:
>>> row = result.fetchone()
>>> print "name:", row[1], "; fullname:", row[2]
name: wendy ; fullname: Wendy Williams
But another way, whose usefulness will become apparent later on, is to use the Column objects directly as keys:
sql>>> for row in conn.execute(s):
... print "name:", row[users.c.name], "; fullname:", row[users.c.fullname]
name: jack ; fullname: Jack Jones
name: wendy ; fullname: Wendy Williams
name: fred ; fullname: Fred Flintstone
name: mary ; fullname: Mary Contrary
Result sets which have pending rows remaining should be explicitly closed before discarding. While the resources referenced by the ResultProxy will be closed when the object is garbage collected, it’s better to make it explicit as some database APIs are very picky about such things:
>>> result.close()
If we’d like to more carefully control the columns which are placed in the COLUMNS clause of the select, we reference individual Column objects from our Table. These are available as named attributes off the c attribute of the Table object:
>>> s = select([users.c.name, users.c.fullname])
sql>>> result = conn.execute(s)
>>> for row in result:
... print row
(u'jack', u'Jack Jones')
(u'wendy', u'Wendy Williams')
(u'fred', u'Fred Flintstone')
(u'mary', u'Mary Contrary')
Lets observe something interesting about the FROM clause. Whereas the generated statement contains two distinct sections, a “SELECT columns” part and a “FROM table” part, our select() construct only has a list containing columns. How does this work ? Let’s try putting two tables into our select() statement:
sql>>> for row in conn.execute(select([users, addresses])):
... print row
(1, u'jack', u'Jack Jones', 1, 1, u'[email protected]')
(1, u'jack', u'Jack Jones', 2, 1, u'[email protected]')
(1, u'jack', u'Jack Jones', 3, 2, u'[email protected]')
(1, u'jack', u'Jack Jones', 4, 2, u'[email protected]')
(2, u'wendy', u'Wendy Williams', 1, 1, u'[email protected]')
(2, u'wendy', u'Wendy Williams', 2, 1, u'[email protected]')
(2, u'wendy', u'Wendy Williams', 3, 2, u'[email protected]')
(2, u'wendy', u'Wendy Williams', 4, 2, u'[email protected]')
(3, u'fred', u'Fred Flintstone', 1, 1, u'[email protected]')
(3, u'fred', u'Fred Flintstone', 2, 1, u'[email protected]')
(3, u'fred', u'Fred Flintstone', 3, 2, u'[email protected]')
(3, u'fred', u'Fred Flintstone', 4, 2, u'[email protected]')
(4, u'mary', u'Mary Contrary', 1, 1, u'[email protected]')
(4, u'mary', u'Mary Contrary', 2, 1, u'[email protected]')
(4, u'mary', u'Mary Contrary', 3, 2, u'[email protected]')
(4, u'mary', u'Mary Contrary', 4, 2, u'[email protected]')
It placed both tables into the FROM clause. But also, it made a real mess. Those who are familiar with SQL joins know that this is a Cartesian product; each row from the users table is produced against each row from the addresses table. So to put some sanity into this statement, we need a WHERE clause. Which brings us to the second argument of select():
>>> s = select([users, addresses], users.c.id==addresses.c.user_id)
sql>>> for row in conn.execute(s):
... print row
So that looks a lot better, we added an expression to our select() which had the effect of adding WHERE users.id = addresses.user_id to our statement, and our results were managed down so that the join of users and addresses rows made sense. But let’s look at that expression? It’s using just a Python equality operator between two different Column objects. It should be clear that something is up. Saying 1==1 produces True, and 1==2 produces False, not a WHERE clause. So lets see exactly what that expression is doing:
>>> users.c.id==addresses.c.user_id
<sqlalchemy.sql.expression._BinaryExpression object at 0x...>
Wow, surprise ! This is neither a True nor a False. Well what is it ?
>>> str(users.c.id==addresses.c.user_id)
'users.id = addresses.user_id'
As you can see, the == operator is producing an object that is very much like the Insert and select() objects we’ve made so far, thanks to Python’s __eq__() builtin; you call str() on it and it produces SQL. By now, one can that everything we are working with is ultimately the same type of object. SQLAlchemy terms the base class of all of these expressions as sqlalchemy.sql.ClauseElement.
Since we’ve stumbled upon SQLAlchemy’s operator paradigm, let’s go through some of its capabilities. We’ve seen how to equate two columns to each other:
>>> print users.c.id==addresses.c.user_id
users.id = addresses.user_id
If we use a literal value (a literal meaning, not a SQLAlchemy clause object), we get a bind parameter:
>>> print users.c.id==7
users.id = :id_1
The 7 literal is embedded in ClauseElement; we can use the same trick we did with the Insert object to see it:
>>> (users.c.id==7).compile().params
{u'id_1': 7}
Most Python operators, as it turns out, produce a SQL expression here, like equals, not equals, etc.:
>>> print users.c.id != 7
users.id != :id_1
>>> # None converts to IS NULL
>>> print users.c.name == None
users.name IS NULL
>>> # reverse works too
>>> print 'fred' > users.c.name
users.name < :name_1
If we add two integer columns together, we get an addition expression:
>>> print users.c.id + addresses.c.id
users.id + addresses.id
Interestingly, the type of the Column is important ! If we use + with two string based columns (recall we put types like Integer and String on our Column objects at the beginning), we get something different:
>>> print users.c.name + users.c.fullname
users.name || users.fullname
Where || is the string concatenation operator used on most databases. But not all of them. MySQL users, fear not:
>>> print (users.c.name + users.c.fullname).compile(bind=create_engine('mysql://'))
concat(users.name, users.fullname)
The above illustrates the SQL that’s generated for an Engine that’s connected to a MySQL database; the || operator now compiles as MySQL’s concat() function.
If you have come across an operator which really isn’t available, you can always use the op() method; this generates whatever operator you need:
>>> print users.c.name.op('tiddlywinks')('foo')
users.name tiddlywinks :name_1
This function can also be used to make bitwise operators explicit. For example:
is a bitwise AND of the value in somecolumn.
We’d like to show off some of our operators inside of select() constructs. But we need to lump them together a little more, so let’s first introduce some conjunctions. Conjunctions are those little words like AND and OR that put things together. We’ll also hit upon NOT. AND, OR and NOT can work from the corresponding functions SQLAlchemy provides (notice we also throw in a LIKE):
>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import and_, or_, not_
>>> print and_(users.c.name.like('j%'), users.c.id==addresses.c.user_id,
... or_(addresses.c.email_address=='[email protected]', addresses.c.email_address=='[email protected]'),
... not_(users.c.id>5))
users.name LIKE :name_1 AND users.id = addresses.user_id AND
(addresses.email_address = :email_address_1 OR addresses.email_address = :email_address_2)
AND users.id <= :id_1
And you can also use the re-jiggered bitwise AND, OR and NOT operators, although because of Python operator precedence you have to watch your parenthesis:
>>> print users.c.name.like('j%') & (users.c.id==addresses.c.user_id) & \
... ((addresses.c.email_address=='[email protected]') | (addresses.c.email_address=='[email protected]')) \
... & ~(users.c.id>5)
users.name LIKE :name_1 AND users.id = addresses.user_id AND
(addresses.email_address = :email_address_1 OR addresses.email_address = :email_address_2)
AND users.id <= :id_1
So with all of this vocabulary, let’s select all users who have an email address at AOL or MSN, whose name starts with a letter between “m” and “z”, and we’ll also generate a column containing their full name combined with their email address. We will add two new constructs to this statement, between() and label(). between() produces a BETWEEN clause, and label() is used in a column expression to produce labels using the AS keyword; it’s recommended when selecting from expressions that otherwise would not have a name:
>>> s = select([(users.c.fullname + ", " + addresses.c.email_address).label('title')],
... and_(
... users.c.id==addresses.c.user_id,
... users.c.name.between('m', 'z'),
... or_(
... addresses.c.email_address.like('%@aol.com'),
... addresses.c.email_address.like('%@msn.com')
... )
... )
... )
>>> print conn.execute(s).fetchall()
SELECT users.fullname || ? || addresses.email_address AS title
FROM users, addresses
WHERE users.id = addresses.user_id AND users.name BETWEEN ? AND ? AND
(addresses.email_address LIKE ? OR addresses.email_address LIKE ?)
[', ', 'm', 'z', '%@aol.com', '%@msn.com']
[(u'Wendy Williams, [email protected]',)]
Once again, SQLAlchemy figured out the FROM clause for our statement. In fact it will determine the FROM clause based on all of its other bits; the columns clause, the where clause, and also some other elements which we haven’t covered yet, which include ORDER BY, GROUP BY, and HAVING.
Using Text
Our last example really became a handful to type. Going from what one understands to be a textual SQL expression into a Python construct which groups components together in a programmatic style can be hard. That’s why SQLAlchemy lets you just use strings too. The text() construct represents any textual statement. To use bind parameters with text(), always use the named colon format. Such as below, we create a text() and execute it, feeding in the bind parameters to the execute() method:
>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import text
>>> s = text("""SELECT users.fullname || ', ' || addresses.email_address AS title
... FROM users, addresses
... WHERE users.id = addresses.user_id AND users.name BETWEEN :x AND :y AND
... (addresses.email_address LIKE :e1 OR addresses.email_address LIKE :e2)
... """)
sql>>> print conn.execute(s, x='m', y='z', e1='%@aol.com', e2='%@msn.com').fetchall()
[(u'Wendy Williams, [email protected]',)]
To gain a “hybrid” approach, the select() construct accepts strings for most of its arguments. Below we combine the usage of strings with our constructed select() object, by using the select() object to structure the statement, and strings to provide all the content within the structure. For this example, SQLAlchemy is not given any Column or Table objects in any of its expressions, so it cannot generate a FROM clause. So we also give it the from_obj keyword argument, which is a list of ClauseElements (or strings) to be placed within the FROM clause:
>>> s = select(["users.fullname || ', ' || addresses.email_address AS title"],
... and_(
... "users.id = addresses.user_id",
... "users.name BETWEEN 'm' AND 'z'",
... "(addresses.email_address LIKE :x OR addresses.email_address LIKE :y)"
... ),
... from_obj=['users', 'addresses']
... )
sql>>> print conn.execute(s, x='%@aol.com', y='%@msn.com').fetchall()
[(u'Wendy Williams, [email protected]',)]
Going from constructed SQL to text, we lose some capabilities. We lose the capability for SQLAlchemy to compile our expression to a specific target database; above, our expression won’t work with MySQL since it has no || construct. It also becomes more tedious for SQLAlchemy to be made aware of the datatypes in use; for example, if our bind parameters required UTF-8 encoding before going in, or conversion from a Python datetime into a string (as is required with SQLite), we would have to add extra information to our text() construct. Similar issues arise on the result set side, where SQLAlchemy also performs type-specific data conversion in some cases; still more information can be added to text() to work around this. But what we really lose from our statement is the ability to manipulate it, transform it, and analyze it. These features are critical when using the ORM, which makes heavy usage of relational transformations. To show off what we mean, we’ll first introduce the ALIAS construct and the JOIN construct, just so we have some juicier bits to play with.
Using Aliases
The alias corresponds to a “renamed” version of a table or arbitrary relation, which occurs anytime you say “SELECT .. FROM sometable AS someothername”. The AS creates a new name for the table. Aliases are super important in SQL as they allow you to reference the same table more than once. Scenarios where you need to do this include when you self-join a table to itself, or more commonly when you need to join from a parent table to a child table multiple times. For example, we know that our user jack has two email addresses. How can we locate jack based on the combination of those two addresses? We need to join twice to it. Let’s construct two distinct aliases for the addresses table and join:
>>> a1 = addresses.alias('a1')
>>> a2 = addresses.alias('a2')
>>> s = select([users], and_(
... users.c.id==a1.c.user_id,
... users.c.id==a2.c.user_id,
... a1.c.email_address=='[email protected]',
... a2.c.email_address=='[email protected]'
... ))
sql>>> print conn.execute(s).fetchall()
[(1, u'jack', u'Jack Jones')]
Easy enough. One thing that we’re going for with the SQL Expression Language is the melding of programmatic behavior with SQL generation. Coming up with names like a1 and a2 is messy; we really didn’t need to use those names anywhere, it’s just the database that needed them. Plus, we might write some code that uses alias objects that came from several different places, and it’s difficult to ensure that they all have unique names. So instead, we just let SQLAlchemy make the names for us, using “anonymous” aliases:
>>> a1 = addresses.alias()
>>> a2 = addresses.alias()
... users.c.id==a1.c.user_id,
... users.c.id==a2.c.user_id,
... ))
[(1, u'jack', u'Jack Jones')]
One super-huge advantage of anonymous aliases is that not only did we not have to guess up a random name, but we can also be guaranteed that the above SQL string is deterministically generated to be the same every time. This is important for databases such as Oracle which cache compiled “query plans” for their statements, and need to see the same SQL string in order to make use of it.
Aliases can of course be used for anything which you can SELECT from, including SELECT statements themselves. We can self-join the users table back to the select() we’ve created by making an alias of the entire statement. The correlate(None) directive is to avoid SQLAlchemy’s attempt to “correlate” the inner users table with the outer one:
>>> a1 = s.correlate(None).alias()
>>> s = select([users.c.name], users.c.id==a1.c.id)
Using Joins
We’re halfway along to being able to construct any SELECT expression. The next cornerstone of the SELECT is the JOIN expression. We’ve already been doing joins in our examples, by just placing two tables in either the columns clause or the where clause of the select() construct. But if we want to make a real “JOIN” or “OUTERJOIN” construct, we use the join() and outerjoin() methods, most commonly accessed from the left table in the join:
>>> print users.join(addresses)
users JOIN addresses ON users.id = addresses.user_id
The alert reader will see more surprises; SQLAlchemy figured out how to JOIN the two tables ! The ON condition of the join, as it’s called, was automatically generated based on the ForeignKey object which we placed on the addresses table way at the beginning of this tutorial. Already the join() construct is looking like a much better way to join tables.
Of course you can join on whatever expression you want, such as if we want to join on all users who use the same name in their email address as their username:
>>> print users.join(addresses, addresses.c.email_address.like(users.c.name + '%'))
users JOIN addresses ON addresses.email_address LIKE users.name || :name_1
When we create a select() construct, SQLAlchemy looks around at the tables we’ve mentioned and then places them in the FROM clause of the statement. When we use JOINs however, we know what FROM clause we want, so here we make usage of the from_obj keyword argument:
>>> s = select([users.c.fullname], from_obj=[
... users.join(addresses, addresses.c.email_address.like(users.c.name + '%'))
... ])
[(u'Jack Jones',), (u'Jack Jones',), (u'Wendy Williams',)]
The outerjoin() function just creates LEFT OUTER JOIN constructs. It’s used just like join():
>>> s = select([users.c.fullname], from_obj=[users.outerjoin(addresses)])
>>> print s
SELECT users.fullname
FROM users LEFT OUTER JOIN addresses ON users.id = addresses.user_id
That’s the output outerjoin() produces, unless, of course, you’re stuck in a gig using Oracle prior to version 9, and you’ve set up your engine (which would be using OracleDialect) to use Oracle-specific SQL:
>>> from sqlalchemy.databases.oracle import OracleDialect
>>> print s.compile(dialect=OracleDialect(use_ansi=False))
SELECT users.fullname
FROM users, addresses
WHERE users.id = addresses.user_id(+)
If you don’t know what that SQL means, don’t worry ! The secret tribe of Oracle DBAs don’t want their black magic being found out ;).
Intro to Generative Selects and Transformations
We’ve now gained the ability to construct very sophisticated statements. We can use all kinds of operators, table constructs, text, joins, and aliases. The point of all of this, as mentioned earlier, is not that it’s an “easier” or “better” way to write SQL than just writing a SQL statement yourself; the point is that it’s better for writing programmatically generated SQL which can be morphed and adapted as needed in automated scenarios.
>>> query = users.select()
>>> print query
SELECT users.id, users.name, users.fullname
FROM users
>>> query = query.where(users.c.name=='jack')
>>> query = query.order_by(users.c.fullname.desc())
>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import exists
>>> query = query.where(
... exists([addresses.c.id],
... and_(addresses.c.user_id==users.c.id, addresses.c.email_address.like('%@msn.com'))
... ).correlate(users))
Let’s bake for .0001 seconds and see what rises:
>>> conn.execute(query).fetchall()
SELECT users.id AS users_id, users.name AS users_name, users.fullname AS users_fullname, addresses.id AS addresses_id, addresses.user_id AS addresses_user_id, addresses.email_address AS addresses_email_address FROM users LEFT OUTER JOIN addresses ON users.id = addresses.user_id WHERE users.name = ? AND (EXISTS (SELECT addresses.id FROM addresses WHERE addresses.user_id = users.id AND addresses.email_address LIKE ?)) ORDER BY users.fullname DESC ['jack', '%@msn.com']
[(1, u'jack', u'Jack Jones', 1, 1, u'[email protected]'), (1, u'jack', u'Jack Jones', 2, 1, u'[email protected]')]
So we started small, added one little thing at a time, and at the end we have a huge statement..which actually works. Now let’s do one more thing; the searching function wants to add another email_address criterion on, however it doesn’t want to construct an alias of the addresses table; suppose many parts of the application are written to deal specifically with the addresses table, and to change all those functions to support receiving an arbitrary alias of the address would be cumbersome. We can actually convert the addresses table within the existing statement to be an alias of itself, using replace_selectable():
>>> a1 = addresses.alias()
>>> query = query.replace_selectable(addresses, a1)
>>> print query
SELECT users.id AS users_id, users.name AS users_name, users.fullname AS users_fullname, addresses_1.id AS addresses_1_id, addresses_1.user_id AS addresses_1_user_id, addresses_1.email_address AS addresses_1_email_address FROM users LEFT OUTER JOIN addresses AS addresses_1 ON users.id = addresses_1.user_id WHERE users.name = :name_1 AND (EXISTS (SELECT addresses_1.id FROM addresses AS addresses_1 WHERE addresses_1.user_id = users.id AND addresses_1.email_address LIKE :email_address_1)) ORDER BY users.fullname DESC
One more thing though, with automatic labeling applied as well as anonymous aliasing, how do we retrieve the columns from the rows for this thing ? The label for the email_addresses column is now the generated name addresses_1_email_address; and in another statement might be something different ! This is where accessing by result columns by Column object becomes very useful:
sql>>> for row in conn.execute(query):
... print "Name:", row[users.c.name], "; Email Address", row[a1.c.email_address]
Name: jack ; Email Address [email protected]
Name: jack ; Email Address [email protected]
The above example, by its end, got significantly more intense than the typical end-user constructed SQL will usually be. However when writing higher-level tools such as ORMs, they become more significant. SQLAlchemy’s ORM relies very heavily on techniques like this.
Everything Else
The concepts of creating SQL expressions have been introduced. What’s left are more variants of the same themes. So now we’ll catalog the rest of the important things we’ll need to know.
Bind Parameter Objects
Throughout all these examples, SQLAlchemy is busy creating bind parameters wherever literal expressions occur. You can also specify your own bind parameters with your own names, and use the same statement repeatedly. The database dialect converts to the appropriate named or positional style, as here where it converts to positional for SQLite:
>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import bindparam
>>> s = users.select(users.c.name==bindparam('username'))
sql>>> conn.execute(s, username='wendy').fetchall()
[(2, u'wendy', u'Wendy Williams')]
Another important aspect of bind parameters is that they may be assigned a type. The type of the bind parameter will determine its behavior within expressions and also how the data bound to it is processed before being sent off to the database:
>>> s = users.select(users.c.name.like(bindparam('username', type_=String) + text("'%'")))
[(2, u'wendy', u'Wendy Williams')]
Bind parameters of the same name can also be used multiple times, where only a single named value is needed in the execute parameters:
... users.c.name.like(bindparam('name', type_=String) + text("'%'")) |
... addresses.c.email_address.like(bindparam('name', type_=String) + text("'@%'")),
... from_obj=[users.outerjoin(addresses)])
sql>>> conn.execute(s, name='jack').fetchall()
SQL functions are created using the func keyword, which generates functions using attribute access:
>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import func
>>> print func.now()
>>> print func.concat('x', 'y')
concat(:param_1, :param_2)
By “generates”, we mean that any SQL function is created based on the word you choose:
>>> print func.xyz_my_goofy_function()
Certain function names are known by SQLAlchemy, allowing special behavioral rules to be applied. Some for example are “ANSI” functions, which mean they don’t get the parenthesis added after them, such as CURRENT_TIMESTAMP:
>>> print func.current_timestamp()
Functions are most typically used in the columns clause of a select statement, and can also be labeled as well as given a type. Labeling a function is recommended so that the result can be targeted in a result row based on a string name, and assigning it a type is required when you need result-set processing to occur, such as for Unicode conversion and date conversions. Below, we use the result function scalar() to just read the first column of the first row and then close the result; the label, even though present, is not important in this case:
>>> print conn.execute(
... select([func.max(addresses.c.email_address, type_=String).label('maxemail')])
... ).scalar()
SELECT max(addresses.email_address) AS maxemail FROM addresses []
Databases such as PostgreSQL and Oracle which support functions that return whole result sets can be assembled into selectable units, which can be used in statements. Such as, a database function calculate() which takes the parameters x and y, and returns three columns which we’d like to name q, z and r, we can construct using “lexical” column objects as well as bind parameters:
>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import column
>>> calculate = select([column('q'), column('z'), column('r')],
... from_obj=[func.calculate(bindparam('x'), bindparam('y'))])
>>> print select([users], users.c.id > calculate.c.z)
SELECT users.id, users.name, users.fullname
FROM users, (SELECT q, z, r
FROM calculate(:x, :y))
WHERE users.id > z
If we wanted to use our calculate statement twice with different bind parameters, the unique_params() function will create copies for us, and mark the bind parameters as “unique” so that conflicting names are isolated. Note we also make two separate aliases of our selectable:
>>> s = select([users], users.c.id.between(
... calculate.alias('c1').unique_params(x=17, y=45).c.z,
... calculate.alias('c2').unique_params(x=5, y=12).c.z))
>>> print s
SELECT users.id, users.name, users.fullname
FROM users, (SELECT q, z, r
FROM calculate(:x_1, :y_1)) AS c1, (SELECT q, z, r
FROM calculate(:x_2, :y_2)) AS c2
WHERE users.id BETWEEN c1.z AND c2.z
>>> s.compile().params
{u'x_2': 5, u'y_2': 12, u'y_1': 45, u'x_1': 17}
See also sqlalchemy.sql.expression.func.
Unions and Other Set Operations
Unions come in two flavors, UNION and UNION ALL, which are available via module level functions:
>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import union
>>> u = union(
... addresses.select(addresses.c.email_address=='[email protected]'),
... addresses.select(addresses.c.email_address.like('%@yahoo.com')),
... ).order_by(addresses.c.email_address)
sql>>> print conn.execute(u).fetchall()
[(1, 1, u'[email protected]')]
Also available, though not supported on all databases, are intersect(), intersect_all(), except_(), and except_all():
>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import except_
>>> u = except_(
... addresses.select(addresses.c.email_address.like('%@%.com')),
... addresses.select(addresses.c.email_address.like('%@msn.com'))
... )
[(1, 1, u'[email protected]'), (4, 2, u'[email protected]')]
Scalar Selects
To embed a SELECT in a column expression, use as_scalar():
sql>>> print conn.execute(select([
... users.c.name,
... select([func.count(addresses.c.id)], users.c.id==addresses.c.user_id).as_scalar()
... ])).fetchall()
[(u'jack', 2), (u'wendy', 2), (u'fred', 0), (u'mary', 0)]
Alternatively, applying a label() to a select evaluates it as a scalar as well:
sql>>> print conn.execute(select([
... users.c.name,
... select([func.count(addresses.c.id)], users.c.id==addresses.c.user_id).label('address_count')
... ])).fetchall()
Correlated Subqueries
Notice in the examples on “scalar selects”, the FROM clause of each embedded select did not contain the users table in its FROM clause. This is because SQLAlchemy automatically attempts to correlate embedded FROM objects to that of an enclosing query. To disable this, or to specify explicit FROM clauses to be correlated, use correlate():
>>> s = select([users.c.name], users.c.id==select([users.c.id]).correlate(None))
>>> print s
SELECT users.name
FROM users
WHERE users.id = (SELECT users.id
FROM users)
>>> s = select([users.c.name, addresses.c.email_address], users.c.id==
... select([users.c.id], users.c.id==addresses.c.user_id).correlate(addresses)
... )
>>> print s
SELECT users.name, addresses.email_address
FROM users, addresses
WHERE users.id = (SELECT users.id
FROM users
WHERE users.id = addresses.user_id)
Ordering, Grouping, Limiting, Offset...ing...
The select() function can take keyword arguments order_by, group_by (as well as having), limit, and offset. There’s also distinct=True. These are all also available as generative functions. order_by() expressions can use the modifiers asc() or desc() to indicate ascending or descending.
>>> s = select([addresses.c.user_id, func.count(addresses.c.id)]).\
... group_by(addresses.c.user_id).having(func.count(addresses.c.id)>1)
[(1, 2), (2, 2)]
>>> s = select([addresses.c.email_address, addresses.c.id]).distinct().\
... order_by(addresses.c.email_address.desc(), addresses.c.id)
sql>>> conn.execute(s).fetchall()
[(u'[email protected]', 3), (u'[email protected]', 4), (u'[email protected]', 1), (u'[email protected]', 2)]
>>> s = select([addresses]).offset(1).limit(1)
[(2, 1, u'[email protected]')]
Finally, we’re back to UPDATE. Updates work a lot like INSERTS, except there is an additional WHERE clause that can be specified.
>>> # change 'jack' to 'ed'
sql>>> conn.execute(users.update().where(users.c.name=='jack').values(name='ed'))
<sqlalchemy.engine.base.ResultProxy object at 0x...>
>>> # use bind parameters
>>> u = users.update().where(users.c.name==bindparam('oldname')).values(name=bindparam('newname'))
sql>>> conn.execute(u, oldname='jack', newname='ed')
<sqlalchemy.engine.base.ResultProxy object at 0x...>
>>> # update a column to an expression.:
sql>>> conn.execute(users.update().values(fullname="Fullname: " + users.c.name))
<sqlalchemy.engine.base.ResultProxy object at 0x...>
Correlated Updates
A correlated update lets you update a table using selection from another table, or the same table:
>>> s = select([addresses.c.email_address], addresses.c.user_id==users.c.id).limit(1)
sql>>> conn.execute(users.update().values(fullname=s))
<sqlalchemy.engine.base.ResultProxy object at 0x...>
Finally, a delete. Easy enough:
sql>>> conn.execute(addresses.delete())
<sqlalchemy.engine.base.ResultProxy object at 0x...>
sql>>> conn.execute(users.delete().where(users.c.name > 'm'))
<sqlalchemy.engine.base.ResultProxy object at 0x...>
Further Reference
API docs: sqlalchemy.sql.expression
Table Metadata Reference: Database Meta Data
Engine/Connection/Execution Reference: Database Engines
SQL Types: Column and Data Types | <urn:uuid:bb009115-4c68-4864-b96d-07cc0d227e62> | 3 | 2.671875 | 0.093485 | en | 0.773956 | http://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/rel_0_5/sqlexpression.html |
Lower Limits Could Affect Markets
In early September, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the entity that oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, gave notice that it would revise the conforming loans limits in an attempt to stimulate the private sector, specifically the private mortgage securitization (PLS) market. Though any reduction in the loan limits is expected to be relatively modest, it could have more far reaching impacts at the local level and for the affected borrowers.
Each year, the FHFA adjusts the national conforming loan limit which defines the space within which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can finance mortgage. The national limit is $417,000, but that varies by county and can increase to $625,500 in high cost markets. The FHA’s limits, which range from $261,050 to $725,750, are based off of the conforming limit so the FHFA’s actions would impact FHA borrowers as well.
NAR Research estimates that if the national conforming limit were lowered to $400,000, roughly 145,000 total conforming mortgages and 49,000 conforming purchase mortgages would have been impacted in 2012 [1]. If the FHA limits were also revised, the impact would be larger by roughly 15,000 and 7,000 borrowers, respectively. The total number was inflated due to the refinance boom in 2012. However, strong price growth in 2013 has likely pushed more home buyers toward the conforming limits. Most estimates have the impacted volume at roughly 2-5% nationally.
While the estimate of the national impact may appear relatively small, the change could have a significant effect at the local level. As depicted in the map below, the impact goes beyond the high priced markets on the coasts and would affect some smaller communities in the Midwest and South. Furthermore, several of the markets in the top 25 most impacted are in formerly distressed areas (e.g. Atlanta, Sacramento, Riverside-San Bernadine, Oakland, Tampa, and Phoenix). These are areas where FICO scores declined in recent years as a result of the economic and housing downturn and where investors have played an important role in their recovery. As prices rise and rent growth flattens, investors will pull back and it is not clear that the PLS industry is currently ready to provide financing for the nascent volume of home buyers needed to fill the void. Some private mortgage insurers recently announced willingness to underwrite mortgages with FICOs between 620 and 680. It will be particularly interesting and instructive to see how lenders respond to this change. But requirements at jumbo lenders and PLS remain significantly higher with minimum FICO scores above 720, down payments of 20% or more, and cash reserves of nine months or more. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as the FHA have new programs to help borrowers in these distressed areas, but they are less potent if reduced limits disqualify borrowers.
Beyond the distressed areas, borrowers pushed into the non-conforming space or from FHA to convention-conforming market may not have the same access to credit due to higher FICO, down payment, and reserve requirements. Since mortgage rates are already at parity or better in the jumbo space and part of the conforming-conventional, if a borrower had sufficient credit quality, the down payment, and the reserve requirements they likely would have already migrated to the private sector. Similarly, the FHA has been underpriced by the private MIs at the middle and upper price echelons since the fall of 2012. Lowering the limits could create a binding equity or credit constraint for the remaining borrowers in this space.
Finally, it isn’t clear that lowering the limits will stimulate the PLS market. There are still a number of issues hindering the PLS market including representation and warrants risk, the unfinished QRM rule, concerns about the implementation and ramifications of the qualified mortgage (QM) rule, secondary market reform and lingering negative investor sentiment. Nor is it clear that bank portfolios will expand to sustain these borrowers. The FHFA might accomplish its goal of expanding the private sector’s market share, but this feat would be accomplished by reducing the total number of borrowers, not by pushing borrowers into the private space.
Though well intended, a reduction in loan limits could crowd out many otherwise qualified and sustainable borrowers. There may be a time when the PLS sector is ready, but it isn’t clear that PLS issuers are ready to take up the baton of borrowers impacted by lowering the limits.
[1] Based on analysis of 2012 HMDA dataset
Ken Fears, Director, Regional Economics and Housing Finance
More Posts
1. Scott
I am no rocket scientist but I am a lover of free enterprise and capitalism. Can someone please explain to me why it is a good idea for the government to be involved in the mortgage industry? | <urn:uuid:80e53e48-9286-41e3-b186-5ff12b834f21> | 2 | 1.617188 | 0.041499 | en | 0.952138 | http://economistsoutlook.blogs.realtor.org/2013/10/17/lower-limits-could-affect-markets/ |
Last modified on 14 May 2014, at 17:30
From Greek evangel(ion), ‘gospel’ + adjectival ending + ism.
evangelicalism (uncountable)
1. (Christianity, historical) Lutheranism.
2. (Islam) Islamic movements which are based on dawah and preaching the Quran and sunnah.
• 2010, Timothy Parsons, The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall, page 108
Islamic evangelicalism helped win over Iberian notables []
3. (Christianity) Protestant movement basing its theology almost entirely on Scripture, which is held to be inerrant.
4. Christian fundamentalism. | <urn:uuid:cd215a3b-cb14-4526-b96c-0f6351234428> | 2 | 2.15625 | 0.968198 | en | 0.832417 | http://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/evangelicalism |
Energy tower (downdraft)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about electricity power generation by downdraft created by evaporation of water sprayed at the top of a tall hollow cylinder. For other uses, see Energy tower (disambiguation).
Sharav Sluice Energy Tower
The energy tower is a device for producing electrical power. The brainchild of Dr. Phillip Carlson,[1] expanded by Professor Dan Zaslavsky and Dr. Rami Guetta from the Technion.[2] Energy towers spray water on hot air at the top of the tower, making the cooled air fall through the tower and drive a turbine at the tower's bottom.
An energy tower (also known as a downdraft energy tower, because the air flows down the tower) is a tall (1,000 meters) and wide (400 meters) hollow cylinder with a water spray system at the top. Pumps lift the water to the top of the tower and then spray the water inside the tower. Evaporation of water cools the hot, dry air hovering at the top. The cooled air, now denser than the outside warmer air, falls through the cylinder, spinning a turbine at the bottom. The turbine drives a generator which produces the electricity.
The greater the temperature difference between the air and water, the greater the energy efficiency. Therefore, downdraft energy towers should work best in a hot dry climate. Energy towers require large quantities of water. Salt water is acceptable, although care must be taken to prevent corrosion, so that desalination is an example to solve this problem.
The energy that is extracted from the air is ultimately derived from the sun, so this can be considered a form of solar power. Energy production continues at night, because air retains some of the day's heat after dark. However, power generation by the energy tower is affected by the weather: it slows down each time the ambient humidity increases (such as during a rainstorm), or the temperature falls.
A related approach is the solar updraft tower, which heats air in glass enclosures at ground level and sends the heated air up a tower driving turbines at the base. Updraft towers do not pump water, which increases their efficiency, but do require large amounts of land for the collectors. Land acquisition and collector construction costs for updraft towers must be compared to pumping infrastructure costs for downdraft collectors. Operationally, maintaining the collector structures for updraft towers must be compared to pumping costs and pump infrastructure maintenance.
Zaslavsky and other authors estimate that depending on the site and financing costs, energy could be produced in the range of 1-4 cents per kWh, well below alternative energy sources other than hydro. Pumping the water requires about 50% of the turbine's output. Zaslavsky claims that the Energy Tower would achieve up to 70-80% [3] of the Carnot limit. If the conversion efficiency turns out to be much lower, it is expected to have an adverse impact on projections made for cost of energy.
Projections made by Altmann[4] and by Czisch[5][6] about conversion efficiency and about cost of energy (cents/kWh) are based only on model calculations[7], no data on a working pilot plant have ever been collected.
Actual measurements on the 50 kW Manzanares pilot solar updraft tower found a conversion efficiency of 0.53%, although SBP believe that this could be increased to 1.3% in a large and improved 100 MW unit.[8] This amounts to about 10% of the theoretical limit for the Carnot cycle. It is not unreasonable to expect a similar low conversion efficiency for the energy tower, in view of the fact that it is based on a similar principle as the solar updraft tower.
Potential problems[edit]
• In a salty humid air corrosion rates can be very high. This concerns the tower and the turbines.[9]
• The technology requires a hot and arid climate. Such locations include the coast of West Africa, Western Australia, northern Chile, Namibia, the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and the Gulf of California. Most of these regions are remote and thinly populated, and would require power to be transported over long distances to where it is needed. Alternatively, such plants could provide captive power for nearby industrial uses such as desalination plants, aluminium production via the Hall-Héroult process, or to generate hydrogen for ammonia production.
• Humidity as a result of plant operation may be an issue for nearby communities. A 400 meter diameter powerplant producing wind velocity of 22 meters per second, must add about 15 grams of water per kilogram of air processed. This is equal to 41 tons of water per second.[1] In terms of humid air, this is 10 cubic kilometers of very humid air each hour. Thus, a community even 100 kilometers away may be unpleasantly affected.
• Brine is a problem in proportion to the humidity created, since water's vapor pressure decreases with salinity, it is reasonable to expect at least as much brine as water in humidity. This means that a river of brine flows way from the powerplant at 41 tons (m3s-1) per second, along with a river of saline water flowing in with 82 tons of water per second (m3s-1).
Large industrial consumers often locate near cheap sources of electricity. However, many of these desert regions also lack necessary infrastructure, increasing capital requirements and overall risk.
Demonstration project[edit]
In 2014 Maryland-based Solar Wind Energy, Inc. proposed to build a 685 metres (2,247 ft) tower. Wind speeds were expected to reach 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph). The company claims that a tower near San Luis, Arizona would produce up to 1,250 MW on sunny days and a yearly average of 435 MW. The company claims to have entitlements for a San Luis site and financing agreement (with JDF Capital Inc.) for up to US$1,585,000.[10]
See also[edit]
1. ^ Pluvinergy
1. ^ "Solar Wind Energy's Downdraft Tower generates its own wind all year round". Retrieved 2014-06-19.
2. ^ US patent 3,894,393, Carlson; Phillip R., "Power generation through controlled convection (aeroelectric power generation)", issued 1975-07-15
3. ^ Zaslavsky, Dan; Rami Guetta et al. (December 2001). "Energy Towers for Producing Electricity and Desalinated Water without a Collector" PDF (435 KB). Technion Israel, Israel - India Steering Committee. Retrieved on 2007-03-15.
4. ^ Altman, Talia; Dan Zaslavsky, Rami Guetta and Gregor Czisch (May 2006). "Evaluation of the potential of electricity and desalinated water supply by using technology of "Energy Towers" for Australia, America and Africa". Retrieved 2007-03-18.
5. ^ Altmann, T.; Y. Carmel; R. Guetta; D. Zaslavsky; Y. Doytsher (June 2005). "Assessment of an "Energy Tower" potential in Australia using a mathematical model and GIS" (PDF). Solar Energy (Elsevier Ltd.) 78 (6): 799–808. doi:10.1016/j.solener.2004.08.025. Retrieved 2007-03-12.
6. ^ Czisch, Gregor (June 2005). "Evaluation of the global potential of energy towers". Retrieved 2007-03-13.
7. ^ Czisch, Gregor (September 2001). "Aeroelectric Oasis System". Global Renewable Energy Potential, Approaches to its Use. Retrieved 2007-03-13.
8. ^ Gutman, Per-Olof; Eran Horesh; Rami Guetta; Michael Borshchevsky (2003-04-29). "Control of the Aero-Electric Power Station - an exciting QFT application for the 21st century". International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.) 13 (7): 619–636. doi:10.1002/rnc.828.
10. ^ Zaslavsky, Dan (2006). "Energy Towers". PhysicaPlus - Online magazine of the Israel Physical Society (Israel Physical Society) (7). Retrieved 2007-03-13.
11. ^ Zwirn, Michael J. (January 1997). Energy Towers: Pros and Cons of the Arubot Sharav Alternative Energy Proposal. Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. Retrieved on 2006-12-22.
12. Zaslavsky, Dan (November, 1996). "Solar Energy Without a Collector". The 3rd Sabin Conference.
External links[edit] | <urn:uuid:321a0f65-32b4-436d-9005-2a26976c68f0> | 3 | 3.40625 | 0.032376 | en | 0.885322 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_tower_(downdraft) |
Shi Qian
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Shi Qian
Water Margin character
Nickname "Flea on a Drum"
Rank 107th, Thief Star (地賊星) of the 72 Earthly Fiends
Scout leader of Liangshan
Origin Thief, tomb raider
Ancestral home / Place of origin Gaotangzhou (present-day Gaotang County, Liaocheng, Shandong)
First appearance Chapter 46
Weapon Pudao
Simplified Chinese 时迁
Traditional Chinese 時遷
Pinyin Shí Qiān
Wade–Giles Shih Ch'ien
This is a Chinese name; the family name is Shi.
Shi Qian is a fictional character in Water Margin, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. He ranks 107th of the 108 Liangshan heroes and 71st of the 72 Earthly Fiends. He is nicknamed "Flea on a Drum".
Shi Qian is a thief from Gaotangzhou (高唐州; present-day Gaotang County, Liaocheng, Shandong). Although he has an ugly appearance, he is extremely agile and nimble. He is nicknamed "Flea on a Drum" for his excellent thieving skills. He is active in the area around Jizhou (蓟州; present-day Ji County, Tianjin) and once ran into trouble with the authorities but was saved by the jailer Yang Xiong.
Joining Liangshan[edit]
One day, after robbing a tomb, he chances upon Yang Xiong and secretly witnesses him killing his adulterous wife, Pan Qiaoyun. He overhears Yang Xiong discussing with Shi Xiu about joining the outlaw band at Liangshan Marsh and reveals himself to them. He then threatens to report them to the authorities if they do not bring him along to Liangshan. The three of them travel together and stop at an inn in the Zhu Family Village for a break.
They run into trouble in the village after Shi Qian steals a hen and gets into a fight with the villagers. Shi Qian falls into a trap and is captured by the Zhus while fleeing from the village, while Yang Xiong and Shi Xiu manage to escape to the neighbouring Li Family Village. Li Ying, the chief of the Li Family Village, writes an apology letter to the Zhus on behalf of Yang Xiong, Shi Xiu and Shi Qian, and requests that the Zhus release Shi Qian. However, the Zhus refuse and insult Li Ying, who is so furious that he leads his followers to the Zhu Family Village to confront his overbearing neighbours. He is wounded by an arrow fired by Zhu Biao, the youngest of the Zhu brothers, and is forced to retreat back to his own village.
Yang Xiong and Shi Xiu travel to Liangshan to seek help. Song Jiang leads the Liangshan outlaws to attack the Zhu Family Village and succeed in rescuing Shi Qian. Shi Qian joins the outlaw band and plays an important role in recruiting Xu Ning during the battle between the outlaws and imperial forces. He breaks into Xu Ning's house, steals Xu's golden armour and lures Xu to Liangshan. Xu Ning decides to join Liangshan after being persuaded by Song Jiang and after seeing his old colleague Lin Chong, who was forced to become an outlaw due to corruption in the government. Xu Ning helps the Liangshan outlaws defeat the imperial forces.
Campaigns and death[edit]
Shi Qian becomes one of the scout leaders of Liangshan after the Grand Assembly of the 108 Stars of Destiny. He follows the heroes on their campaigns against the Liao invaders and rebel forces after they have been granted amnesty by Emperor Huizong. He survives the final campaign against the rebel leader Fang La, but dies from an intestinal disease on the journey back to the imperial capital. | <urn:uuid:95376e4f-8800-44f8-94ef-f5932a8ee5d0> | 2 | 1.742188 | 0.045274 | en | 0.952136 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Qian |
Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 1.djvu/309
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Franklin's favourite saying at each progress of the American insurrection. The burden of the song was then as follows:—
'Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!
Le peuple en ce jour sans cesse répète:
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!
Malgré les mutins, tout réussira.'
At a later period the burden, though more ferocious, was hardly more metrical:—
'Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!
Les aristocrat' à la lanterne;
Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!
Les aristocrat' on les pendra.'}}
The tune—the length and compass of which show that it was not composed for the song—was the production of a certain Bécour or Bécourt, a side-drum player at the Opera; and as a contre-danse was originally very popular under the title of 'Carillon national.'
{ \time 2/4 \key g \major \tempo "Allegro" \partial 4 \relative g' { g8 g16 a | g8 g16 a g8 g16 a | g4 g16 a b c | d8 e16 d c8 b | b a g g16 a | g8 g16 a g8 g16 a | g4 g16 a b c | d8 e16 c b8 a | g4_\fermata^\markup { \italic \smaller Fine. } \bar "|:" \repeat volta 2 { b8 d16 b | c b a g fis g a fis d4 b'8 d16 b | c b a g g a b cis | d4 d8 d16 e | d8 d16 e d8 d16 e | d8 r d16 e fis g | a8 b16 a g8 fis | fis e d d16 e | d8 d16 e d8 d16 e | d4 d16 e fis g | a fis b g fis8 e | d4 } } }
[ G. C. ]
CALAH, John, born 1758, was organist of Peterborough Cathedral in the latter part of the last century. He composed some cathedral music, still in use, and died Aug. 4, 1798.
[App. p.575 adds "in 1781–1785 he was organist of the parish church and master of the Song-school at Newark-upon-Trent. Correct the date of his death to Aug. 5."]
[ W. H. H. ]
CALANDO (Ital.), diminishing, i.e. in tone; equivalent to diminuendo or decrescendo, and often associated with ritardando.
[ G. ]
[ A. J. H. ]
CALDARA, Antonio, was born at Venice in 1678, where he studied music under Legrenzi. He remained for many years a simple singer in the Ducal Chapel of S. Marco, but was in 1714 appointed Maestro di Cappella at Mantua. Thence in 1718 he went to Vienna, where the emperor Charles VI made him one of his vice-chapel-masters. In 1738 he returned to Venice, where he lived in retirement until his death in 1768 [App. p.575 "Aug. 28, 1763, on the authority of Paloschi and Riemann"]. These are the dates in his career which are given by Fétis, and which he defends against Gerber and Antoine Schmidt, who say that he died at Vienna in 1736. He was a laborious composer both for the church and the stage. But his worth is hardly equal to his fecundity. A certain solemnity of manner in some measure redeems his church music; but his operas are essentially of that order which when once laid aside are laid aside for ever. He wrote no less than 69 operas and oratorios, and dramatic compositions in the nature of one or the other. The catalogue of his church music is equally lengthy, and includes a number of cantate on sacred subjects for one, two, and three voices, with elaborate orchestral accompaniments.
[ E. H. P. ]
CALIFE DE BAGDAD. Opera in one act, words by Saint-Just, music by Boieldieu; produced at the Opera Comique Sept. 16, 1800, and still a favourite, after many hundred representations.
[ G. ]
CALL, Leonard de, born in 1779; a guitar player and composer of harmonious and pretty part songs, which were greatly in fashion in Germany at the beginning of the century, and contributed much to the formation of the 'Männer Gesangvereine' in that country. Some pleasing specimens will be found in 'Orpheus.' De Call is also known for his instruction book for the guitar. He died at Vienna 1815.
[ G. ]
CALL CHANGES. Ringers are said to be ringing call changes when the conductor calls to each man to tell him after which bell he is to ring, or when the men ring changes with the order in which they are to ring written out before them. When such changes are rung, each change is generally struck consecutively from ten to a hundred times.
CALLCOTT, John Wall, Mus. Doc., was born November 20, 1766, at Kensington, where his father carried on the business of a bricklayer and builder. Whilst a school-boy he had frequent opportunities of examining the organ at Kensington church, and having funned an acquaintance with the organist became a constant visitor to the organ-loft on Sundays. There he acquired his knowledge of the rudiments of music. His | <urn:uuid:35208343-2f61-41c3-b353-e49cc6f0802e> | 2 | 2.46875 | 0.071325 | en | 0.953554 | http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:A_Dictionary_of_Music_and_Musicians_vol_1.djvu/309 |
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Data Mining & Data warehousing unit 1 2 marks with Answers and 16 mark questions
Data Mining & Data warehousing
Unit I
Part A
1. What is Data mining?
Data mining refers to extracting or "mining" knowledge from large amount of data. It is considered as a synonym for another popularly used term Knowledge Discovery in Databases or KDD.
1. Give the steps involved in KDD.
KDD consists of the iterative sequence of the following steps:
v Data cleaning
v Data integration
v Data selection
v Data transformation
v Data mining
v Pattern Evaluation
v Knowledge Presentation
1. Give the architecture of a typical data mining system.
The architecture of a typical data mining system consists of the following components:
v Database, data warehouse, or other information repository
v Database or data warehouse server
v Knowledge base
v Data mining engine
v Pattern Evaluation module.
v Graphical user interface.
1. Define Database management system.
A database system also called database management system consists of a collection of interrelated data known as a database and a set of software programs to manage and access the data.
1. Define relational database.
Relational database is a collection of tables each of which is assigned a unique name. Each table consists of a set of attributes (columns or fields) and usually stores a large set of tuples (record or rows).
1. Define data warehouse
Data warehouse is a repository of information collected from multiple sources stored under a unified schema and which usually resides at a single site. It is constructed via a process of data cleaning, data transformation, data integration, data loading and periodic data refreshing.
1. Define data mart and compare it with data warehouse.
Data mart is a department subset of a data warehouse. It focuses on selected subjects and thus its scope is department wide. On the other hand data warehouse collects information about subjects that span an entire organization and thus its scope is department wide.
1. Define transaction databases.
A transaction database consists of a file where each record represents a transaction. A transaction typically includes a unique transaction identity number and a list of items making up the transaction.
9. Explain object oriented databases.
Object oriented databases are based on object-oriented programming paradigm where each entity is considered as an object. Each object has e associated with it the following:
v A set of variables
v A set of messages
v A set of methods.
1. Explain spatial databases.
Spatial databases contain spatial-related information. Such databases include geographic databases, VLSI chip design databases, medical and satellite image databases. Spatial data are represented in raster format consisting of n-dimensional bit maps or pixel maps. Maps are represented in vector format where roads, bridges are represented as a union of basic geometric constructs such as points, lines, polygons etc.
1. Explain temporal and time-series databases.
A temporal database usually stores relational data that include time-related attributes. These attributes may involve several timestamps each having different semantics.A time-series database stores sequence of values that change with time such as data collected regarding the stock exchange.
1. Explain text databases and multimedia databases.
Text databases are databases that contain word description for objects. These descriptions are long sentences or paragraphs such as product specifications, error or bug reports etc.Multimedia databases store image, audio, and video data. They are used in applications such as picture content based retrieval, voice mail systems, www, etc.
1. Define legacy databases.
A legacy database is a group of heterogenous databases that combines different kinds of data systems such as relational or objects oriented databases, hierarchical databases, or file systems.
1. Give the classification of Data Mining tasks
Descriptive – Characterizes the general property of the data in the database.
Predictive – perform inference on the current data in order to make predictions.
1. Describe class/concept description.
Data can be associated with classes or concepts. The individual classes can be described in summarized, concise, and yet precise terms. Such descriptions of a class or a concept are called class/concept descriptions. These descriptions can be derived via data characterization or data discrimination.
1. Define data characterization.
It is a summarization of the general characteristics or feature of a target class of data. The data corresponding to the user-specified class are typically collected by a database query.
1. Give the output forms of data characterization.
Pie charts, bar charts, curves, multidimensional data cubes and multidimensional tables including cross tabs. The resulting descriptions can also be presented as generalized relations or in rule form called characteristic rule.
1. Define data discrimination.
It is a comparison of the general features of target data objects with the general features of objects from one or a set of contrasting classes. The target and contrasting classes are specified by the user and the corresponding data objects retrieved through database queries.
1. What is an association analysis?
Association analysis is the discovery of association rules showing attribute-value conditions that occur frequently together in a given set of data. It is widely used for market basket or transaction data analysis.
1. Define Classification.
It is the process of finding set of models that describe and distinguish data classes or concepts for the purpose of being able to use the model to predict the class objects whose class label is unknown. The derived model is based on the analysis of a set of training data.
Part B
1) Define data mining. Describe the steps Involved in data mining when viewed as a process of knowledge discovery. Explain the architecture of the data mining system?
2) Describe the kinds of data on which data mining is performed?
3) Briefly explain the kinds of patterns that can be mined?
4) Give the classification of data mining system. Describe the issues related to data mining.
5) Define data warehouse. Explain its features. Differentiate operational database systems and data warehouses?
6) Briefly describe star snowflake and fact constellations schemas with examples?
7) Explain data warehouse architecture in detail?
8) How a fact table is to be designed for data warehouse process?
9) Explain the steps to be involved in designing the dimension table?
10) Write briefly about the horizontal partitioning strategy
11) Explain about vertical partitioning strategy
12) Explain about hardware partitioning strategy
Hackerx Sasi
Don't ever give up.
Even when it seems impossible,
Something will always
pull you through.
The hardest times get even
worse when you lose hope.
But When you give up,
You lose !
I DONT GIVE UP.....!!!
with regards
prem sasi kumar arivukalanjiam
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Tamil Short Film Laptaap
Tamil Short Film Laptaap
| <urn:uuid:e5f7196a-e6cc-473e-8106-53d4e1a29c16> | 3 | 3.234375 | 0.839852 | en | 0.76797 | http://engineerportal.blogspot.com/2012/08/data-mining-data-warehousing-unit-1-2.html |
PASCAL - Pattern Analysis, Statistical Modelling and Computational Learning
Concepts and methods from machine learning as tools for the analysis of computations in nervous systems
Michael Pfeiffer
(2010) PhD thesis, Graz University of Technology.
This thesis investigates how innovative machine learning methods, which autonomously extract information from data, can be used to gain insights into neural information processing. The brain provides a framework which has been optimized through evolution to support fast and robust adaptation to the environment, thereby increasing chances of survival. Building upon the mathematically framework of machine learning allows us to study the role of experimentally observed synaptic learning phenomena, or to use analogies from neuroscience in order to improve machine learning algorithms for difficult real-world tasks. My dissertation is structured into several parts, which highlight the multiple possibilities where machine learning and computational neuroscience can fruitfully interact. The first part studies auditory information processing by insects in real-world scenarios. Analyzing recordings that were performed in the natural habitats of the insects in the tropical rainforest, we find that neural coding with characteristic burst firing patterns provides a reliable way of transmitting information in situations where signals are heavily distorted by environmental noise. The second part uses neural network techniques to construct models of high-level human behavior. The relevance of text that humans were reading was classified from the movements of their eyes. Our approach was so successful that it finished first in an international competition. In the third part a new algorithm for reward-based learning in continuous state- and action spaces is presented, which draws inspiration from neuroscientific concepts of motor control. In combination with sample-based models and innovative exploration policies this leads to an improvement over existing algorithms, which are applicable for robotics tasks. The final parts of my thesis links biologically plausible Hebbian learning mechanisms to mathematical concepts of learning and decision making. Neural network models are presented in which simple synaptic plasticity rules with strong convergence guarantees lead to approximately optimal decisions in a Bayesian sense. This shows how nervous systems can learn strategies for a rich variety of tasks with apparently very simple and limited basic units of computations, i.e. neurons and synapses. The presented approach makes concrete predictions for sparse, redundant neural codes for input signals, with which Hebbian learning can quickly and robustly lead to sensible decisions. We first present mechanisms for supervised learning, and extend these rules to reward-modulated learning in winner-take-all networks, where action selection policies are learned from rewards and punishments. Finally, we explore functional roles for spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) in soft winner-take-all circuits of spiking neurons. It is shown that spiking neurons can learn implicit internal models of high-dimensional input signals without supervision, thereby identifying hidden causes of inputs. In particular, it is shown that STDP is able to approximate a stochastic online Expectation-Maximization algorithm for modeling the input data.
EPrint Type:Thesis (PhD)
Project Keyword:Project Keyword UNSPECIFIED
Subjects:Computational, Information-Theoretic Learning with Statistics
User Modelling for Computer Human Interaction
Learning/Statistics & Optimisation
Brain Computer Interfaces
Theory & Algorithms
ID Code:6083
Deposited By:Michael Pfeiffer
Deposited On:08 March 2010 | <urn:uuid:19e6351b-ec09-454c-bac5-be959b84819a> | 2 | 1.804688 | 0.027164 | en | 0.909405 | http://eprints.pascal-network.org/archive/00006083/ |
Fire Emblem Wiki
3,984pages on
this wiki
GameFire Emblem: Thracia 776
First SeenChapter 13: The Stronghold (joins in Chapter 14: Open Fire)
Starting ClassDragon Rider
“Your kindness has not gone unnoticed by Dain and Noba. You must believe in our victory. Now, I must go out and fight as well!”
—Eda to Linoan
Eda (エダ Eda) is a playable character in Fire Emblem: Thracia 776. She is a twenty-one year old Dragon Knight of Thracia, and Dean's younger sister. She came along with her brother who is protecting Linoan due to Prince Areone's orders. She tells Linoan of the sacrifices that Dean has made, and after the liberation wars end, Eda remains by Altena's side, comforting her, while focusing on Thracia's construction instead of her own happiness.
Character DataEdit
• Chapter 14: Automatically from the start.
Base StatsEdit
Starting Class
Skill Weapon Starting Items
Dragon Rider 5 22 7 3 6 9 12 9 5 8* 0 0 1 - FE5 Sword IconSword - D
FE5 Lance IconLance - B Killer Lance
Slim Sword
*5 move while dismounted
Growth RatesEdit
HP Str Mag Skl Spd Luk Def Bld Mov
60% 40% 20% 35% 60% 30% 20% 5% 1%
Promotional GainsEdit
• Promotes to Dragon Knight
• Strength: +2
• Magic: +1
• Skill: +3
• Speed: +2
• Defense: +2
• Build: +1
• Move: +1
• +1 for Lance Mastery Rank
Support BonusEdit
Supported by
Eda comes in with weak base stats, no skills, and a Pursuit Critical Coefficient of 1. Eda's low constitution makes her lose speed when using most Lances.
Eda endures further penalties when she is forced to dismount in the indoors chapters, losing 3 STR and 4 DEF in addition to the use of Lances. Her sword rank is at rank D. As there are no Arms Scrolls, Eda's swords rank can only be raised through tedious dismounted training.
Despite these flaws, flying units are still needed in many outdoor chapters. If you are not going to use other flying units, then you should could use Eda to ferry around your army in the outdoor chapters.
Death QuoteEdit
“Kate... Thanks for...everything... Go Thracia...”
—Eda's death quote
Escape QuoteEdit
“I promise I'll do better next time!”
—Eda's escape quote
Chapter 13Edit
Dean: The full-scale attack has begun... Well, what do we do, Glade?
Glade: We're far outnumbered. Our defeat will only be a matter of time.
Eda: Shall I go derange the enemy lines? It should buy some time for us.
Dean: No, that won't do. The enemies have ballistas. You'll just be a perfect target if you go out alone. The basics of fighting from dragon-back are to run in for a surprise hit, and then immediately retreat. You must never rush, Eda.
Eda: Yes, my brother.
Glade: I will send out my knights.
Dean: Will that be enough? The mercenaries all fled.
Glade: Hm... What about Prince Shanan? If he is a direct descendant of the Sword Saint Odo, he must have power far greater than ours. Why does he refuse to help?
Dean: Oh...him. He apparently has no interest in battles in lower places.
Glade: Hmph, and he spends his time playing with the women, eh? ...We have no choice. We will have to fight on our own.
Dean: Be careful. This is only the beginning. ...The worst still has yet to come.
Glade: I know.
Chapter 14Edit
Eda: Lady Linoan, the attack has begun.
Linoan: The Empire's full-scale attack... What is Lord Leaf doing?
Eda: The prince is having a meeting with the other commanders.
Linoan: I see... Is Dean with them?
Eda: Dean is watching the south gate because he doesn't feel comfortable at meetings... My brother can be difficult at times.
Linoan: No, I would never have survived without him. After my father was killed, our mansion was taken away, and for two years I was unable to even go outdoors freely. The cruel surrogate would constantly threaten me to tell him where the prince was. The thought of that abuse still sends shivers down my spine... But then...Dean rescued me from that nightmare. He protected me from assassins from the Empire, and always cheered me up when I was about to break down. He always laughed it off, but I was sure he was a well-known mercenary. I never knew he working under Lord Areone...
Eda: Prince Areone knew about the danger Tahra was in, so he secretly ordered my brother to rescue you. Dean was so pleased at the trust the prince was putting in him that he abandoned the army to fulfill the prince's commands.
Linoan: Lord Areone...went through that much...?
Eda: He couldn't leave the country, but then again, he couldn't let you, his fiancee, die... I can only imagine how troubled he was. Anyway, please don't worry, Lady Linoan. Your kindness has not gone unnoticed by Dain and Noba. You must believe in our victory. Now, I must go out and fight as well!
Eda - Dragon Knight of Thracia (トラキアの竜騎士 Torakia no ryū kishi)
After the New Kingdom of Thracia was established, Eda stayed by Altena's side and comforted her emotionally devastated master. Due to her loyalty and earnestness, she never sought out her own happiness, and devoted her life to rebuilding Thracia and supporting Altena.
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Random Wiki | <urn:uuid:66ecaa93-0578-4610-9a21-35f59e4f4bd4> | 2 | 1.6875 | 0.026512 | en | 0.931305 | http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Eda |
Despite the potential hardships posed by the new hours of service (HOS) rules poised to go into effect January 1, some find they have opened a positive dialog between the government and trucking on what has been and remains a very contentious issue.
"The best thing about these rules is what's not written in there," said David McCorkle, chairman of Oklahoma City-based McCorkle Truck Line.
McCorkle told Fleet Owner that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's new HOS rules are also far better than the agency's first attempt at HOS reform in 2000.
"The previous proposal really didn't get at the issue of sleep management for drivers, the ability to rest when they are tired and drive when they are rested," he noted.
McCorkle, who also serves as chairman of the American Trucking Assns.' HOS committee, added that the industry needs to use these new rules as a "jumping off point" to help develop "real world" sleep management programs for drivers.
"The real issue is that government can't legislate a driver to sleep or a truck to stop," he said. "Weather, traffic conditions, and whether parking is available all affect when drivers can stop and get their rest. These rules give us at least a place to start now." | <urn:uuid:b38af472-c33c-4037-991a-15ee3474f9f2> | 2 | 1.609375 | 0.054431 | en | 0.981832 | http://fleetowner.com/news/fleet_new_hos_rules_2 |
When one system performs in exactly the same way as another, though perhaps not at the same speed. A typical example would be emulation of one computer by (a program running on) another. You might use an emulation as a replacement for a system whereas you would use a simulation if you just wanted to analyse it and make predictions about it.
Last updated: 2003-05-22
Nearby terms:
EMSemTeXEMU8000emulationemulatorEmulator programEMXenabling
Try this search on Wikipedia, OneLook, Google | <urn:uuid:efabe5a9-2d6f-428f-b08a-b9cc740e5861> | 3 | 3.09375 | 0.192214 | en | 0.917353 | http://foldoc.org/emulation |
A New Revenue Source for Journalism?
(Photo: Jon S)
Felix Salmon recently proposed an interesting new profit source for newspapers like The New York Times. Citing the Times‘s recent expose on Walmart and the resulting drop in the company’s share price, Salmon wonders why the company doesn’t charge companies for early access to big stories:
[S]houldn’t the NYT, which can always use a bit of extra revenue, take advantage of the fact that its stories can move markets so much? Not directly: I’m not suggesting that the New York Times Company should start buying out-of-the-money put options on Mexican corporates in advance of its own stories. But how much would hedge funds pay to be able to see the NYT’s big investigative stories during the trading day prior to the appearance of the story? It’s entirely normal, and perfectly ethical, for news organizations, including Reuters, to give faster access to the best-paying customers.
Salmon argues that reporters and editors wouldn’t have any connection to corporate clients — “All that’s needed is that when a big story is entering the final stages of layout and fact-checking, a version is sent under strict embargo to a client or clients who have paid for that access.”
Meanwhile, the startup Assignmint hopes to be a matching service between editors and freelance writers that eliminates risk and transaction costs.
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1. rationalrevolution says:
Umm… a horrible idea, that I would hope the SEC or someone would not allow. This would basically create a form of pay to play insider trading.
Yeah, clearly it would generate revenue for the papers, its a form of corruption!
• Mike B says:
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
Disliked! Like or Dislike: Thumb up 13 Thumb down 23
• Skip Montanaro says:
The information the journalist gets may well be inside information. If the article which contains it is then sold to a hedge fund which acts on it, wouldn’t that still be illegal? It might be harder to prove, since it has passed through more hands, but if it was inside information when the journalist first got it, then I would think that it’s still inside information no matter how many hands it passed through, as long as it’s not broadly available.
• JohnB says:
If someone works for a financial publication like Value Line etc, they get arrested if they give out the publication ahead of time.
This article writer must be from another world if he thought that writing an article and giving prior notice to people wouldn’t be the worst form of corruption.
Just because he used the Times as an example, he assumes anything they do must be OK?
Thumb up 3 Thumb down 2
2. ZJG says:
This would require collusion across all news providers to hold back relevant information. In no way would that be sustainable.
Thumb up 8 Thumb down 5
• Mike B says:
It only works for exclusive stories, but most investigative pieces are exclusive.
3. CS says:
Is it really going to be ok with the SEC? Suppose a Times reported decided to trade on the information before release. Would that be “ethical”, as Salmon claims? Would it be also legal, as he implies? I’m not convinced, and I don’t think that the Times ought to test this. (I believe that the WSJ has internal policies prohibiting such trading. Does the NYT?)
If they sell the info as “advance delivery of research”, which will of course be made available free to general readers in a day or two, would that bypass the ethical/legal concerns? I wonder.
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4. Sally M Betscher says:
I think the “perfectly ethical” comment, regarding newspapers giving early access to paying clients, is open to debate. And fairly sophisticated debate, since the issues are by no means clear cut or obvious. I foresee slippery slope arguments, but we all know those can be fallacious. Interesting dilemma.
• Mike B says:
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5. NO... NO NO NO NO NO says:
What an absolutely abhorrent idea, and it goes against everything I have ever considered part of “good journalism”.
Journalism’s main purpose is to inform the people. Not to informs *some*, but ALL. Sometimes that information has a financial impact. Letting companies learn of pending articles that may have some financial impact gives those companies a HUGE financial advantage.
If the NY Times or any other newspaper or journalistic organization were to make one of these arrangements, they’d become nothing more than Faux News, just shilling to the highest bidder rather than a failed ideology.
6. josh says:
If it’s true that companies’ stock prices tend to drop after negative stories about them are published, I wonder if there are some employees of these stories’ publishers take advantage of knowing the story’s print date by readying themselves financially to buy the company’s stock once it’s price does drop and then selling their shares when the price recovers, assuming that these companies’ stock prices do tend to recover.
I wonder if there is a way to test this question.
I wonder if the ability to take advantage incentivizes publishing negative stories about companies.
I wonder if anybody who actually has knowledge of the publishing date even has teh financial resources to take advantage. I wonder this assuming that most people in the newspaper business don’t get paid very well. I have no idea how much they tend to get paid.
Anybody have any ideas on how to assess the wonders listed above?
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7. neela says:
I don’t believe it would be legal to trade on. The law is clear, you cannot trade on Material Non-public information regardless of how you acquire it. It doesn’t matter if an insider tips you, a channel partner tips you, your buddy at the fda tips you etc. Reg-FD has made it so companies cannot even share information to analysts before they share them with the public.
A major negative piece in the times regarding alleged corruption is really no different to having knowledge of whether the FDA will issue a negative ruling on a product of yours. That said, there is a grey area. You are allowed to do such things as channel checks and trade on that. You can stand outside of stores or use satelite imaging on the parking lots of stores on black friday. The line b/w legal research and material insider information is certainly blurry, but my guess is that the above practice would not fly with the SEC.
• Neela says:
In thinking more about this, there is a way to tweak the model for it to be legal.
Let’s say the Times publishes on two schedules – Premier and Standard.
Premier costs $50K per user and is available to anyone who wants to subscribe. All investigative reports are available to subscribers of the premier subscription one day before it is published to standard subscribers – regular Web and print customers. In that situation then the NYT would be okay as the information would be viewed as Public the day it is published to premier subscribers. This is why investors can absolutely get proprietary research reports from Ibanks. The problem of course, is that willingness to pay for this is limited as every other hedge fund is likely to see it/have access.
It is only if one or two people get it and no one else does that it becomes non-public, but of course, that’s when it’s most valuable. Of course the challenge becomes where to draw the line. What if NYT prices premier at $1M / seat such that only 3 hedge funds subscribe. Is that public enough?
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8. Nick says:
I don’t understand how this isn’t saying that NYT should team up with large companies to perform insider trading;
The SEC says of insider trading
The entire idea of these sorts of actions being illegal is that being able to change things by knowing nonpublic information threatens the integrity of the market.
So, in the case of an individual who learns of important, nonpublic information and sells it to another individual who then makes money off of it, it’s illegal insider trading. But for the NYT selling to companies it’s just doing business?
And what, exactly, is the difference between doing an out-of-the-money put option and this operation?
With such a put option, they would be buying the option and potentially having a profit, but also some limited risk if the stock doesn’t fall; in this instance, they let someone else buy the put option, and have instead a guaranteed profit. From that perspective, it seems to be a less risky, guaranteed income version of doing put options on the companies, which is…questionable ethically.
Now take it one step further: suppose major news organizations start doing this. They gain an important source of revenue. Then, the company throws in a sweetener: “If you delay publishing this for just a few hours, we’ll give you 1.5x our normal fee. If you don’t, we’ll stop paying you ever again.” And then, “If you delay for 24 hours, we’ll pay extra.” “two days.” “a week.”
This moves us down the path where news organizations, instead of being light of truth revealing corruption and illegal actions performed by companies, instead become complicit, perhaps even helping to cover up their activities, the opposite of what a free press is supposed to do.
So yes, I’m sure news companies could make tons of money by performing illegal and unethical things, but I wouldn’t recommend it.
• Alaska Ranger says:
There is precious little here that is grey: effectively all is black & white. NYTimes, its employees, etc. cannot legally trade in the securities markets based upon material they are about to publish. Period.
The SEC’s dicta about insider trading does, as commenter Neela suggests, present some interesting questions, however. Neela correctly calls it “Material Non-Public Information”…the term “insider” is more a handy reference word than specific (think of those employees of the NYTimes). Now, let us suppose that I know of an exchange-traded exploration company searching the mountains around me for extractable resources. If I use my own knowledge of this terrain and a lifetime of geologic expertise to ascertain that this company will run through their cash long before they ever find anything here, can I short the stock, or do I possess material non-public information? It certainly is non-public; but is it material?
Thumb up 0 Thumb down 0 | <urn:uuid:b1caeba6-426b-4b29-a6bf-4d4c275d6aec> | 2 | 1.679688 | 0.026631 | en | 0.946598 | http://freakonomics.com/2012/04/27/a-new-revenue-source-for-journalism/ |
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Importing Google Earth Imagery Into A GIS
Limitations of this approach:
18 Responses to “Importing Google Earth Imagery Into A GIS”
1. 1 Erik
Odds are if you are a user of a real GIS app then this use of google’s data is not allowed by the GE license. ;)
2. 2 Frank Taylor
I’ll second what Erik just said. Anyone planning to use an image from Google Earth for a business application should read the GE user license first. The imagery in Google Earth is mostly restricted by those who have licensed it to Google. You can seek permission to use imagery from Google Earth, but some of the license holders will require you to buy the imagery for a business application, or not allow it. Some of the imagery is license free (like those from NASA).
3. 3 Erik
GE’s license doesn’t distinguish between their public domain data and their commercial data, so you are better off getting PD imagery directly from NASA or the USGS, or just take your screenshot in World Wind instead. ;)
4. 4 Leszek Pawlowicz
I’ll take my layman’s shot at the usability question in an upcoming post. But for public domain imagery, you can get higher-quality georeferenced versions of the imagery used in WorldWind from the USGS Seamless Server, or one of the Terraserver programs I’ve talked about in earlier posts.
5. 5 mdsumner
6. 6 Aussie Sarah
I am a reseach student looking at using Google Earth for my project. Does anyone know what their view about the use of imagery for research purposes is?
7. 7 Leszek Pawlowicz
I don’t know what the copyright/fair use laws are for Australia, so I don’t have an answer for you. Google Earth does have a program that offers free copies of Google Earth Pro for qualified non-profits; if you’re eligible for that, it would probably mean you could use Google Earth for your research without any worries.
8. 8 Thomas
Touratech QV 4 can also grab images from GE to a GIS map.
30 days demo version:
9. 9 imran elahi
how can i use google earth images in gis for chitral, when ever i try i came across with some complications.
10. 10 Nick McW
This is really neat, thanks for posting. Have you tried it with GE Pro? I’m just asking since GE Pro saves images with a lot more resolution (4800 pixels rather than 1000 pixels – see http://earth.google.com/product_comparison.html). So, I wonder if the b&w image that Shape2Earth makes (step 5) will have the same resolution as the colour image saved by GE itself (step 6)? If the resolutions are different, then the pixel size values in the JGW will be wrong (although the corner coords will still be correct, I expect).
Also – any idea why Shape2Earth saves B&W, not colour?!?! Seems odd.
11. 11 Dan
I did try this, and Nick (above) nailed it. The GE Pro 4800 pixel image does not match the referencing of the Shape2Earth B&W one. This could probably be corrected by mucking with the pixel values, but I couldn’t be bothered. I went with the method described here instead: http://forums.esri.com/Thread.asp?c=93&f=1740&t=193459&mc=3#575260.
12. 12 Nick McW
Just tried GE Pro at last – it’s great, in that it saves images at up to 4800 pixels horizontally. The vertical image size depends on the window size and whether the sidebar view is on. In full screen mode, I get 3765 pixels vertically, but I guess it would go up to 4800 x 4800 pixels if I stretched GE over two monitors or had a particularly hi-res display. I now get a c. 18 megapixel image rather than a 1 MP image. Looked at another way, a saved image covers almost 5 km x 4 km at 1 metre resolution.
However, I found the same as Dan, that the Shape2Earth extension for MapWindow only correctly references the basic 1000 pixel image. So I made a simple spreadsheet to “muck around with the pixel values” (I like the phrase!) and calculate the values needed for a worldfile for the 4800 pixel image. It’s rather clunky, requiring the user to copy the North, West, East and South extents of the bounding rectangle from the S2E dialogue and paste them into Excel, then to copy data out of Excel and paste it into a .jpgw text file. However, it does seem to work and is probably a bit quicker and potentially more accurate than georegistering in ArcGIS.
13. 13 Leszek Pawlowicz
Thanks, Nick. Any chance you could post a link to that spreadsheet? Unlike Google Earth Free/Plus, there should be no argument about using Google Earth Pro imagery in this manner.
14. 14 Nick McW
Hi, here’s the spreadsheet as a Google Document:
To use it, you’ll need to export from Google Docs to your PC:
Google Docs > File > Export > .XLS
Improvements welcome of course……
15. 15 Carlos
My company does have a licence to use google earth’s images in our work.
16. 16 oyunlar
With google earth plus??
“My company does have a licence to use google earth’s images in our work.”
17. 17 kral oyun
Thanks, Nick chance you could post a link to that spreadsheet? Unlike Google Earth Free/Plus, there should be norgument boutusing Google EarthPro imagery inthis manner.
18. 18 Vikas jyani
I have captured the google earth snapshots and mosaiced them to make a complete study area.
for my college project work. is it illegal an unfair.
| <urn:uuid:bbd48b38-69aa-4405-bcef-18c37c52060c> | 2 | 1.671875 | 0.026049 | en | 0.880875 | http://freegeographytools.com/2007/importing-google-earth-imagery-into-a-gis |
Figure 3.
Rearrangement phylogeny for genus Drosophila. The number along each branch of the tree shows the probable number of fixed rearrangement breaks inferred along that evolutionary branch. Each inferred rearrangement break corresponds to the disruption of a gene pair (NGP) that was inferred to exist in the immediate ancestor. Consequently, it includes macro and micro syntenic disruptions. See Materials and methods for details on the handling of ambiguous cases. Rearrangement breaks are assumed to occur as a result of chromosomal inversion events. Estimates for inversion counts can be computed from these data as outlined in the Materials and methods. The total number of inferred fixed rearrangement breaks for each genus Drosophila species, from the Drosophila root, is mentioned alongside the species name. Anopheles gambiae (shown), Aedes aegypti, Apis mellifera, and Tribolium castaneum are also used as outgroup species. Subgenus Drosophila species show lower overall average branch lengths than subgenus Sophophora species. Dashed lines at the subgenus Sophophora and subgenus Drosophila nodes reflect the loss of genus-specific NGP signal at the genus Drosophila root, which is only partially compensated for by distant outgroup species. See Discussion for details.
Download authors' original image | <urn:uuid:41faa5cb-bfa0-4682-a9e7-60572c3a4f5f> | 4 | 3.59375 | 0.054285 | en | 0.879111 | http://genomebiology.com/2007/8/11/R236/figure/F3 |
The Lightest Olympic Torch Ever
It's being referred to as a "golden cheesegrater" in various circles. The public seems to hate it. Still, at 800 grams, this is the lightest Olympic torch yet. And that's important, because a lot of people are going to carry the thing a long way.
Reuters says the design ties in London's Olympic history:
Ignoring the unwelcome comparisons, the designers said its triangular shape symbolises the three times that London has staged the Games in 1908, 1948 and 2012, the faster, higher stronger motto of the Olympic movement and the sport, education and culture triple vision of the 2012 Games.
Designed in London and manufacured in Coventry, the torch is 800mm high and has 8000 holes, representative of the 8000 mile journey and the 8000 people who will carry it throughout the UK.
According to the UK Independent, original designs for the aluminum torch included an eco-friendly flame with low-carbon emissions, but the designers weren't able to find a suitable propellant for the flame in time. Instead, it will burn a more traditional gas concoction. The journey will begin next may in Ancient Olympia and end July 27 at London's Olympic Stadium. [Reuters and UK Independent via Born Rich] | <urn:uuid:17fe609a-8f15-408b-a5e2-c4d7e53af206> | 2 | 2.453125 | 0.031547 | en | 0.946415 | http://gizmodo.com/5810476/the-lightest-olympic-torch-ever?tag=olympics |
Kailua to state: Stop sending tourists here
Associated Press
It’s the latest salvo in a long-running battle about how much tourism Kailua wants and should allow — a dispute popping up around the state as more of the increasing numbers of visitors who arrive want to experience island life like a local rather than a tourist.
The board is upset about a thriving industry of bed-and-breakfast and vacation rentals leased out short-term without permits. The board said these places deplete Kailua’s already limited supply of housing, inflating costs and putting homes out of reach of those born and raised in town.
Neighbors don’t like having a stream of strangers staying next door.
“I would say to them, ‘I’ve got teenagers. I’ve got very young kids. I’m trying to teach them to stay away from drugs. You must have nieces and nephews, please take it inside and be discreet,’” she said. They ignored her pleas, noting they had medical marijuana licenses.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how many vacation rentals are in Kailua, but one website, Vacation Rentals by Owner, lists 289 vacation rental units in the town. The Hawaii Tourism Authority estimated there might be about 500. Statewide, there are between 7,000 and 10,000, regulated based on different local laws in each county.
So, when the board noticed the tourism agency’s website suggested “a Kailua vacation rental can be the perfect solution” for those planning a family vacation or traveling in large groups, members decided to push back.
By a 12-2 vote, the board in September passed a resolution requesting the agency “stop promoting Kailua as a tourist destination and alternative to Waikiki.”
Defenders of vacation rentals and bed-and-breakfasts said they support the economy and provide jobs, noting they’ve helped many boutiques and restaurants that cropped up in Kailua during the past decade or so to flourish.
Rules for posting comments | <urn:uuid:d87d2cfb-9a29-439e-bd33-d67b816502a5> | 2 | 1.515625 | 0.018739 | en | 0.94782 | http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/sections/news/state/kailua-state-stop-sending-tourists-here.html |
Staying Healthy Image Gallery
Staying Healthy Image Gallery
Do you know what causes runny nose and sneezing? See more health tips with staying healthy pictures.
Stockbyte/Getty Images
When someone says, "I have a cold," what he or she means is, "There is something in my body that is causing me to have the set of symptoms that we call a 'cold.'" The set of symptoms normally includes things like a runny nose, sneezing, coughing, "chills" and a headache. It does not include a fever -- normally, if there is a fever it's called "the flu."
There are many different viruses that can cause cold symptoms, but about half of the time a cold is caused by a class of viruses called rhinoviruses.
The rhinovirus gets into the cells lining your nose and starts reproducing. It arrives from other people -- it is not cold weather that causes a cold, but the fact that cold weather causes people to congregate together indoors, which makes transmission of the virus easier. The virus generally moves from someone else's hands to your hands (either directly or through some intermediate surface like a door knob), and from your hands into your nose or eyes.
Your body reacts to the presence of the virus with its immune system. The article How Your Immune System Works talks about infectious diseases and how your immune system deals with them. In the case of a cold, the immune system opens up blood vessels through inflammation and also increases mucus secretions. These two processes give you the runny nose and the stuffy feeling. The irritation caused by the virus and all of the fluid causes sneezing. If the virus makes it into the cells lining the lungs, then they start producing fluid and mucus as well, which produces the cough.
As the immune system gears up over several days and fights the virus, the mucus thickens and changes color with dead cells (a form of pus, really). Eventually, the immune system eliminates the virus completely and you are well again!
For more information, see the links on the next page. | <urn:uuid:2b25ec88-d47b-46b4-b2cc-4b161297375c> | 4 | 3.625 | 0.936867 | en | 0.955742 | http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/cold-flu/cold-causes.htm |
tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116648122015-02-15T01:54:51.390-08:00Incest Blogthese are some thoughts on incest, its morality, incidence, and prohibition. it must be stated clearly that the blog stands squarely against any incest involving corecion or lack of consent. child abuse is especially odious. any and all postings considering the legalization of incest refer only to consensual sex between adults.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1132336090602142472005-11-18T09:34:00.000-08:002005-11-18T09:48:47.756-08:00British Pakistanis' 2nd Cousin Marriage Birth Defect RatesBritish officials want to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/16/ncous16.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/16/ixhome.html">stop cousin marriages</a> because birth defect rates appear to be about ten times higher than for more distantly related married couples:<br /><br /><br /><em>Marriages between cousins should be banned after research showed alarming rates in defective births among Asian communities in Britain, a Labour MP said last night.</em><br /><br /><em>The report, commissioned by Ann Cryer, revealed that the Pakistani community accounted for 30 per cent of all births with recessive disorders, despite representing 3.4 per cent of the birth rate nationwide.</em><br /><br /><em>“We address problems of smoking, drinking, obesity and we say it’s a public health issue, therefore we have to get involved with persuading people to adopt a different lifestyle,” the MP for Keighley, Bradford, told BBC2’s Newsnight programme last night.</em><br /><br /><em>“I think this should be applied to the Asian community. They must look outside the family for husbands and wives for their young people.”</em><br /><br /><em>It is estimated that more than 55 per cent of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins, resulting in an increasing rate of genetic defects and high rates of infant mortality. The likelihood of unrelated couples having the same variant genes that cause recessive disorders are estimated to be 100-1. Between first cousins, the odds increase to as much as one in eight.</em><br /><br /><em>In Bradford, more than three quarters of all Pakistani marriages are believed to be between first cousins. The city’s Royal Infirmary Hospital has identified more than 140 different recessive disorders among local children, compared with the usual 20-30.</em><br /><br /><em>The findings were expected to be condemned by the Asian community, in which many see the tradition of marriages between first cousins as culturally fundamental.</em><br /><br /><em>“You have an understanding, you have the same family history,” said Neila Butt, who has had two children with her husband, Farooq, her first cousin. “It’s just a nicer emotional feel.”</em><br /><em></em><br />Somthing to keep in mind is that these birth defect rates are the result, most likely, of repeated generations of first-cousin marriages, where the gene pool keeps getting more and more concentrated due to generation after generation of inbreeding. This is very interesting because the number typically reported is that first-cousin marriages result in birthdefects about double the rate for non-related couples. But that rate is derived in cultures where first cousin marriages are very rare and where the culture has no tradition of encouraging first cousin marriages. Consequently, that rate reflects what happens when you get a first-cousin couple coming from a background in which there had been no previous incest, presumably, in previous generations. Here we have about 10 times the rate in a situation where there is repeated first-cousin marriages over and over, generation after generation. Clearly, things get worse and worse.<br /><br />On the other hand, it's surprising in some way that the bith defect rates aren't even higher. I would like to be able to compare miscarriage rates. It is known that human bodies will spontaneously miscarry many defective fetuses. Perhaps the rates aren't even higher because so many fetuses never make it to full term to be counted in the official stats on birth defects. You have to be born after all to have a birth defect. Pity the many who never make it even that far.<br /><em></em><br /><em></em><br /><em></em>Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1123245111191770352005-08-05T05:23:00.000-07:002005-08-05T05:32:55.113-07:00A Constitutional Right to Incest?Matthew J. Frank has an <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/franck200508040812.asp">interesting piece</a> in National Review Online dealing with the <em>Muth vs. Frank</em> case that was just adjudicated by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. The case revolves around Wisconson's anti-incest law. Allen and Patricia Muth, brother and sister, managed to get married and have three kids. The authorities found out, took the kids away, and sent parents to jail. Allen Muth then brough suit arguing that incest between consenting adults must be a protected constitutional right since the wording of the 2003 Supreme Court decision in the <em>Lawrence vs. Texas</em> case basically implies that any consenting sex between adults is private and cannot be regulated without violating a person's right to liberty.<br /><br />As Mr. Frank writes in the article, this case may soon end up at the Supreme Court since the reasoning that the Seventh Circuit Court used to uphold Winconson's anti-incest law is legally worthless and indeed since <em>Lawrence vs. Texas</em> is now precedent, the <em>Muth vs. Frank</em> case is very strong. It will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court decides to take the case and also, if they do, what they'll decide.<br /><br />But there is a pretty good chance if they take the case that they may come down in favor of ruling that consenting incest between adults is legal. To do otherwise would be to back track on the rights given to homosexuals in the <em>Lawrence vs. Texas</em> case, which struck down the state of Texas' anti-sodomy law.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1118062783577282612005-06-06T05:56:00.000-07:002005-06-06T05:59:43.583-07:00Slate on IncestHere are two articles by William Saletan that have appeared in Slate. The first one is on the <a href="http://http://slate.msn.com/id/2064227/">cousin incest movement</a>, and the second on whether legalizing gay sex will lead to the <a href="http://http://slate.msn.com/id/2081904/">legalization of incest</a>.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1118059663043026592005-06-06T05:06:00.000-07:002005-06-06T05:09:02.863-07:00Incest in FolktalesDr. D.L. Ashliman of the University of Pittsburgh has posted this extensive essay on <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/incest.html">Incest in Indo-European Folktales</a>. It's worth a read.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1118059515573110192005-06-06T05:02:00.000-07:002005-06-06T05:05:15.573-07:00The History of How Anthropologists Invented the "Incest Taboo"Incest is a Latin word. Taboo is a Tongan world. It took a bunch of early anthropologists and sociologists to put the two together, as told by Tim Mason in this academic article called <a href="http://http://tmason.club.fr/WebPages/Publications/Incest_Frontiers.htm">Incest: Frontiers and Syncretism</a>.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1118059266217295072005-06-06T05:00:00.000-07:002005-06-06T05:01:06.216-07:00Forbidden LoveHere's the link to the Guardian (London) article on incest in the UK that was published in 2002 and entitled <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4331603,00.html">Forbidden Love</a>.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1118059018254562052005-06-06T04:54:00.000-07:002005-06-06T04:56:58.256-07:00Ungentlemanly ActsHere is a book review of <a href="http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2000-02-18/books_roundup8.html">Ungentlemanly Acts: The Army's Notorious Incest Trial.</a> It's about the true life case of an office courtmartialed for womanizing and seducing the daughter of another officer who struck back by accusing the father of incest. And it's in Texas during the cowboy days.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1118047126370168872005-06-06T01:34:00.000-07:002005-06-06T01:38:46.373-07:00Choose Your Own Incest Adventure...Back in grade school, there were books sold to kids under the "Choose Your Own Adventure" category. Every few pages, you had to decide, for instance, whether to take the black door or the brown door, or to help the stranger or run.<br /><br />Well, it turns out that the genre lives on line at <a href="http://www.chyoo.com">http://www.chyoo.com</a>, where you can play such story games in a variety of categorys including of course incest---afer all, why else would I post about it here? As of this posting there are 123 incest stories to choose from. So will you flirt with your mom or go mow the lawn?Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1116942977709709872005-05-24T06:51:00.000-07:002005-05-24T06:56:17.713-07:00Jared Diamond on IncestJared Diamond is most famous for his best seller <em>Guns, Germs, and Steel</em>, which argued that geography and historical accidents led to the West's dominance of the world. But back in 1996 in Discover magazine, he wrote this really <a href="http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_v7/ai_4473996">great article</a> on what experiments have shown about incest avoidance.<br /><br />Especially nice is how he fairly treats the data that shows that while people don't typically want to have sex with anyone they were raised with as a small child, they <em>do</em> want to have sex with people who are very similar to those they were raised with. That is, you like traits similar to those possessed by mom, but don't want mom herself.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1116869283595085502005-05-23T10:26:00.000-07:002005-05-23T10:28:03.596-07:00Incest in Iceland (Yes, Iceland)Here is a <a href="http://kabul.library.uvic.ca/beck/media/text/incest.html">link </a>to a very interesting article on the legal prohibitions and prosections relating to incest that took place in Iceland up to 1900---i.e. when it was very much an isolated society.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1116868585903145852005-05-23T10:15:00.000-07:002005-05-23T10:16:25.903-07:00Early American Incest ScandalHere's a great link that will tell you about what at the time was a huge incest scandal--but one that might never have happened. It's <a href="http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3644/is_200201/ai_n9027398">1790-something...</a>Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1116868275092151302005-05-23T10:08:00.000-07:002005-05-23T10:11:15.093-07:00Lord Byron's IncestLord Byron, the famous poet, was also infamous for having his marriage break up because of an affair he had with his half sister, Augusta Leigh. Here is a link to a <a href="http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4504_129/ai_65650759">book review</a> of <em>AUGUSTA LEIGH: BYRON'S HALF-SISTER, </em>which details the affair.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1116867793647082442005-05-23T10:00:00.000-07:002005-05-23T10:03:13.650-07:00Archives of the Incest DigestA few years back, a newsgrouper who went by the handle of Rank would ask people to submit their personal stories of incest. He would then edit them down to the good parts, collect a few, and put out an issue of the very irregularly published Incest Digest. I personally find most of these stories quite credible sounding. You can get to an archive of the old posts <a href="http://www.asstr.org/~True_Youth_Stories/TYS_IncestDigest.htm">here</a>.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1116784575337669592005-05-22T10:55:00.000-07:002005-05-22T10:56:15.340-07:00Some Pro-Incest Links<a href="http://inkaboutit.homestead.com/incest.html">Here</a>.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1116782025786619962005-05-22T10:10:00.000-07:002005-05-22T10:39:05.290-07:00The Brain Science of Incest AvoidanceIn this long, academic, but readable <a href="http://www.homestead.com/flowstate/incest.html">article</a>, you can find a seriously good argument about why incest avoidance is likely to be a learned behavior rather than something inate in the genes. That is an important point because you wouldn't want evolution to make animals totally unable to engage in incest---after all, if it's just a brother and his sister on an island, there are no other potential mates and the optimal solution evolutionarily is to engage in incest.<br /><br />This <a href="http://www.homestead.com/flowstate/Incestwars.html">page</a> provides links to other articles by the same author. They are much more readable and present his ideas in a much more accessible way.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1116778907601106282005-05-22T09:17:00.000-07:002005-05-22T09:29:06.863-07:00The Infamous December 1977 Penthouse Article<em><strong>In its December 1977 issue, Penthouse magazine published the following article about incest.</strong></em><br /><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:180%;">INCEST: THE LAST TABOO</span></strong><br /><br />by Philip Nobile<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">'Previously suppressed material from the original Kinsey interviews tells us that incest is prevalent and often positive.'</span></strong><br /><br />Few things are as powerful as a deviation whose time has come. Homosexuality, wife swapping, open marriage, bisexuality, S & M, and kiddie porn have already had their seasons. Just as we seemed to be running low on marketable taboos, the unspeakable predictably popped up. Incest is supposed to be the ultimate inhibition, universally recognized and unconsciously observed. Margaret Mead declares that widespread breaches of this primative taboo may be more disruptive of society than crime, suicide, and murder. So incest is very serious business. Even the discontentedly civilized shudder at its mention. Yet the game that every family can play, while repulsive and resistable, appears undeniably bewitching and oddly exciting in passing fantasy.<br /><br />Thematically, incest is rugged country. Although Sophocles, Shakespeare, Stendahl, Shelly, Balzac, Wagner, Mann, and Wharton have tried to express its horrible fascination, the popular literature is understandably thin. But no longer. This once unbankable subject is now the darling of the media. After centuries of restraint, incest is finally a hit.<br /><br />To wit: NBC News devoted its monthly Saturday night Weekend show last May to a ninety-minute documentary on the incest victims at a unique California child sex-abuse clinic.<br />In Pete Hamill's boxing novel Flesh and Blood (Random House), young Brooklyn heavyweight Bobby Fallon sleeps with his mother Kate and fights for the title. According to the catologue copy, theirs is "a love affair that readers will never forget."<br /><br />Carolyn Slaughter's Relations (Mason/Charter), an August Literary Guild alternate, tells of the intimacies shared by a brother and sister in the late nineteenth century. "The beauty of their love is inevitably destroyed, but not the memory of the beauty. ..."<br /><br />Twins (Putnam's) by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, is a recently published novel based on the weird deaths of indentical-twin gynecologists in New York City in 1975. Their fictionalized fatal flaw was incest. Paperback rights have been sold to NAL for $902,000, and the movie version is about to be optioned.<br /><br />Rewedded Bliss: Love, Alimony, Incest, Ex-Spouses, and Other Domestic Blessings (Basic), by David Mayleas, cites cases of sex between stepparents and stepchildren and gives rules for avoiding this increasing "polyincest" in second marriages.<br /><br />For her untitled book on incest (contracted by Hawthorn), children's book author Louise Armstrong is tracking down women for first-person accounts of the ordeal.<br />Redbook, Family Circle, People, the Washington Star, and the New York Times have recently broken the taboo in print with major features.<br /><br />Three films with incest plots were exhibited at Cannes last spring: Yves Boisset's The Yellow Taxi, with Fred Astaire and Charlotte Rampling; Carlos Saura's Elisa, Vida Mia, with Geraldine Chaplin and Fernando Rey; and benoit Jackquot's Les Enfants du Placard, with Brigette Fossey and Jean sorel. This cluster arrives six years after Louis Malle's sympathetic treatment of an incestous mother and son in Murmur of the Heart.<br /><br />Incest would be just another media trend, faddishly seduced and abandoned after repealed use, were it not for two forthcoming studies that promise to turn the prohibition on its head. Both introduce and uphold the notion of "positive incest", an especially dissonant oxymoron that will madden therapists and confuse the masses more than the Kinsey reports did twenty-five years ago. Actually, Kinsey was the first sex researcher to uncover evidence that violation of the taboo does not necessarily shake heaven and earth. Unpublished data taken from his original sex histories (some 18,000 in number) imply that lying with a near relative rarely ends in tragedy. "In our basic sample, the is, our random sample, only a tiny percentage of our incest cases had been reported to police or psychologists," states Kinsey collaborator Dr. Paul Gebhard, currently directory of the Institute for Sex Research in Bloomington, Ind. "In fact, in the ones that were not reported, I'm having a hard time recalling any traumatic effects at all. I certainly can't recall any form among the brother-sister participants, and I can't put my finger on any among the parent-child participants."<br /><br />The nation was hardly prepared for such talk in the fifties, but Gebhard is relasing Kinsey's startling incest material for incorporation in Warran Farrell's work-in-progress, The Last Taboo: The Three Faces of Incest. According to the cultural gatekeepers in New York publishing, America still wasn't ready to hear about positive incest in the mid seventies. Farrell's impressive credentials -- a Ph.D. in political science from N.Y.U., former board member of the National Organization for Women, and author of a book entitled Beyond Masculinity -- counted as nothing. His forty-one-page outline (including two sizzling case histories -- one with a New York writer who has intercourse regularly with his seventeen-year-old daughter, occasionally supplemented with threesomes with the daughter's girlfriend, and another with a Notre Dame graduate who made love to his mother for ten years) was returned by twenty-two houses last fall. MacGraw-Hill's editor-in-chief Fred Hills wanted to acquire the project, but company executives said no. The top editors at a major reprint concern were anxious to buy it until their lady boss invoked an "over my dead body" line. Bantam was the only firm that dared to bid, and Farrall signed for $60,000.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>'Dr. James Ramey, a sociologist, states, "If two relatives make love in a caring situation, that's one thing. If it's rape, it's another.You can't put the incest tag on that." '</strong></span><br /><br />Dr. James Ramey, a sociologist with a multi-disciplinary Ph.D. from Columbia, has censored his own positive incest manuscript for the past four years. Fearing for his reputation and massive misunderstanding, Ramey hesitated to lead with an apparently permission-giving book on man's oldest taboo. He refuses to discuss specifics but volunteers that only one incest family from his 1,500-plus interviews and questionnaires ever ran afoul of the law. "And that was a setup," he adds. Feeling that others are bound to soften up the opposition before him, Ramey has opened negotiations for the book. But unless he can control the publication date, promotion, and jacket and advertising copy, he will not proceed. "You have to be careful when you do a taboo-bucking book," he comments. "There are a lot of slips between the cup and the lip."<br /><br />NBC's Weekend visit to the Santa Clara County Child Sexual Abuse Treatment Center in San Jose will not help Farrell and Ramey convince anybody that incest is less than a scourge. Host Lloyd Dobyns was so depressed by the content that he told the audience in his introduction that he wasn't sure he'd watch himself it it weren't his own program. What followed was a montage of contrite fathers and exploited daughters pouring out their unrelievedly sad stories of incestuous grief. To interrupt the monotony of the documentary, producer Clare Crawford-Mason frequently cut to Hank Giaretto, director of the treatment center, for background and wisdom on the taboo. Giaretto was positively against incest and linked it to prostitution, drug abuse and sexual dysfunction in daughter victims. In his experience the normally repressed impulse overpowered law-abiding, middle-class fathers when they were down and out professionally and alienated from their wives. These men looked toward their blossoming daughters first for consolation and then for sex. A self-described humanist psychologist, Giaretto requires every father patient to apologize to his daughter and confess his secret to every family member still in the dark about his sins. Regardless of the cost and embarrassment, he believes that public prostration is preferable to discreet, private handling of incestuous entanglements.<br /><br />For example, in a curious composite portrait of an incestuous family drawn from Giaretto's records and published in Family Circle, the father goes to prison for six months, depletes his life savings, and loses his old job; his daughter has to repeat a year in school; and the other two children freak out and are forced into therapy. Branded as a child molester, the father has dim prospects of future employment. Although such a cure may be worse than the disease, Giaretto admits he would hand over to the law any participants in incest who sought his counsel anynymously. "I have never come across a happy incestuous family, " he said on Weekend. Of this there is little doubt.<br /><br />Although Farrell had personally familiarized Giaretto with his findings on positive incest before the Weekend taping, Giaretto failed to temper his apocalyptism on camera. For instance, Giaretto might have hinted that his strictly patient population was biased by definition and therefore could not possibly provide a true picture of the practice. And he could have explained that brother-sister incest, by far the most common kind, is known to be relatively harmless. Producer Crawford-Mason, who is also a Washington correspondent for People, loaded the documentary with so many recitals of the Auschwitz of incest that key, clarifying questions were never asked. Both Crawford-Mason and Dobyns deny sensationalizing a sensitive sexual issue before a wide-eyed- audience of millions, emphasizing that the show was about Giaretto's center, not incest. "If the subject was incest," Dobyns conceded, "we did it poorly."<br /><br />Crawford-Mason won't grant the bias inherent in Giaretto's sample. "You're trying to attack my story," she says testily. "How many documentaries have you produced? ... If we didn't make it clear that brother-sister incest was not as traumatizing it was a mistake. We discussed incest for the first time in public. And the very fact that you're writing this article proves that the show succeeded. You have a right to comment, but it's Monday-morning quarterbacking."<br /><br />Warren Farrell admires Giaretto's rehabilitative mission among legitimate victims, for his own investigation allows for considerable negativity, particularly in the father-daughter category. But he faults Weekend for its skewed perspective. "It was like interviewing Cuban refugees about Cuba. Weekend recorded sexually abused children speaking about their sexual abuse, which is valuable, but the inference is that all incest is abuse. And that's not true."<br /><br />Farrell was reluctant to give a tour of the heart of the country. His research is incomplete, and the data collected from 200 in-depth interviews (he plans to have 250 for the book) await a computer run. Although he vowed not to speak out prior to publication (probably in 1979), he consented to a one-time debriefing at a Chinese restaurant near his Riverside Drive apartment overlooking the Hudson River in Manhattan. At thirty-four, he is separated from his wife, who is an IBM executive, and childless.<br /><br />The idea for the book struck him after reading a Times article about incest early last year. According to the piece, only a tiny fraction of the cases ever reaches the courts. In 1976 New York City police received merely one incest complaint and no arrests. Farrell wondered if perhaps some incidents weren't reported because the relationships went smoothly. Since nothing had been written about nonpatient-nonoffender participants, he decided the gap was too large to ignore.<br /><br />What is the incidence? Farrell's survey of 2,000 undergraduates in state as well as community colleges yielded a 4 to 5 percent figure. Kinsey's incidence was 3.9, but his collaborator, Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, thinks that the real figure is closer to 10 percent. Incest is not simply a deviation; it is a crime. People tend not to respond as honestly as they would about other modes of unconventional sex. Positive incest is even more hidden, since nothing is gained by disclusure. Thus most of Farrell's positive participants who replied to his ads in the Village Voice, the New York Review of Books, Psychology Today, and the New Republic were speaking out for the first time.<br /><br />Farrell cautions that his statistics are rough and confined just to his current sample of 200 -- including people from the unemployed, the working class, business executives, Ph.D.'s and professional athletes. But his preliminary data suggest that the taboo needs severe overhauling. Breaking down the effects into positive (beneficial), negative (traumatic), and mixed (nontraumatic but not regarded as beneficial) categories -- the three faces of incest in his subtitle -- he says that the ovewhelming majority of cases fall into the positive column. Cousin-cousin (including uncle-niece and aunt-nephew) and brother-sister (including sibling homosexuality) relations, accounting for about half of the total incidence, are perceived as beneficial in 95 percent of the cases.<br /><br />Mother-son incest represents 10 percent of the incidence and is 70 percent positive, 20 percent mixed, and 10 percent negative for the son. For the mother it is mostly positive. Farrell points out the boys don't seem to suffer, not even from the negaive experience. "Girls are much more influenced by the dictates of society and are more willing to take on sexual guilt."<br />The father-daughter scene, ineluctably complicated by feelings of dominance and control, is not nearly so sanguine. Despite some advertisments, calling explicitly for positive female experiences, Farrell discovered that 85 percent of the daughters admitted to having negative attitudes toward their incest. Only 15 percent felt positive about the experience. On the other hand, statistics from the vantage of the fathers involved were almost the reverse -- 60 percent positive, 20 percent negative. "Either men see these relationships differently," comments Farrell, "or I am getting selective reporting from women."<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>'Do you talk about rape and courtship in the same breath? Both are defined by intercourse, but the consent and spirit are different. So, too, with so-called coercive and noncoercive incest.'</strong></span><br /><br />In a typical traumatic case, an authoritarian father, unhappily married in a sexually repressed houshold and probably unemployed, drunkenly imposes himself on his young daughter. Genital petting may have started as early as age eight with first intercourse occurring around twelve. Since the father otherwise extends very little attention to his daughter, his sexual advances may be one of the few pleasant experiences she has with him. If she is unaware of society's taboo and if the mother does not intervene, she has no reason to suspect the enormity of the aberration. But when she grows up and learns of the taboo, she feels cheapened. If she comes from the lower class, she may turn to prostitution or drugs as compensation for self-worthlessness, although a direct cause-effect link is far from certain. The trauma is spread through all classes, Farrell observes, but incest is more likely to be negative in the lower class.<br /><br />Ramey would quarrel with Farrell's classification of the above case as incest. When coercion is involved, it's plain rape in his opinion. "You can't put the incest tag on that," he argues. "If two relatives make love in a caring situation, that's one thing. If it's rape, it's another." Dr. C.A. Tripp, a New York sex researecher who is unafraid of positive incest, also contests Farrell's methodology. "Do you talk about rape and courtship in the same breath?" he says. "Both are defined by intercourse, but the consent and spririt are vastly different. So, too, with so-called coercive and noncoercive incest. The two shouldn't be lumped together as two aspects of the same phenomenon."<br /><br />It is not difficult to guess the benefits that accrue to the incestuous father, but what's in it for the 15 percent of daughters who inform Farrell that they liked it? The answer is a tender, nonfumbling, and loving introduction to sex that is wildly arounsing for all its wickedness and devoid of the usual teenage backseat trial and error. One daughter told Farrell that she preferred her father to "the locker room jerkoffs" who were interested only in scoring with her. She felt that they, rather that her father, were trying to take advantage. If the father lets his daughter go gently, avoiding jealous fits, their relationship may be fondly remembered. Some have been known to continue after marriage.<br /><br />"When I get my most glowing positive cases, 6 out of 200," says Farrell, "the incest is part of the family's open, sensual style of life, wherein sex is an outgrowth of warmth and affection. It is more likely that the father has good sex with his wife, and his wife is likely to know and approve -- and in one or two cases to join in."<br /><br />Incredible? Impossible? Insane? Well, just such a father-daughter case happened in New York City. A forty-two-year-old Jewish writer, contentedly married for twenty years, phoned Farrell after reading his ad and related the following story.<br /><br />Two years ago the writer happened to be at his beach house alone with his attractive fifteen-year-old daughter. He watched her strip out of her bikini -- nudity was not unusual in the family -- and fantasized about having sex with her while she showered. His wife's appendix operation had curtailed his sex for the previous five months. This day the women on the beach and a few beers had led him into special temptation. When the daughter emerged from the bathroom in a towel, he greeted her in the nude and erect. Although he had never consciously desired incest before, he told his daughter that he missed sex. Without further prompting she fellated him to orgasm. Then she cried until he assured her that they hadn't done anything wrong; he asked her not to tell her mother.<br /><br />Two weeks later the daughter walked around the house naked until the father approached her. That day he deflowered her to their mutual satisfaction. But the father was careful not to push things. He did not want to hurt his daughter, who seemed to have an active sex life with boys her own age. Several weeks later the daughter took the initiative again, this time with a girl friend as a third party. This threesome was the most exciting sex the father had ever had. Soon the father and daughter were having intercourse three times a week, repairing to motels with their secret passion. When they were six months into the incest, the wife unexpectedly returned to the apartment from shopping and caught the pair in the act. Despite some initial hysteria, the wife okayed everything. Apparently she was relieved that her husband's strong sexual demands could be met at home rather than with hookers, and she hinted that she'd like to watch the two of them in bed. When the writer talked with Farrell, the incest had been ongoing for two years. The father is enjoying himself immensely, and he says that his daughter prefers his expertise to the groping of her boyfriends, who just want to be "deepthroated." The writer insists that they're both much better friends now that before.<br /><br />Incredible. Impossible. Insane. But unless the writer is deluded, it is perhaps true and definitely positive. However, Farrell has become increasingly skeptical of reports from fathers, for they are seldom confirmed by daughters. For a woman's view of positive incest, see Edith Wharton's long supressed short-story fragment Beatrice Palmato, appended to R.W.B. Lewis's biography. It is the best read with one's feet in holy water, as Wharton leaves nothing to the pornographic imagination.<br /><br />Brother-sister relations are attended by fewer complications, since domination is not a factor. Farrell recounted the history of a twenty-five-year-old woman who had happily slept with her older brother for two years until he left home, four years ago, to get married. Today they talk on the phone every week and remain very close. The woman has no regrets and regards her incest as one of the best sexual experiences of her life.<br /><br />She began the long seduction of her brother at the age of thirteen or fourteen, prancing around their suburban New York home with her robe open. The tease progressed to leaving her bedroom door open while she was undressed. Apparently, the brother ignored these early invitations but later reciprocated with exhibitionism of his own. When she was eighteen, the girl started masturbating in bed, naked and with the door ajar. The brother responded by simltaneously masturbating in his own room. Soon they were masturbating together and performing oral sex. In a few weeks they engaged in sexual intercourse for the first time.<br /><br />The sister was turned on to making love with a mirror image of herself. Breaking the taboo only heightened her pleasure. They had sex twice a week for the duration of their liason, often dipping into fantasies and Polaroid pornography. The brother once watched her make love to another man; another time he looked on as she exercised in the nude with a girl friend. On both occasions he made love to her immediately afterward. Their familial arguments ceased during the affair, and they became the best of friends. The sister now feels the incest helped in overcoming her inhibitions, though she and her brother had an active sex life with other partners while they were involved. They have slept together only once since her brother married.<br /><br />Farrell realizes the risks that attend publication of this book. "In a society where men are powerful and exploitive and insensitive to women's feelings, which is reinforced by female adaptiveness and a daughter's lack of power, data like these can be used as an excuse for the continuation and magnification of that exploitation. When I consider that, I almost don't want to write the book."<br /><br />Since neither victim nor benefactor needs Farrell's confirmation, why does he gamble with bringing on a sexual deluge? "First, because millions of people who are now refraining from touching, holding, and genitally caressing their children, when that is really part of a caring, loving expression, are repressing the sexuality of a lot of children and themselves. Maybe this needs repressing, and maybe it doesn't. My book should at least begin the exploration.<br />"Second, I'm finding that thousands of people in therapy for incest are being told, in essence, that their lives have been ruined by incest. In fact, their lives have not generally been affected as much by the incest as by the overall atmosphere. My book should help therapists put incest in perspective."<br /><br />Farrell also hopes to change public attitudes so that participants in incest will no longer be automatically perceived as vitims. "The average incest participant can't evaluate his or her experience for what it was. As soon as society gets into the picture, they have to tell themselves it was bad. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy."<br /><br />If pushed to the wall, would Farrell urge incest on families? "Incest is like a magnifying glass," he summarizes. "In some circumnstances it magnifies the beauty of a relationship, and in others it magnifies the trauma. I'm not recommending incest between parent and child, and especially not between father and daughter. The great majority of fathers can grasp the dynamics of positive incest 'intellectually'. But in a society that encourages looking at women in almost purely sexual terms, I don't believe they can translate this understanding into practice."<br /><br />The joys of incest will be lost on the therapeutic community. A pocket of Kinseyans, however, won't dispute the possibility a priori, as most other psychotherapists, in particular the Oedipally oriented, must. "Incest was grist for our mill," comments Dr. Pomeroy, now a marriage therapist in San Francisco. "We were interested in what people did and couldn't have given a damn about what was right or wrong or proper or improper." Yet it took Pomeroy a quarter of a century to come out of the research closet. His article in last November's Penthouse Forum -- Incest: A New Look -- landed like an unopened parachute in professional sex circles, but it was the first in this new antitaboo wave.<br /><br />Although Pomeroy reports many beautiful romances between father and daughter, he discriminates between the consenting adult variety and pedophilia. "The trouble with incest isn't incest at all," he remarks; "it's pedophilia. There are real problems with a thirty-five-year-old father having sex with his thirteen- or foureen-year-old daughter because of his one-up position. But a twenty-five-year-old woman sleeping with her fifty-year-old father -- what the hell difference does it make? It's not a society's concern." (Dr. Ramey came across a son who crawled into his mother's bed for the first time when he was past fifty.)<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><strong>' "Maybe this [ incest ] needs repressing, and maybe it doesn't,"says author Warren Farrell." My book should at least begin the exploration." ' </strong></span><br />Despite the drawbacks of pedophilic incest, Pomeroy has seen it flourish under ideal conditions. "Here's a husband who's fairly mature and thinks of incest only as a stepping-stone for his daughter in developing her sex life. So her urges her to have social-sexual contacts outside the home. I've seen cases like this but they are the great exception. The odds are against it, because the father can seldom be objective. I'm treating a man now who's had intercourse with his fourteen-year-old daughter. When he ... tried to control her outside sex, she blew the whistle."<br />Pomeroy speculates that incest occurs most frequently at the two extremes of society, since rich and poor tend to be less affected by sexual taboos. He eschews elaborate interpretations of the impulse that drives mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers into bed with each other. "Sex is fun," he explains. "That's the overriding factor. You can't overlook that sex is pleasurable enough to overrule this terrific taboo in some cases."<br /><br />This reporter retorted that he, too, endorsed the fun of sex but wouldn't dream of incest with any of his three daughters. "Perhaps you wouldn't because you've been fathering too much -- wiping their noses, changing their diapers, and so forth," Pomery replied. "The fathering principle kills the sex impulse. It certainly does for me. I wouldn't consider sleeping with my daughter, although I've given it much thought and even talked to her about it. And she said to me, 'You're a great father, but you don't turn me on either.'"<br /><br />According to Dr. Tripp, the lifting of the taboo would not automatically invite an avalanche of incestuous activity. Far from being a potential hotbed of sexual tension, the nuclear family just about kills lasciviousness around the hearth -- and for good reason. "It's not the fathering and the intimacy," states Tripp, "but the closeness and the lack of mystique that block out sexual interest between any two people, i.e., father and daughter, friend and friend, and comfortable 'old shoe' husband and wife. The most fascinating thing in sexual motivation is the appeal of a slightly hidden or removed object. What seems to permit incest to emerge at all is the insertion of some kind of alienation into the scene, e.g., the father is distant, often away from home, or the home itself is split, etc."<br /><br />Willard Gaylin, a psychiatrist at Columbia Medical School as well as president of the Institute for Biology, Ethics, and the Life Sciences, is appalled by the positive incest hypothesis. For him it is an intellectual and moral contradiction. He wouldn't believe it if it lay down on his couch. "I'd have to say that what's wrong with incest is the same as what's wrong with homosexuality. It's not necessarily wrong for the persons to do it if it gives them pleasure. But it implies that some wrong has already occurred -- the there was not a normal development out of the incestual stage into finding men other than the father attractive. Incest usually represents a very distorted structure and is never a positive good. ... After all, a child will have plenty of intercourse in life, but he or she is going to have only one crack at a caring parent."<br /><br />Despite Kinsey's statistics, Gaylin remains unconvinced of nontraumatic incest. "We deal in probabilities, not possibilities, in medicine. If incest became a fun-loving way of initiating your kids into sex, it would do more harm than good. I tend to trust the wisdom of the Old and New Testaments and every other religious group."<br /><br />Dr. Abraham Kardiner, one of psychiatry's grand old men who did early studies on the taboo, worries about this article. "You will throw a monkey wrench into society by introducing the idea that incest is beautiful," he says. "The family is in enough trouble already from homosexuality."<br />Television producer Claire Crawford-Mason is equally dubious. "Saying that incest isn't harmful is a male chauvinist cop-out. Father-daughter incest is the ultimate victimization. Mother-son incest must be devastating to the son... The medical profession ignores two- and three-year-olds with gonorrhea of the throat; the doctors insist they catch it from bed sheets."<br /><br />Warren Farrell prophesies that incest will be a major social issue in the eighties. If so, the debate will be bloody and presumably unproductive. Those who accept the original sin of incest, the great Judeo-Christian majority, will not be dissuaded by anyone's case studies. The last taboo could become the last straw as the Save Our Children movement heads closer to home.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1113393846953716842005-04-13T04:32:00.000-07:002005-04-13T06:29:52.670-07:00The Sociology of IncestProfessor Henslin of The Ohio State University (why don't they just call it Ohio State University instead of The Ohio State University) has posted a <a href="http://www.sociology.ohio-state.edu/classes/soc101/alonzo/Henslin%20Sexuality%20Chapter.pdf">very interesting article</a> about the sociology of sexuality. It's in a pdf file, though, so you'll need <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a> to read it.<br /><br />He makes the excellent and very simple point that there are some sexual activites that societies don't much bother trying to prohibit, while there are others that they invest a lot of effort into preventing. Rape is the most obviously prohibited thing. But incest isn't much farther down the list.<br /><br />Naturally, what is prohibited varies a great deal from society to society and--even more interesting--within a society over time. Did you know that it wasn't till 1908 that England passed its first laws outlawing incest? And did you know that child pornography wasn't made illegal at the Federal level in the USA until the 1970's? Clearly, some prohibitions that we are used to (whether we like them or not) weren't always in place. Mores change, and our laws evolve with them.<br /><br />Dr. Henslin's article gives a good quick overview of the thinking on why most societies have some form of incest taboo. Less ink is devoted to why it might differ over time within a society or between societies, however. But I think that generally reflects the poor state of academic research into incest. Thanks to the anthropologists, we know what different societies' mores are with regard to incest, but not much about how often they are broken or how they evolve. The article is a good overview, however.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1112441777266893442005-04-02T03:06:00.000-08:002005-04-02T03:49:04.410-08:00Genetic Sexual Attraction and Incest AvoidanceMost people find incest gross. But if you ask them about incest in general, they will be less grossed out than if you ask them having sex with one of their own relatives. This fact gets to the heart of <em>incest avoidance</em>--the tendency of animals (including people) from the same family to avoid sexual contact with each other.<br /><br />There are many theories to explain this well documented behavior. Some are sociological. Some are biological. But no matter what theory you may have as to why incest avoidance may have proven beneficial (fewer birth defects, or lots of advantageous, alliance building marriages to members of other families and clans), you still need an actual mechanism that explains exactly what makes individuals from the same family avoid each other later as sexual partners.<br /><br />One line of thinking has to do with the ability of mammals to smell each other. In particular, there is evidence that we can subconsciously smell each other's histocompatibility antigens. These antigens are chemical tags onto which invading pathogens (bacteria, viruses) can attack your cells.<br /><br />A good evolutionary strategy is to have kids with someone whose antigens are different from your own. That way, you'll be spreading your children's risk with respect to germs. By giving them lots of different antigens (which you will do if you mate with someone whose antigens are very different from your own), you'll be making it harder for any one virus to come in and easily take over all your kid's cells. By contrast, if you mate with a near relative, your kid will have a very limited set of antigens.<br /><br />So one line of thinking about incest avoidance is that we avoid our relatives because they smell like we do--that is they have antigens that are so similar to our own that we know they are kin because they smell like us. This explanation has significant attractiveness because it is known that animals (including female humans) do in fact prefer mates with histocompatibility antigens very different from their own.<br /><br />Another line of thinking is that the actual mechanism for incest avoidance is simple contact. In particular, you don't want to fuck as an adult anyone you were in contact with as a child. For instance, if you were raised by your biological parents, then you'll avoid them later on for partners. But it also goes for step parents and adoptive parents. Whoever you were around--be they actual blood relatives or not--you'll want to avoid. Good evidence for this comes from the fact that children raised together en masses in group homes for children on Israeli Kibbutzes almost never married anyone who lived with them in the same dormitories growing up. It didn't matter whether they were siblings or not. What seemed to matter was simple proximity growing up.<br /><br />A <a href="http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/papers/incest2003.pdf">very interesting paper</a> in the proceedings of the Royal Society (London) presents evidence in favor of the raised-together mechanism for incest avoidance, and thus against the antigens mechanism. The three authors find that the longer kids were raised together, the more grossed out they are later on by the thought of sex with each other. Of particular importance, this is true no matter whether the kids were in fact related to each other. That is, there is not so much incest avoidance as there is avoidance of having sex with anyone you grew up with (and by grew up with, I mean lived with in the same residence.)<br /><br />This research is also very interesting in light of a phenomenon that has come to be called genetic sexual attraction (GSA). This term refers to the fact that siblings and parents separated by adoptions many years before often find themselves hugely sexually attracted to their relatives later on if there is a reunion (as between a young man and his biological mother whom he hasn't seen in 25 years because she gave him up for adoption when he was an infant.)<br /><br />This appears to be a big problem and most of the big adoption websites now have a page or two devoted to warning people about it before they go through with a reunion. Here's an <a href="http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,956454,00.html">article</a> from the London Guardian about GSA. And <a href="http://www.reunite.com/adoption-records/genetic-sexual-attraction.html">here</a> and <a href="http://forums.adoption.com/t10252,40,1.html">here</a> are some links to adoptions websites' warnings/suggestions. What is fascinating here is that GSA seems to be totally consistent with the idea that unless you grow up with someone, you are not going to avoid them later on as a sexual partner. In fact, what seems to go on with GSA is that when reunited, people find that they have huge amount in common and lots of shared interests and look alike, etc etc. All things that are attractive. And given that they have no tendency to avoid each other (since they didn't grow up around each other), sex is an natural outcome. Also check out the very candid <a href="http://www.geneticsexualattraction.com/">site</a> run by Barbara Gonyo, another who experienced GSA.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1112428748682050822005-04-01T23:50:00.000-08:002005-04-02T03:05:33.003-08:00State By State Incest Statutes for the Entire USAHere is a <a href="http://www.ndaa-apri.org/pdf/vaw_incest_laws_nov_18_03.pdf">link</a> to a pdf file compiled by the <a href="http://www.ndaa-apri.org/">National District Attorneys' Association </a>of each and every one of the 50 States' statutes regarding incest. I have not read through it in detail, but the major incest board poster Hans has read through it all (bless him) and has concluded (after warning that he's no lawyer) that the laws seem to indicate that "consensual adult incest in general is legal in Michigan, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. And consensual adult incest, with the exception of incest between parents and children, is legal in: Ohio."<br /><br />If this is in fact the case, I'm pretty well shocked. I had assumed that incest was strictly prohibited under law everywhere in the USA. It would be interesting to see if there are other jurisdictions around the world where it is not illegal.<br /><br />UPDATE: It turns out that the National District Attorneys' Association condensed the above long winded listings of each state's incest statutes into <a href="http://http://www.ndaa-apri.org/pdf/vaw_state_criminal_incest_statutes.pdf">this handy table</a>. With the table to cut through the clutter, it seems that Hans was very right about Ohio and Rhode Island, but not about Michigan and New Jersey. Kudos to Kia for finding the original link.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1112427890175652702005-04-01T23:32:00.000-08:002005-04-01T23:48:41.296-08:00Birth Defects and Legal Prohibitions on IncestOver the last 40 or so years, American courts have increasingly ruled in favor of a very broad interpretation of individual sexual rights. Or, stated somewhat differently, the courts seem to see less and less justification for the government to intervene in citizen's sexual matters on the grounds that their behavior may have consequences for other people not directly and immediately involved in the sexual act itself.<br /><br />This is probably due to the fact that any particular sex act has, truly, grown less consequential. For instance, modern antibiotics have basically eliminated sexually transmitted diseases as any sort of major public health problem. Compare that to the mass absenteeism and morbidity that used to be caused by STDs, and which was the common lot of anyone not strictly in a monogamous sexual relationship before the advent of these wonder drugs. Similarly, modern birth control methods now mean that sex is detached in a way never before possible from procreation. While sex in general matters, individual sex acts--and thus acts of sex among individuals--are simply much less weighty than they used to be.<br /><br />This means that pretty soon, there will be a battle fought out in either the legislatures or the courts (more likely the courts) about whether or not society really has any interests in prohibiting consentual adult incest. The major argument right now is that it might lead to birth defects. But in a society that allows for abortions even up to the moment of conception (partial birth abortion, anyone?), and in which you can screen for most developmental anomalies in utero, this is something of a red herring. But even more of this justification for prohibiting incest would be removed if it were found out that incestuous couplings just didn't really cause all that many birth defects.<br /><br />Along those lines, please check out this very <a href="http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/04/columns/fl.grossman.incest.04.09/#1">nice article </a>by law professor Joanna Grossman on the legal implications of a new study that shows that cousin couples have rates of birth defects among their children that are not much different from those of non-related couples. If this research holds up, there will be very little for opponents of cousin incest to stand on legally.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1111671941289006032005-03-24T05:35:00.000-08:002005-03-24T05:46:36.206-08:00Incest and Abortions...In the USA, very very few of the total number of abortions are due to incest. In surveys, it's reported to be the reason for the abortion in 1% of cases or less. Here is a good<a href="http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html"> survey of the data</a> by Robert Johnson. Another good summary can be found <a href="http://www.bfl.org/hardcase_abortions.htm">here</a>, at Baptists for Life.<br /><br />This is very interesting to me because if you go to incest boards, people often ask to talk to those who have had a child by incest. Nobody ever asks about those who aborted an incestuous pregnancy.<br /><br />If you click over <a href="http://www.afterabortion.info/rape.html">here</a>, you find that "incest victims only very rarely volunteer to have an abortion." (Maloof, "The Consequences of Incest: Giving and Taking Life" The Psychological Aspects of Abortion (eds. Mall & Watts, Washington, D.C., University Publications of America, 1979) 84-85.)<br /><br />That correlates well with the fact that "in the only major study of pregnant rape victims ever done, Dr. Sandra Mahkorn found that 75 to 85 percent chose against abortion." (Mahkorn, "Pregnancy and Sexual Assault," The Psychological Aspects of Abortion, eds. Mall & Watts, Washington, D.C., University Publications of America, 1979, 55-69.)<br /><br />Given the high disposition of women to keep their unborn children even when raped or because of abusive incest, it would seem to me that those who unwittingly get pregnant due to a consensual incestuous relationship would be even more likely to avoid an abortion.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1111666713833260472005-03-24T04:11:00.000-08:002005-03-24T04:44:24.023-08:00Cousin Couples...Here is a <a href="http://www.isteve.com/cousin_marriage_conundrum.htm">very interesting post</a> by Steve Sailer about the problems caused in Muslim countries by the very high rates of cousin marriages there. In particular, with families so tighly bound together by many overlapping blood ties, most social organizations are family oriented to an extreme degree. How extreme? To the degree that strangers and acquaintances have a hard time working together. There is simply too much distrust of those who are not members of your own family.<br /><br />How common is cousin marriage in Iraq? How about 50% of marriages. And the incestuous ties are even greater than that statistic implies because this has been going on for generations.<br /><br />But does this say anything about Western countries and the fight for incestuous rights? I think it does. Those fighting for incestuous rights now are doing so in the context of a society that is extremely hostile to incest. As such, there are very few incestuous couples around. And, as a result, their numbers are far too small to affect overall social organization, as is the case in Iraq.<br /><br />But, we must not assume that if incest is legalized, it won't have the same sort of detrimental effects as seen in Iraq. It very well may. Incestual family bonds may be much stronger than non-incestual family bonds in ways that affect how family members deal with non-family members.<br /><br />Now, for a little balance, do go over to <a href="http://www.cousincouples.com/">Cousin Couples </a>and check out their very pro-cousin marriage website. But do remember that they have the freedome to be arguing for cousing marriages in the context of a society that doesn't have to deal with the detrimental effects of incest becuase it is so rare. If it became common, it might bring with it a rash of problems, as it has in other countries. Plus, there is the slipery slope argument. Even in Iraq, you can't marry your mother. If incest is legalized in the West, the you could. And the problems with that sort of a situation--if it becomes common enough--might be much worse than with common cousin marriages.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1111667850750555462005-03-24T04:25:00.000-08:002005-03-24T04:40:49.600-08:00Family Law and Incest...If gay marriage is legalized, will it inevitably lead to the legalization of other sorts of marital arrangements? There is an interesting slippery slope argument here. And I don't think it's a foolish one.<br /><br />The arguments in favor of gay marriage are largely being couched in terms of individual rights and the right to freely associate with other individuals. If one individual (who happens to be a woman) wants to legally contract with another (who happens to be a man), and if rights of contract are based on individual rights, then what grounds does the law have to prevent one individual (who happens to be a man) from marrying another individual (who happens to be a man)? But, as far as incest is concerned...If all these marrying rights are individually based, then what is to stop one individual (who happens to be a daughter) from marrying another individual (who happens to be her father)? There's no end to it.<br /><br />But the legalization of incest would be at the bottom of the slippery slope. First gay marriage...which looks to be half way there. Next, polyamory. Which just got a big proponent in the way of University of Chicago Law School professor Elizabeth F. Emens. She just put out a paper ("<a href="http://www.law.nyu.edu/pubs/socialchange/current.html">Monogamy's Law: Compulsory Monogamy and Polyamorous Existence</a>" in Volume 29, Number 2 of <em>The New York University Review of Law and Social Change</em>) arguing forcefully for the legalization of polyamory--multiple person marriages. My guess is that this will be the start of something big, and that if gay marriage isn't stopped soon, we will very quickly slide down the slope to legalized incest. How quickly? A generation. Maybe 30 years. Fast in legal terms. You can find a good article about it <a href="http://nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200503230746.asp">here</a>, by Stanley Kurtz.<br /><br />Now, not being involved in incest personally, and not being actually attracted to anyone in my own family, I am not the best person to be arguing for the interests of those who would like to legalize adult incest. In fact, I see lots of potential problems, as hinted at by my last post on Cousin Marriages. But I'm confident that if gay marriage goes through, polyamory will be next, and then adult incest. There just won't be any legal ground on which to oppose it.Wishful [email protected]:blogger.com,1999:blog-11664812.post-1111659883538718362005-03-24T02:13:00.000-08:002005-03-24T02:24:43.540-08:00Welcome...Here it is. The incest blog.<br /><br />I must admit I've never done it. And I'm not attracted to anyone in my family.<br /><br />But incest erotica turns me on. The thought of two people being so attracted to each other that they'd willingly violate our largest taboo is, to me, some measure of just how deep their lusts must run. And lusts of that magnitude I find very attractive.<br /><br />I'm going to use this blog for two purposes. The first is to post in one convenient place lots of links to incest erotica and information. The second is to give a place where those involved in incest can make a permanent posting about their experiences.<br /><br />A few caveats are in order. First, I am wholeheartedly against rape. Along those lines, most pedophilia is outright rape (coerced sex) or is at least statutory rape (not coerced, but if a child isn't legally capable of giving consent, then it can hardly be called consensual.) In addition, adult incest can also be rape. <br /><br />This blog will be about consensual incest. If the comment boards don't stay clean, they won't remain open. No child porn. No rape. I hope that's clear.<br /><br />That being said, please contribute to this blog. Links, comments, stories--they are all welcome.Wishful [email protected] | <urn:uuid:33d9a0bf-1bd0-4f03-abfc-d5af45b83b55> | 2 | 1.5625 | 0.059945 | en | 0.957208 | http://incestblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated |
A funny thing happened to the al-Qaida terrorist network over the last decade or so. While the so-called "War on Terror" waged by America and her allies has been extremely costly in dollars as well as lives, it has largely resulted in the cleaning of al-Qaida's clock. Today they're generally considered a shadow of their former selves, and that's why they're lowering their expectations a bit.
Case in point: instead of telling their followers to hijack airplanes, al-Qaida's English-language magazine is now telling people to light cars on fire in parking lots with gas cans and matches, and pour oil on the roads before blind curves to cause traffic accidents.
Wired's fantastic Danger Room blog has the report here, which says torching cars and causing wrecks is "America's worst nightmare," but also warns would-be terrorists to “don’t get petrol on yourself.”
Danger Room notes that previous lame al-Qaida schemes include this gem too:
Its last foray into vehicular assaults involved tricking out the grille of an F-150 with knives to create an “ultimate mowing machine.” (Even Osama bin Laden rolled his eyes at that one.) The apparent calculation behind the half-assed car torchings and unsafe driving conditions is that they need to lower the barriers to entry for jihad, since pretty much no American Muslims bother with it.
So basically, al-Qaida has gone from orchestrating major terrorist attacks that put entire nations on edge to just general dickery and Looney Tunes-style antics. I can't say I feel bad for them.
Photo credit Shutterstock | <urn:uuid:af6ec2b1-dfa5-4733-851a-7499695d3586> | 2 | 1.507813 | 0.375093 | en | 0.960199 | http://jalopnik.com/al-qaida-cant-hijack-planes-so-they-want-to-torch-your-450805842 |
Visual Trails: Do the Doors of Perception Open Periodically?
• Julien Dubois ,
Affiliations: Université de Toulouse, Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UMR5549, Faculté de Médecine de Purpan, Toulouse, France
• Rufin VanRullen
Visual Trails: Do the Doors of Perception Open Periodically?
• Julien Dubois,
• Rufin VanRullen
• Published: May 10, 2011
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001056
“Visual trailing” is a transient but dramatic disturbance of visual motion perception of unknown origin: the subject perceives a series of discrete stationary images trailing in the wake of otherwise normally moving objects. Although this phenomenon is most frequently encountered after ingestion of prescription and/or illicit drugs (most commonly with lysergic acid diethylamid, or LSD), it has also occasionally been reported following brain damage or neurological disorders. A quantitative account of visual trails is lacking; we argue that careful experimental investigation could potentially reveal how our brains update conscious visual perception in time.
What Do Visual Trails Look Like?
Ask any LSD user: they know the drug is taking effect when the “good trails” kick in. Trailing is a visual perceptual effect commonly experienced during LSD consumption and as a long-lasting side effect of the drug (hallucinogen persisting perception disorder) [1][4]. LSD users perceive a series of discrete positive afterimages in the wake of moving objects, a percept that has been likened to a multiple-exposure stroboscopic photograph, somewhat akin to Etienne-Jules Marey's chronophotographs [5] from 1880, or to more recent digital art produced in a few clicks (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Multiple-exposure stroboscopic photograph.
This illustrates (inasmuch as possible with a static image) the perception experienced during trailing.
Trailing is a visual disturbance that has been observed under various conditions. While some authors use the terminology of LSD users [1][3],[6],[7], others describe the phenomenon in more clinically suited terms: examples are “akinetopsia” [8],[9], “polyopia”[9], “palinopsia” [4],[10][13], or “visual perseveration” [14]. In Table 1, we clarify the meaning of each of these terms (according to [5],[8],[15][21]). However, none of these terms precisely captures the specific elements of visual trails: they occur only for moving objects (unlike polyopia); moving objects are still perceived as moving (unlike akinetopsia); duplicate images are perceived only in the presence of real objects (unlike palinopsia); and, most importantly, visual trails are not mere streaks ([22]), as would appear on a long-exposure photograph of moving objects (visual perseveration). Rather, trailing consists of a discrete series of snapshots of the moving object along its past trajectory, as if successive frames of a movie had been superimposed. These phenomenological features of trailing are clearly portrayed in the case reports that we collected (Box 1). The discreteness of the trailing percept, in particular, is one of its most characteristic, and most mysterious, aspects.
Table 1. Glossary.
Box 1. Selected Case Reports
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)
“[When asked] if they ever ‘saw any trails’, [the subject] would wave a hand across the visual field and say ‘Oh, you mean these?’ The subject could then describe a trail of images of the moving hand, much like the frames of a piece of motion picture film frozen in space long enough for the subject to see them” [3].
“A 47-year-old man reported seeing streams of multiple, frozen images trailing in the wake of moving objects. As soon as motion ceased, the images collapsed into each other. He compared his vision to a scene lit by a flashing strobe, except that stationary elements were perceived normally. In fact, if nothing was in motion and he held perfectly still, his vision was entirely normal. The moment anything moved, however, it left a stream of static copies in its path. For example, while out for an evening stroll, he saw a pack of identical dogs lined up behind his West Highland terrier. Driving was impossible because he was confused by multiple snapshots of cars, streets, and signs. Moving lights were followed by a long comet tail” [8].
“He began to have numerous morning episodes of ‘strobe images’. They were most apt to occur in dim illumination. He described looking at the door of his bedroom and seeing multiple images of the door ‘march’ across his field of vision when he shifted his gaze to the bureau on the other side of the room. The false images were intense, and he had many such episodes every morning, each lasting 15 minutes or less” [10].
“As she watched her husband walk past her, she saw multiple afterimages of him as if he were leaving a visual trail. These afterimages were less color intensive than the normal visual image, slightly blurred, and faded away after 30 seconds to 1 minute. The phenomenon repeated itself with most moving objects and was generally more pronounced with objects in Ms. A's lateral visual fields” [29].
“Ms. A reported seeing ‘picture in picture’ images, like she was in a ‘discotheque’, or in a place with stroboscopic lights. Those persistent ‘frozen pictures’ faded away after a few seconds. The phenomenon repeated itself with most moving objects” [11].
Who Experiences Visual Trails?
While LSD induces trailing [1][3],[23], consumption of other hallucinogens like psilocin and mescaline has not been linked with such visual disturbances in the clinical literature (to our knowledge). Either their interaction with the receptors that mediate trailing is not as potent, or LSD acts at sites that other hallucinogens do not bind with (for a review of the pharmacology of hallucinogens, see [24] and for LSD more specifically, see [25],[26]). Reports pertaining to the past use of illicit drugs are, however, poorly controlled (a good example is a report of illegal marijuana leading to trailing by Levi and Miller [27], in which they explicitly acknowledge that their cases may be confounded by the presence of impurities in illegal marijuana, as well as by past use of LSD).
A better understanding of the pharmacology of trailing may arise from the report of similar visual disturbances following the use of prescription drugs. The chemistry and dosage of prescription drugs is well controlled, which is not the case for illicit drugs. Nefazodone, for instance, is a recent antidepressant drug with multiple reports of episodes of visual trails as a side effect [6][8],[28]. A closely related antidepressant drug, trazodone, can induce similar side effects [10]; so can mirtazapine [29], and, possibly, risperidone (the study is inconclusive due to the concurrent administration of trazodone [30]). These four antidepressant drugs all antagonize 5-HT2a and 5-HT2c receptors, and it has been proposed that this is at the origin of the trailing phenomenon [28]. However, the first recognized inducer of visual trails, LSD, has the opposite effect (agonist activity) at both these receptors [24][26]. Common to these antidepressant drugs and LSD is an increase in extracellular serotonin levels (indeed, all these drugs have been linked to serotonin syndrome [31], a form of poisoning due to excess serotoninergic activity that causes a range of symptoms, including hallucinations, elevated body temperature, and fast heart beat). Although the evidence is suggestive of a link between serotonin and visual trailing, the widespread action of serotonin throughout the brain prevents us from speculating further for the time being.
Visual trails have also been experienced with other drugs with very different pharmacology. The antiepileptic drug topiramate, which, among other actions, blocks voltage-dependent sodium channels and increases GABA activity at some GABA-A receptor subtypes, has been involved with visual trails [11],[12]. Increased inhibition, mediated by higher levels of serotonin or GABA potentiation, stands out as a likely common action of this drug and the ones described previously. Topiramate also inhibits cytochrome isoform CYP2D6 [32], which has been associated with serotonin syndrome [31].
Besides pharmacologically induced trailing, some clinical reports from neuropsychological populations deserve to be mentioned. A crisp account of migraine patients experiencing trailing is given by Sacks [5], where he estimates the frequency of snapshots at “six to twelve frames per second” (see also [33]). We found one other report of visual trails (combined with akinetopsia and palinopsia) in migraineurs [34] (see also medical doctor Klaus Podoll's Web site [35]). On the whole, trailing is a very rare disturbance for migraine sufferers, the migraine being a very heterogeneous condition that affects roughly 20% of the population at one time or another; the possibility exists that the disturbance occurs only for a very specific and rare form of migraine, or is a side effect of drugs that patients take to relieve their symptoms [12]. As a side note of interest, controlled studies have found migraine patients to have impairments for global motion perception [36] (see also [37]).
A recent case study [9] described visual trails associated with another neurological condition: the posterior cortical atrophy variant of Alzheimer's disease [38]. The symptoms are referred to as akinetopsia/polyopia by the authors, but their description corresponds to a direction-specific version of trailing (visual trails are perceived when objects move from right to left, but not when they move from left to right). Direction-specificity restricts the mechanistic models that can be put forward to explain visual trails; however, the etiology is very different from previously discussed cases, and in the absence of other reports of directional trailing, it is premature to draw conclusions from this report.
Finally, a very rare disturbance of motion perception, for which Zeki coined the word akinetopsia [15], can follow bilateral lesions in the occipito-temporo-parietal cortices [39]. Patient L. M. permanently lost motion perception (except for slowly moving objects [40]). Instead of seeing a moving object, she saw the object in a series of stills, as in a movie run too slowly. This is a rather extreme case that differs qualitatively from trailing (see Table 1), but it may ultimately rely on similar mechanisms.
What May Cause the Perception of Visual Trails?
Visual trails, because of their discrete and repetitive nature, may represent the perceptual manifestation of an underlying periodic process. This periodicity could arise outside of the neural system (e.g., eye movements, motor tremor), or may be the result of faulty motion computation mechanisms (e.g., motion smear suppression), or, finally, may point to a more general, quasi-periodic sampling process that affects, among other things, the motion perception system. These three (non-exhaustive and non-exclusive) possibilities are developed below.
Do Visual Trails Arise from Abnormal Eye Movements?
Trailing may not originate in the neural pathways at all. For example, if visual trails are only perceived when subjects track a moving object with their eyes, the discrete afterimages may be caused by a defective, jerky smooth-pursuit mechanism. Saccadic suppression would operate while the eyes execute repeated corrective saccades to keep track of the moving object, shutting on and off the visual input intermittently. Note that people having experienced trailing often recount that trails follow just one or a few moving objects at a time, rather than affecting the entire visual scene, as would be the case after eye movements (or uncontrolled tremors). This makes such a motor explanation unlikely; nonetheless, a well-controlled eye tracking experiment on individuals experiencing visual trails would be essential to evaluate this hypothesis.
Do Visual Trails Reflect a Failure of Specific Motion Perception Mechanisms?
The periodicity may arise as a disturbance of certain motion processes that are normally continuous. For example, motion streak suppression [41] is an inhibitory mechanism allowing the brain to regulate the smear that a moving object leaves in its wake, owing to visible persistence (an image normally takes about 100 ms to fade from perception, long enough to blur the trajectory of a moving object as in a long-exposure photograph). Under the effects of LSD or related drugs, the streak suppression process might fall out of its normal operating range, resulting in stronger than normal local inhibition followed by excitatory rebound. This hypothesis would predict that trailing is accompanied by abnormal oscillatory activity confined within the motion perception system, a prediction that could be verified in human or non-human primates with appropriate recordings.
Could Visual Trails Be the Manifestation of Periodicities Inherent to all Perceptual Processes?
Trailing may reflect a more widespread rhythmic activity affecting (possibly among other modules) the motion perception system. Two alternatives must be distinguished here, which could be teased apart by comparing oscillatory brain activity in the normal and drug-altered states. Either this rhythmic activity is directly produced by the drug (or at least, increased beyond perceptual threshold)—a rise of inhibition could generate prominent oscillations, turning the normally continuous processing of visual information into a series of discrete snapshots—or this periodicity is always present in the normal brain, but inaccessible to conscious perception. In the latter case, the drug may increase visible persistence, or disrupt motion streak suppression, two processes that would normally serve to hide the discrete visual trails.
Related Phenomena Pointing to Periodicities in Visual Perception
A persistent thread in the perceptual literature is that temporal binning is, indeed, common to all of perception (reviewed by [42]). One of the most striking phenomenological manifestations of the discrete nature of perception is the so-called “continuous wagon wheel illusion”: in plain sunlight, a continuously rotating, spoked wheel can be perceived to rotate in a direction opposite to its true motion. While movie watchers are accustomed to this percept (which follows from an undersampling of the continuous motion of the wheel by the discrete frame rate of the camera and the movie projection system), perceiving reversals in conditions of continuous illumination is more challenging. Quasi-periodic sampling or binning processes within the visual system have been proposed as an explanation; this interpretation has been a subject of controversy, and many experiments have been conducted to test it. In light of these recent experiments, VanRullen and colleagues hypothesized that attentional processes may function in a quasi-periodic manner [43],[44]: when attention is deployed, it samples information at discrete moments in time. The rate of sampling may be dependent on the task at hand [43],[45],[46]. One component of this theory purports that the attentive motion system takes discrete samples of the object in motion to compute its trajectory. Past snapshots are usually concealed from conscious perception—but some substances may interfere with their proper suppression, giving rise to the trailing phenomenon.
Towards a Solution: Measuring Visual Trails
How many “ghost images” [23] trail in the wake of the moving objects? How far apart are the “discrete and discontinuous images” [2]? How long do they persist for? These questions have, so far, not been answered. In fact, visual trails have been considered an annoyance at best, and quantifying them has not been the main concern in the various clinical settings in which they were observed. Careful quantitative investigation will be needed to shed light on the mechanisms that cause visual trails to appear as a discrete series of snapshots of the moving object.
As a preliminary step towards quantitative answers, we conducted an online survey in which we asked self-declared past LSD users to decide which of ten short movies with simulated visual trails best matched their recollected experience. We varied the interval between simultaneously perceived snapshots from 25 ms to 250 ms, keeping the number of concurrently visible repetitions to four. For over more than 210 participants, the responses were not randomly distributed across the ten choices, but followed a highly consistent pattern (chi-squared test, p<0.0008) with a preference for faster snapshot periodicities; participants selected a time interval between images of 67 ms on average, corresponding to an underlying periodicity in the 15–20 Hz (beta) range. Although this is the first study that tries to quantitatively assess the frame rate of LSD-induced visual trails, it suffers from numerous pitfalls. First, we have little control over the individuals who take the survey, as they do so anonymously from their home computer. However, this protocol follows a new trend in psychological research of using the Web for large-scale studies (see the Web site recently created by Harvard scientists). Second, the responses rely on the memory of the percept, which may be faulty. Last, the chemical composition and dose taken by each individual is not controlled, which is problematic considering that more than 200 types of LSD tablets have been encountered since 1969 and more than 350 blotter paper designs have been in circulation since 1975 [47] (also, some blotters sold as LSD are in fact mimics). In fact, some of the most experienced users indicated that trailing is dose dependent. For all these reasons, one must be cautious in interpreting these initial results. The movie used for the survey as well as a results summary can be found online aturvey.
Collecting further quantitative data with individuals who experience visual trailing will be necessary to tease apart the alternative accounts—possibly in combination with computational modeling. Solving the mystery of the origins of the trailing effect might reveal something deep about the mechanisms underlying perception, challenging the way we think we perceive the world.
We wish to thank Christof Koch for useful discussions and comments on the manuscript. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies advertised the survey about LSD trails on their Web site ( and without their help we would not have collected as many responses as we did.
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47. 47. Laing R. R, editor. (2003) Hallucinogens: a forensic drug handbook. San Diego: Academic Press.. | <urn:uuid:a7c28761-5e2d-449e-8eae-291dbe276b65> | 2 | 1.695313 | 0.043009 | en | 0.884714 | http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001056 |
Parashat Reeih
Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17
August 18, 2012 / 30 Av 5772
Our favorite Indian restaurant was jam-packed when we arrived, one of those nights when every table is full and you are so close to the diners at the table next to yours that, despite your best efforts, you cannot tune out their conversation. Halfway through our meal, a woman and a young man who was unmistakably her grandson were seated at the two-top next to us. Even without the grandmother's large chai necklace, they looked (as my Russian Jewish father-in-law would say) "typically Jewish," and given our neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, there was nothing atypical about that.
Try as we might to concentrate on our own conversation, we could not—they were, after all, only inches away. The grandson had just returned from a life-changing semester abroad in India, and was intoxicated by the experience. He ordered proudly from the menu, explaining the dishes to his grandmother and how they differed from what he had eaten there. He described how he had decided to major in Eastern Religion and hoped to get back to that part of the world. He talked about the Bhagavad Gita and the teachings of his favorite Hindu masters. His grandmother listened patiently, but seemed bewildered by her grandson, who was unshaven and long-haired but otherwise looked just like her, yet was learning Sanskrit and had had his world thrown open by a country, people, and culture completely foreign to her. She never said it, but you could see it in her eyes: "India? What does that have to do with you, a nice Jewish boy?"
As Jewish Americans, we have the greatest blessing our people has ever known: freedom. A freedom that grants us not only the ability to vote and educate ourselves and live as full citizens of our great nation, but also to explore faiths and traditions and cultures besides our own and to choose any of them for ourselves. If the Hindu masters move my soul more than the teachings of the Rabbis—well, it's a spiritual free market in 2012 America. I can choose to be whoever I want to be.
The most important question of our time is, therefore: Why should I? Why should I choose a Jewish life? And more than just a "Jewish" life—which might consist of nothing more than bagels, gefilte fish, and a penchant for Seinfeld reruns: Why should I choose a life of mitzvah, of Jewish commitment and action, when there are so many other compelling religions and spiritual paths?
Choice, choosing, chosenness: all themes that emerge in Parashat Reeih. The Deuteronomic voice is concerned with persuading us to live according to the path laid out in the previous four books of the humash, and it is clearly wary of the fact that we do have a choice in the matter.
"See, this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin you this day; and curse, if you do not" (Deut. 11:26–28). Reward and punishment, blessing and curse. Choose Judaism because bad things will happen if you don't. How antiquated and defensive this seems, and how absurd when read literally. As Dr. Tikva Frymer-Kensky (z"l) wrote:
We often call Halakha "Jewish law," but the flouting or abrogation of Halakha carries no sanctions. No court or police enforces these rules . . . And in the post-Holocaust era, few believe in supernatural sanctions, neither in God's reward and punishment of the nation through history, nor in the judgment of the individual in an afterlife. Halakha exists today, in the Jewish Diaspora of the twentieth century, as rules without sanctions, strictures without consequences. The performance of a mitzvah (commandment) is its own reward. ("Toward a Liberal Theory of Halakha," Tikkun, July/August 1995, p. 42)
No, I will not choose a life of mitzvah because I will be rewarded if I do, and cursed if I do not. I choose a life of mitzvah because "the performance of a mitzvah . . .is its own reward." Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote, in his gloss of the verse about the blessing (Deut. 11:27):
Very significantly it does not say here, as it does in the following verse at the curse, im tishm'u but asher tishm'u. The actual fulfillment of God's commands is already in itself a real part of the blessing, which not only follows the obedience but starts to be realized by and with the carrying out of the mitzvah. The mental and moral act which is accomplished every time we faithfully obey the Torah is itself a blessed progress, a step forward of our whole being, and with every mitzvah-act we bless ourselves. (Hirsch, The Pentateuch, rendered into English by Isaac Levy. 1962.)
I could go to India, or the church across the street, or become part of any of a host of secular humanistic communities whose adherents live deeply meaningful and fulfilled lives. Any would likely bring me to the end I seek. But there is one thing I cannot do: I cannot not choose. I have to choose something. If I choose well, if I choose something that works—and Judaism enjoys the status of being one of the world's great religions precisely because it works—then that choice will in and of itself be its own reward, a step forward of my whole being.
Is my choosing a life of mitzvah, then, arbitrary? To a certain extent, yes. One of the parashah's other attempts at persuading us to choose Judaism is: "For you are a people consecrated to the Lord your God: the Lord your God chose you from among all other peoples on earth to be his treasured people" (Deut. 14:1). Most contemporary American Jews bristle at the idea of Jewish "election" or chosenness. It reflects neither our understanding of a God who has created multiple forms of religious expression and loves all Creation equally and mercifully, nor our conviction of the biological equality of all races and nations. But one bit of this verse cannot be ignored, and this I offer as part two of the answer to the "Why should I?" question: that we Jews are chosen to uphold a certain spiritual path. Not because God loves us more, not because it is the best path, but because, as Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan put it:
Mankind is not all of one piece and, in the task of preserving and developing the spiritual heritage of the human race, the various historic groups have to assume responsibility, each one for the maintenance of its own identity as a contributor to the sum of human knowledge and experience." (The Meaning of God in Modern Religion, 96)
There are, after all, only about 15 million of us; given that we have to choose some way of living and meaning-making, why not choose this one?
In my own life, as I read through Deuteronomy this time around and watch for the new moon of Elul to come on the horizon next week, I find myself blessed for the moments of this year in which I have been able to deepen my own practice of halakhah, the new steps I've been able to take, and even the strictures that have grounded some of the most important pieces of my life. Is my choosing arbitrary? Could I have found myself feeling similarly blessed had I chosen other paths this year? Probably. But having chosen this life, I find myself feeling deeply the words Frymer-Kensky wrote in the Tikkun article: "The ultimate purpose of the Halakha is to infuse our daily biological and social activity with a sense of divinity, purpose, and community, so that we can truly live in the path of God."
As we headed out of the restaurant that night, I engaged in one of my very few acts of unsolicited keruv. I handed the grandson my business card. "Your journey sounds amazing," I told him, smiling. "If you ever consider coming home, call me."
| <urn:uuid:ccbcfd30-84d0-45e3-ab25-9dffdb5c1c81> | 2 | 1.757813 | 0.03385 | en | 0.964489 | http://jtsa.edu/Conservative_Judaism/JTS_Torah_Commentary/Reeih_5772.xml |
Listening is not the same as hearing. Listening is a conscious activity based on three basic skills: attitude, attention, and adjustment. These skills are known collectively as triple-A listening.
Maintain a constructive Attitude
A positive attitude paves the way for open-mindedness. Don't assume from the outset that a lecture is going to be dull. And even if the lecturer makes statements you don't agree with, don't decide he or she is automatically wrong. Don't let reactive interference prevent you from recalling the speaker's key points.
Strive to pay Attention
You cannot attain concentration by concentrating on the act of concentration. Your attention must focus on the lecture. When you hear a lecture, the words enter your short-term memory, where they have to be swiftly processed into ideas. If they aren't processed, then they will be dumped from short-term memory and will be gone forever. Attentive listening makes sure the ideas are processed.
Cultivate a capacity for Adjustment
Although some speakers clearly indicate what they intend to cover in their lectures, you need to be flexible enough to follow a lecture regardless of the direction it may take. If, however, you are thoroughly lost, or if the speaker's message is not coming across, ask a clarifying question.
The above information was adapted from Walter Park's How to Study in College, Fifth Ed. | <urn:uuid:befa2ea1-d094-47a5-9490-b0267f7fd97b> | 4 | 3.90625 | 0.039826 | en | 0.947727 | http://lamission.edu/learningcenter/triplealistening.htm |
Obamacare Requires Disclosure of Calorie Content
I think too many people know nothing about Obamacare except that the name Obama is in the title, and that’s enough for them to like it or dislike this very complex healthcare legislation.
No matter how you feel about it, I think the law is an attempt at reform that at the very least is inspiring an important public discourse on one of the most important subjects that we face as a democracy.
So, I’ve been slowly chipping away at learning more about this huge 2010 law. One of the interesting provisions is that chain restaurants must list the calories of menu items in the menu. They must also provide detailed nutritional content info (fat, sodum, carbs, sugars, protein, etc) upon request.
I knew that this has been a growing trend in restaurants, but I thought that it was due to laws passed in major cities and not due to a federal law. In some cases, restaurants have until 2014 to start disclosing this info, so there still might be a few hold outs.
I am a huge fan of government forcing information down our throats. That’s where big government does the most good in my opinion: help inform the public, and let the public make their own individual choices.
Where a lot of people start feeling uneasy is when laws start popping up that limit what people can eat or drink. For example, the following video discusses a recent New York City law that bans jumbo-sized sugary drinks in restaurants, theaters, and street carts. I like this specific law, but it makes me nervous.
Like I said, I’m all for government informing the public, even forcing that information down our throats. But consumer freedom is essential to the economic vibrancy of our nation. We should limit this freedom very carefully, if at all.
Don’t Draw Muhammad But Defend The Right of Anyone To Do It
Paul Ryan is no Sarah Palin and no Ron Paul
Romney announced that his vice presidential running mate will be the Representative from Wisconsin Paul Ryan. As the chair of the House Budget Committee, he is mostly known to the public as the person who proposed a bold plan that tries to deal with rising Medicare costs. I would make an analogy that he is proposing to deal with a serious infection in the foot by amputating the leg. While this may be an effective solution in an academic sense. In the broader social and economic reality of our country, I think his plan is not only naive but, more importantly for his current political situation, unpopular and unsellable.
So while Paul Ryan is no Sarah Palin in that he is intellectually rigorous. He holds some extreme views on issues that actually matter for our countries future. But neither is he Ron Paul, because his fiscal conservatism extends only to some parts of the economy, and do not seem to be based on a consistent set of principles.
On a purely political level, I think the Romney-Ryan ticket will lose in a landslide election (60-40 perhaps). Romney reminds me of Kerry in that he is a boring, awkward, gaffe-machine. It’s unfortunate, because I would love to see a strong fiscal conservative debate our president, and create some distance between the two candidates. Because without a strong challenger, it seems that our foreign and domestic policies are not likely to change.
On a positive note, I’m glad Romney picked Paul Ryan as opposed to a more gimmicky running mate. Ryan is known to speak his mind, and make careful arguments. So hopefully he will help inspire some good policy debates, as opposed to just the flinging of radicalized talking points back and forth.
Arguing for The Things That Don’t Affect You
Main point: It may seem useless to talk about things that don’t have a direct effect on our lives, but it’s not useless. It’s all connected by a set of principles, and discussing it, reveals the strengths and weaknesses of those principles.
Ever since Nick Delpopolo (American judo player) was banned from the Olympics for having eaten a pot cookie 1-2 weeks before the event he was competing in, I found myself arguing for the decriminalization of weed. There are a lot of solid argument on the side of the decriminalization movement. And I find it a good gateway topic to broader discussions of the role of government in a society.
The “problem” is that I don’t smoke weed, and to some people that somehow weakens my arguments for its decriminalization. It’s true, I have no “horse in that race”. The same is true about arguing for gay marriage (since I’m not gay), a woman’s right to choose (since I’m not a woman), gun control (since I don’t own a gun), or more wonky fiscal policy topics…
I think these topics are extremely important, but they don’t have a direct effect on my life. The word “direct” is important here. Because these topics certainly do have an indirect effect. Believe it or not, whether gay people can marry has a ripple effect through the fabric of our society that extends to the funding of scientific research, to the policy of nuclear non-proliferation, to the price of oatmeal in the grocery story.
I try to live based on a set of concrete principles and argue for those principles in all aspects of life, even when the immediate effect in my personal life is not obvious.
An Oppressive Dictatorship With Cheap Salad and No Hypocrisy
Note: The title and topic of this blog post are tongue-in-cheek. I am aware that a government that always “knows what’s best” naturally drifts far away from what actually is best.
I was watching a technical talk on the topic of computational geometry on YouTube and a comment popped up that in one sentence managed to include both a racist and a homophobic slur. This made me wish that I could somehow ban the ability of human beings to do write such comments (just because they are protected by the cover of anonymity). Of course, you couldn’t enforce anything like that, unless…
So I wondered what kind of things I’d love to see a dictatorial government implement. Here are some random ideas that would either benefit me directly or indirectly ;-)
• YouTube comments that contain racist or homophobic slurs would be punished by forcing that person to recite the same comment in-person to a group of people against which the comment was made. The group will then have 30 minutes to do with the commenter what they wish.
• Salads would be heavily subsidized. So that a salad will always be cheaper than a burger. (Of course, then, the fast food lobby would convince Congress that a burger is actually a salad because it sometimes has lettuce).
• Every citizen is required to prove on a yearly basis that they have the minimum civics knowledge required of most immigrants seeking citizenship. Questions like “What are the main branches of our government?”, “What is the Bill of Rights?”, “Who is the chief justice of the Supreme Court?”, “What are the rights guaranteed by the first amendment to the constitution?”, etc.
• Every politician would be required to pass a much more stringent civics test. Basically you should be knowledgeable in 20th century international history, political science, law, and the basics of all major scientific disciplines (biology, physics, chemistry, etc).
• Hypocrisy in hateful speech (e.g. homosexuals speaking out against gay marriage) should be punished with some kind of humiliation on Twitter.
• Since the Olympics are going on, my kind of dictatorial government would actually fund the athletes training hard for years to represent their nation in the myriad of Olympics sports that do not provide them with a natural source of income.
On a serious note, while I believe that government (aka the people) can do a lot of good, I also tend to agree with Thomas Jefferson that “I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.”
Centralized Health Care Record Database
I’m a big proponent of “big data”, of giving people the option of storing anything and everything about their life digitally as long as it makes their life easier, better, more fulfilling.
Unfortunately, too many people are still scared of giving personal information over to “big business” or “big government”. In my view, that’s like being scared of pulling down your pants during a physical exam.
There are areas of our lives, where keeping a centralized database of personal information can have dramatic effects of the quality of life. One such area is the healthcare system, where many records are still not kept electronically, and those that are, cannot be easily synchronized from one doctor to the next.
You could, of course, pass laws that require health care providers to (1) keep all records electronically and (2) to use the same standard that work with the centralized database. My hope is that companies like Google come out with a solution that seems obviously beneficial.
Unfortunately, Google Health tried to do just that and recently closed down. The reason is unknown, there are many suggestions, but the main reason is probably that it was bad PR. People seem scared of putting their health records online due to privacy concerns, and therefore if Google helps them do it, that somehow automatically make Google evil.
The following is a C-SPAN program on this subject from a while back:
Two Ideas From Jesse Ventura on Improving Our Political System
I knew Jesse Ventura vaguely as a “pro” wrestler and less vaguely as an actor who played alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator. So when he ran for governor of Minnesota, without bother to learn anything more about him, I just assumed him to be no more than a gimmick candidate who didn’t really stand for anything, but was damn good at riding talking points and the power of his name.
A couple of days ago, I saw this talk of his at Google and was pleasantly surprised:
The man is principled and reasonable. It’s not easy to put a label on him. He seems to basically be a libertarian, but he is a big supporter of investing in infrastructure. The big thing he wants to cut is defense spending. Like most good libertarians, he is a bit quirky, borderline mad, and totally out of fashion with the way mainstream politics works. But he is full of good ideas, and seems to be incapable of lying which in the very least makes him an interesting speaker and writer.
In the talk he briefly proposed two simple (arguably small) ideas for reforming elections:
1. Don’t show party affiliation on the ballot.
2. Add “none of the above” as an option.
The first idea he feels will encourage people to learn about the actually candidates and the details of their positions instead of just voting all Democrat or all Republican. It’s an interesting idea but my cynical side assumes that voters will not do any more research and will either not vote or vote based on something meaningless like the sound of the candidate’s name.
The second idea is interesting as well. It gives the voter a way to voice a disapproval of the system in general, and makes the reason of “I don’t like any of them” a less valid excuse for not voting.
President Obama Speaks in Support of Gay Marriage
Obama publicly declared his personal belief that gay marriage should be legal. It was truly refreshing to hear the president speak out for gay rights on an issue where he is potentially far enough ahead of public opinion to lose votes over it.
There are a lot of opinions about the political impact of this. While I will engage in such discussion given a few beers, I certainly don’t see value or validity in any opinion on the matter. I have only one general sense, and that is: when people will look back 50 years from now at the fact that gay people could not marry, they will see it the same way as we now see the fact that women could not vote in the United States in a relatively recent past.
In other words, we are making some kind of progress. None of it is trivial (though it might appear to be in retrospect) but it’s comforting to know that I live in a time when we as a society are actively struggling with big moral questions. And all of it adds up to real implications for ourselves and our neighbors.
Of course, I’m confident that in 50 years, there will be newly “identified” groups of people whom the majority will discriminate against, either through the law or just through the way we talk, think, and live. I believe that one such group is robots. It may seem like a joke now, but I do believe that the growth of the personal robotics industry (or perhaps cloning) will bring some damn tough moral questions to the forefront.
U.S. Prison Population
Main point: U.S. Prison populations are growing, and there is no smoking gun or a clearly-identified simple solution.
Each Friday, C-SPAN’s “America By the Numbers” segment features information from the federal statistical system. This week they did a program on the U.S. Prison Population.
Mostly, they confirmed what I already knew…
The American prison system is growing rapidly due to the fact that there is money to be made in it on many levels. The plot on the right shows the % of US population jailed at 0.22% in 1980 and at 0.76% in 2007. In other words, it more than tripled.
Many libertarians will tell you that the war on drugs is at the core of the problem. It seems that it is part of the problem but not at the core of it. Only 20% of prison inmates are there for drug offenses. However, there is a more powerful but indirect effect of the war on drugs seen in longer sentences for more violent or property crimes if the criminal has a prior record (often due to a minor drug offense).
Of course, the C-SPAN program also highlighted the well-known race imbalance. Black males are imprisoned at 6.5 times the rate of white males. One new interesting statistic I learned is that there is a bit more racial equality among women in that black women are imprisoned at 3 times the rate of white women.
By the way, for people that are unclear about the distinction between jails and prisons… A jail is for short sentences or just for holding people that are awaiting trial. A prison is the long-term cage that most of these financial discussions are center around.
Game Change: 2008 Election in a Nutshell
Game Change is almost but not quite a history book about the 2008 election. For folks that follow the week-to-week (or even day-to-day) of political commentary, should stop, and just wait to read about the simple truth of it all a year after the election. I feel like I learned more from Game Change than I did from the countless hours of reading the NY Times and other sources in the year leading up to the election. I suspect the same might be true for the current election season.
The book gets at who Obama, Clinton, McCain, Palin, Edwards, and Giuliani really are better than the media did during the campaign. Why? Because most of the book was written from interviews done right after the election. Everyone’s memory was fresh, and there was much less need to lie (or less immediate benefit for doing so). Some of it is a bit gossipy, even if the sources are solid.
The following, off the top of my head, are some of the more interesting things I remember from the book:
Obama is a Political Science Nerd
Obama is a policy wonk. He is known for making flowery speeches and being a good politician, but in fact his interests lie in long private debates over details of policy. Yes, he is a political science nerd, and this alone made me gain a ton of respect for him. He is luckily more than an empty suit with pretty words that I was worried he might be. One problem he kept complaining about (as many other politicians do) is all the time he is supposed to spend fundraising takes away from the valuable policy discussions. I can relate to that problem, as that seems to plague the world of academia as well. Many professors find that a large portion of their time is spent searching for funding of their research as opposed to doing the actual research.
Elizabeth Edwards is Not a Saint
I don’t want to touch this subject too much because Elizabeth Edwards was deceived by her husband and suffered a public death while inspiring many people with her saintly image. What the book reveals is that she was a very difficult person in private life. She was controlling, irrational, and just not good to John. Clearly he didn’t deserve better, but the description of Elizabeth’s real-life character helped me understand that dysfunctional relationship a little better.
Politically, McCain was In Over His Head
I gained a lot of respect for McCain after reading this book, because honestly, his instinct and intentions are genuine in a way that’s rare in politics. As he started losing, however, he let other people define who he is. He started trying to “play” politics and lost. It’s clear that the brilliant politicians in this whole group are the Clintons. McCain and Obama are much more human and real. Luckily for Obama, he can also make a hell of a good speech, and McCain can’t. | <urn:uuid:b0a29b61-bf2a-459f-b34e-d48a8e0bd0b7> | 2 | 1.757813 | 0.036103 | en | 0.963403 | http://lexfridman.com/blogs/thoughts/category/politics/page/3/ |
Be a Better Negotiator with These Three Rules
Negotiations are tough, but even if the idea of negotiating scares you a bit, you don't have to be a pro to get what you want. Scientific American points to three simple, research backed tips that can help you get what you want.
Scientific American spoke with law professor and author Russell Korobkin to come up with three simple rules for negotiation:
1. Be fair. "Good negotiators should always think about how they can show the proposal they're making is fair to both parties," Korobkin says. "Fairness" does not have one exact definition, but social psychology studies suggest that an offer people consider fair is one that is similar to what other people in the same situation are getting, consistent with market prices or terms, or on par with a similar transaction you have made in the past...
2. Strike a power pose. Psychologists have found that expansive, open postures ("high-power poses") make people feel more powerful and confident during stressful situations such as interviews or negotiations, whereas closed, curled-in positions ("low-power poses") do the opposite...
3. Aim high. Really high. Business research shows that people with more aggressive (but still realistic) goals—say, getting a 20 percent raise at work versus a 5 percent bump—end up doing better in negotiations. "One big reason for that is that people who have more aggressive goals make more aggressive first offers," Korobkin says. "Where you start has a lot to do with where you end up." This is called the "anchoring effect..."
Of course, it's about more than just those tips, you'll need some tactics too. We've got you covered there as well. Head over to Scientific American for more detailed explanations of the above tips.
How to Be a Better Negotiator | Scientific American | <urn:uuid:ee206d07-c5bc-46d4-9ebd-b079f2f363cc> | 2 | 2.484375 | 0.087177 | en | 0.967806 | http://lifehacker.com/be-a-better-negotiator-with-these-three-rules-1561790557 |
"The method could apply equally well to commercial aluminum airframe fuselage skins or to transportation infrastructures such as bridges and railways for subways and trains," says technique developer Douglas Adams, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue.
The method lets researchers automatically diagnose the structural integrity of materials made from layers of ceramics, plastics, metal alloys, and fabrics, and held together by a gluelike matrix. Strong, lightweight materials such as these are finding use in missiles, aircraft, and other weapons systems, including a new type of armor in future tanks.
The new composite armor is said to be much more effective than its metal counterpart, but with one hitch: It doesn't show outside structural damage even if the inside is seriously harmed. Purdue's vibration technique would come in handy here because it can constantly check the condition of the composite armor and send a warning if the material is ready to fail.
The technique has proven sensitive enough to detect damage from small impacts that might be incurred when, say, a wrench hits the material. Tests on composite parts take place on a diagnostic system that uses a series of vibrating actuators and sensors. The actuators transmit high-frequency acoustical waves that hit material defects and scatter back toward the transmitting source, where sensors pick them up. "How that scatter is distributed tells us how big the damage site is, and where it is," says Adams.
Similar diagnostic methods have been tried in the past but without much success: Too many embedded sensors and actuators throughout a part weakened the composite material. Purdue says the key to its technique is a relatively meager array of actuators and sensors on the perimeter of a structure. "Our sparse arrays do no harm, which is the first requirement for any structural health monitoring system. They are also much easier to maintain than a widely embedded array if a transducer happens to fail," Adams explains. | <urn:uuid:edc512fa-0667-4702-8997-e7ce0c8b8708> | 3 | 3.375 | 0.01907 | en | 0.951954 | http://machinedesign.com/news/vibrations-pinpoint-structural-damage |
Subject: Re: what makes lost+found in NetBSD?
To: None <[email protected]>
From: Collatz Root <[email protected]>
List: current-users
Date: 11/06/1995 22:10:22
> This might seem a bit thick of me, but which program is supposed to
> make the "lost+found" directory for new filesystems? [...] [A]t
> present, none of my NetBSD-created filesystems have a lost+found
> directory. I do regard this with some concern...
The 4.4 theory seems to be that it's fsck's job. I don't really like
this, because it requires having at least one available inode and the
necessary disk blocks, but if it bothers you it's trivial to write a
little mklost+found that makes the directory, creates files in it to
grow it to size, and then cleans it out again. I suppose the idea is
that if fsck is capable of growing lost+found, there's no reason it
can't be responsible for creating it in the first place.
Here's a first-draft skeleton mklost+found, with error checking,
include files, and frills such as command-line parsing omitted:
char namebuf[256];
int i;
{ sprintf(&namebuf[0],"lost+found/%d%200s",i,"");
der Mouse | <urn:uuid:183b8903-519b-41c6-9a5a-4c5c7d139de4> | 2 | 1.710938 | 0.70579 | en | 0.88423 | http://mail-index.netbsd.org/current-users/1995/11/06/0029.html |
Double Majors
Hawaiʻinuiākea students may opt to be a double major in both Hawaiian Language and Hawaiian Studies to earn their undergraduate degree.
• Double major = Two degrees from the same school or college
• Concurrent major = Two degrees from two different schools or colleges
To double major, a student must:
1. Earn 25 credits of successful coursework
2. Have a minimum 2.0 GPA
3. Submit application for double major
Double majors must complete specific BA general education requirements and the double major requirements for Hawaiian Language and Hawaiian Studies. This generally means that the student must plan for more time and more expenses towards degree completion.
Once approved, double majors must:
• Maintain a mininum 3.0 overall GPA for Hawaiian Language and Hawaiian Studies courses
• Earn a grade of B- or better in all double major classes
Policy on Double Counting for Double Majors
Please be advised that students who qualify to double major in Hawaiian Language and Hawaiian Studies MAY NOT DOUBLE COUNT COURSE CREDITS REQUIRED FOR BOTH MAJORS. In other words, students may not double dip, i.e., use the same course to satisfy major requirements in both degree programs
For example, Hawaiian 301 and Hawaiian 302 are currently required for both Hawaiian Language and Hawaiian Studies majors. Students must declare what major these courses will apply towards meeting the major’s requirements (i.e., either Hawaiian Language or Hawaiian Studies, but NOT BOTH) before the undergraduate degree is awarded.
Furthermore, the student must assign both courses to HAW or HWST and not split the assignment of courses.
Students who qualify to double major must be prepared to complete the additional equivalent credits by enrolling and completing equivalent courses, usually at the upper division (300-400 levels) in order to fulfill the requirements of both majors.
Please see your Academic Advisor for applying for a double major and developing a plan of study for meeting the specific requirements and agreements that need to be approved.
Click here to apply for double majors in HAW & HWST. Request an appointment now. | <urn:uuid:ff178ccb-832c-48c2-8160-9352e0b14092> | 2 | 1.625 | 0.023964 | en | 0.887402 | http://manoa.hawaii.edu/nhss/academicadvising/double-major/ |
The Full Wiki
More info on A People's History of the United States
A People's History of the United States: Map
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In a 1998 interview prior to a speaking engagement at the University of Georgiamarker, Zinn told Catherine Parayre he had set "quiet revolution" as his goal for writing A People's History. "Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather from people beginning to take power from within the institutions. In the workplace, the workers would take power to control the conditions of their lives." In 2004, Zinn published a companion volume with Anthony Arnove, titled Voices of a People's History of the United States. The book parallels A People's History in structure, supplementing it with material from frequently overlooked primary sources.
Columbus to the Robber Barons
Chapter 1, "Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress" covers early Native American civilization in North America and the Bahamasmarker, the genocide and slavery committed by the crew of Christopher Columbus, and incidents of violent colonization by early settlers. Topics include the Arawaks, Bartolomé de las Casas, the Aztecs, Hernando Cortes, Pizarro, Powhatan, the Pequot, the Narragansett, Metacom, King Philip's War, and the Iroquois.
Chapter 2, "Drawing the Color Line" addresses early slavery of African Americans and servitude of poor British people in the Thirteen Colonies. Zinn writes of the methods by which he says racism was artificially created in order to enforce the economic system. He argues that racism is not natural because there are recorded instances of camaraderie and cooperation between black slaves and white servants in escaping from and in opposing their subjugation.
Chapter 3, "Persons of Mean and Vile Condition" describes Bacon's Rebellion, the economic conditions of the poor in the colonies, and opposition to their poverty.
Chapter 4, "Tyranny is Tyranny" covers the movement for "leveling" (economic equality) in the colonies and the causes of the American Revolution. Zinn argues that the Founding Fathers agitated for war to distract the people from their own economic problems and stop popular movements, a strategy that he claims the country's leaders would continue to use in the future.
Chapter 5, "A Kind of Revolution" covers the war and resistance to participating in war, the effects on the Native American people, and the continued inequalities in the new United States. When the land of veterans of the Revolutionary War was seized for non-payment of taxes, it led to instances of resistance to the government, as in the case of Shays' Rebellion. Zinn wrote that "governments - including the government of the United States - are not neutral... they represent the dominant economic interests, and... their constitutions are intended to serve these interests."
Chapter 6, "The Intimately Oppressed" describes resistance to inequalities in the lives of women in the early years of the U.S. Zinn tells the stories of women who resisted the status quo, including Polly Baker, Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer, Amelia Bloomer, Catharine Beecher, Emma Willardmarker, Harriot Hunt, Elizabeth Blackwell, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Fuller, Sarah Grimké, Angelina Grimké, Dorothea Dix, Frances Wright, Lucretia Mott, and Sojourner Truth.
Chapter 7, "As Long As Grass Grows or Water Runs" discusses 19th Century conflicts between the U.S. government and Native Americans (such as the Seminole Warsmarker) and Indian removal, especially during the administrations of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren.
Chapter 8, "We Take Nothing By Conquest, Thank God" describes the Mexican-American War. Zinn writes that President James Polk agitated for war for the purpose of expansionism. Zinn argues that the war was unpopular but that newspapers of that era misrepresented the popular sentiment.
Chapter 9, "Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom" addresses slave rebellions, the abolition movement, the Civil War, and the effect of these events on African-Americans. Zinn writes that the large-scale violence of the war was used to end slavery instead of the small-scale violence of the rebellions because the latter may have expanded beyond anti-slavery, resulting in a movement against the capitalist system. He writes that the war could limit the freedom granted to African-Americans by allowing the government control over how that freedom was gained.
Chapter 10, "The Other Civil War", covers the Anti-Rent movement, the Dorr Rebellion, the Flour Riot of 1837, the Molly Maguires, the rise of labor unions, the Lowell girls movement, and other class struggles centered around the various depression of the 19th Century. He describes the abuse of government power by corporations and the efforts by workers to resist those abuses. Here is an excerpt on the subject of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. [99918]
Chapter 11, "Robber Barons and Rebels" covers the rise of industrial corporations such as the railroads and banks and their transformation into the nation's dominant institutions, with corruption resulting in both industry and government. Also covered are the popular movements and individuals that opposed corruption, such as the Knights of Labor, Edward Bellamy, the Socialist Labor Party, the Haymarket martyrsmarker, the Homestead strikers, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs, the American Railway Union, the Farmers' Alliance, and the Populist Party.
The Twentieth Century
Chapter 12, "The Empire and the People", covers American imperialism during the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War, as well as in other lands such as Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Zinn portrays the wars as being racist and imperialist and opposed by large segments of the American people.
Chapter 13, "The Socialist Challenge", covers the rise of socialism and anarchism as popular political ideologies in the United States. Covered in the chapter are the American Federation of Labor (which Zinn argues provided too exclusive of a union for non-white, female, and unskilled workers; Zinn argues in Chapter 24 that this changes in the 1990s), Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, Joe Hill, the Socialist Labor Party, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Progressive Party (which Zinn portrays as driven by fear of radicalism).
Chapter 14, "War is the Health of the State", covers World War I and the anti-war movement that happened during it, which was met with the heavily enforced Espionage Act of 1917. Zinn argues that the United States entered the war in order to expand its foreign markets and economic influence.
Chapter 15, "Self-Help in Hard Times", covers the government's campaign to destroy the IWW and the Great Depression. Zinn states that, despite popular belief, the 1920s were not a time of prosperity, and the problems of the Depression were simply the problems of the poor (who Zinn states are in permanent depression) extended to the rest of the society. Also covered is the Communist Party's attempts to help the poor during the Depression.
Chapter 16, "A People's War?", covers World War II, opposition to the war, and the effects of the war on the people. Zinn, a veteran of the war himself, notes that "it was the most popular war the US ever fought," but states that this support may have been manufactured through the institutions of American society. He cites various instances of opposition to fighting (in some cases greater than those during WWI) as proof. Zinn also argues against the US's stated intentions to fight racism in Europe, as it was not fighting against systematic racism in the US such as the Jim Crow laws (leading to opposition to the war from African-Americans). Another argument made by Zinn is that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not necessary, as the US government had already known that the Japanese were considering surrender beforehand. Other subjects from WWII covered include Japanese American internment and the bombing of Dresden. The chapter continues into the Cold War. Here, Zinn reveals how the US government used the Cold War to increase control over the American people (for instance, eliminating such radical elements as the Communist Party) and at the same time create a state of permanent war, which allowed for the creation of the modern military-industrial complex. Zinn believes this was possible because both conservatives and liberals willingly worked together in hysterical reaction to anti-Communism. Also covered is the US's involvement in the Greek Civil War, the Korean War, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and the Marshall Plan.
Chapter 17, "'Or Does It Explode?'" (named after a line from Langston Hughes' poem "A Dream Deferred," referred to as "Lenox Avenue Mural" by Zinn), covers the Civil Rights movement. Zinn argues that the government began making reforms against discrimination (although without making fundamental changes) for the sake of changing its international image, but often did not enforce the laws that it passed. Zinn also argues that while nonviolent tactics may have been required for Southern civil rights activists, militant actions (such as those proposed by Malcolm X) were needed to solve the problems of black ghettos. Also covered is the involvement of the Communist Party in the movement, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Freedom Riders, COINTELPRO, and the Black Panther Party.
Chapter 18, "The Impossible Victory: Vietnam", covers the Vietnam War and resistance to it. Zinn argues that America was fighting a war that it could not win, as the Vietnamese people were in favor of the government of Ho Chi Minh and opposed the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, thus allowing them to keep morale high. Meanwhile, the American military's morale for the war was very low, as many soldiers were put off by the atrocities that they were made to take part in, such as the My Lai massacremarker. Zinn also tries to dispel the popular belief that opposition to the war was mainly amongst college students and middle-class intellectuals, using statistics from the era to show higher opposition from the working class. Zinn argues that the troops themselves also opposed the war, citing desertions and refusals to go to war, as well as movements such as Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Also covered is the US invasions of Laos and Cambodia, Agent Orange, the Pentagon Papers, Ron Kovic, and raids on draft boards.
Chapter 20, "The Seventies: Under Control?", covers American disillusion with the government during the 1970s and political corruption that was exposed during the decade. Zinn argues that the resignation of Richard Nixon and the exposure of crimes committed by the CIA and FBI during the decade were done by the government in order to regain support for the government from the American people without making fundamental changes to the system; according to Zinn, Gerald Ford's presidency continued the same basic policies of the Nixon administration. Other topics covered include protests against the Honeywell Corporation, Angela Davis, Committee to Re-elect the President, the Watergate scandal, International Telephone and Telegraph's involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, the Mayagüez incidentmarker, Project MKULTRA, the Church Committee, the Pike Committee, the Trilateral Commission's The Governability of Democracies, and the People's Bi-Centennial.
Chapter 21, "Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus", covers the Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush administrations and their effects on both the American people and foreign countries. Zinn argues that the Democratic and Republican parties keep the government essentially the same (that is, they handled the government in a way that was favorable for corporations rather than for the people) and continued to have a militant foreign policy no matter which party was in power. Zinn uses similarities between the three administrations' methods as proof of this. Other topics covered include the Fairness Doctrine, the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, Noam Chomsky, global warming, Roy Benavidez, the Trident submarine, the Star Wars program, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, the Iran-Contra Affair, the War Powers Act, US invasion of Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War, the Invasion of Grenada, Óscar Romero, the El Mozote massacremarker, the Bombing of Libya, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States invasion of Panama, and the Gulf War.
Chapter 22, "The Unreported Resistance", covers several movements that happened during the Carter-Reagan-Bush years that were ignored by much of the mainstream media. Topics covered include the anti-nuclear movement, the Plowshares Movement, the Council for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze, the Physicians for Social Responsibility, George Kistiakowsky, The Fate of the Earth, Marian Wright Edelman, the Citizens' Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes, the Three Mile Island accidentmarker, the Winooski Forty-four, Abbie Hoffman, Amy Carter, the Piedmont Peace Project, Anne Braden, César Chávez, the United Farm Workers, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Teatro Campesino, LGBT social movements, the Stonewall riots, Food Not Bombs, the anti-war movement during the Gulf War, David Barsamian, opposition to Columbus Day, Indigenous Thought, Rethinking Schools, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Chapter 23, "The Coming Revolt of the Guards", covers Zinn's theory on a possible future radical movement against the inequality in America. Zinn argues that there will eventually be a movement made up not only of previous groups that were involved in radical change (such as labor organizers, black radicals, Native Americans, feminists), but also members of the middle class who are starting to become discontented with the state of the nation. Zinn expects this movement to use "demonstrations, marches, civil disobedience; strikes and boycotts and general strikes; direct action to redistribute wealth, to reconstruct institutions, to revamp relationships."
Chapter 24, "The Clinton Presidency", covers the effects of the Bill Clinton administration on the US and the world. Zinn argues that, despite Clinton's claims that he would bring changes to the country, his presidency kept many things the same as in Reagan-Bush era. Topics covered include Jocelyn Elders, the Waco Siegemarker, the Oklahoma City bombingmarker, the Crime Bill of 1996, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, the 1993 bombing of Iraq, Operation Gothic Serpent, the Rwandan Genocide, the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fundmarker, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1998 bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan, the Impeachment of Bill Clinton, Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, Stand for Children, Jesse Jackson, the Million Man March, Mumia Abu-Jamal, John Sweeney, the Service Employees International Union, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, the Worker Rights Consortium, the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Spare Change, the North American Street Newspaper Association, the National Coalition for the Homeless, anti-globalization, and WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity.
Chapter 25, "The 2000 Election and the 'War On Terrorism'", covers the 2000 presidential election and the War on Terrorism. Zinn argues that attacks on the US by Arab terrorists (such as the September 11, 2001 attacks) are not caused by a hatred for our freedom (as claimed by President George W. Bush), but by grievances with US foreign policies such as "stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia... sanctions against Iraq which... had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children; [and] the continued U.S. support of Israel's occupation of Palestinian land." Other topics covered include Ralph Nader, the War in Afghanistan, and the USA PATRIOT Act.
Critical reception
When A People's History of the United States was first published in 1980, the New York Times reviewer, Columbia University historian Eric Foner, described the book as filled with telling quotations and vivid descriptions of usually ignored events, and said that "Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of academic history." However, referring to Zinn's focus on "the distinctive experience of blacks, women, Indians,workers and other neglected groups," Foner said, "The portrayal of these anonymous Americans is strangely circumscribed. Blacks, Indians, women and laborers appear either as rebels or as victims. Less dramatic but more typical lives — people struggling to survive with dignity in difficult circumstances — receive little attention", adding, "A People's History reflects a deeply pessimistic vision of the American experience." Summing up, Foner found the approach to be limited, and said further that the book needed "an integrated account incorporating Thomas Jefferson and his slaves, Andrew Jackson and the Indians, Woodrow Wilson and the Wobblies."
Writing in the Washington Post Book World, reviewer Michael Kammen, a professor of American History at Cornellmarker, wrote: "I wish that I could pronounce Zinn's book a great success, but it is not. It is a synthesis of the radical and revisionist historiography of the past decade. . . Not only does the book read like a scissors and paste-pot job, but even less attractive, so much attention to historians, historiography and historical polemic leaves precious little space for the substance of history. . . . We do deserve a people's history; but not a singleminded, simpleminded history, too often of fools, knaves and Robin Hoods. We need a judicious people's history because the people are entitled to have their history whole; not just those parts that will anger or embarrass them. . . . If that is asking for the moon, then we will cheerfully settle for balanced history."
In a 2004 article in Dissent critiquing the 5th edition of A People's History of the United States, Georgetown Universitymarker history professor Michael Kazin argued that Zinn's book is too focused on class conflict, and wrongly attributes sinister motives to the American political elite. He also characterized the book as an overly simplistic narrative of elite villains and oppressed people, with no attempt to understand historical actors in the context of the time in which they lived. Kazin writes, "The ironic effect of such portraits of rulers is to rob 'the people' of cultural richness and variety, characteristics that might gain the respect and not just the sympathy of contemporary readers. For Zinn, ordinary Americans seem to live only to fight the rich and haughty and, inevitably, to be fooled by them." Kazin argues further that A People's History fails to explain why the American political-economic model continues to attract millions of minorities, women, workers, and immigrants, or why the socialist and radical political movements Zinn favors have failed to gain widespread support among the American public.
Other editions and related works
A version of the book titled The Twentieth Century contains only chapters 12-25 ("The Empire and the People" to "The 2000 Election and the 'War on Terrorism'"). Though it was originally meant to be an expansion of the original book, recent editions of A People's History now contain all of the later chapters from it.
In 2004, Zinn and Anthony Arnove published a collection of more than 200 primary source documents titled Voices of a People's History of the United States, available both as a book and as a CD of dramatic readings. Writer Aaron Sarver notes that although Kazin "savaged" Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, "one of the few concessions Kazin made was his approval of Zinn punctuating 'his narrative with hundreds of quotes from slaves and Populists, anonymous wage-earners and ... articulate radicals.'"
Whether Zinn intended it or not, Voices serves as a useful response to Kazin’s critique. As Sarver observes, "Voices is a vast anthology that tells heartbreaking and uplifting stories of American history. Kazin will be hard-pressed to charge Zinn with politicizing the intelligence here; the volume offers only Zinn’s sparse introductions to each piece, letting the actors and their words speak for themselves."
In 2008, Zinn worked with Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle on creating A People's History of American Empire, a graphic novel that covers various historic subjects from A People's History of the United States as well as Zinn's own history of involvement in activism and historic events as covered in his autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.
Zinn has worked as the series editor for a series of books under the A People's History label. This series expands upon the issues and historic events covered in A People's History of the United States by giving them in-depth coverage, and also covers the history of parts of the world outside the United States. These books include:
Younger readers' version
After many years of requests from parents and teachers, in July 2007 Seven Stories Press released A Young People's History of the United States, an illustrated, two-volume adaptation of A People's History for young adult readers (ages 10–14). The new version, adapted from the original text by Rebecca Stefoff, is updated through the end of 2006, and includes a new introduction and afterward by Howard Zinn.
In his introduction, Zinn writes, "It seems to me it is wrong to treat young readers as if they are not mature enough to look at their nation's policies honestly. I am not worried about disillusioning young people by pointing to the flaws in the traditional heroes." In the afterword, "Rise like lions", he asks young readers to "Imagine the American people united for the first time in a movement for fundamental change."
In addition, the New Press released an updated (2007) version of The Wall Charts for A People's History — a 2-piece fold-out poster featuring an illustrated timeline of U.S. history, with an explanatory booklet.
Current editions
• Zinn, Howard (2003). The Twentieth Century. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0060530340
• A Young People's History of the United States, adapted from the original text by Rebecca Stefoff; illustrated, in two volumes; Seven Stories Press, New York, 2007
• Teaching Editions
• A People's History of the United States: Teaching Edition
• A People's History of the United States, Abridged Teaching Edition, Updated Edition
• A People's History of the United States: Volume 1: American Beginnings to Reconstruction, Teaching Edition
• A People's History of the United States, Vol. 2: The Civil War to the Present, Teaching Edition
• A People's History of the United States: The Wall Charts; designed by Howard Zinn and George Kirschner; New Press (2007). ISBN 978-1-56584-171-0
See also
External links
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An affine monoid is a finitely generated commutative submonoid of $\mathbb Z^k$ for some positive integer k. Let S be an affine monoid and let G(S) be the group generated by S. We say the monoid S is normal if and only if for all $g \in G(S)$ and $n \in \mathbb N \setminus \{0\}$, $ng \in S$ implies $g \in S$.
Let $S$ be the submonoid generated by the finite set $T= \{(p_0,p_1, \cdots ,p_{n-1}) \in (\mathbb Z_{\geq 0})^n: \sum_{i=0}^{n-1}p_i=n \,\, and \,\, \sum_{i=0}^{n-1}i.p_i \cong 0 \pmod n\}$. Now my question is how to prove that $S$ is normal ?
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2 Answers 2
up vote 4 down vote accepted
I worked on this for a bit with Ricky Liu, who came up with this very quick solution:
Take your set T. Suppose $\sum p_i = kn$, where $k \geq 2$. Create the following set T': let $i$ appear $p_i$ times. This creates a set $T'$ with at least $2n$ elements (by your first constraint and $k \geq 2$), whose sum is divisible by $n$ by your second constraint.
However, by Erdos-Ginsberg-Ziv, there's a subset of $n$ elements which add to $n$, which exactly corresponds to your generator, so we're done.
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Thanks for your answer. Actually I want to prove EGZ theorem using this result, so I do not want to use EGZ to prove this result. I knew this proof already. – user3649 Feb 3 '10 at 8:45
Sorry, I did not get the above answer. Can somebody please explain me.
Suppose, $q.(p_0,p_1, \cdots ,p_{n-1}) \in S$, where $ q \in \mathbb N \setminus 0$ and $(p_0,p_1, \cdots ,p_{n-1}) \in G(S)$, why is it clear from the above answer that $(p_0,p_1, \cdots ,p_{n-1})$ is already in $S$. Some of the $p_i$'s can be negative as well. It is not at all clear to me. Thanks in advance.
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First of all: no p_i can be negative: since q{\bar p} is in S (where I write {\bar p} for (p_0, ..., p_{n-1}), it follows that qp_i >= 0 for all i. Since {\bar p} is in G(S), it follows that p_0 + ... + p_{n-1} = kn for some integer k. Moreover, k >= 0 (since each p_i >= 0). I guess the best way to understand the above proof will be by induction on k. If k = 1, then {\bar p} already is in S. Otherwise, as yanzhang suggests, by Erdos-Ginsberg-Ziv, there are 0<=i_1 < ... < i_k <= n-1 and j_1, ..., j_k such that (continued to the next comment) – auniket Feb 10 '10 at 7:44
1 <= j_m <= p_{i_m} for each m, j_1 + ... + j_k = n and i_1j_1 + ... + i_kj_k is divisible by n. Let {\bar q} := (q_0, ..., q_{n-1}) where q_s = j_s if m = i_s for some s, and q_s = 0 otherwise. Then {\bar q} is in T, and by induction {\bar p} - {\bar q} is in S. Done! – auniket Feb 10 '10 at 7:51
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:3c8ad58f-620f-4706-ad89-9378721af2c6> | 2 | 1.929688 | 0.799604 | en | 0.850956 | http://mathoverflow.net/questions/13477/normality-of-an-affine-semigroup?sort=oldest |
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Someone I know is trying to figure out if the following concepts already have an established name in the literature, and MO is a great place to ask around.
1) Suppose $X$ is a metric space equipped with an associative product and a unit element. Let $m: X \times X \to X$ be the product. Suppose also that $m$ is nonexpansive, i.e. $$ d\big( m(x,x'),m(y,y') \big) \le d\big((x,x'),(y,y')\big) $$ say when $X\times X$ is given the Euclidean metric with respect to the given metric of $X$. Is there a standard name for this type of structure?
2) Let $f : X \to Y$ be a map between metric spaces with the property that for all $x,y \in X$ $$ d(f(x), f(y)) \geq d(x,y). $$ So in a way this is the opposite of a nonexpansive map. Is there a name for such maps?
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2) Expansive. – Bill Johnson Sep 27 '10 at 18:01
2) noncontracting map – Anton Petrunin Sep 28 '10 at 0:06
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If $M$ is a $n-1$ dimensional Riemannian submanifold in a $1+n$ dimensional space-time manifold $(V,g)$ of pseudo-Riemannian signature $(1,n)$ and $\nabla$ be the Riemann-Christoffel connection on it.
One chooses two future directed null geodesics orthogonal to M say $X^+$ and $X^-$ and defines two rank $2$ tensors $K^+$ and $K^-$ such that their components are,
$K^+ _{ab} = \nabla _a X^+_b$
$K^- _{ab} = \nabla _a X^- _b$
(where $a$ and $b$ run over the indices on $M$)
Let $h_{ab}$ be the components of the induced metric on $M$ from $g$ of $V$. Then one defines the following "null mean curvatures", $\chi ^+$ and $\chi ^-$ along $X^+$ and $X^-$ as,
$\chi ^ + = h^{ab}K^+_{ab}$
$\chi ^ - = h^{ab}K^-_{ab}$
Now apparently $h$ and $g$ can be related as,
$h = g + \frac{1}{2}(X^+ \otimes X^- + X^- \otimes X^+)$
• This is something I am not very clear about. I guess there is some abuse of notation about what is called $h$ since in the two definitions the dimensions of $h$ don't seem to match.
With the above definition one can show that,
$h^{\mu \nu} \nabla _\mu X^+ _\nu = g^{\mu \nu} \nabla _\mu X^+ _\nu$
(where $\mu$ and $\nu$ run over indices of the space-time $V$)
A similar expression holds with $X^-$ and the proof of this crucially needs both the properties that $X$'s are null as well as geodesic. This relates to the notion of ``expansion" of a geodesic congruence and hence shows that null mean curvature is exactly the expansion for the geodesic congruence to which $X$'s would be tangent vectors to.
Now one calls such a $M$ a ``Trapped Surface" if both the null mean curvatures $\chi ^+$ and $\chi ^-$ are negative.
I run into some confusions when I try doing this test on $r=constant$ and $t=constant$ spheres in the Schwarzschild metric,
$ds^2 = -(1-\frac{2M}{r})dt^2 + \frac{dr^2}{(1-\frac{2M}{r})} + r^2(d\theta ^2 + sin^2 \theta d\phi ^2)$
I should get both the null mean curvatures of all spheres inside $r=2M$ to be negative and hence all of them are trapped surfaces. To get this I have to choose the future directed null geodesics orthogonal to the 2-spheres as,
$X^{+/-} = (\frac{+/-1}{(1-\frac{2M}{r})}, -1 , 0, 0)$
• Now I am not very clear as to how to justify that these are both "future directed" inside the event horizon (i.e the surface $r=2M$). (I have some arguments of my own but not very clear) That these are null and orthogonal geodesics to the two spheres is clear.
For the above one gets that $\chi ^{+/-} = -\frac{2}{r}$ and hence justifying that all spheres inside the event horizon are trapped surfaces.
• I would also like to know as to what is the coordinate independent definition for a geodesic to be "future directed" and in how general a space-time can a notion of being "future directed" be imposed globally and continuously.
• Given a general pseudo-Riemannian metric how does one detect the presence or absence of a trapped surface? How does one find such a surface? (The above definition seems to give a test of being trapped if one is given a surface)
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Maybe I am misunderstanding. However, I believe the expression for the Schwarzschild metric you wrote down in coordinates only holds outside the event horizon (i.e. r>2M). My guess is if you use coordinates that extend past the event horizon (if I recall correctly an example of these are called advanced and retarded coordinates) then things should work out in a straight forward manner. – Rbega Oct 15 '10 at 22:24
1 Answer 1
Quite a lot of questions you have there. First a bit of nitpick:
• You didn't give enough information to define the null second fundamental forms. Just knowing a geodesic is not enough. You need a whole family of them. To be precise, you need $X^\pm$ to be null vector fields along $M$ orthogonal to $TM$, and then you extend them by parallel transport along themselves in the null direction.
For a bit more about the geometry, look at Galloway's Beijing Lecture Notes or B. O'Neill's Semi-Riemannian Geometry.
About the relationship between $h$ and $g$: the induced metric on a Riemannian submanifold of a semi-Riemannian manifold can be treated as a projection operator on the total tangent space restricted to over the submanifold. In other words, let $p\in M\subset V$, then because $M$ is Riemannian, you can split $T_pV = T_pM \oplus (T_pM )^\perp$, then $h$ uniquely lifts from $Sym_2(T_pM)$ to $Sym_2(T_pV)$ by extending trivially in the perpendicular directions. This lift coincides with $g + X^-\otimes X^+ + X^+\otimes X^-$ (if you normalize $g(X^-,X^+) = -1$). (Note, this fixing of normalization is important. You didn't specify it in your question.)
Now, you should get out of the habit of working in Schwarzschild coordinates for the trapped region. That coordinate system is only good for thinking about the exterior of the black hole. Inside the trapped region, the surfaces of constant $r$ are in fact space-like... The picture would be much clearer if you think in terms of Kruskal coordinates.
About "future directed":
• Looks like you are missing a bit of basic causal theory? A space-time is called time-orientable if it admits a continuous, non-vanishing time-like vector field $\tau$. For time-orientable space-times, the notion of future and past are well-defined: a causal vector $v$ is said to be future oriented if $g(v,\tau) < 0$, and past-oriented if $g(v,\tau) > 0$. There exists Lorentzian manifolds which are not time-orientable. See any General Relativity textbook for more details and examples (esp. Hawking-Ellis and O'Neill).
Detection of trapped surface:
• Outside of spherical symmetry, where you can detect trapped surfaces by using the metric dual of the one form $dr$, where $r$ is the area-radius (if $dr$ is space-like, then the sphere is non-trapped), there's no general mechanism to detect trapped surfaces, other than a priori knowledge that both of its null mean curvature are negative (as in, this is an open problem). If you restrict to a spatial slice, then there are some work in the Riemannian geometry literature concerning this problem by looking at the Jang equation (I think Marcus Khuri worked on it for a bit, don't know if he is still on it). There are also related work on dynamical horizons and marginally outermost trapped surfaces by Ashtekar, Galloway, Lars Andersson, and others. But if you do find a general way to detect presence of trapped surfaces without local computations, do let me know, because you'd be about a third way there toward solving weak cosmic censorship.
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Also, a geometrically better way of thinking about trapping is to ignore this whole geodesic and null vector field business, and think about the mean curvature vector. The second fundamental form of a submanifold $M\subset V$ measures the failure of $TM$ to be parallel under transport by $\nabla$. Thus the proper way to see the second fundamental form, is that it is a symmetric two tensor on $TM$ that takes value in the normal bundle for $M$. Then taken the $g$ (or the $h$, doesn't matter) trace of this tensor you get a section of the normal bundle over $M$. This is the mean curvature vector. – Willie Wong Oct 16 '10 at 1:14
If the mean curvature vector is space-like, $M$ is not trapped (near that point). If it is time-like, then it is either trapped (future pointing) or anti-trapped (past pointing, like in a white hole). For spherically symmetric space-times, the mean curvature vector of the symmetry spheres are precisely the metric dual of the one form $dr$ that I wrote above, up to a scalar multiple. For more about the second fundamental form as taking values in the normal bundle, see O'Neill's book. – Willie Wong Oct 16 '10 at 1:19
@Willie Thanks for your replies. I am familiar with the understanding of the null second fundamental form as symmetric rank two tensor on the submanifold taking values in the normal bundle. I skipped writing all that and to keep the question short I directly defined the quantities $K^{+/-}_{ab}$. So you are saying that the tensor whose components are $h_{ab}$ (as defined in the question) and the tensor $h$ (as defined in the question) should be thought of as lifts of each other? – Anirbit Oct 16 '10 at 7:08
@ Willie But then what does this lift tell us? What good it is when it does not lift to the original metric on the full space-time? Is there a way of explicitly writing down the embedding of $M$ in $V$ along which if $g$ is pulled back it precisely gives the metric ${h_{ab}}$ ? I am familiar with the notion of time-orientability as you defined it. SO I guess you are suggesting that I look in the Kruskal coordinates and identify these symmetry two spheres in those coordinates and also the future directed null geodesics in those coordinates and repeat the calculation? – Anirbit Oct 16 '10 at 7:12
@Willie Thanks for what you called the "nitpicking". It was important. – Anirbit Oct 16 '10 at 7:13
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:19fbe6ea-567a-42b5-9a85-8229881c4b46> | 2 | 1.546875 | 0.077498 | en | 0.899485 | http://mathoverflow.net/questions/42324/testing-for-trapped-surfaces |
Crickladetown (“parish”parish), North Wiltshire district, administrative and historic county of Wiltshire, England. Cricklade lies at the head of navigation of the upper Thames, at the point where the river intersected Ermine Street, a Roman road linking Silchester and Cirencester. A Roman fort was established there as a reconnaissance centre in AD 69 CE. Cricklade was created a borough by the Saxon king Alfred the Great in 871, and by the early 10th century it was sufficiently important to have a mint. Henry II granted the borough a charter in 1155, and Henry III (reigned 1216–72) founded a hospital and granted a weekly market and three-day fair. During the 14th century the town formed part of the dowry of the queens of England. St. Sampson’s Church, on the site of a 9th-century Saxon building, dates from the 12th to the 16th century. Local industries include a glove factory, hand pottery, and a creamery and canning factory situated outside the town. Pop. (19912001) 34,808132. | <urn:uuid:36919b96-d9ec-42b6-882f-296d24fee06b> | 3 | 2.921875 | 0.127654 | en | 0.967583 | http://media-1.web.britannica.com/eb-diffs/940/142940-11390-27897.html |
Colosseumoriginally called original name Flavian Amphitheatregiant amphitheatre built in Rome under the Flavian emperors. Construction of the Colosseum was begun sometime between AD 70 and 72 during the reign of Vespasian; the structure was officially dedicated in AD 80 by Titus in a ceremony that included 100 days of games. Later, in AD 82, Domitian completed the work by adding the uppermost story. Unlike earlier amphitheatres, which were nearly all dug into convenient hillsides for extra support, the Colosseum is a freestanding structure of stone and concrete, measuring 620 by 513 feet (190 by 155 metres) overall and seating . Three of the arena’s stories are encircled by arcades framed by decorative half-columns in the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders; the structure’s rising arrangement of columns became the basis of the Renaissance codification known as the assemblage of orders.
The amphitheatre seated some 50,000 spectators. It was the scene of thousands of hand-to-hand combats between gladiators, of contests between men and animals, and of many larger combats, including mock naval engagements. However, it is uncertain whether the arena was the site of the martyrdom of early Christians.
The Colosseum was damaged by lightning and earthquakes in medieval times and, even more severely, by vandalism; all the marble seats and decorative materials have disappeared. A restoration project was undertaken in the 1990s, and in 2000 the Colosseum staged a series of plays to an audience of some 700 people. It was the first time in almost 1,500 years that live performances had been held in the amphitheatre.. Changing exhibitions relating to the culture of ancient Rome are regularly mounted. | <urn:uuid:5fc0ebcf-0e69-437d-b20b-a1eca42859d3> | 4 | 3.640625 | 0.019923 | en | 0.975651 | http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-diffs/613/126613-18731-24848.html |
3 Curious Things I Didn't Know about the Aphid
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Last year I was walking on the beach here in L.A. and I saw a gal wearing this Aphids Suck tee. I remember thinking: if there isn't a t-shirt for everything now! Man-o-man. Poor aphids.
Cut to last month and my rose bushes were suddenly coated with the little buggers, just as the new growth was starting to come in! What to do?
Spray or pray?
My conscience said pray they'd go elsewhere and infest someone else's bushes; but the part of me that had been working so arduously all winter for healthy roses said spray "˜em!
So I went to the nursery and picked up not a chemical spray, but a mini-primer on the aphid, instead.
aphid.jpg Curious fact #1: You can hose the suckers off with water! That's right: no poison necessary—just a spray nozzle on your hose.
ladybug.jpg Even more curious fact #2: Another way to get rid of them is by attracting ladybugs to your infected plant. Each ladybug is capable of consuming up to 50 to 60 aphids per day! In terms of weight/size proportions, that would be like you eating 50 to 60 whole trout every day. Yeah, that's a lot of fish.
Aphid-giving-birth.jpg Even WAY more curious fact #3: Aphids are born pregnant! Yup, they are what's known as parthenogenic (from the Greek words meaning virgin and creation), meaning they don't need a male to become impregnated. Think of the unborn offspring as organs, growing inside the aphid as she grows inside her mother. Pretty cool, eh?
So if you see someone wearing one of those Aphids Suck tees, consider accosting the owner and scribbling a DON'T in there, "˜cause I can think of a million things that suck a whole lot more than the very cool little, often-harmless aphid.
March 19, 2008 - 11:24pm
submit to reddit | <urn:uuid:4ead11a7-b2b4-4d86-9a6d-2d35ac3b74c8> | 2 | 1.90625 | 0.435258 | en | 0.965781 | http://mentalfloss.com/article/18266/3-curious-things-i-didnt-know-about-aphid |
What is meta? ×
I logged in to my account today, posted an answer to a question and an edit to an answer. The next thing I know, my account was logged out, my user was deleted and my answer was removed.
I don't understand why my account was deleted.
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closed as too localized by Martijn Pieters, animuson, Brad Larson Nov 1 '12 at 1:56
what methods did you use to login to the site? Perhaps you accidentally created a new account by signing in with different credentials? You can see your login details in your profile – Lix Oct 31 '12 at 21:07
There's a comment on your answer that reads: "This reads like brochure material." – Andrew Barber 49 mins ago, Your account probably appeared to be a spammer account. – Mysticial Oct 31 '12 at 21:07
So the policy is to simply delete an account when an answer appears to "read like brochure material"? It certainly is not brochure material. – BrianJM Oct 31 '12 at 21:09
No, not at all. We're just guessing with what might be minor indicators. – Bart Oct 31 '12 at 21:10
I'm not a moderator - let alone the one who deleted your account. But I can say that we are very harsh on spammers. I'm not saying that you are spamming, but your answer seemed to be an advertisement for a product. – Mysticial Oct 31 '12 at 21:11
So can I get my old account back? If I post the same answer again, is this account then going to be deleted? – BrianJM Oct 31 '12 at 21:12
I'd say on a quick glance, this read like brochure material but on a more thorough one, it didn't. Moderators have very little time to look at the posts they moderate. This action may well get reversed, I'll flag this post and ask a mod to take a look at the issue – Pëkka Oct 31 '12 at 21:17
And to save everyone else the searching, the answer is here: stackoverflow.com/a/13166648/922184 (10k link) – Mysticial Oct 31 '12 at 21:18
In any case, you don't look like a spammer to me. You just got unlucky enough to get caught in this. Just sit and wait for the mods to decide what to do. – Mysticial Oct 31 '12 at 21:20
@MadaraUchiha If it's a spammer, there's no warning. Not saying this user is a spammer, though, and also not saying that the account was deleted because a mod thought they were spamming (likely scenario, but not the only possibility). – Yannis Oct 31 '12 at 21:27
I was the one who flagged and commented, though perhaps someone else flagged as well. The post in question read like advertising material to me; it seemed a bit out of the realm of a normal 'fan' posting about their favorite tool. I was surprised to see the account deleted, however. I'll guess Brad had a good reason, or it was a mis-click. There were no other answers on the account though, so I'm not sure if it's too important to get the account back, per se. (though that's not up to me, is it!) – Andrew Barber Oct 31 '12 at 21:36
@Pekka: There's nothing a moderator can do; the account was nuked from orbit. It's a "do-over" at this point. – Robert Harvey Oct 31 '12 at 21:47
@Pekka: The information is lost. The account had only two activities, which the OP has helpfully screen-shotted here. It doesn't really matter how old the account is; if the total activity is only spammy, we'll push the reset button. We don't burn accounts if there is any evidence whatsoever of productive activity, as that would cause actual data loss. In this particular case, the remedy is to simply create a new account. – Robert Harvey Oct 31 '12 at 21:52
@BrianJM: All I can really say about this is just make sure you have two or three upvoted (read: valuable to the community) non-promotional answers on your new account, and you'll be more or less permanently protected against nuking (we'll send you a mod message first, if overly promotional activity is occurring). – Robert Harvey Oct 31 '12 at 22:02
@BrianJM I don't agree that the post looks less spammy on closer inspection; I read it quite thoroughly before flagging, as I usually do. What made it trip my "spam" senses was how hard it tried to push one solution over another - using so much wording that one could find in a brochure or 'testimonial'. That might simply be your writing style. However, as Robert noted; with more 'normal' activity on the account, borderline things tend not to look as spammy. :) – Andrew Barber Oct 31 '12 at 22:15
1 Answer 1
up vote 23 down vote accepted
I was the one who deleted your account.
I did so after reading your answer, which was flagged as spam. For posterity, this is what it contained:
Since you are looking for a solution that does not rely on jailbreaking or rooting a device, Perfecto Mobile will not suffice. What you are looking for is the M-eux QTP Mobile Testing solution.
M-eux integrates directly with QTP (add-in), Visual Studio and Eclipse. There is no need to jailbreak or root devices and it offers true object recognition (so you can utilize your existing QTP skills). The mobile device can be connect directly to your computer (USB), accessed through a WiFi connection or accessed remotely in a lab (on-site or off-site).
M-eux has a track record of promptly supporting the newest devices and latest OS versions. M-eux supported iOS 6 the day it was released. Perfecto still doesn't support it (and can't until it is jailbroken); you won't find an iPhone 5 in their list of supported devices. Jailbreaking tablets in the USA violates the DMCA (effective Jan 2013), which obviously presents challenges for solutions that rely on jailbroken devices.
It reads like it's straight out of a brochure, and points to a commercial service while attacking another. I found it very hard to believe that a neutral third party would write a post like this.
We have had a significant volume of spam posted today from a series of new user accounts. If a new account looks entirely created to spam, with no indication that it's a real user or someone who's simply unaware of our promotional rules, we tend to destroy those accounts.
The fact that this was the first and only answer by a new user to a question that was months old, it read like an ad, and I'd just dealt with four or five other spammers dumping answers across the site, caused me to lean toward the destruction of this account. Deletion of an account is extremely difficult to undo, so I only use it where I am certain the account isn't legitimate and there is nothing else of value attached to it.
Hopefully you can see the indications that led me to this. Nothing of significance was lost by removing this account, aside from your time in creating a new one. You've already done this, and started posting good looking answers with that, so there's not a lot more we can do here. I apologize for the inconvenience, but we tend to be pretty harsh on spam here.
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Thanks for clarification. You may close this question. – BrianJM Oct 31 '12 at 22:31
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Mises Daily
Home | Library | Free Money Against "Inflation Bias"
Free Money Against "Inflation Bias"
November 14, 2006
Tags The FedFinancial MarketsInterventionism
Today's mainstream economics maintains that inflation — defined as an ongoing rise of the economy's price level over time — is "a prerequisite for a growing and thriving world."[1] A great number of arguments in support of the "inflationist view" have been put forward. For instance, inflation would be needed to allow real wages and employment to adjust more smoothly to changing market conditions.
A more recent argument in favor of central banks pursuing positive "inflation targets," or at least "zero inflation targets," is the alleged necessity of preventing nominal interest rates from hitting zero.[2] Such an outcome, it is widely feared, would run the risk of making monetary policy ineffective in terms of influencing real and nominal magnitudes.
At the same time, deflation — understood as an ongoing decline in the economy's price level — is widely believed to harm output and employment. For instance, if consumers expect goods and services to become cheaper in the future, it is feared, they would postpone their purchases, thereby setting into motion a vicious downward spiral: dropping demand, falling prices, declining output.
Taking an "outside view" by today's standards, Milton Friedman argued in the late 1960s that "optimal inflation" should be negative.[3] Specifically, Friedman suggested that economic welfare was maximized when the nominal interest rate was zero; this requires inflation to be equal to the negative of the real interest rate (as will be explained in some more detail below).
A well-established ideological "inflation bias" couldn't be more dismissive of the idea of a central bank delivering deflation. If the price level declines, so the reasoning goes, a borrower's real debt would rise, and debt servicing would become difficult, even impossible. What is more, declining prices would make investors unwilling to lend, as money balances gain in value over time without money holders having to embark upon risky investments. In short, capital markets couldn't do their job properly if the price level declines over time.
Admittedly, the whole discussion — including the underlying definitions of the variables used therein — couldn't be more out of touch with the thinking, insights, and recommendations of the Austrian School of Economics. As Ludwig von Mises wrote:
"By committing itself to an inflationary or deflationary policy a government does not promote the public welfare, the commonweal, or the interest of the whole nation. It merely favors one or several groups of the population at the expense of other groups."[4]
Mises argued for an unconditional return to the principles of free-market money. Money as a means of exchange must be the product of unhampered market forces. Government-controlled money would violate the principle of justice and lead to economic inefficiency.[5] It would pose insurmountable limits to human knowledge, thereby inviting fraud and causing costly, even fatal, policy errors.[6] The money supply monopoly should be wrested from the hands of the government and returned to the free market.
Mises was particularly aware that any crisis resulting from a government-run monetary system — such as, for instance, rising unemployment following a recession and deflation, caused by the bursting of a government-sponsored credit and money expansion boom — would swing wide open the doors for government interventionism, threatening the very foundations of the free-market society.
From that viewpoint, advocating free-market money actually amounts to seeking protection against the danger of eroding societal freedom through governments. Mises put it succinctly:
"It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights."[7]
The rest of this article has two goals. First, to show that market agents' savings and investment decisions are actually indifferent towards any (a-priori known) changes in the price level; the notion of an economically necessary "inflation bias" for facilitating savings and investment can easily be discarded.
Second, to elaborate on Mises's point, namely, that when it comes to preserving the free society, deflation won't be any better than inflation under a government-run monetary system; and that the only way to reverse the path towards disaster would indeed be an unconditional return to free-market money.
To set the ball rolling, let us take a brief look at the composition of nominal market interest rates. According to the "Fisher equation," the nominal rate, can be separated into two components, that is the real interest rate, and a premium compensating for inflation (expectation), π:.
Assume, for the sake of a simple illustration, that the economy's real (trend) growth rate is 2.0% per annum (p.a.), and inflation (expectation) is ˜1.9608% p.a., which gives, according to the above formula, a nominal interest rate of 4.0% p.a.
Now let us consider saving and investing in today's inflation regime (see Fig. 1). For instance, the saver buys a bond in the amount of US$100.00 in t = 0, which has a maturity of 10 years (column 2). Starting in t = 1, the bond holder receives annual coupon payments of US$4.00 (that is the nominal interest rate of 4.0% p.a. multiplied by the principal amount of US$100.00). In t = 10, the investor receives US$104.00, that is the bond's principle plus US$4.00 interest payments.
The development of the price level is shown in column 3. It is assumed to be 100 in t = 0, and it increases in line with inflation, so that after 10 years the price level is 121.4. Column 4 shows the cash flows in real terms, that is dividing 2 by 3. Column 5 exhibits the present values of the periodical cash flows in real terms, discounted at the real interest rate to t = 0. Finally, column 6 gives the real net present value (NPV) of investment — that is the real outlay of US$100.00 in t = 0 plus the present values of future real cash flows in the amount of US$100.00.
The NPV of the investment is zero. This finding should not come as a surprise: it simply says that the internal rate of return of the investment equals the real interest rate of 2.0% p.a.[8] To put it differently, the investor has secured a real return on his or her investment of exactly 2.0% p.a., and the borrower has gained access to funds for 20 years, for which he or she pays a real rate of 2.0% p.a.
What would happen if inflation is negative, and the nominal market interest rate zero? Consider an economy in which output is growing at a positive rate of, say 2.0% p.a. Inflation compensation, however, is now ˜ -1.9608% p.a., making the nominal market interest rate zero according to the Fisher relation. Fig. 2 shows the payments under the assumption of zero nominal market interest rates.
Again, the investor pays out US$100.00 in t = 0 and receives US$100.0 in t = 10, with no payments inbetween as coupon payments are zero (column 2). Column 3 shows the price level, which declines from 100.0 in t = 0 to 82.0 in t = 10. The cash flows in real terms are shown in column 4. The real payment at the end of the maturity of the bond amounts to US$121.90. Discounting this payment by the real interest rate yields a PV of US$100.00 in t = 0 (column 5). As a result, the NPV of the investment is zero. Again, the real return of the investment is 2.0% p.a. (column 6).
The two examples suggest that saving and investing would be possible irrespective of a rise or a fall in the price level rises over time. In both regimes savers earn a real return of 2.0% p.a., and investors pay real cost of borrowing of 2.0% p.a.
But what about periodic payments (as might be desirable for, for instance, pension related investment purposes) in a regime of zero interest rates? As can be shown, this would also be possible.
The credit contract would simply have to include a clause for the borrower to make periodic payments, which, in turn, would lower the (real) amount of principle to be paid back at the end of the maturity of the bond.
Using the example shown in Fig. 2, let us assume the borrower and lender agree for annual payments in the amount of US$2.00 in the credit contract (see Fig. 3). As a result, the investor would receive a nominal US$2.00 each year, reducing the pay-back payment in t = 10 to US$82.00 (that is US$100.00 minus nine times US$2.00). Again, the real return of the investment is 2.0% p.a.
These simple examples suggest that savers and investors can be expected, irrespective of ongoing inflation or deflation (and positive or zero market interest rates), to provide funds and demand funds, respectively. Savings and investment, therefore, would take place regardless of whether the economy's price level rises or declines over time. Against this background, no intellectually convincing case can be made for upholding the notion of an economically necessary "inflation bias."
To be sure, today's upward drifts in prices are the outcome of deliberate government "inflationist" decisions made in the past. No doubt, a change in the currently established inflation regime — that is, for instance, moving from inflation to deflation — would result in far-reaching redistribution of income as far as already outstanding contracts are concerned: borrowers would have to cope with a higher-than-expected real capital costs, and lenders would enjoy a higher-than-expected real income at the expense of borrowers.
Is there any merit, from the Austrians' viewpoint, that would suggest recommending central banks to switch from an inflationary to a deflationary regime? The answer is no. As long as governments retain the money supply monopoly, the erosion of the purchasing power of money could, and presumably would, also occur under "deflation targeting": central banks — unlikely to be shielded against demands from an "inflationist public opinion" — might simply opt for deflation that is lower than the decline in the price level as expected by market agents.[9]
Perhaps most importantly, the very source of the crises would remain in place: the concept of "price index targeting," which rests on the erroneous "stabilization" idea, a concept that is in full contradiction to the notion of free markets: "Human action originates change. As far as there is human action there is no stability, but ceaseless alteration."[10]
In view of changes in the money stock, Mises explained that "[w]hat is fundamental to economic theory is that there is no constant relation between changes in the quantity of money and in prices. Changes in the supply of money affect individual prices and wages in different ways. The metaphor of the term price level is misleading."[11]
For the Austrians, government-induced change in the stock of credit and money — be it for the purpose of delivering inflation or deflation according to pre-determined designs — must inevitably result in a distortion of relative prices, lead to a misallocation of scarce resources and, ultimately, pave the way towards crisis.
What is more, if a central bank, under deflation targeting, reduces credit and money supply less rigorously, the economic outcome would be equal to a situation in which the central bank, under inflation targeting, expands credit and money supply too generously. In both cases real credit and money supply would increase, debasing the purchasing power of money.
Even under a regime in which government controlled central banks pursue deflation targeting there would be the risk of creating unsustainable debt levels for private households, firms and governments. A rising indebtedness (relative to income), in turn, would sooner or later tip the balance of societal preference in favor of debasing the value of money.
From the Austrian point of view, a government controlled money supply system, coupled with the price level stabilization idea, is inherently crisis prone, irrespective of inflation targeting or deflation targeting. That is why Austrians argue for an unconditional return to free-market money. They see it as a solution to the dangers emerging from today's monetary regime.
[1] Rothbard, M. N. (2006), For a New Liberty, Ludwig von Mises Institute, p. 217.
[2] An in-depth discussion of this issue can be found, for instance, in: Johnson, K. H., Small, D., Tryon, R. (1999), "Monetary policy and price stability," in: Austrian Central Bank, 27. Volkswirtschaftliche Tagung, pp. 65–94, in particular pp. 81.
[3] See Friedman, M. (1969), "The Optimum Quantity of Money," in: Friedman, M. (ed.), The Optimum Quantity of Money and other Essays, Aldine, Chicago, Il.
[4] Mises, Ludwig von, Human Action, Chapter 17, section 18: "The Inflationist View of History."
[5] For an insightful elaboration of this issue see, for instance, Hoppe, H.-H. (2006), The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, Ludwig von Mises Institute, pp. 175–204.
[6] Using the term "pretense of knowledge," this point was forcefully made by F.A. Hayek in his lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 11, 1974: "The Pretense of Knowledge."
[7] Mises, "The Principle of Sound Money," Chapter 21 of The Theory of Money and Credit.
[8] Note that the internal rate of return of 2% is the discount rate which makes zero the difference between the present value of cash flows to be received in the future and the initial outlay.
[9] This would be analogous to current practice, in which actual inflation is usually allowed to exceed promised inflation.
[10] Mises, Human Action, Chapter 12, section 4: "Stabilization."
[11] Mises, "The Non-Neutrality of Money," in: Money, Method, and the Market Process.
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Friday, May 31, 2013
I copied this from wikipedia:
Treason in this definition is a very specific offense requiring involvement of a foreign government. In the case of Benghazi, the foreign government involved is not recognized by any modern entity. Islamic terrorists are fighting for an Islamic government that does not formally exist. So, if you support them against your own country, is this being a traitor? By this definition, the answer is no.
In this definition, the concept of foreign government is what is causing the issue. What if it was a business, or some other organization that has as a goal the destruction of your government? Would that not qualify as well? I believe so.
I look at Treason as being a citizen's actions to help a foreign entity overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the parent nation. The only word change in this sentence is to change foreign government to foreign entity. I look at it as being any organization that is waging war against my country and you are helping them in any way, qualifies.
The intent here is to include Islamic terrorist organizations into this category. Why? Because Islamic governance is at war against us as was demonstrated in attacks upon our sovereign assets in 1993 (First world trade center bombing) 1998, (twin embassy bombings), 2000( USS Cole), 9/11/01 and 9/11/12.
ANY organization that can wage organized warfare qualifies as a government for this definition, even if not formally recognized. The real reason why I expand this definition is because I am a loyal American. I missed Vietnam by a few years, but if I had been old enough, I would have gone. In other words, the United States comes before my family and before myself, including my own life. NO other entity, particularly foreign, outweighs this duty. Benghazi has demonstrated that President Obama does not have this loyalty. He places his own personal interests in front of our country. Hiding the enemy from the American public is aiding the enemy. President Obama did it intentionally.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Ignorance of the law is no excuse
You cannot argue in court that you did not know that the law made whatever you did illegal. Yet the argument that President Obama is presenting to the American public in all these scandals is that he did not know about any of them. I guess we are not to hold him accountable for the actions of a few 'crazy' 'low level bureaucrats'. Apparently, “the buck does NOT stop here” on the Presidents desk. These 'low level bureaucrats' must really like President Obama because they can do so much without oversight into what they are doing. Very poor command and control at best. Not to mention dangerous.
These 'low level bureaucrats' have powers over you and I that can easily ruin our lives. The financial implications of the IRS running without accountability is bad enough. With Obama Care, these 'low level bureaucrats' will be able to do just about anything that they want to you (Including 'pulling the plug') and our President will know nothing of it. Not that a sitting President will need to know everything, but not being informed or being enabled to make and enforce major policy initiatives?
Corporations are required to follow the law, just like everyone else. And their executives are held accountable and can be sent to jail. You can bet that the executives know all about ALL major policy initiatives. And they are not able to plead that they did not know the law. This is one major reason as to why private ownership works so much better than 'public' (Government) ownership.
Friday, May 24, 2013
In yesterdays speech, President Obama replied to a comment to not shut down Gitmo by telling a person who commented that in a Democracy, you have the right to free speech, but you also need to listen. He was implying that it was time for her to listen. As if he is listening himself. And the crowd applauded.
The implications of listening is that you end up compromising in some way. I struggled with this for most of my life, and I still do. This must be list a ex-smoker. They tend to be really sensitive when someone else lights up. I feel that I can spot a poor listener a mile away, and President Obama is a classic example.
President Obama is a really poor compromiser. He is nothing like a stereotype Republican deal maker. We would have seen far more deal making throughout his Presidency if this was not the case. He is not alone. The classic example is when the Speaker of the House said that we had to pass the Health Care bill so that the American public can find out what is in it. This is not listening, and President Obama signed the bill the next day. In another example, President Obama said that he did not know all the facts, but the police acted stupidly. Yes, this is really listening and it is typical.
President Obama is “Fundamentally CHANGING” America. And he is not listening to you or I about it. He stated that is what he is going to do and he is doing it. No butts about it.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
President Obama must go
Fast and furious, the government seizing records from the AP and the IRS going after conservative organizations are excellent examples of government exceeding its accepted limits of power. The consistent attacks on whistle blowers is an excellent way to stop transparency. A good example of how President Obama is doing the opposite of what he told us before he became President. And then we have Benghazi.
Our President lied to us when he attempted (so far, successfully) to persuade us that the spark for the attack in Benghazi and Egypt were spontaneously generated from an obscure video, instead of the planned, coordinated acts of war by an external enemy that resulted in the murder of our ambassador and the raising of enemy flags over our country's sovereign territory. Hardly being the most transparent administration ever. In fact, Benghazi can be argued to have been treason, covering up an overt attack by an external enemy upon our country for your own political gain. If President Obama was a Republican, he would most likely be removed from office. But this is not the case.
If President Obama survives this, we are done. The CHANGE that he wanted to implement would be permanent. Placing your own personal gain over that of our country, at any level, leave alone the Presidency, is a pattern of decline that is at such a point that our basic ability to defend ourselves will be determine by political advantage instead of national interests. This was a trait of the late Roman Republic and of the Roman empire. This, along with exposure of unwanted babies on the mountainside were major indicators of the decline of the Republic and the growing need for authoritarian power.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
IRS failure and AP were caused by low-level bureaucrats?
The new scandals with the IRS targeting conservative groups and the AP scandal with information that should not have been available are being blamed on “lower level bureaucrats”. This is a lose – lose reply by the Obama administration.
Bureaucrats are not risk takers. If they were, they would be employed in the private sector where risk taking is much better rewarded. The private sector is where the real risk takers go simply because they can prosper there. It is BS to state that low level bureaucrats went out on a limb like this. It goes against the institutional nature of bureaucrats in government. But lets take President Obama at his word.
At the very best, the idea that this type of decision making is being made and implemented without oversight by the highest levels of ANY organization is indicative of very lax and poor management. This demonstrates a serious lack of control of some of the most powerful organizations within the entire United States, private or public. In either case, the responsible party is the President.
This blaming of lower level 'management' for these major policy initiatives is just more proof that private organizations are much better at managing just about ANY financial function than government. And this is the BEST CASE scenario? The worst case or even the middle case (And the most probable) imply that President Obama encourage and approved of these actions.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Benghazi: It does matter
Despite my view that without the U.S. Senate, the Benghazi hearings will likely come to nothing, Benghazi DOES matter.
Secretary of State Clinton, in response to attacks about how she handled Benghazi, said that it did not matter if some people walked around and decided to attack Americans or reacted to a video. The people were still dead. Yes, Mr. Secretary, it does matter. Because it was neither and both you and President Obama knew it. In other words, you lied about it. And are still attempting to lie about it.
No wonder she became angry. Anger is all she has left to defend herself with. I guess it was OK for her husband to lie to her about all the affairs that he had. I have always felt that was between the two of them. And I understand how much people give up to be public figures. Politics is a tough life, and I get that too. But this was an attack upon the sovereignty of our country while she was on duty and she lied about it. And her boss is no less culpable.
Only three days before the attack, President Obama had proudly announced that our enemies were on the run. Their leadership had been 'decimated'. It would look badly on him if only a few days later that very same enemy launched a coordinated attack upon the government of the United States. So they lied about it to blame some obscure video. For something like two weeks they claimed that this was the source of the attack when they knew better. Our ambassador was killed and our enemy raised their flag over our sovereign territory. Well, maybe it does not matter to our Secretary of State the events that actually led up to it, but it matters to me. It was on her watch.
Maybe Hillary does not understand the meaning of this event, but I am certain that our enemy does. It mattered enough for them to plan it out and execute it while President Obama and she had the watch. I guess it does not matter to her who these people were or where they came from. In this case, her holding that post did not matter because she was certainly no worthwhile obstacle for them to overcome. It does not matter to her, but it matters to me. It matters to the United States of America when our ambassador is killed and our sovereignty is violated by an overt enemy attack. Killing is as loud a message as you can send and we are not listening. (What does it mater?) President Obama and his Secretary of State are not defending out country from external enemies. Instead they are covering up the real threat and inventing something else for personal political gain. This is called lying about winning the war when you are actually losing.
Our enemy in this case is an irregular one. Guerrilla warfare has been around since long before the Romans and the Greeks. Irregular forces typically do not match up well against regular troops. The overrunning of our embassies is an usually large and very real victory for them. This is symbolized by the raising of their flag on our sovereign territory. Obviously, these two embassies were not well defended. They could not have been in order for something like this to occur against an irregular enemy such as we have today. Even if they had surprise. It is a major sign that we are NOT winning the war like President Obama said that we were back in September.
Yes, Mr. Secretary, losing in war does matter.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Benghazi is no Watergate
Despite the fact that what President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton did in the Benghazi cover up, no way is the final result going to be anything like the result of Watergate.
I have seen lots of arguments supporting this view, many of which are valid. However, one word says it all. Senate. Control of the U.S. Senate is NOT in the Republicans hands. I just do not see the Democrat party dumping the top two leaders that they have. No matter what they did or did not do. Without the Senate, Republicans are going to be stopped cold. | <urn:uuid:32d28292-21c1-4946-9dcf-b22bdbb66482> | 2 | 1.5 | 0.059417 | en | 0.980101 | http://modwar.blogspot.com/ |
Jobs must lead, not lag, the recovery economy's shedding jobs again due to a pullback in government workers. By Paul R. La Monica, editor at large
NEW YORK ( -- It's time to put to bed this silly notion that the still weak labor market is nothing to worry about because jobs are a lagging economic indicator.
The economy will not and cannot recover until a lot more people go back to work. It's tempting to write off the worse-than-expected loss in jobs in July because it was primarily a result of temporary Census jobs coming to an end.
Still, the 71,000 gain in private sector jobs in July was lower than what economists were hoping for and has to be considered a disappointment.
Whether another round of government stimulus is needed to prod businesses to start hiring again is up for debate. But it's painfully clear that businesses MUST add workers for the economy to bounce back.
Sure, jobs growth usually doesn't pick up until after the broad economy does in the wake of recessions. But there was nothing usual about the 2008-2009 downturn.
"The financial panic was the underlying cause of this recession. That makes it different," said Bill Seyfried, professor of economics at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla. "Coming out of a credit crisis, recoveries tend to be much weaker. I don't anticipate a strong bounce in jobs or the economy."
In 2001, for example, the recession was relatively mild and mostly felt by high-tech companies on the two coasts. It was a business-led slowdown.
But the unemployment rate back then never got anywhere close to the 9.5% it is at now, let alone the 10.1% peak it hit last October. So that's why the economy was able to bounce back in 2002 and 2003. Even during the worst of that jobless recovery, the unemployment rate only got up to a high of 6.3%.
Too much is riding on a job rebound now. The housing market is still in shambles. It's tough to imagine improvement until more people are back to work. Without that, the foreclosure epidemic won't end and the continued glut of houses could make it tough for home prices to rise.
Consumer spending is also not increasing at a decent enough clip to get the economy moving in the short-term. This is great for the long haul as the pickup in the savings rate is a sign of responsible fiscal behavior -- which means we may not suffer through another credit-bubble-induced collapse anytime soon.
But if everybody hunkers down and pinches pennies, that will probably mean that the economy continues to grind along at a low and slow pace, which is why I've coined the term the barbecue recovery to describe the economy.
Businesses, despite having relatively large levels of cash at their disposal, won't hire until consumers start spending again. But many consumers aren't spending because they either don't have a job, don't have a high-enough paying job or are worried about holding on to their job.
"It is a chicken vs. the egg dilemma, but the weakness in the labor market reflects a gradual and slow recovery," said Sean Snaith, director of the Institute for Economic Competitiveness at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. "The aftermath of the long recession has left scars on consumers and it's going to take time for them to heal."
So consumers and businesses both are sitting and waiting. I still think businesses need to be the ones brave enough to make the first move. They need to hire more even if demand isn't fully back yet because they could actually help create demand by giving consumers a reason to be more confident.
But someone has to blink or the fears about a double-dip recession and/or deflation could come to pass.
"At some point, jobs have to kick in for the economic engine to really work. Each month is like a little bit of torture where there are reasons to worry even more," said Bill Cheney, chief economist with John Hancock Financial in Boston. "The real problem is not that employment lags, but that it's lagging too much."
Reader comment of the week. I wrote on Tuesday about how Ford's stock is on a tear and that it may still have room to head higher as the automaker's sales continue to rebound. One reader definitely seems to be a fan of Ford and offers lavish praise to its CEO for its revival.
"Alan Mulally for President," wrote Pete Wagner.
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Solubility and Bonding I and II
Patricia A. Riley Lincoln Park High School
2001 N. Orchard St. Mall
Chicago IL 60614
(773) 534-8130 x 148
A high school student will be able to:
1. define solubility.
2. identify a substance's bonding (ionic or covalent) from its chemical
3. predict a substance's solubility in water and oil from its chemical
4. determine the effects of temperature and surface area on the solubility
of CuSO4, copper(II) sulfate.
5. determine the surface area of two different objects, using a ruler and
the formula: Surface Area = Sum of the Surface Areas of All Sides.
6. use the scientific method to gather, organize, and analyze data.
Materials Needed:
Teacher demonstration: Each group of 3 or 4 students:
wave bottle Elmer's Glue, white school variety
Color Spectrum toy (American Science Center) artist oil pastels
vinegar paint thinner/odorless turpentine
salt tempera paint powder
vegetable oil copper(II) sulfate crystals
ammonia (root killer in a hardware store)
iodine crystals paint brushes
liquid furniture polish/cleaner plastic cups
colorless, transparent plastic cups plastic spoons
construction paper signs toothpicks
masking tape construction paper
water hammer
coffee percolator (hot water source) graduated cylinder
water: hot, iced, room
metric ruler
cuisinaire rod and component
Miniteach I:
1. Hold a wave bottle and gently tilt it. Ask class to describe what they
see. Draw out the following points: there are two different liquids, the
liquids do not mix but keep separating, the same liquid is always on top. Ask
why the two liquids do not mix. Why is the same liquid always on top?
2. Have students observe the Color Spectrum toy (any toy involving
substances that are immiscible will work) and explain how it works. Point out
that density and solubility are different concepts.
3. Ask class to define solubility and write it on the chalk board.
4. Remind students of the two different types of bonds that they have
studied, ionic (electron transfer) and covalent (electron sharing). Tape paper
labels on the board. Ask students how they can predict the bonding in a
substance from its formula: ionic, metal and nonmetal; covalent, nonmetals
only. Write these rules of thumb under the appropriate labels. Show the class
such common household substances as water (H2O), salt (NaCl), vinegar (CH3COOH),
sugar (C12H22O11), iodine crystals (I2), ammonia (NH3) and classify them as
ionic or covalently bonded and to tape a paper label with the name and formula
for each under the correct category sign on the board. Remind the class that
covalent substances are either polar (not symmetrical, the molecule has two
different ends: water, sugar, vinegar, ammonia) or nonpolar (symmetrical, both
ends of the molecule are the same: I2). Have the students reclassify the
covalent substances into polar covalent and nonpolar covalent categories.
4. Fill a number of colorless, transparent plastic cups with water. Show
students a variety of common household substances (vinegar, salt, vegetable
oil, ammonia, liquid furniture polish, iodine crystals). Ask students to
predict whether each will dissolve in water and then test it. Repeat with oil
instead of water. Have students keep track of the solubilities at their seats
and on the board chart. Now ask students to analyze the board chart for any
patterns or relationships they can see. Draw out that substances that are ionic
or polar covalent dissolve in water which is itself polar covalent, while
substances that are nonpolar covalent do not. Nonpolar covalent substances
dissolve in vegetable oil. State the solubility rule: Like dissolves like!
The fact that water and vegetable oil will not dissolve in each other suggests
that vegetable oil has what type of bonding???
5. Divide the class into groups of three or four. Each group must
determine the bonding type of a number of substances for which they do not know
the chemical formula by seeing what they dissolve in, water or vegetable oil.
The substances should include Elmer's Glue (white school variety), artist oil
pastels, paint thinner, Root Killer (CuSO4, available in hardware stores),
powdered tempera paint, and food coloring. Students should try different
combinations, for example: artist pastel and water, artist pastel and paint
thinner, Root Killer crystal in water, Root Killer crystal in Elmer's Glue, etc.
What conclusions can be drawn about solubility? about bonding? Students should
enter these substances in the board chart.
6. Point out applications for solubility and bonding. Artists use
solubility in the creative process. Examples include:
Turpentine Wash: artist pastel washed (i.e., painted over with a brush)
with turpentine or paint thinner. Crayons dissolve in
Water Resist: water soluble tempera paints brushed over artist pastels.
Crayons do not dissolve in water solutions.
Collage: many different media are assembled and glued together. Should
the pieces dissolve in the glue?
Miniteach II:
1. Remind students of the previous lesson: Like dissolves like. Briefly
review what is meant by "like": ionic and polar covalent substances dissolve in
polar covalent solvents; nonpolar covalent substances dissolve in nonpolar
covalent solvents.
2. Raise the question: How might we make a solute, such as sugar,
dissolve better? Write the suggestions on the chalk board; they will include
stirring, heating, adding more solvent (water), and crushing. How could these
suggestions be tested? Have students suggest procedures. What variables would
need to be considered in each test? What data would have to be collected? What
safety issues need to be considered?
3. Divide the class into groups of 3 or 4. Give each group a set of
procedures that summarize the discussion in 2:
A. Construct a group data table.
B. Determine the volume of water to be used in each trial.
C. Select 5 CuSO4 crystals of equal size.
D. Control:
1) Fill a cup with 100 mL room temperature water.
2) Add 1 of the crystals to the cup and record the time.
3) Record the time when the crystal has completely dissolved.
E. Effect of Temperature on Dissolving: Repeat Step D using
1) Hot water from the coffee pot.
2) Ice water from the labeled bottle.
F. Effect of Stirring on Dissolving: Repeat Step D but this time stir
continuously with a plastic spoon.
G. Effect of Surface Area on Dissolving:
1) Repeat Step D but crush the crystal first. (Place the crystal
between two sheets of clean paper and hit with a hammer.)
2) Measure the dimensions of a cuisinaire rod with a metric ruler
and calculate the surface area of the rod:
Surface Area of a side = length x height
Surface Area of the rod = Sum of the Surface Areas of all the
3) Count out the number of cuisinaire cubes needed to equal the
rod used in 2). Calculate the Total Surface Area of all the
cubes used:
Total Surface Area of cubes = Surface Area of 1 cube x number
of cubes used
4. When the groups have finished, compare results. Consider the following
questions: What is the effect of temperature on dissolving? of stirring? of
surface area? Why was a control used? How was it used? How many variables
were measured in each test? Have the students explain what they saw in terms of
molecular motion and the Kinetic Theory as much as possible.
Students will be assessed on their participation in the discussions and on
their safe performance of all laboratory exercises. Each group will submit a
written lab report.
Return to Chemistry Index | <urn:uuid:0f9e1382-6032-4916-8ee9-9ce9b02dec34> | 4 | 3.953125 | 0.946274 | en | 0.881786 | http://mypages.iit.edu/~smile/ch9710.html |
Smithsonian National Zoological Park l Friends of the National Zoo
Poison Arrow Frogs
Order: Anura
Family: Dendrobatidae
Genus/species: Dendrobates auratus (green poison arrow frog)
Dendrobates tinctorius (dyeing poison frog)
D. auratus frogs reach sizes of about one to 1.5 inches (3 to 4 cm). Frogs in some populations may reach 2.5 inches (6 cm). There are many color variants based on geographic area. Most are black and either green or light blue with the black in bands or spots. The stripes or spots can range from blue, blue-green, green, yellow-green, or white.
D. tinctorius is a very large poison frog. They reach lengths of about two inches (4 to 5 cm). There is quite a bit of variation in size and color. Some can reach 2.5 inches (6 cm).
Poison arrow frogs are known for their beautiful colors. These colors are used as warnings to predators that they are poisonous (their poisonous defense evolved to ward off predators.) Some scientists think that the reticulated pattern of the frogs also act as camouflage among the forest shadows. This idea is not the norm.
Distribution and Habitat
Poison frogs live in the rainforests of Central and South America. D. auratus is found on the Pacific coast from southern Costa Rica to northern Columbia and on the Caribbean coast of southern Nicaragua to Columbia and the island of Tobago. There is also a stable population on Oahu, Hawaii, after they were introduced in 1932. D. tinctorius is found in Suriname, French-Guiana, and Guyana. They can also be found in a small area of Brazil, near Suriname.
D. auratus’s natural habitat is the wet tropical rainforest below 2,600 feet (800 m) near a pool or stream. They are also found in secondary forests and cultivated land. D. tinctorius live in primary rainforests to elevations of 1,300 feet (400 m). They spend most of their time on the rainforest floor near little streams.
Diet in the Wild
Both feed mostly on spiders and small insects such as ants and termites, which they find on the forest floor using their excellent vision. They capture their prey by using their sticky, retractable tongues.
Zoo Diet
They are fed small crickets daily.
The mating season for D. auratus occurs throughout the entire rainy season from mid-July through mid-September.
Male frogs go through an elaborate ritual to attract mates. The males vocalize, a trill sound, to attract females. Once the courtship ritual is complete the females deposit up to 40 eggs on leaves. The eggs are encased in a gelatinous substance for protection against desiccation.
During the two-week development period, the male returns to the eggs periodically to check on them. Once the tadpoles hatch, they swim onto the male’s back and he carries them to a place suitable for further development, such as wet holes in broken trees and branches, little ponds, wet coconut-shells, and even in tin cans and car tires.
Bromeliads are also used but not as much as in other species. The tadpoles are attached to the male’s back by a mucus secretion, which is soluble only in water so there is no chance for them to fall off. Once at their final destination, the tadpoles are on their own. They need an additional three months to metamorphose into small frogs.
Life Span
They may live more than ten years in captivity.
These frogs are not currently listed as endangered and are bred in captivity for the pet trade. However, the destruction of their habitat is causing numbers to decline.
Currently the possibility of new medications from these frog’s secretions is being explored.
Fun Facts
Poison arrow frogs are also called poison-dart frogs because some of the Amerindian tribes use their secretions to poison their darts. Not all arrow frogs are deadly, only three species are very dangerous to humans. The most deadly species to humans is the Phylobates terriblis. Its poison, batrachotoxin, can kill many small animals or humans. These frogs are found in Columbia along the western slopes of the Andes. Arrow frogs are not poisonous in captivity. Scientists believe that these frogs gain their poison from a specific arthropod and other insects that they eat in the wild. These insects most likely acquire the poison from their plant diet.
Source of Information
It appears here with their permission. The original author of this information was Rachel Schafer.
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/ site/ accounts/ information/ Dendrobates_auratus.html. | <urn:uuid:be863ebf-7093-4775-a952-9309e33bb27d> | 4 | 3.8125 | 0.059761 | en | 0.951216 | http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/ReptilesAmphibians/Facts/FactSheets/Poisondartfrog.cfm |
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watch One-Minute World News
Last Updated: Sunday, 16 October 2005, 20:59 GMT 21:59 UK
A brief history of condoms
Image of condoms
The earliest known condoms were used by the ancient Egyptians, but the condom as we know it today was first developed by King Charles II, who asked his physician, the Earl of Condom, to invent something to protect him from syphilis. He came up with an oiled sheath made from sheep intestine.
The King's invention caught on, used enthusiastically by his courtiers, and advertised widely, but they became morally controversial. Many argued that condoms lead to the deterioration of the human race by encouraging pre-marital sex, sex with prostitutes and the demise of marriage.
As with all innovations, there were teething troubles, notably with the noblemen who re-used their condoms without washing.
In the 19th century condoms began to be produced from vulcanized rubber, a strong elastic material. However men were instructed to wash their condoms before and after sex, and to reuse them again and again until they cracked or broke, which obviously offers little or no protection from sexually transmitted infections or conception.
Latex manufacturing processes improved in the 1930s to produce a thin, pliant and inexpensive product, similar to the one-use only condoms we use today.
Following widespread use in World War Two, the next challenge for prophylactics involved making them more consumer friendly. The reservoir tip on the skin-tight latex condom was introduced in the early '50s, as was the sensation-deadening condom designed to end premature ejaculation.
In the '80s, the spread of AIDS transformed the condom into an essential sexual accessory, providing highly effective birth control and protecting millions worldwide from infections. These days condoms come in many shapes and sizes, textures, colours, and even different flavours!
This article is taken from one which originally appeared at:
Americas Africa Europe Middle East South Asia Asia Pacific | <urn:uuid:c386a849-283b-4e40-96b4-8454bc0814ad> | 3 | 3.03125 | 0.12227 | en | 0.968559 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/4347796.stm |
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Mosquitoes 'respond to body odour'
It's an eternal question: why do mosquitoes, and other flying things, target some people and not others?
Dr James Logan, from the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, tries to provide the answer.
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Magellanic magic. Lying south of the Milky Way's disk (blue-white horizontal plane), the Magellanic Clouds (white blobs at lower right) shed gas (pink) that our galaxy will grab for itself.
D. Nidever et al., NRAO/AUI/NSF, and A. Mellinger, Leiden-Argentine-Bonn (LAB) Survey; Parkes , Westerbork, and Arecibo Observatories
Hubble finds vast reservoir of gas near the Milky Way
"It's a very beautiful study with surprising results," says Leo Blitz of the University of California, Berkeley, an astronomer who was not part of the project.
Astronomer Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues made the discovery while studying a stream of gas shed by two nearby galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which orbit the Milky Way. The lost Magellanic gas stretches over more than half a million light-years of space, and much of it will fall into our galaxy's disk, supplying fuel for new stars. Astronomers discovered this gas long ago because it contains hydrogen, the most abundant element in space.
But this gas isn’t always easy to detect. It comes in different varieties. One is a neutral, or nonionized, form, in which each proton has an electron; this type of gas emits 21-centimeter-long radio waves that radio telescopes readily spot. But the gas also comes in an ionized form, in which electrons are free of protons; this type of gas doesn't emit these radio waves and so can be much harder to detect.
To see whether this second type of gas was falling into the Milky Way from the Magellanic Clouds, Fox's team used data from the Hubble Space Telescope. The astronomers examined 69 distant quasars and active galaxies that lie behind the gas, to measure how much of their ultraviolet light ionized gas from the Magellanic Clouds absorbs.
To their surprise, Fox and his colleagues detected so much absorption of the background ultraviolet light that they concluded the Magellanic Stream must contain far more ionized gas than neutral gas. In The Astrophysical Journal, the team quadruples the estimated amount of gas the Magellanic Clouds have lost. Whereas previous work indicated that the hydrogen gas was half a billion times as massive as the sun, Fox's team puts the number at 2 billion solar masses. Because the gas also contains other elements—especially helium, the second most abundant element in the universe—the grand total approaches 3 billion, and it’s greater still if much of the stream lies farther than the Magellanic Clouds, as astronomers suspect.
"It's the best job ever" of measuring the Magellanic Stream's mass, says astronomer Bruce Elmegreen of the IBM Research Division in Yorktown Heights, New York. "There's more than enough to keep the [Milky Way's] star formation rate going at its current value." Thus, our galaxy can keep creating new suns far into the future.
All of this is great for the Milky Way, but what about other spiral galaxies facing gas shortages? "We're very atypical," Fox says. Most other giant spirals lack large, close-in, gas-rich satellite galaxies like the Magellanic Clouds. But Fox suspects that other giant spirals also get replenished when gas-rich satellites fall toward them; we just happen to live in one of the few galaxies where this process is occurring today, giving astronomers a ringside seat on the refueling of a giant galaxy.
Posted in Physics, Space | <urn:uuid:5b04caa9-69ea-4a17-909b-13d0fc592f78> | 4 | 3.546875 | 0.081787 | en | 0.90217 | http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2014/07/hubble-finds-vast-reservoir-gas-near-milky-way |
icon for podpress Standard Podcast [71:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Dear Skywatchers,
This week we talk with retired senior scientist and engineer Boyd Bushman who worked for Lockheed Martin, Texas Instruments and Hughes Aircraft. Boyd is regarded as one of the inventors of the Stinger missile, night vision for the military and anti-gravity through the use of M. “M” representing magnets!
For the past few years, skywatchers around the country and planet have witnessed and recorded the billion dollar weather control program and its effects that go far beyond cloud seeding. Hundreds of scientific questions remain unanswered, in fact mainstream media go out of there way to ignore the obvious and others, including the Discovery Channel have only helped to debunk and discredit the truth.
Here on Skywatch Radio we will continue to put pieces together to help us understand the larger picture. We ask senior scientist Boyd Bushman about anti-gravity, glowing spheres and black beams. We don’t get the answers we expect.
More about orbs . . . this time there are thousands over New York City! An invasion? We don’t know, perhaps they live under the sea, or maybe the hollow earth. Maybe they’re leaving. . .?
Youtube skywatcher ever2020 captured fleets of objects flying over the Bronx last month. This is one of three groups she caught on video. We welcome comments on this skywatchers.
This really blurs the line further, regarding the “is it ours or theirs?” question. Ever2020 describes her experience . . .
” . . . this was filmed on November 28 at around 2:00 PM. I went outside to smoke a cigarette, I know I shouldn’t do that but you know it’s very hard to stop. So my baby had fallen sleep and I went outside to smoke, I noticed this cloud moving extremely fast very high up, took a better look and this is what I saw, a bunch of spheres. I don’t know how many they were but like a thousand or so. I grab my camera and began to film at first it was very hard to see them because with chemtrails around you could not tell what is up there but they were moving and that made it much easier for me. I zoomed in and I realized that they were the spheres I have filmed in several occasions. I filmed them for about three whole minutes after they were out of sight.”
“That was the first fleet. I waited for a couples of minutes to see if I saw something else but nothing happened so I went back inside to check on my baby, he was still sleeping. I went back outside with my camera on, started looking up but nothing, suddenly I looked west and another but this one was much bigger than the first one, I began to filmed but I couldn’t see a thing because it was so high up thankfully my camera has a 2000x digital zoom and I found it, so I was filming those things with the auto focus on and noticed a bunch of things just appearing an disappearing and much lower, I pointed my camera to that direction and a plane was in the way. Those spheres were unorganized and their colors were much brighter unfortunately I only got a few seconds because they disappeared on thin air. On that day these things were all over. At night you could see them everywhere, the scary thing is that they get way too close to the airplanes and that is how you could tell they are uncontrollable because nothing is supposed to be near a plane when it is ascending or descending and these things fly inches away from them and even two at the same time. But I don’t know what they are if only I knew.”
Thanks Ever2020. Amazing work! | <urn:uuid:3b85330f-22ec-4eb9-b4a9-f196e03357d2> | 2 | 1.757813 | 0.024389 | en | 0.982271 | http://newyorkskywatch.com/2007/12/20/skywatch-radio-december-19-2007/ |
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Two ways to ensure learning
Daniel Ethier said...
I think you hit the nail on the head here. I've been saying this about math for years.
Math contests, like the AMC-10, are a good place to look for these kinds of harder problems that you can only do if you understand.
There are also plenty of books of contest problems that have some good ones, although it can take some work to find them unless they have a good index.
gasstationwithoutpumps said...
The Art of Problem Solving books ( are an excellent source for challenging problems. Note that all the old AMC tests are also available on the web.
Anonymous said...
When I was in middle school I participated in a math olympiad. When the results came out I found out that I had done correctly 2 problems and had got 1/2 credit for the third one. When I saw the teacher I expected to get criticized for the one problem I hadn't done correctly. Instead he was beaming with pride, I had won first place. And thus I learned that victors do not get judged.
When I do math with my daughter I never ask her how she did it if she gives the correct answer. Apart from the fact that it would be very boring for her to explain it to me, I think that even if it were obvious she was guessing, being able to guess is a good skill to have.
Instead I make sure that problems I give to her are difficult enough that she gets a few of them wrong. Then we can discuss in detail how she did it and I can correct any errors in her understanding.
Anonymous said...
nice posting.. thanks for sharing. | <urn:uuid:b34d1a24-0f68-497f-a4bd-4474aaecc800> | 3 | 2.53125 | 0.035187 | en | 0.973712 | http://oilf.blogspot.com/2012/07/two-ways-to-ensure-learning.html |
Session: A less technical talk on technical communication
Wednesday, 14:10 - 15:00
Track: Excellence
As developers, we spend more time communicating with humans than we do with computers. How can we do that more effectively? How can we be more accurate and concise in our communication? How can we best find analogies which illustrate the desired point? When working with difficult to describe concepts, how can we more easily define them and improve our communication of them? What short and long term benefits can we reap from learning to more effectively communicate? (Yeah, very touchy-feely...)
Jon Skeet
Jon is a software engineer working in the Mobile team at Google. While his day job primarily involves Java code, Jon is a huge C# enthusiast. His book on the language, “C# in Depth” is now in its second edition. He is probably best known for his contributions to Stack Overflow, the developer Q&A web site – although before Stack Overflow he was a prolific newsgroup poster. Although Jon is employed by Google, his talks are his personal opinions; he is not speaking on behalf of Google.
Jon Skeet | <urn:uuid:404db0eb-ce37-4d73-84e0-10634bf18e5c> | 2 | 1.523438 | 0.998617 | en | 0.967413 | http://oredev.org/2011/sessions/a-less-technical-talk-on-technical-communication |
Alice in Wonderland (Deane)
Maribel Modrono and Kumiko Tsuji in Alice in Wonderland. Photo by Rich Sofranko.
Choreographer: Derek Deane
Music: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with additional music by Carl Davis
Costumes and Set Design: Sue Blanc
Lighting: Hugh Vanstone
World Premiere: English National Ballet, 1995
PBT Performance Date: April 2008
Synopsis (from PBT playbill, 2008)
Act I
Alice is playing beside a river while her sister reads a book. She tries to get her sister’s attention, but eventually gives up and falls asleep in her sister’s lap. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a White Rabbit appears. Alice follows him as he jumps down a rabbit hole.
Alice lands at the bottom of the hole in a long low corridor made entirely of doors. She finds a small table with nothing on it except a tiny gold key and a bottle. Alice discovers that the key will only work in the smallest door in the corridor, which opens into the most beautiful garden Alice has ever seen. Alice drinks the contents of the bottle and starts to shrink. Underneath the table she finds a small cake. She eats the cake and it has the opposite effect to the bottle – she starts to grow and grow.
The White Rabbit drops his white glove and his fan. Alice picks them up and starts dancing with them. Realizing she is lost and alone she suddenly feels very lonely; she starts crying so much that she is soon swimming in a pool of her own tears. As she tries to swim to safety she realizes that she is surrounded by animals who all swim through the pool of tears to the bank. They all sit shimmering on the bank and Alice decides to hold a Caucus Race in order to dry the animals’ ruffled fur and feathers.
The White Rabbit returns in search of his glove and fan. He and Alice meet an enormous Caterpillar sitting on top of a huge mushroom smoking a large pipe. The Caterpillar conjures up the Garden of Living flowers and the flowers dance for Alice.
The Frog Footman and the Fish Footman appear with an invitation to the Queen’s Croquet Match. In the Duchess’s house, the Duchess and the cook are hard at work in their kitchen. Watched by the Cheshire Cat, the Cook prepares fish with clouds of pepper while the Duchess and Cook pass the baby from one to the other, and finally to Alice – she looks at the baby and it turns out to be a pig! The Cook and Duchess rush off leaving Alice with the Cheshire Cat. The White Rabbit reappears and whisks Alice off to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party where she meets the March Hare and the Dormouse.
Act II
Alice is taken to the Queen’s Croquet Match by the White Rabbit and meets the Royal Gardeners who are painting the roses red. The Queen of Hearts arrives with the entire pack of cards including the Knave of Hearts. The croquet match begins and out of nowhere the Cheshire Cat reappears to watch the game.
The Duchess returns and tells Alice all about the Queen, but the Queen notices them gossiping. She looks at the Duchess and cries “Off with her head!” The cards, the Queen, the Duchess and the Cheshire Cat all disappear, leaving Alice with the Gryphon. Down by the seashore, Alice and the Gryphon meet the Mock Turtle. Four lobsters appear from the sea and dance the Lobster Quadrille.
Alice is exhausted by all the excitement and she falls asleep. In her dream the Knave of hearts appears and they dance together.
The White Rabbit returns in a great panic and takes Alice to The Trial. The Knave of Hearts has been accused of stealing some tarts! The White Rabbit reads out the accusation and calls the Mad Hatter as the first witness. The Cook is called as the second witness. The court descends into chaos as the Queen of Hearts cries “Off with his head! Off with her head!”
Alice suddenly remembers that most of the characters in the courtroom are just cards. She is no longer frightened of them and she finds herself back on the river bank with her sister. All the fantastic characters have disappeared and Alice is left wondering whether it was all just a dream… | <urn:uuid:e94deab8-8d9c-46eb-a25e-4ba72eaf9bc0> | 2 | 1.59375 | 0.137993 | en | 0.934619 | http://pbt.org/alice-wonderland-deane |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
What is the most concise way to learn about bond and interest rate models from the book Mathematical Models of Financial Derivatives by Yue-Kuen Kwok? I have studied Oksendals Stochastic Differential Equations and have read Option Theory with Stochastic Analysis by Benth, so am not starting completely from scratch. I also have the book Risk Neutral Valuation by Bingham and Kiesel if this could provide a more concise way.
share|improve this question
1 Answer 1
I haven't read Yue-Kuen Kwok's book, so it's hard for me to comment on it. Based on my personal experience, I'd recommend the following literature, depending on what you're trying to accomplish:
If you're on the quant-path, I think a lot of practitioners would recommend
• Interest Rate Models – Theory and Prctice (Damiano Brigo & Fabio Mercurio): This is a very heavy book, but it covers a lot of material. Also if you only care about term structure modeling, you really just need to go over a few chapters. The book is extremely well written – easy to follow, concise, and full of examples.
• Andersen & Piterbarg's Interest Rate Modeling: These three volumes are better kept as references, but they're very detailed and discuss some of the latest developments in term structure modeling (e.g., multi curve construction techniques).
If you're looking for a less rigorous treatment of the material, I'd recommend
• Fixed Income Securities: Valuation, Risk, and Risk Management (Pietro Veronesi): A few of my friends who did MFE programs used this book as their FI textbook; I read through it very quickly. It has a lot of typos..., but overall, it's still an excellent book. Much much easier to follow then the two above, but full of examples and real life applications.
Finally, I'd also recommend
• Fixed Income Securities: Tools for Today's Markets (Bruce Tuckman): There's a third edition now, but I much prefer the 2nd edition. The 2nd edition doesn't discuss models such as the Libor market model, but from a pedagogical perspective, it's much better written. The strength of the book is that it goes over a lot of market conventions that other books tend to ignore – and in real life trading, these details are exceptionally important. The trading examples are really well explained. If you're trying to gain perspectives on how practitioners (traders & strats) think about the market, this book is a must-read in my opinion. However, this is the least rigorous of the books I'm listing here, and doesn't go into the details of term structure modeling. It does provide lots of intuitions behind the models, so it makes a nice complement to other books.
share|improve this answer
Thanks. Am I right in saying that modelling the term structure is the most important part of IR modelling? I read the IR chapter of kwon yesterday is it all seemed to revolve around different parameters of the orstein-uhlenbeck process. I will try to source your first book as well. – 1234 Aug 5 '14 at 12:02
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:bf13d852-74fc-4077-8c8f-352464162022> | 2 | 1.859375 | 0.106624 | en | 0.956223 | http://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/14284/concise-way-of-learning-bond-ir-models |
The quickest route to perdition
September 24, 2013
When Walter White makes his exit upon the series finale of “Breaking Bad,” TV will lose its most compelling depiction of evil.
The brilliant high-school chemistry teacher turned crystal-meth kingpin, played by actor Bryan Cranston, is transformed into a loathsome killer before our eyes. Series creator Vince Gilligan says he set out to make Mr. Chips into Scarface. In Walt’s steady descent, the self-styled family man unleashes a moral chaos that has a destructive logic as stark as the show’s New Mexico setting.
From the bloody fallout from his first “cook,” Walt gets a glimpse at the howling hell that beckons. He enters the world of drugs anyway, in the illusory belief that he can keep the furies at bay through force of will and intellect.
When we first meet Walt, he embodies a workaday goodness. He’s the high-school teacher in front of a bored classroom. He’s the father helping hike up his disabled son’s pants. He’s the breadwinner working a part-time job at the carwash to help make ends meet.
By the end, he’s the basis of an international meth network. He’s capable of having multiple potential witnesses against him killed simultaneously. He’s a prodigious and talented liar.
The sin that undergirds it all is pride and a related thirst for power. Walt could have accepted help with his medical bills from an old college roommate who achieved great business success, but he’s offended at accepting charity. He will maintain control through his own meth-fueled earning power. In so doing, he becomes a cash-addled slave to greed.
In the final season, we see him rolling a barrelful of his cash through the desert, in a Sisyphean march under the sun to save some of his millions. Even as his cancer returns after a remission, he is at war against the old adage that “you can’t take it with you.” He schemes to find a way to leave his ill-gotten riches to his family, to make, in his mind, all his crimes worthwhile.
He is a classic example of what the late political scientist Edward Banfield called “amoral familism,” the inability to work “for any end transcending the immediate, material interest of the nuclear family” that characterizes backward societies and the mob. His supposed loyalty to his family, though, is only a thin tissue of self-justification.
One reason that “Breaking Bad” is so gripping is that the viewer can’t help rooting for Walt even when he’s at his most odious because the memory of the put-upon underdog still lingers. Walt is a reminder of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s axiom that the line between good and evil runs through every man. But once he decides he can be his own moral arbiter, as National Review’s Jonah Goldberg notes, there’s no stopping his downward slide.
The critics call “Breaking Bad” the best show on television. Some other series will claim that honor soon enough. But there may never be a character who better illustrates the way to perdition.
Rich Lowry can be reached via e-mail: | <urn:uuid:06fee391-4aa2-4ee7-931d-d70182f4bb71> | 2 | 1.679688 | 0.029779 | en | 0.974075 | http://robesonian.com/article/20130924/news/309249984/&template=printthis |
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Posted by timothy
Most Sensitive Detector Yet Fails To Find Any Signs of Dark Matter
Comments Filter:
• by amaurea (2900163) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @02:54PM (#45284517) Homepage
Several different experiments have tried to measure dark matter directly in the lab, and the experimental situation is pretty confusing. This plot [] shows the confidence intervals and exclusion limits for various experiments (but it does not include LUX yet). The shaded regions are confidence intervals, that basically say "we've seen dark matter, and its properties lie somewhere in this region. But the dotted lines say "we haven't seen it, and if it exists, it can't lie above these lines".
What is strange, then, is that all of the detections are in regions that have been excluded by other experiements. LUX just makes the situation even more strained by pulling those upper bounds even lower. Still, those bounds and intervals depend on assumptions about the properties of dark matter, and it may be possible to reconcile [] the results.
It will be interesting to see what happens to those tentative detections when they get more data. My bet is that in the end some systematic effect will be found to be responsible for the apparent signal. Or (much less likely) that they were just flukes. But who knows?
• by tylersoze (789256) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @02:54PM (#45284525)
Guess they should have given up on the Higgs boson search 10 years ago, too? A negative results is not a "failure", it just constrains things a little more.
The most compelling evidence for dark matter is []
Obviously we should always be open to alternate hypotheses, but at the moment dark matter is still the most straightforward explanation.
• Re:Maybe (Score:4, Informative)
by lgw (121541) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @02:57PM (#45284557) Journal
We can certainly detect dark matter. The CMBR studies have show it fairly directly (we've "observed" dark matter as much as we "observe" things with an electron microscope or radio telescope). The ratio of "normal" matter to "dark" matter in the early universe has been measured to 2 significant digits (perhaps more since last I looked into it).
The unknown part is what dark matter is made of. We know it's there, we just don't know what it is.
• Re:Maybe (Score:4, Informative)
by Sique (173459) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @03:29PM (#45284953) Homepage
That's what they are doing with the experiment. They know that there is a difference between the observed gravitation inside the galaxy and the expected gravitation from the visible matter. They know a lot of properties the missing matter has not: it doesn't interact with anything else than gravitation. Thus it does not interact for instance with the electromagnetic force, it is thus electrically neutral. It has no magnetic spin. It does not absorb photons. It does not interact with visible matter except by gravitational force.
This experiment tries to find some other interactions, but none so far were detected.
• by Zalbik (308903) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @03:33PM (#45284997)
Or to put it another way:
1. Scientists come up with theories to explain a phenomenon
2. Test to confirm
3. New observation breaks the theory
4. Theory refined to account for new measurements
5. Goto 2
That doesn't look like bad science at all.
The dark matter thing is stuck at step 2 as it may be either (a) the theory is wrong or (b) dark matter is really really hard to test for.
Science is a process, not a big book of answers. If you want a big book of answers there are any number of religions willing to accommodate you. Just be aware that the answers you get may be (1) vague, (2) contradictory and (3) of limited predictive use.
• Re:Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
by Valdrax (32670) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @03:33PM (#45285003)
At what point did it become ok in the scientific community to keep on with a theory that evidence contradicts?
Where has it been contradicted here? The failure to observe WIMPs by this experiment doesn't mean that they don't exist -- just that they don't have certain properties that would make them detectable by this instrument.
It's like the search for the Higgs boson. There were theories that allowed for the Higgs to exist at lower energy levels than it was eventually found at. We tested them with the LEP and with Tevatron, in the 1990s. As we ruled out those lower (and some higher) energy levels, we got closer and closer to the truth. The Higgs boson exists are a mass somewhere around 125 GeV/c^2.
All this experiment has done is narrow the parameters a bit so far. Did you make a similar cry in 2011, when Tevatron shut down that we shouldn't have been wasting money on the LHC because the Higgs was contradicted? If so, then shame on you then. If not, then shame on you now.
The day I realized that the previous three chapters I had read were not science, but rather theories that were based on other theories based on yet other theories that only existed because the first theory was shown to be wrong at some point, was a real downer.
How is that not science? Science is all about filling in the gaps and trying to find explanations for what we don't know -- including the things we didn't previously know we didn't know. It's not some divine revelation that you either get right the first time or you disregard it as heresy and falsehood. It's a global learning process.
• by Antipater (2053064) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @03:38PM (#45285063)
MoND has problems, too. The most prominent is the Bullet cluster []. It's a group of colliding galaxies where the center of gravitational lensing and the center of observed mass don't line up, something that can't be explained by MoND but can be explained by dark matter: the collision "separated" the galaxies from their dark matter halos, causing the difference in CoG locations. Of course, this is also hotly debated, and IANAP.
• Re:Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @03:44PM (#45285157)
Protip... that still doesn't explain the rotation curve problem observed in spiral galaxies.
• Re:Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
by boristhespider (1678416) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @03:48PM (#45285207)
"What we have is a phenomenon that is not explained by the calculated mass of the universe."
Vague statement. What we have are two phenomena, one which is not explained by the observed mass in galaxies or in clusters, and one not explained by the present (and currently only serious) model of the universe. Feel free to propose alternative models for the universe... but make sure that they fit the current observations *at least* as well as that model and fails to break the Solar System. That is hard to do.
True, with the correction above.
No it isn't. That will do precisely nothing for the rotation curves of galaxies and will also basically do nothing for the cosmological problem either. Vague hand-waving and appeals to Mach's principle don't hold without a concrete model. Provide that model and people may be convinced, but at the minute what you're suggesting is startlingly acausal and, as a result, unacceptable.
"Meaning it is bigger than we can see."
Very true. No-one thinks that the entire universe is the observed universe.
Nope, you get precisely the same results that we currently get, because while it may startle you, that's what we currently do -- effectively. Thanks to causality, matter outside of our horizon cannot have an effect on us. Basically, something which is far enough away from us that light cannot have made the distance cannot possibly have influenced us. That, or you have to propose a new theory of gravity -- good luck with that one. It's a common game in cosmology, and one which precious few people since Einstein have had any luck at.
No it doesn't. Do you think that we're using non-relativistic models of cosmology? Relativity is at the heart of your statement that gravity wells dilate time, and relativity is at the heart of cosmological models.
Now this is a much more interesting statement. Dig out Wiltshire's attempts to use time dilations between galactic clusters and voids to explain the dark energy problem, firmly in the context of general relativity. The fundamentals are not well-studied, but it is promising. However, it goes the opposite direction from your surmise -- it tends towards providing a dark energy rather than a dark matter. It does drive home the point though that it is vital to actually try and calculate something based on an idea, properly rooted in a concrete theory. The answers might be rather different from what you expected...
• by amaurea (2900163) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @04:24PM (#45285671) Homepage
Actually, it separated the hot gas in the galaxies from the stars and dark matter in the galaxies. Stars are so small compared to the distances between them that when galaxies collide, the stars just pass right through each other. The same applies to the dark matter (because it doesn't interact electromagnetically (or it would be visible), it does not experience any significant friction force). But the diffuse, hot gas collides and gets left behind in the collision. So you end up with dark matter and stars on each side of the collision point, and a huge amount of hot gas stuck in the middle. That gas is much heavier than the stars, so without dark matter, the gravitational field should be concentrated around the gas. But instead we see it (through gravitational lensing) to be concentrated around the stars (which is where we would expect the dark matter to be as explained above).
• Re:Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
by boristhespider (1678416) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @05:06PM (#45286057)
I'm a professional cosmologist, and I have to take issue with your first statement. The instruments did not, and categorically have not, detected the presence of something that is matter. If they had, that would be a direct detection of dark matter, and a Nobel prize would already be sitting on their desk. What they have detected are indirect signals of dark matter. It is very hard to reproduce the observations - particularly the cosmological observations - without adding at least one component of dark matter. So the observations are typically interpreted in terms of dark matter.
But this is very much not, strictly speaking, necessary. What we have is something that has an effect which, when viewed through a Robertson-Walker model, looks for all the world like a species of massive, weakly-interacting particle (or two or three such species - no-one ever said there has to be only one). On smaller scales, we have what for all the world appears to be a large amount of mass that can't be seen.
Any of this could be down to a modification of gravity. We know the nature of gravity roughly up to the position of the Voyager craft -- call it 300AU to be generous. We are extrapolating that a thousand times to get to galactic scales, a million times to get to cluster scales, and a thousand million times to get to cosmological scales, all without evidence. Of course, without a better theory to replace relativity, it's the best we can do, so we do it - but don't try and claim that instruments have detected that it is matter (they haven't), nor that we are wedded to particulate dark matter (with caveats, we aren't; the caveats are firstly that neutrinos have a mass and are therefore a rather warm dark matter, and secondly that it seems rather unlikely that there isn't at least one species of weakly interacting matter which would act as CDM, but maybe not in sufficient abundance to answer our woes).
• Re:Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
by boristhespider (1678416) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @05:11PM (#45286093)
It's always enlightening to see how it looks to people who have had occasional glimpses from the outside but never bothered looking any further.
No-one is so wedded, philosophically, to the idea of CDM as is. Everyone knows its an approximation. The arguments over what it *is*. Mirage, particle, multiple particles, modifications to gravity, unanticipated effects of relativity on large scales, unanticipated effects of *averaging* observations across large scales, or a combination of the lot of them. And I can guarantee that practically no-one has been arrogant enough to stand up in a room and declare that we know what dark matter is.
I saw one person - who shall remain nameless - say something along these lines. He said to a room full of distinguished cosmologists (and me, I'm not distinguished at all), and I paraphrase since this was a few years back, "We can be absolutely certain that supersymmetry exists". That quite took my breath away. Firstly: no we can't be. Secondly: lol. Thirdly: winning that prize obviously turned you into an even bigger prick than you already were. I can't remember if anyone made these points to him because his talk was so stultifyingly boring, and so overlong, that I was comatose long before the end. Anyway, the corollary of his flabbergastingly inaccurate statement is that he also believes firmly that there is a single species of particulate dark matter, since this is more or less a prediction of general supersymmetric theories.
He's wrong, anyway. There may very well be supersymmetry, but we can in no way be certain that it exists.
Same goes for "dark matter", whatever you want to call it. The only thing you can't do is deny that the problem is there, and that the simplest explanation, which basically works all the way from galactic scales up to cosmological scales, is that it is composed of massive, weakly-interacting particles.
• Re:Maybe (Score:5, Informative)
by boristhespider (1678416) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @06:42PM (#45286917)
Yeah I tried to go through some of that stuff years back, and it was distinctly unconvincing, sketchily-laid out, and in a far weaker state than the author(s) would wish you to believe. Ultimately, if they feel they have a truly viable theory they have to apply it, in as much detail as the current LCDM model has been applied. That means they have to start off in the early universe (or the distant past, if you prefer; we don't *have* to assume a Big Bang), then justify in some way the existence of both the cosmic microwave background, and the exact spectrum of perturbations on it; then in the same, self-consistent coherent model, they have to account for structure formation and the presence of a wave imprinted on the largest scales of galactic structure which just happens to have a wavelength that perfectly matches that on the CMB... if the universe evolved as predicted by a Lambda CDM model; they have to include a form of nucleosynthesis to explain the ratio of elements we see in the oldest stars; they have to explain why old stars tend to be metal poor and young stars are metal rich; they have to explain the collapse of shards in clusters to form galaxies; and so on and so on.
Do that, and people might just start paying attention... but they have to do it at a level of rigour that is equivalent to that employed in professional cosmology. If they can't, they don't have a theory, they have words, and words are extremely cheap. It has to be couched in a mathematical language, and that's because it has to have a surmise and make a testable prediction. It has to be directly testable. I am very definitely not a fan of Lambda CDM, and a hunt back through my posts on /. that relate to cosmology would probably make that quite clear, but I've spent many years looking at it and its perturbations anyway. In my view, Lambda CDM has one absolute killer of a prediction: the wavelength which it predicted, from that on the CMB, was imprinted on the large-scale structure, and which was later found, exactly where it said. That wavelength, and the amplitude of the wave, is exquisitely sensitive to any change in the evolution of the perturbations, which is itself exquisitely sensitive to a change in the background spacetime. Lambda CDM got it right; any successor model -- and I hope to God there is one, because Lambda CDM is not satisfactory -- also has to.
The last that I knew, the Electric Universe stuff doesn't do any of this. (I would emphasise again that to gain acceptance it is not enough to posit a model -- and it's not even enough to present some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Frankly, the absolute minimum is a full analysis of possible backgrounds -- containing at least photons, neutrinos and standard model matter -- before you can even think of putting a paper out. That would then need to be followed up with an analysis of the perturbations, which we are all after all made from. Effectively, a version of the CAMB code, or one of its competitors, is necessary. Without it, you don't really have a viable model, just yet another model that can recreate something with observables matching the background Lambda CDM, and those come ten a penny. And so on. This is not an easy job, which is why we have no answers yet -- but it sure as shit isn't because the people working in the field are purblind idiots devoid of imagination or soul. Well, certainly not all of them ;) )
• Re:Maybe (Score:4, Informative)
by IndustrialComplex (975015) on Wednesday October 30, 2013 @06:57PM (#45287007)
So basically you're using the same logic people use to justify the existence of God? How very..... scientific of you
We have observed 'Y'. We think that 'X' might be what is causing 'Y'. We setup an experiment to test for 'X' The experiment did not detect 'X'. The observed 'Y' still exists, but we now know it is not caused by 'X'.
Or an example:
Every morning, my newspaper is delivered. I think that it is being delivered by car. I have a special 'newspaper delivery car' detector. I setup the detector, and check the results the next morning. The detector did not detect any 'newspaper delivery cars'. The newspaper was still delivered, but I now know it was not delivered by car.
Y = Newspaper delivery
X = Delivery by car
Experiment = Check for delivery cars
Result = proof that delivery was not by car
Yet we know 'Y', the newspaper delivery, occurred/exists even though we have eliminated one of the ways in which it could be occurring.
• Re:Maybe (Score:4, Informative)
by cavebison (1107959) on Thursday October 31, 2013 @01:17PM (#45292739)
Sigh, completely wrong.
1. Dark Matter (or some kind of "unseen gravity source") has to be present *within each galaxy* to stop galaxies flying apart because of their spin, which calculations based on their visible matter says they should do.
2. Dark Matter (or some kind of "unseen gravity source") has to be present between us and certain distant objects, because of the visible effect of "gravitational lensing" (ie. visible distortion of light) being caused by something we can't see.
There may be other examples of why DM is a thing, but those are the main two that pop to mind.
TL;DR it's a LOT more than just "adding up" the required matter in the universe.
| <urn:uuid:76bb7489-a38b-4abb-bb96-9dca6d09c064> | 2 | 2.140625 | 0.283214 | en | 0.964915 | http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/10/30/1749202/most-sensitive-detector-yet-fails-to-find-any-signs-of-dark-matter/informative-comments |
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