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Vignettes > Tunnel Channels of the Saginaw Lobe, Michigan, USA
Tunnel Channels of the Saginaw Lobe, Michigan, USA
Alan E. Kehew, Western Michigan University
Andrew L. Kozlowski, New York State Geological Survey
Author Profile
Shortcut URL:
Continent: North America
Country: USA
UTM coordinates and datum: none
Climate Setting: Humid
Tectonic setting: Craton
Type: Process
Figure 1. Three lobes of the Laurentide Ice Sheet in southern Michigan. Details
Figure 2. Digital elevation model (DEM) of part of southern Michigan. Higher elevations in brown and yellow shades. Curved dashed line is area of the Saginaw Lobe. Short, straight lines are prominent tunnel channels, oriented along the subglacial hydraulic gradient of the lobe. Details
Figure 3. Model for formation of tunnel channel. Top: tunnel channel is eroded beneath glacier. Middle: Ice and debris collapse into the channel as the ice down wastes or retreats. Bottom: buried ice slowly melts to form the relief on the modern landscape. Details
Figure 4. Left, top: tunnel channel has formed and filled as shown in middle of Figure 3. Left, middle: other ice lobe advances and deposits meltwater fans over filled tunnel channel. Left, bottom: buried ice in channel melts to form modern landform. Right. DEM of example of model at left. The Saginaw Lobe tunnel channel was eroded and filled with ice and debris. The Lake Michigan Lobe advanced from the west and deposited fans over the buried tunnel channel. The fans grade smoothly across the valley, indicating that it was filled at the time of deposition of the Lake Michigan meltwater fans. Details
Figure 5. Hillshade DEM of tunnel channels shown by white, dashed lines in Figure 2. Topographic profile across channels below. Prominent esker identified in channel 3. Details
Drainage of meltwater from a glacier occurs at the surface of the glacier, as well as internally and between the ice and its bed. Different components of the meltwater drainage system commonly interact with each other, transferring meltwater from the surface to the base of the glacier, for example. Meltwater processes result in a wide variety of landforms and deposits. These erosional and depositional features are concentrated near and beyond the margin of the ice because ablation (melting) is at its maximum in the marginal zone.
Among the most interesting types of landforms produced by meltwater erosion are tunnel channels, which are also known as tunnel valleys. These are interpreted to be eroded by high-energy meltwater flowing in a tunnel at the base of the glacier. These tunnels are are similar to ones in which eskers are deposited, although they erode downward into the substrate beneath the glacier rather than up into the ice. Despite this difference, eskers do occur in some tunnel channels. Wright (1973) first interpreted valleys of this type in Minnesota as the result of catastrophic discharges of meltwater that was initially impounded under the ice and then was suddenly released by some mechanism to flow through tunnels toward the margins. Hooke and Jennings (2006) suggested that the subglacial lakes were ponded behind a dam of frozen soil and rock under the margin of the glacier (permafrost) until a channel eroded headward from the margin and drained the lake catastrophically. Brennand and Shaw (1994) explain tunnel channels in Ontario as the result of erosion by huge subglacial sheetfloods. Gradual erosion of the valleys over time has also been suggested as mechanism for formation (Mooers, 1989).The purpose of this vignette is to describe the characteristics of tunnel channels in the Saginaw lobe of the Laurentide Ice Sheet in Michigan and to explore different hypotheses for their origin.
Characteristics of tunnel channels
The most diagnostic characteristics of tunnel channels include: (1) dimensions reaching >100 km in length and up to 5 km width, (2) generally straight reaches oriented parallel to the subglacial hydraulic gradient of the ice lobe, (3) longitudinal profiles that can rise in elevation in the downstream direction indicating formation by pressurized meltwater, and (4) irregular side slopes and valley bottoms (Kehew et al., 2007). Despite the generally straight reaches of these valleys, braided, dendritic, and anastomosing networks have been described.
Tunnel channels have highly variable topographic expression due to burial by glacial or post-glacial deposition after their initial formation. One mechanism of burial is the slumping of debris into the valleys as the ice retreats across the landscape. Deposition of sediment during readvances of the ice also provide a mechanism for filling and burial. The degree of burial by younger sediment can range from minor to nearly complete, which would leave in some cases, no visible signs of the valley at land surface.
Tunnel channels of the Saginaw Lobe
The Saginaw Lobe is one of three major lobes of the Laurentide Ice Sheet that coalesced in southern Michigan (Fig. 1). Tunnel channels occur non-continuously from Saginaw Bay to the southern border with Indiana. Kehew and Kozlowski (2007) identified five different types based on the degree of burial, the source (glacial lobe) of sediment that buried the channel, and the presence of eskers in the channels. One group of channels consists of straight reaches oriented in a fan shaped pattern around the central part of the Saginaw Lobe (Fig. 2). Cross-cutting relationships indicate the following sequence of events for the formation of a tunnel channel: (1) subglacial erosion of the channel near the margin of the glacier, most likely by a discrete, high energy flow of meltwater, (2) collapse of ice and debris into the valley during stagnation and/or retreat of the glacier, and (3) gradual meltout of the buried ice causing subsidence to form the modern topographic depression (Figure 3). Re-advance of the Saginaw Lobe or advance of the adjacent Lake Michigan Lobe over terrain vacated by retreat of the Saginaw Lobe prior to stage 3 added additional sediment to the channels, completely burying them in some cases.
Cross cutting relationships can sometimes be used to work out the history of the channels. As shown in Figure 4, after erosion of a channel and collapse of ice and debris into it from the Saginaw Lobe, the Lake Michigan Lobe advanced into the area. Braided outwash fans from the Lake Michigan Lobe grade smoothly grade across the tunnel channel, indicating that it had to have been filled with a combination of collapsed ice and debris. If there had been an open valley at the time, the fans would not grade continuously across it as they do. Later, meltout of the buried ice exposed the modern valley.
Many tunnel channels contain eskers (Fig. 5), suggesting that the tunnels remained active for a relatively long period of time after erosion and were gradually filled with sediment by streams flowing in the tunnel. A bore hole drilled in one of these eskers yielded a fining-upward sequence of sediment suggesting a gradual decline in energy of streams flowing in the channels as the ice stagnated.
Much remains to be learned about these channels including (1) what was depth of erosion into the substrate, (2) how long and continuous are individual valleys, (3) what was the relationship between the channels and specific ice-marginal positions, (4) whether erosion was rapid during catastrophic releases of sub-glacial meltwater or more gradual sustained discharge in tunnels that remained in the same location, and (5) what was source of the meltwater?
Associated References
« Landscape response in the California Coast Ranges to the stormy conditions of the Pleistocene to Holocene climatic transition Catastrophic glacial-lake outburst spillways: form and process relationships. » | <urn:uuid:3bf96efd-9427-4892-9379-3bea9a6937aa> | 3 | 3.171875 | 0.073173 | en | 0.939345 | http://serc.carleton.edu/vignettes/collection/36626.html |
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Civil War Saturday - vonAllmen
(This post was inspired by the meme started here)
My third-great-grandfather, Christian vonAllman, and his family came to the US from Switzerland around 1844. By the time the war broke out he was close to fifty and his only sons were small children. He did have at least one brother who also immigrated to the US, Jakob. Jakob vonAllmen had two sons who served for the Union:
• Jacob/Jakob vonAllmen and John vonAllmen, 1834 - 1919 and 1840 - 1913. Both enlisted on 1 December 1861 in Company I, 63rd Illinois Infantry. They mustered out on 13 July 1865.
Since Olney, Illinois is a small town and the vonAllman name is a pretty rare one I have to include one more soldier:
• John vonAllmen. Enlisted in Company G, 136th Illinois Infantry on 13 May 1864 and mustered out on 22 October 1864. I have no idea how he is related, but I'm pretty confident that he is in some way connected to my family.
Units covered:
Pension files:
Both John and Jacob filed for and received pensions (filed in Illinois and Missouri)
I don't have copies of either pensions files as yet.
1 comment:
1. My 3rd great grandfather served in the 39th and 107th Illinois Infantry - perhaps their paths crossed during the war.
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~ Katherine's Renaissance Dance Pages ~
England, around 1500
Dances recorded in the Gresley MS (being personal notes written by one John Banys around 1500); English translations of French manuals will be treated with the French Basse danses. The Gresley MS contains only the most sketchy descriptions, and uses many undefined terms, so reconstructions are very speculative, and often vary widely.
For different interpretations of several of these dances, try this article by Robert Hugget.
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Eglamour: for three people in single file
Text from the MS: Eglamowr de tribus: doble trace. After the end of the trace: the first three forth, the second the same, the 3d the same. Then the first man outward on the left shoulder and goo behend, the 2d the same, the 3d the same. The the first man out, the 2nd out, the 3rd ou
This is the reconstruction Cait Webb gives in the book that accompanies her CD "Eschewynge of Ydelnesse"
6 doubles forwards, all together
one by one: one double forwards
two doubles going to the end of line, turning outwards to the left
one double turning out
first and last person change places with two doubles (by convention, going anti-clockwise)
middle person goes to from with one double
-repeat with new leader-
The last two movements are made in imitation of Belfiore, and are not indicated in the English text.
Ly Bens Distonys: for a couple holding customary hands
also spelled 'Lebens disinens' and 'Lubens discuneus'
Text: Trace. After the end of the trace, the first 3 forth and torne, whill the second retrett 3 bake. Then come togeder and ethir tirne into oders plas. Then the last man 3 forth and torne, whill the first retrett. Then come togeder in such wys as they did afore and ethir end in ther own place. Then trett and retrett and torne.
:"Short Version"
I don't know whose reconstruction this is; I believe it is the one most commonly done in Lochac.
2 doubles forwards, dropping hands at end (or two singles and one double)
3 singles, woman going backwards, man going forwards, and turning to face at end
1 double to meet, but taking an angled path, to end up on the other side of your partner; man turns to face forwards
3 singles, man going backwards, woman going forwards, turnind to face at end
1 double to meet, returning to original place; woman turns to face front; take cutomary hands
2 singles, one forwards and one backwards, and drop hands
1 double, turning in place
"Long Version"
This reconstruction is by Cait Webb (very slightly altered by me):
A: 2 doubles forwards, together, dropping hands at end
B: 3 singles (slower steps), man going backwards, woman going forwards; woman turns to face at end
1 double, returning to partner (same side as you started on)
1 double, turning into partner's place (taking hands if desired)
repeat B, swapping gender roles, and returning to your own place.
C: Face up and take customary hands. Single forwards, single backwards, double turning in place.
Prenes in Gre: for a couple holding customary hands
"Alas the herd whill that i coth dans"
Text: Trace forthright 6 singlis; ather torne other aboute, and forthright 6 singlis agen. After the end of the trace, rak both togeder and torne. Then face to face 6 singlis, ether contrary oder, and 3 retrettes ayen. Then a flowrdelice of both at onys. Then change places and torne face to face. Then a flowrdelice and come togeder.
Reconstruction by Eoin Chil mac Cionoadha, of Trimaris, slightly modified by myself. It works well to the music on Eschewynge of Ydelnesse.
6 steps forwards, turn to face
6 steps circling (take right hands if you wish)
6 steps passing right shoulder, separating, and turning to face
2 slow sideways steps, moving forward a little
turn over left shoulder
6 small steps forwards, coming close to your partner, face to face
3 slow steps backwards
turn over left shoulder, fast reverence; turn over right shoulder, fast reverence
6 steps passing partner and turning to face
turn over left shoulder, slower reverence
Temperans in tribus: for three, side by side
article on Temperans, with fuller discussion of reconstruction choices (pdf)
reconstruction by: Eoin Ghil mac Cionaodha, Ludwig von Regensburg, Katharine von Regensburg, Sionnain O'Malley, Theadora Perplexa, Urraca Yriarte de Gamboa; 2005.
trett and retrett: three slow steps forwards, three slow steps backwards
retrett and trett / trett and retrett: three slow steps backwards, then three forwards, except dancer on right, who goes forwards then backwards, and ends at other end of line.
Two fast doubles forwards, half turn; repeat in other direction
trett and retrett
3 rakkes: three steps flankingly forwards
Flowrdelice: turn in place with two doubles, reverence
"Half hey": three doubles, people on ends swap places
Left person three steps forwards and full turn in place
Middle person three steps forwards and full turn in place
Right person three steps forwards, no turn
Each person jumps, one by one, starting with left-most
All turn in place, using two doubles.
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Research Questions
Writers have four means by which they can incorporate source content into their text: they can quote, summarize, paraphrase, or patchwrite that content. Contemporary educational and media discourse has been focused on whether writers acknowledge their sources when they incorporate material from them. A more profound question is how writers incorporate source material; quotation, summary, paraphrase, and patchwriting are separate discursive moves representing different levels of intellectual engagement with the source. Quotation requires only the ability to copy. Paraphrase requires comprehension of and engagement with a small bit of text, such as a sentence. Summary requires engagement with an extended passage, even the entire text. Patchwriting stands between quotation and paraphrase; it is neither an exact copying nor a complete restatement, and scholars such as Howard and Pecorari have argued that it typically results from an incomplete comprehension of the source. Although writers are universally urged to use quotation marks and citation whenever they copy text exactly, many college composition textbooks recommend paraphrase as a more sophisticated and useful way of drawing material from source texts and some disciplines do not accept direct quotation as an appropriate way to incorporate textual source material. Much has been written about the value of summary in advanced academic writing; it demonstrates a high level of engagement with a source text. Much has been written, too, about patchwriting as an indication of uneven comprehension of source texts, and some educators still regard it as a form of plagiarism.
The Citation Project began with the desire to know whether college writers use quotation, summary, paraphrase, and patchwriting in their source-based writing. The findings of the pilot inquiry are described in “Writing from Sources, Writing from Sentences,” to be published in the Fall 2010 issue of Writing and Pedagogy. The questions from the pilot remain the core questions for the entire study. Yet as so often happens in research on writing, the inquiry of the pilot study produced new questions. Our research now not only asks whether students use the four means of incorporating source content, but how often and under what circumstances. For example:
Does the use of quotation, summary, paraphrase, and patchwriting correlate with the genre, length, or linguistic complexity of the source?
Do any of these four means of incorporating source content tend to appear more often at the beginning or end of the student’s text? Do students, for example, tend to summarize sources more often early in the paper, and patchwrite from them more frequently toward the end, suggesting that patchwriting may be the product of a decrease in engagement with the paper or a lack of time?
Does the frequency of patchwriting increase with linguistically complex sources, suggesting that students patchwrite when they do not fully comprehend a text?
Do we see more patchwriting when students are using condensed texts that are themselves summaries or factual overviews of a topic?
Does the use of quotation, summary, paraphrase, and patchwriting correlate with the number of sources used or the frequency of use of one source? Are students, for example, more or less likely to patchwrite when they work with a complete text, citing different parts of the text throughout their papers?
Answers to such questions as these, we believe, will help educators move beyond the surface issue of citation, towards helping students become sophisticated conversants with source texts. These answers may also help educators increase students’ overall information literacy, helping students find, evaluate, and select sources with which they can engage in meaningful and appropriate ways. As students’ facility in source-based conversations increases, we believe the incidence of plagiarism will decrease. | <urn:uuid:82e7d0ea-ca6a-4f7c-81a8-a251612403c1> | 4 | 3.703125 | 0.12371 | en | 0.941412 | http://site.citationproject.net/?page_id=113 |
All about rainbows, double rainbows, circular rainbows!
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.
-John Keats, Lamia (1820)
Poet John Keats (1795-1821) once famously — and infamously — joked that Isaac Newton had destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by “reducing it to the prismatic colors.” This statement has been quoted often whenever someone wants to argue that scientific knowledge dulls the beauty and poetry of nature.
Keats was being an idiot, though: a true understanding of the science behind a phenomenon only adds to its beauty. There are so many subtle aspects to even the simple optics of a rainbow that make it a fascinating and lovely subject of contemplation. Once you get past the basic science of a rainbow, you are well-prepared to study more sophisticated and unusual phenomena such as this double rainbow that my wife and I saw from our house last July.
Double rainbow. It was, in fact, all the way.
I’ve had rainbows on my mind since I was recently asked to explain some of the optics by a journalist. Surprisingly, standard optics textbooks such as Born and Wolf’s Principles of Optics and Hecht’s Optics have no discussion of the phenomenon. This is likely due to the fact that most optical scientists have no need to understand rainbows in their research, but this does not mean they are not objects worthy of study.
So let me endeavor to explain all about rainbows: how they form, how double rainbows form, when fully circular rainbows form, and anything else I can think of. This isn’t just trivia: a lack of knowledge of rainbows can lead to truly humiliating consequences.
Let’s start with the short explanation: a rainbow is formed when light from the sun hits falling rain, bounces around in the raindrops and gets directed back roughly the way it came. Each color (wavelength) of light bounces a little differently in a raindrop and gets sent back in a slightly different direction; this results in us seeing different colors from different locations, giving us the beautiful multicolored bow.
Raindrops themselves can form in a range of different sizes, from 0.5 mm in diameter to 4.5 mm in diameter. Drops larger than this end up splitting up into smaller droplets, so 4.5 mm is in fact an upper limit. We’re concerned primarily with drops smaller than 1 mm which are, contrary to popular perception, spherical and not tear shaped. For sizes on the order of a millimeter, we can safely ignore the wave properties of light and treat it as a collection of rays that suffer only reflection and refraction. The standard picture to show how a rainbow forms is then given as follows.
The standard rainbow explanation picture.
A ray of light from the sun coming from the left hits the droplet. It part of the light refracts into the water drop, gets reflected once inside, and then gets refracted out of the drop roughly back in the direction it came, at an angle of roughly 42.5° relative to the incoming ray for red light.
This picture is accurate, but can actually be a little misleading: a cursory glance at it might suggest that we see a rainbow from each raindrop. Each ray, however, returns at a slightly different angle, and therefore is seen at a different location. This means that each color of the rainbow comes from a different group of drops, as illustrated crudely below.
This picture also demonstrates where a rainbow forms. The rays of the sun come from directly behind the observer and reflect off the raindrops into the observer’s eyes; this means that the rainbow is centered on the shadow of the person’s head. Because the sun is above us when rainbows form, our shadow ends up on the ground. The result is that we typically can only see one fraction of the rainbow, with the remainder of it effectively “obscured by the ground.” If one is high above the ground, however, it is possible to see a complete circular rainbow, as seen for example below.
A circular rainbow seen while skydiving over Illinois. Picture by Steve Kaufman, via Wikipedia.
So far so good, right? Well, there’s a bit of a problem with our simple “standard rainbow explanation picture” above: it shows only one ray coming in! In fact, each droplet should have a collection of parallel rays hitting it, each of which gets reflected back in a different direction. This is shown for blue rays below.
At first glance, it seems like we should all colors spread out over all angles, and no rainbow at all! In fact, this is partly true: the rays shown above, and the corresponding ones for the rest of the color spectrum, are spread out and appear in the interior of the rainbow as a bright region; this can be seen in my rainbow picture at the top of the post, reproduced below.
Note the bright region inside the primary rainbow.
Note the bright region inside the primary rainbow.
So what distinguishes some of the rays and makes them a rainbow, where others just join into a “white noise” background? Look carefully at the last two rays in the picture above — oh, heck, look at the same picture below with the rays drawn in red for clarity.
The two rays exiting at the lowest point in the drop — the topmost two rays entering the drop — are nearly parallel to each other, whereas all the other rays have significantly different directions. By a curious quirk of geometry and optics, we have an entire group of rays (clustered around roughly 42.5°) that are all going in the same direction. More rays equals more light intensity, and we therefore have an unusually bright “beam” of light leaving the droplet at those special angles. These collection of parallel rays form the rainbow that we see.
You’ll notice that the size of the droplet plays no role in the direction that light goes on exiting; provided a droplet is spherical, it will create a rainbow in the same direction regardless of size. This of course makes sense, because we can’t expect a rain shower to consist of a collection of raindrops of exactly the same size!
One important question has remained unanswered: what causes different colors of light to refract differently within the raindrop? The short answer is that the speed of light in water (and, in fact, in all matter) depends on the wavelength (color) of light in a process called dispersion. Because refraction depends on the speed of light, every color takes a slightly different path in the droplet. Dispersion has been most famously visualized in the classic Pink Floyd album cover for Dark Side of the Moon, using Isaac Newton’s classic experiment with prisms as inspiration.
But this explanation is sort of a “punt”: we explain the rainbow by punting to “dispersion,” but what actually causes dispersion? The answer is fortuitously related to a recent post I did on Chladni patterns and the phenomenon of resonance. A simple example of resonance is making a child’s swing move by pumping your legs at just the right frequency: when your motion matches the natural oscillation frequency of the swing, your movements add up over multiple swings to create one big swinging motion. You have made the swing move by driving it at its natural, or resonant, frequency.
Atoms have their own natural frequencies associated with them that arise (very roughly speaking) from the orbit of electrons around the nucleus*. A diagram of the Bohr atom may help here.
The Bohr atom. Electrons can only exist stably in discrete orbits, and typically absorb/emit light by making transitions between these discrete orbits.
Thanks to the laws of quantum mechanics, electrons can only orbit in certain special orbits, labeled in the picture of a simple hydrogen atom above by the index n. Each of these orbits has its own natural frequency of motion, kind of like all the planets in the solar system each have their own length of year. When an atom is illuminated by light, the light drives the atom much like a child makes a swing move. The response of the atom depends crucially on the relationship between the frequency of the light and the natural frequencies of the atom. This is the origin of dispersion: this interplay between the natural oscillations of the atoms and the oscillations of the light wave that drive them.
Putting together all that we’ve learned so far, we now have a pretty substantial explanation of the rainbow! This means we can turn to that magical and elusive phenomenon, the double rainbow. In fact, a double rainbow is relatively easy to understand with what we’ve learned; it arises from rays of light that reflect twice inside of raindrops.
The rays from the double rainbow come back at a more extreme angle than those of the primary rainbow: by my calculation, they make an angle of about 50° with respect to the incoming ray. This means that the double rainbow lies outside of the primary rainbow, as one can see from experience. The colors will also be reversed, as we can see by posting the primary rainbow figure right next to the comparable double rainbow figure.
The double rainbow will be naturally dimmer than the primary rainbow. Every time light is reflected inside the drop, part of it “leaks” out of the droplet and is lost. The more times it bounces around inside, the more light is lost.
With that in mind, we can ask: are there higher rainbows? In fact, it is possible on rare occasions to see the tertiary and quaternary (3rd and 4th) rainbows, caused by light bouncing around 3 and 4 times within the rain droplet, respectively! However, these bounces cause the light to exit the drop traveling roughly in the same direction that it entered. This means that the tertiary and quaternary rainbows can only be seen when the raindrops are between the sun and the observer.
This process can be repeated in the right laboratory conditions. In 1998, researchers observed rainbows** up to an amazing 200th order by the use of a high-powered laser and a pendant water drop hanging from the bottom of a glass dropper of diameter roughly 2.5 mm.
So what does all of this information gain us? As I have noted, there isn’t really a practical application for rainbow optics, to my knowledge. However, learning about how rainbows work demonstrates that even such a simple effect has hidden complexity to it. This complexity, in my opinion, adds another layer of beauty, giving me, I daresay, a stronger connection to the science of rainbows and to nature in general.
* I should point out here, lest I be accused of oversimplifying, that electrons do not actually “orbit” the nucleus. At the atomic scale, the wave properties of electrons are dominant, and the electron can more accurately be described as a “cloud” around the nucleus. However, this electron cloud still had natural frequencies of vibration associated with it.
** P. H. Ng, M. Y. Tse, and W. K. Lee, “Observation of high-order rainbows formed by a pendant drop,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 15 (1998), 2782.
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10 Responses to All about rainbows, double rainbows, circular rainbows!
1. Ok, that first link made be embarrassed to be in the same species as she. Nifty article to read about rainbows.
2. Yoron says:
So, seeing two suns in the sky is explainable form this too, right?
3. Yoron says:
from, not ‘form’. My fingers are revolting, well sort of..
4. Robin says:
So now how about a triple rainbow? The third usually being vey pale and under the primary, as if a double wasn’t complicate enough! We’d never seen one until we move to our current home and we see at least one a year, so not that rare.
• This is probably a supernumerary rainbow, which is discussed briefly on Wikipedia. I didn’t discuss them here because such rainbows involve completely different optics, resulting from the wave properties of light! (Perhaps a future post…)
• Robin says:
Thx that looks like what we see – a completely different effect!
I was also going to ask about raindrop shape as I do recall reading they weren’t spherical, but that page and bit more reading suggest that they can be a range of different shapes, including near perfect spheres. It is amazing that there is so much to be learnt about things that might seem quite mundane at face value.
• Yes, there is quite a lot of complexity in rainbows! That was what I was hoping to convey with my post, that necessarily could only cover a part of the “spectrum.” Raindrop shape tends to vary depending on the size of the drop: the smallest ones are spherical, but the larger ones can be quite different from spheres.
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A Radical New Router
One of the founders of the Internet says network routers are too slow, costly, and power hungry--and he knows how to fix them
Photo: Jonathan Sprague/Redux
Router Master Internet pioneer Lawrence G. Roberts has reengineered the network router to handle streaming media.
The Internet is broken. I should know: I designed it. In 1967, I wrote the first plan for the ancestor of today’s Internet, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET, and then led the team that designed and built it. The main idea was to share the available network infrastructure by sending data as small, independent packets, which, though they might arrive at different times, would still generally make it to their destinations. The small computers that directed the data traffic—I called them Interface Message Processors, or IMPs—evolved into today’s routers, and for a long time they’ve kept up with the Net’s phenomenal growth. Until now.
Today Internet traffic is rapidly expanding and also becoming more varied and complex. In particular, we’re seeing an explosion in voice and video applications. Millions regularly use Skype to place calls and go to YouTube to share videos. Services like Hulu and Netflix, which let users watch TV shows and movies on their computers, are growing ever more popular. Corporations are embracing videoconferencing and telephony systems based on the Internet Protocol, or IP. What’s more, people are now streaming content not only to their PCs but also to iPhones and BlackBerrys, media receivers like the Apple TV, and gaming consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation 3. Communication and entertainment are shifting to the Net.
But this shift is not without its problems. Unlike e-mail and static Web pages, which can handle network hiccups, voice and video deteriorate under transmission delays as short as a few milliseconds. And therein lies the problem with traditional IP packet routers: They can’t guarantee that a YouTube clip will stream smoothly to a user’s computer. They treat the video packets as loose data entities when they ought to treat them as flows.
Consider a conventional router receiving two packets that are part of the same video. The router looks at the first packet’s destination address and consults a routing table. It then holds the packet in a queue until it can be dispatched. When the router receives the second packet, it repeats those same steps, not ”remembering” that it has just processed an earlier piece of the same video. The addition of these small tasks may not look like much, but they can quickly add up, making networks more costly and less flexible.
At this point you might be asking yourself, ”But what’s the problem, really, if I use things like Skype and YouTube without a hitch?” In fact, you enjoy those services only because the Internet has been grossly overprovisioned. Network operators have deployed mountains of optical communication systems that can handle traffic spikes, but on average these run much below their full capacity. Worse, peer-to-peer (P2P) services, used to download movies and other large files, are eating more and more bandwidth. P2P participants may constitute only 5 percent of the users in some networks, while consuming 75 percent of the bandwidth.
So although users may not perceive the extent of the problem, things are already dire for many Internet service providers and network operators. Keeping up with bandwidth demand has required huge outlays of cash to build an infrastructure that remains underutilized. To put it another way, we’ve thrown bandwidth at a problem that really requires a computing solution.
With these issues in mind, my colleagues and I at Anagran, a start-up I founded in Sunnyvale, Calif., set out to reinvent the router. We focused on a simple yet powerful idea: If a router can identify the first packet in a flow, it can just prescreen the remaining packets and bypass the routing and queuing stages. This approach would boost throughput, reduce packet loss and delays, allow new capabilities like fairness controls—and while we’re at it, save power, size, and cost. We call our approach flow management.
To understand how flow management works, it helps to describe the limitations of current packet routers. In these systems, incoming packets go first to a collection of custom microchips responsible for the routing work. The chips read each packet’s destination address and query a routing table. This table determines the packet’s next hop as it travels through the network. Then another collection of chips puts the packets into output queues where they await transmission. These two groups of chips—they include application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, as well as expensive high-speed memory such as ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM) and static random access memory (SRAM)—consume 80 percent of the power and space in a router.
During periods of peak traffic, a router may be swamped with more packets than it can handle. The router will then pile up more packets in its queue, establishing a buffer that it can discharge when traffic slows down. If the buffer fills up, though, the router will have to discard some packets. The lost packets trigger a control mechanism that tells the originator to slow down its transmission. This self-controlling behavior is a critical feature of the Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, the primary protocol we rely on with the Internet. It’s kept the network stable over decades.
Indeed, during most of my career as a network engineer, I never guessed that the queuing and discarding of packets in routers would create serious problems. More recently, though, as my Anagran colleagues and I scrutinized routers during peak workloads, we spotted two serious problems. First, routers discard packets somewhat randomly, causing some transmissions to stall. Second, the packets that are queued because of momentary overloads experience substantial and nonuniform delays, significantly reducing throughput (TCP throughput is inversely proportional to delay). These two effects hinder traffic for all applications, and some transmissions can take 10 times as long as others to complete.
Photo: Jonathan Sprague/Redux
Flow control: The Anagran FR-1000 can be plugged into existing networks and can manage up to 4 million simultaneous flows.
As I talk to network operators all over the world, I hear one story after another about how the problem is only getting worse. Data traffic has been doubling virtually every year since 1970. Thanks to the development of high-capacity optical systems like dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM), bandwidth cost has been halved every year, so operators don’t have to spend more than they did the year before to keep up with the doubling in traffic. On the other hand, routers, as pieces of computing equipment, have followed Moore’s Law, and the cost of routing 1 megabit per second has decreased at a slower pace, halving every 1.5 years. Without a major change in router design, this cost discrepancy means that every three years a network operator will have to double its spending on infrastructure expansion.
Flow management can solve this capacity crunch. The concept of data flow might be more easily understood in the case of a voice or video stream, but it applies to all traffic over the Internet. Key to our approach is the fact that each packet contains a full identification of the flow it belongs to. This identification, encapsulated by the packet’s header according to the Internet Protocol version 4, or IPv4, consists of five values: source address, source port, destination address, destination port, and protocol.
All packets that are part of the same flow carry the same five-value identification. So in flow management, you have to effectively process—or route—only the first packet. You’d then take the routing parameters that apply to that first packet and store them in a hash table, a data structure that allows for fast lookup. When a new packet comes in, you’d check if its identification is in the hash, and if it is, that means the new packet is part of a flow you’ve already routed. You’d then quickly dispatch—the more accurate term is ”switch”—the packet straight to an output port, thus saving time and power.
If traffic gets too heavy, you’ll still have to discard packets. The big advantage is that now you can do it intelligently. By monitoring the packets as they’re coming in, you can track in real time the duration, throughput, bytes transferred, average packet size, and other metrics of every flow. For example, if a flow has a steady throughput, which is the case with voice and video, you can avoid discarding such packets, protecting these stream-based transmissions. For other types of traffic, such as Web browsing, you can selectively discard just enough packets to achieve specific rates without stalling those transmissions.
This capability is especially convenient for managing network overload due to P2P traffic. Conventionally, P2P is filtered out using a technique called deep packet inspection, or DPI, which looks at the data portion of all packets. With flow management, you can detect P2P because it relies on many long-duration flows per user. Then, without peeking into the packets’ data, you can limit their transmission to rates you deem fair.
Since the early days of the ARPANET, I’ve always thought that routers should manage flows rather than individual packets. Why hasn’t it been done before? The reason is that memory chips were too expensive until not long ago. You need lots of memory to store the hash table with routing parameters of each flow. (A 1 gigabit-per-second data trunk often carries about 100 000 flows.) If you were to keep a flow table on one IMP of 40 years ago, you’d spend US $1 million in memory. But about a decade ago, as memory cost kept falling, it started to make sense economically to design flow-management equipment.
In 1999, I founded Caspian Networks to develop large terabit flow routers, which I planned to sell to the carriers that maintain the Internet’s core infrastructure. That market, however, proved hard to crack—the carriers seem satisfied with overprovisioning, as well as techniques like traffic caching and compression, which ameliorate congestion without addressing the roots of the problem. In early 2004, I decided to leave Caspian and start Anagran, focusing on smaller flow-management equipment to solve the overload and fairness problems. We designed the equipment to operate at the edge of networks, the point where an Internet service provider aggregates traffic from its broadband subscribers or where a corporate network connects to the outside world. Virtually all network overload occurs at the edge.
Anagran’s flow manager, the FR-1000, can replace routers and DPI systems or may simply be added to existing networks. It supports up to 4 million simultaneous flows—a combined 80 Gb/s in throughput. Its hardware consists of inexpensive, off-the-shelf components as opposed to ASICs, which increase development costs. We implemented our flow-routing algorithms in a field-programmable gate array, or FPGA, and the router’s memory consists of standard high-speed DRAM. The FR-1000 sells in different models, starting at less than $30 000.
Like a regular router, the FR-1000 has input and output ports. But the similarities end there. Recall that in a traditional router the routing and queuing chips consume 80 percent of the power and space. By routing only the first packet of a flow, the FR-1000’s chips do much less work, consuming about 1 percent of the power that a conventional router requires.
Even more significant, the FR-1000 does away entirely with the queuing chips. During congestion, it adjusts each flow rate at its input instead. If an incoming flow has a rate deemed too high, the equipment discards a single packet to signal the transmission to slow down. And rather than just delaying or dropping packets as in regular routers, in the FR-1000 the output provides feedback to the input. If there’s bandwidth available, the equipment increases the flow rates or accepts more flows at the input; if bandwidth is scarce, the router reduces flow rates or discards packets.
By eliminating power-hungry circuitry, the FR-1000 consumes about 300 watts, or one-fifth the total power of a comparable router, and occupies one unit in a standard rack, a tenth of the space that other routers fill. We estimate that the equipment allows network operators to reduce their operating costs per gigabit per second by a factor of 10.
Illustration: Emily Cooper
How Flow Routing Works: Flow managers keep track of streams of packets and can protect voice and video transmissions while reducing peer-to-peer traffic.
Click on image for a larger view.
Measurements of the FR-1000 in our laboratories and by customers showed that networks equipped with the flow manager were able to carry many more streams of voice and video without quality degradation.
Another important capability we tested was whether the equipment could maintain quality of transmissions during congestion. The test involved a 100-Mb/s data trunk using a conventional router and another that included the Anagran flow manager. We progressively added TCP flows and measured the time required to load a specific Web page. The conventional router began to discard packets once traffic filled the trunk’s capacity, and the time to load the Web page increased exponentially as we kept adding flows. The Anagran flow manager was able to control the rate of the flows, slowing them down to accommodate new ones, and the load time increased only linearly. The result: At 1000 flows, the flow manager delivered the page in about 15 seconds, whereas the conventional router required nearly 65 seconds.
Another capability we tested was fairness controls. Currently, P2P applications consume an excessive amount of bandwidth, because they use multiple flows per user—from 10 to even 1000. But services like cloud computing, which rely on Web applications constantly accessing servers that store and process data, are likely to expand the problem. We conducted measurements at a U.S. university whose wireless network was overwhelmed by P2P traffic, with a small fraction of users consuming up to 70 percent of the bandwidth. Early attempts to solve the problem using DPI systems didn’t work, because P2P applications often encrypt packets, making them hard to recognize. The Anagran equipment was able to detect P2P by watching the number and duration of flows per user. And instead of simply shutting down the P2P connections, the flow manager adjusted their throughputs to a desired level. Once the fairness controls were active, P2P traffic shrank to less than 2 percent of the capacity.
The upshot is that directing traffic in terms of flows rather than individual packets improves the utilization of networks. By eliminating the excessive delays and random packet losses typical of traditional routers, flow management fills communication links with more data and protects voice and video streams. And it does all that without requiring changes to the time-tested TCP/IP protocol.
So is the Internet really broken? Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration. But the 40-year-old router sure needs an overhaul. I should know.
About the Author
Lawrence G. Roberts led the team of scientists who developed ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet, in the late 1960s. In ”A Radical New Router”, he proposes dumping his old router design for one that will better handle the complexities of today’s audio and video Web traffic. Not that Roberts watches movies or listens to music online. ”I don’t get a lot off the Internet in that way,” he says. ”I don’t even watch TV.”
To Probe Further
For more technical details on flow management and the Anagran FR-1000, visit http://www.anagran.com. See also the white papers ”Flow Rate Management” and ”TCP Rate Control With IFD [Intelligent Flow Delivery],” available at Lawrence G. Roberts’s Web site: http://www.packet.cc.
For more on Internet routing, visit the Web sites of the Internet Research Task Force’s Routing Research Group at http://www.irtf.org/charter?gtype=rg&group=rrg and the Internet Engineering Task Force’s Routing Area at http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/wg-dir.html. | <urn:uuid:6ce53f0b-3f7d-47f2-8a05-924f72a56756> | 2 | 2.28125 | 0.020077 | en | 0.934153 | http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/a-radical-new-router |
The sysindexes system table contains information about your index structures that you can't get through information schema views. Every database has a sysindexes table, which contains one row for every index and one row for every column-based statistics on a table. In general, Microsoft recommends that you don't retrieve data directly from this table, but there's no other way to obtain some of the information it contains. You can derive some of the index properties from the INDEXPROPERTY() function, but not all of them, as I mentioned in my December column, "Digging Up the Dirt on Indexes."
One type of information that you can get from the sysindexes table and from no other documented method is certain page numbers that a table or index uses. The sysindexes table contains three columns—first, firstIAM, and root—that represent page locations within a database, as indicated by a file number/page number combination. SQL Server stores each of these page locations in a byte-swapped format. To convert this to a decimal file number and page number, you must first swap the bytes, then convert the values from hexadecimal to decimal. For example, let's find the page address for the first page of the Northwind database's Order Details table. You can run the following query to get the value in hex:
USE Northwind
SELECT first FROM sysindexes
WHERE id = object_id('Order Details') AND indid < 2
As I mentioned in December, a sysindexes.indid value of less than 2 identifies the row for the table itself and not for a separate index on the table.
The preceding query returns the hex value 0x940000000100 for the first page of the table. You now have to convert this number to a file and page address. In hexadecimal notation, each set of two hexadecimal digits represents 1 byte, so each pair of digits has to stay together as a byte. You first "swap" or reverse the bytes, so the last becomes the first and the first becomes the last, to get 00 01 00 00 00 94. The first two groups represent the 2-byte file number, and the last four groups represent the page number. So the file number is 0x0001, which is 1, and the page number is 0x00000094, which is 148 in decimal. This means that the first page of the Order Details table is on file 1, page 148. But in a relational database, there's no implied ordering to table rows, so what does "first" mean? "First" means something only if you have an index, in which case the index's leaf level stores the pages in an order that's based on the index key columns. For a clustered index, such as the one here, the index's leaf level is the table itself.
SQL Server doesn't guarantee that the sysindexes.first column will always tell you the first page of a table. I've found that the value is reliable immediately after I build an index and stays reliable until I perform a lot of data-modification operations on the data in the table. As I mentioned, two other columns in sysindexes use the same byte-swapped hexadecimal format. The root column's value is the page location of the index's root. If the table's row in sysindexes has an indid value of 0, the table is a heap and has no clustered index and consequently no root. In that case, the value in the sysindexes.root column is just a copy of the value in the sysindexes.first column.
The third hexadecimal column, first-IAM, is the page number of the first Index Allocation Map (IAM) for the table or index. You can get lots of information about IAMs in my April 1999 article, "The New Space Management."
You can use the page addresses for the first and root columns as arguments to the DBCC PAGE command, which I described in "Using DBCC Page," March 2000. If you want to know the page numbers for all the pages that make up a table, you could get the first page number from the sysindexes table as I described above, then use DBCC PAGE to look at the header of the page and find the value for m_nextPage. Then, you could use DBCC PAGE to open that next page, find the value for m_nextPage again, and continue to follow the chain of pages for any table that has a clustered index. However, as much as this method might appeal to your inner geek, there are easier ways to get all the page numbers belonging to a table or index. These methods, which I describe next, will always show you the correct page numbers in a table, even after you perform numerous data-modification operations.
First, enable the undocumented DBCC command PGLINKAGE by turning on trace flag 3604, just like you need to do for DBCC PAGE. In order to use this command, you need to know at least one page number belonging to the table. Then you pass the database ID, the file ID, the page ID, and the number of pages you want to see:
pagenum, number_of_pages, printopt=\{1|2\} )
Supplying a 0 for number_of_pages will return all the pages from the given page number to the end of the linked list of pages. A printopt value of 1 lists just the file and page numbers; when you give a printopt value of 2, you can see the previous and next page numbers along with each page number. Thus, the following command will list the first 10 pages in the Northwind database's Order Details table:
DBCC PGLINKAGE (6,1,148,10, 1)
Figure 1 shows the output that I get back from this command. Of course, your actual page numbers will likely be different when you run this command.
Using DBCC PGLINKAGE is a quick way to get the list of all pages belonging to a table, in sorted order. However, the page numbers all come back as messages, so you can't easily save them and examine them using SQL queries. For this reason, I prefer to use DBCC IND to get all the page numbers for a table. One benefit of DBCC IND is that you don't need to know any page numbers before you use this command; all you need to know is the table name. Also, with just one command, DBCC IND can tell you all the pages that belong to the table for all indexes and returns the results in a tabular format that you can save in a table for analysis and reporting. DBCC IND also tells you all the pages for the table, for IAMs, and for pages containing text or image data.
DBCC IND has three parameters. The first parameter is the database name or the database ID. The second parameter is the object name or object ID within the database. The third parameter is a specific index ID or one of the values 0, -1, or −2, which Table 1 explains. Here's the syntax:
DBCC IND (\{'dbname' | dbid \}, \{
'objname' | objid \}, \{ indid | 0 | -1 | -2 \})
To get all the pages for all the indexes for the Order Details table, I'd execute the following command:
DBCC IND ('Northwind', 'Order Details', -1)
Note that, unlike with the DBCC PAGE command, I don't need to enable trace flag 3604 before running DBCC IND. Table 2 lists this command's output columns and the meaning of each.
Although we usually talk about the leaf level of any index as being level 0 and the leaf level of a clustered index as being the data pages, in the DBCC IND output, the level above the data in a clustered index is considered to be level 0. To find the first page in any index level, you can look for the page with a PrevPagePID and a PrevPageFID of 0. However, if you have lots of rows in the output, it can be hard to scroll the output to find the row representing that first page. If you could capture this output into a table, you could then use T-SQL queries to find the rows you're interested in. Fortunately, you can capture the output of any command that gives results in a tabular form.
The first step in this case is to run the code that Listing 1 shows to create a table that will hold the tabular results of the DBCC command. Because the table name starts with sp_, if you create this table in the master database, you'll be able to access it from any database without having to qualify the table name with the database name.
To populate this table with index information from the Order Details table, run the following INSERT statement:
TRUNCATE TABLE sp_index_info
INSERT INTO sp_index_info
('Northwind', 'Order
Details', -1) ')
Since the table can be populated from any database, you might want to truncate the table before you insert more data into it, so the TRUNCATE TABLE statement is optional. To find the row for the first data page, you need to find a row that has a page type of 1 and no previous page. You can use the following SELECT statement:
SELECT * FROM sp_index_info
WHERE pagetype = 1 AND
prevpagePID = 0 AND prevpageFID = 0
After you have the page numbers for a table, you can use the DBCC PAGE command to examine the data rows. And, now that you have the data in a table, you can organize it in many different ways and ask questions about the indexes on this table. For example, if you want to know how many pages of each type you have, you can run the query that Listing 2 shows.
If you want to know how many pages are in the DBCC IND output for each index, you can run the code that Listing 3 shows. This query joins the new table to the sysindexes table in Northwind to get the name of each index. You can probably come up with many more questions about the indexes on a table, so I'll leave it up to you to come up with the queries to extract that information.
In future columns, I'll tell you about more interesting information you can find in the sysindexes table. I'll also start examining some of the index information that will be available in SQL Server 2005. | <urn:uuid:1fa59987-e5b6-4721-a52d-e2a4dedbc7e2> | 2 | 2.046875 | 0.455981 | en | 0.882664 | http://sqlmag.com/t-sql/index-internal-information |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am reading on JSF and I feel rather confused why JSF is a MVC framework (or atleast which parts belongs to which "letter").
I looked at this question: What components are MVC in JSF MVC framework?
I read there if you don't look at it in an aggregated view the model is your entity, view is your XHTML code and controller is the managed bean. Hmm...Ok, but doesn't the view very often depend on carrying out further business logic calls which returns a set of entities for example, does the description still fit?
One book I read described it as managed beans is the some kind of "message" bringer that the Faces Servlet (Controller) use to invoke the business layer (Model) and then the XHTML code is the view.
There are so many explanations and differences so I don't know which or how to understand it.
share|improve this question
4 Answers 4
up vote 54 down vote accepted
Specifically, in JSF the mapping is as follows:
• Model - The Services/DAOs plus the entities they produce and consume. The entry point to this is the managed bean, but in Java EE (of which JSF is a part) these artifacts are typically implemented by EJB and JPA respectively.
• View - The UI components and their composition into a full page. This is fully in the domain of JSF and implemented by JSF UIComponents and Facelets respectively.
• Controller - The traffic cop that handles commands and incoming data from the user, routes this to the right parts and selects a view for display. In JSF one doesn't write this controller, but it's already provided by the framework (it's the FacesServlet).
Especially the last part is frequently not well understood: In JSF you don't implement a controller. Consequently, a backing bean or any other kind of managed bean is NOT the controller.
The first part (the model) is also not always clearly understood. Business logic may be implemented by EJB and JPA, but from the point of view of JSF everything that is referenced by a value binding is the model. This is also where the name of one of the JSF life-cycle phases comes from: Update Model. In this phase JSF pushes data from the UI components into the model. In that sense, (JSF) managed beans are thus the model.
Although JSF itself doesn't explicitly define the concept, there is an often recurring and specific usage of managed beans called the backing bean.
For JSF a backing bean is still the model, but practically it's a plumbing element that sits in the middle of the Model, View and Controller. Because it performs some tasks that may be seen as some controller tasks, this is often mistaken to be the controller. But, as explained before this is not correct. It can also perform some model tasks and occasionally do some view logic as well.
See also:
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With thar approach, in Spring MVC the controller -or Front Controller- is the DispatcherServlet and Spring Controllers are part of the Model. Sounds weird :S – Carlos Gavidia Apr 11 '12 at 21:30
Made it a bit clearer, however I thought backing bean was just a "dataholder" for the view components and the managed beans was more like the controller you say backing beans are, am I wrong? – LuckyLuke Apr 12 '12 at 6:08
As a plumbing component, the backing bean is typically injected with a Service from which it obtains one or more entities. These entities are indeed hold on to. Via a getter the entity in its entirety is returned. View components bind to the individual properties of an entity. Basically the backing beans means the Service code stays 'pure' and data is cached during the scope of the bean (often view scope or request scope). – Arjan Tijms Apr 12 '12 at 8:32
@RodmarConde well, a bit perhaps, but more often some client-side code is seen as the view in that case and the web service is simply a path to the service. – Arjan Tijms Apr 30 '13 at 15:51
@ArjanTijms The answer you given is like a head shot, easy to get the exact point. – kark Apr 29 '14 at 18:56
In a minimalist form, it's:
• Model: Anything you use for persistence (Hibernate, JPA, etc) and data modeling (Java Beans).
• View: xhtml, jsp, etc.
• Controller: Mananaged Beans.
JSF gives you the power to control your requests/responses. The way you create model/view it's not directly connected to the framework MVC concept. It's just a matter of choice. The MVC concept is related to code organization.
Analogously Struts is a MVC framework, but it works mainly as a controller.
I think I help you to better clarify your idea.
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What is the difference between Java Beans and Managed Beans? – Koray Tugay Apr 16 '13 at 14:19
Hi @KorayTugay Java Beans are simple classes with getters and setters and a default constructor, while a Managed Bean is is a lightweight container-managed object. Java Beans: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaBean/index.html Managed Beans: docs.oracle.com/javaee/6/tutorial/doc/gjaam.html#gjacb – axcdnt Apr 16 '13 at 14:58
Thanks, the above answer BOLDLY states that a managed bean is not a controller.. So it is a little confusing really. – Koray Tugay Apr 16 '13 at 15:47
And if possible, can you explain in simple english what you mean by "using for persistence" ? – Koray Tugay Apr 16 '13 at 15:49
Let's imagine you'll work with a persistence layer, then you should define your own model classes, whatever it be (ORM solution or even JDBC). Let's assume you chose JDBC and you'll have classes like "Person.java" for example with a name and age as attributes. Before persisting you'll have to set it's values (a name, age, etc). This will normally be known as an "entity" or model for general purpose. If you choose an ORM solution like (Hibernate) you should map your class, using annotations (@Entity) or a XML file. Hope you get the idea, this is a quite superficial explaining for sure. – axcdnt Apr 16 '13 at 16:04
The interesting thing about the managed bean idea is that it can both be used as a model (MVC pattern) or as a controller (mediating-controller MVC pattern, also called model-view-adapter), where the model and view do not interact directly.
In that latter case, the routing mechanism is not the controller, as the business logic is contained in the managed bean and the Model is strictly a domain model. We then have:
• Model - contains the domain model, in most cases represents the tables in the database, persisted through DAOs.
• View - the ui components, connected to the bean;
• Controller - the managed bean that contains the business logic and handles communication between the view and the model.
I think some people confuse mediating-controller MVC as plain MVC, which leads to the different explanations encountered.
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I think, all anwsers here are correct. But the main point for confusion arises for me from mixing the mvc components' definitions coming from the framework, here JSF, with those model and controller components you define in your application design:
Assume you change from JSF to any other Web UI framework in your business application: You will still have a "business model" and a "business controller". (In our projects we just call these components "the model" and "the process".)
What does this mean: Either you can't use mvc for the description of the overall application architecture, but solely for the UI, or you may have to accept many controller, model like components in your full application stack.
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:3b7bb86f-151c-4c0f-95ec-0104b01b9c8c> | 3 | 2.90625 | 0.146622 | en | 0.931633 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10111387/understanding-jsf-as-a-mvc-framework |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I have a script that is inventorying (not sure if thats a word) my environment.
It goes out and pulls Hostname OS, IP, and ENV (dev, prod, etc)..then spits all that to a logfile
At the top of my script i have a check to see if the logfile exist.
[[ -f $LOGFILE ]] || touch $LOGFILE && echo "ENV" "\t" "HOSTNAME" "\t" "OS" "\t" "IPADDRESS"
What i want it to do is IF exist, do nothing...otherwise touch and echo header to file.
Currently every run it echos the header row.
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Use parentheses. – Kevin Sep 26 '12 at 0:59
yes use them: [[ -f aaa ]] || (touch $LOGFILE && echo "ENV" "\t" "HOSTNAME" "\t" "OS" "\t" "IPADDRESS" > $LOGFILE) – MeaCulpa Sep 26 '12 at 5:15
2 Answers 2
Mixing || and && on the same line like this causes issues if the command after || succeeds. Expanding it to a full if statement is recommended.
if [[ ... ]]
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The code you give doesn't echo the line to your log file anyway.
printf interprets "\t" as a tab character. You don't need the touch command, since the file will be created and opened for writing by the output redirection.
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:c865455c-ff0a-45f5-9f77-fde805f609ee> | 2 | 1.796875 | 0.053154 | en | 0.85535 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12593154/test-command-duplicate-header-row-in-log |
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I'm using Nokogiri and open-uri to grab the contents of the title tag on a webpage, but am having trouble with accented characters. What's the best way to deal with these? Here's what I'm doing:
require 'open-uri'
require 'nokogiri'
doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open(link))
title = doc.at_css("title")
At this point, the title looks like this:
Instead of:
How can I have nokogiri return the proper character (e.g. ù in this case)?
Here's an example URL:
share|improve this question
It would be of assistance to those who help if we could have the URL to the site so we can test against it. – Ryan Bigg Apr 3 '10 at 19:35
How do you inspect the title afterwards and which Ruby version you are using? Rag\303\271 is Ragù UTF-8-encoded. – Mladen Jablanović Apr 3 '10 at 19:51
Hi Mladen, I'm using Ruby 1.8.6. I'm inspecting the title from the Ruby interactive console. Ultimately, it ends up being stored in a MySQL database. Once in MySQL it looks like: ù – Moe Apr 3 '10 at 19:59
7 Answers 7
up vote 9 down vote accepted
When you say "looks like this," are you viewing this value IRB? It's going to escape non-ASCII range characters with C-style escaping of the byte sequences that represent the characters.
If you print them with puts, you'll get them back as you expect, presuming your shell console is using the same encoding as the string in question (Apparently UTF-8 in this case, based on the two bytes returned for that character). If you are storing the values in a text file, printing to a handle should also result in UTF-8 sequences.
If you need to translate between UTF-8 and other encodings, the specifics depend on whether you're in Ruby 1.9 or 1.8.6.
For 1.9: http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/ruby_19s_string for 1.8, you probably need to look at Iconv.
Also, if you need to interact with COM components in Windows, you'll need to tell ruby to use the correct encoding with something like the following:
require 'win32ole'
WIN32OLE.codepage = WIN32OLE::CP_UTF8
If you're interacting with mysql, you'll need to set the collation on the table to one that supports the encoding that you're working with. In general, it's best to set the collation to UTF-8, even if some of your content is coming back in other encodings; you'll just need to convert as necessary.
Nokogiri has some features for dealing with different encodings (probably through Iconv), but I'm a little out of practice with that, so I'll leave explanation of that to someone else.
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Hi Jason, Thanks so much for all the help. Got it working perfectly. I set my MySQL DB encoding to UTF-8 as well as my terminal profile. – Moe Apr 3 '10 at 21:31
@Moe This might be 'handling' the issue, or it might be masking it. See my answer for how to cleanly ensure that Nokogiri is getting the right UTF-8 content. – Phrogz Jan 15 '11 at 21:02
Tip: you could also use the Scrapifier gem to get metadata, as the page title, from URIs in a very simple way. The data are all encoded in UTF-8.
Check it out: https://github.com/tiagopog/scrapifier
Hope it's useful for you.
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I was having the same problem and the Iconv approach wasn't working. Nokogiri::HTML is an alias to Nokogiri::HTML.parse(thing, url, encoding, options).
So, you just need to do:
doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open(link).read, nil, 'utf-8')
and it'll convert the page encoding properly to utf-8. You'll see Ragù instead of Rag\303\271.
share|improve this answer
Summary: When feeding UTF-8 to Nokogiri through open-uri, use open(...).read and pass the resulting string to Nokogiri.
Analysis: If I fetch the page using curl, the headers properly show Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 and the file content includes valid UTF-8, e.g. "Genealogía de Jesucristo". But even with a magic comment on the Ruby file and setting the doc encoding, it's no good:
# encoding: UTF-8
require 'nokogiri'
require 'open-uri'
doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open('http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mateo1-2&version=NVI'))
doc.encoding = 'utf-8'
h52 = doc.css('h5')[1]
puts h52.text, h52.text.encoding
#=> Genealogà a de Jesucristo
#=> UTF-8
We can see that this is not the fault of open-uri:
gene = html.read[/Gene\S+/]
puts gene, gene.encoding
#=> Genealogía
#=> UTF-8
This is a Nokogiri issue when dealing with open-uri, it seems. This can be worked around by passing the HTML as a raw string to Nokogiri:
# encoding: UTF-8
require 'nokogiri'
require 'open-uri'
doc = Nokogiri::HTML(html.read)
doc.encoding = 'utf-8'
h52 = doc.css('h5')[1].text
puts h52, h52.encoding, h52 == "Genealogía de Jesucristo"
#=> Genealogía de Jesucristo
#=> UTF-8
#=> true
share|improve this answer
thanks you just helped me again :) – Felipe Lima Jan 31 '11 at 21:55
Thanks a lot for this answer! – Claudio Acciaresi Dec 26 '11 at 20:51
Try setting the encoding option of Nokogiri, like so:
require 'open-uri'
require 'nokogiri'
doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open(link))
doc.encoding = 'utf-8'
title = doc.at_css("title")
share|improve this answer
You need to convert the response from the website being scraped (here epicurious.com) into utf-8 encoding.
as per the html content from the page being scraped, its "ISO-8859-1" for now. So, you need to do something like this:
require 'iconv'
doc = Nokogiri::HTML(Iconv.conv('utf-8//IGNORE', 'ISO-8859-1', open(link).read))
Read more about it here: http://www.quarkruby.com/2009/9/22/rails-utf-8-and-html-screen-scraping
share|improve this answer
From the sample provided, it's clear that his content is already in UTF-8. – JasonTrue Apr 8 '10 at 6:22
nope it isn't. else he would get ù only. the webpage is not utf-8 encoded – Nakul Apr 8 '10 at 13:50
\303\271 are c-escaped UTF-8 byte values, which is how they appear in IRB when you look at an evaluated string; it's octal for C3 B9, which is the UTF-8 sequence for ù. If it were iso-8859-1, he would have gotten the octal for F9, or \371. – JasonTrue Apr 9 '10 at 23:26
but then, why would it look like ù in mysql? As i understand its irb not able or display it utf-8, right? – Nakul Apr 13 '10 at 10:36
That was a separate problem, which I explained in my answer. Mysql collation needs to be set for UTF-8 on the table that you're storing data in. IRB can display UTF-8 text on appropriate terminals, but it won't display evaluated expressions as UTF-8. It shows evaluated expressions as ASCII + Octal escaped sequences. ("puts" may will behave differently. See puts "\001" vs "\001" in irb for an example that isn't UTF-8 specific.) – JasonTrue Apr 21 '10 at 5:53
Just to add a cross-reference, this SO page gives some related information:
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:fa65a3fa-1749-48d4-8cd3-d6d663b94f33> | 2 | 2.171875 | 0.733928 | en | 0.851034 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2572396/nokogiri-open-uri-and-unicode-characters?answertab=active |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I see something strange like:
Now I'm not that CVS, SVN, etc. dude. When I open that in the browser it tells me that I did something wrong. So I bet I need some hacker-style tool? Some client?
(I mean... why not just provide a ZIP file? Isn't the world complex enough?)
share|improve this question
Easiest link for getting git itself by source is probably code.google.com/p/git-core/downloads/list – mikebabcock Nov 7 '12 at 23:38
Sir What is this " zipball " ... if i will download CakePHP from "github.com/cakephp/cakephp/zipball/2.3.2 " then it is possible this will be different than the official version ?? – Puzzled Boy Aug 16 '13 at 6:10
6 Answers 6
up vote 147 down vote accepted
Please Note: This is deprecated as of September 2013. See revised answer here.
Have a read through http://help.github.com/
To clone that repository via a URL like that: yes, you do need a client, and that client is Git. That will let you make changes, your own branches, merge back in sync with other developers, maintain your own source that you can easily keep up to date without downloading the whole thing each time and writing over your own changes etc. A ZIP file won't let you do that.
It is mostly meant for people who want to develop the source rather than people who just want to get the source one off and not make changes.
But it just so happens you can get a ZIP file as well:
Click on http://github.com/zoul/Finch/ and then click on the ZIP button just to the left of the repository URL field. See here:
Enter image description here
share|improve this answer
THANKS man, you saved my weekend! I almost thought I had to go through all this complexity just to get a download. oh man. wtf. thanks. – dontWatchMyProfile May 1 '10 at 20:10
@sdaau There's a big Downloads button on the right side whether you are logged in or not. Click it, and it will give you options to DL .tar.gz or .zip. – Sammy Larbi Aug 11 '11 at 15:03
now the button for downloading is quite small and located left from the repository URL field, it says "ZIP". had a hard time to find it :s – mmoossen Jan 2 '12 at 9:49
Is there any way not to have to download the entire repository? Say, if the repository is a "plugins" repo and you only want one plugin? – Mala Feb 6 '13 at 19:03
not without using the Github API as far as I know. – Christoph Feb 11 '13 at 15:25
What happens when the repository owner has not prepared a zip file, and you just want a download to use yourself? There is an answer and you don't need to go though that horrid process to download software, install and register keys and whatnot on GitHub, etc.!
To simply download a repository as a zip file: add the extra path '/zipball/master/' to the end of the repository URL and voila, it gives you a zip file of the whole lot.
For example,
It then gives you a zip file to download.
share|improve this answer
THANK YOU! I needed to download code from a repository that didn't have a zip file, and this worked perfectly. I would have never figured out what I'm doing from the github help. – weronika Sep 26 '11 at 19:12
Awesome info my friend. There have been many times where I have wanted to download different branches without having to install git. Honestly I don't understand why there just isn't a link for this... – Zaptree Dec 10 '11 at 3:20
I think this is even better then the answer marked as answer. – SwissCoder Feb 8 '12 at 16:00
Wish this worked, but no luck here: github.com/facebook/php-webdriver --when I add "zipball/master/" to the end of that URL, I just get an error message. I'm echoing the original commenter... I just don't understand why it's so f'ing hard to download source code I see on github. I don't want a git client, I don't want to learn git, I just want to pull down the files that are right in front of my face :-) – Eric Feb 16 '12 at 0:45
@Eric - it worked for me: github.com/facebook/php-webdriver/zipball/master – Steve K Apr 23 '12 at 23:25
As of September 2013, the Download ZIP button has moved to bottom-right of page:
Download ZIP (2013)
If you don't see the button:
• Make sure you've selected <> Code tab from right side navigation menu, or
• Repo may not have a zip prepared. Add /zipball/branch/ to the end of the repository URL and to generate a zipfile of the master branch.
to get the master branch source code in a zip file.
share|improve this answer
To download your repository as zip file via curl:
curl -L -o master.zip http://github.com/zoul/Finch/zipball/master/
If your repository is private:
curl -u 'username' -L -o master.zip http://github.com/zoul/Finch/zipball/master/
Source: Github Help
share|improve this answer
sweet! worked like a charm, I had permission limits in a batch system with no browser and this one was what I needed! – userHoofarthirtysevenfive Jan 10 '14 at 22:30
Here's a good reference if you want to do it from the command line: http://linuxprograms.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/checkout-code-from-github/
Basically it's
git clone http://github.com/zoul/Finch.git
share|improve this answer
2014-08-29: If you want a single zip file from within a repo, rather than the whole source (eg https://github.com/JetBrains/youtrack-workflows/tree/master/Notify%20User%20Mentioned%20in%20Comment%20User) you can click the file you want and then 'View Raw' to trigger the download…
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:f4432f55-4084-4cbd-82a8-b76e26f9cd05> | 2 | 1.523438 | 0.043209 | en | 0.886649 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2751227/how-to-download-source-in-zip-format-from-github |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I understand that semicolons indicate the end of a line in languages like Java, but why?
I get asked this a lot by other people, and I can't really think of a good way to explain how it works better than just using line breaks or white space.
share|improve this question
Duplicate : stackoverflow.com/questions/10254588/… – fastcodejava Mar 13 '13 at 0:06
5 Answers 5
They don't signal end of line, they signal end of statement.
There are some languages that don't require them, but those languages don't allow multiple statements on a single line or a single statement to span multipile lines (without some other signal like VB's _ signal).
Why do some languages allow multiple statements on a line? The philosophy is that whitespace is irrelevant (an end of line character is whitespace). This allows flexibility in how the code is formatted as formatting is not part of the semantic meaning.
share|improve this answer
Ah, yes. I do know some languages that still allow multiple statements on one line, but by separating with a special character: statement1 | statement2 | statement 3, and I know some that allow one statement across multiple lines: statement 1/3 + statement 2/3 + statement 3/3 (comments don't allow multiple lines apparently, so just imagine this was 3 separate lines!) – BlueThen Jan 15 '11 at 18:46
Well, you could make the semicolon optional and use it if you want to have multiple statements in one line. This is what JavaScript does. – Tim Büthe Mar 26 '13 at 10:58
Many languages allow you to put as much spacing as you like. This allows you to be have control over how the code looks.
String result = "asdfsasdfs"
+ "asdfs"
+ "asdfsdf";
Because you are allowed to insert extra newlines you can split that line across several lines without problem. The language still needs to know the line is finished that is why you need a semicolon.
share|improve this answer
JavaScript allows this with optional semicolons, so they are not needed per se – Tim Büthe Mar 26 '13 at 11:00
If you put the + sign at the end of each line then the syntax could parsed easily without the use of semicolon. – Bernard Feb 27 at 19:20
Short answer:
Because everyone else does it.
In theory a language's statement is whatever the language designer is able to syntactically interpret when they parse your file. So if the language designer did not want to have semicolons they could have periods, dashes, spaces, newlines, or whatever to denote the separation of a statement.
Language designers often make the syntax easy to understand so that it can become popular.
Wikipedia: Semicolon Usage in Computer Languages
So if some language designer created a language that used ':-)' to denote the end of a statement it would, 1) be hard to read; 2) not be popular with people who already are used to using a ';'.
echo "Take Care" :-)
share|improve this answer
I see how it'd be pretty to a typical programmer, but I feel like that's only because they're used to this design. Why would the very first programming language to use semicolons, use it? Is it easier for the compiler? – BlueThen Jan 15 '11 at 18:52
Partially that, but JavaScript has optional semis which are nice because you CAN separate multiple statements one line if you want to. But it also produces some gotchas where not using one can lead to confusion with popular JS patterns like using parens around functions to evaluate and fire them immediately after definition. I actually enjoy white-space end-of-statements but it's never bothered me in JS where I tend to write after every line just to be explicit and avoid confusion for the next dev. It's an extra character here and there but we format in whatever fashion we like. That fits JS. – Erik Reppen Jan 8 '13 at 0:24
The languages do it, as it signifies the end of a statement, not an end of the line, which means that you can compress code, to make it smaller and take up less space.
Take the C++ code (#include <iostream>):
std::cout << "did you know?" << std::endl;
std::cout << "; signifies **end of statement**" << std::endl;
std::cout << "**not the end of the line**" << std::endl;
It could also be written
for(int i = 0; i < 5; ++i){std::cout << "did you know?" << std::endl; std::cout << "; signifies **end of statement**" << std::endl; std::cout << "**not the end of the line**" << std::endl;}
share|improve this answer
Some programming languages use it to signify the end of a statement thus making the language oblivious to white-space from a statement standpoint. One thing to bear in mid is that if at compile time you are checking for either a new line or a semicolon and then you have to asses several different "situations" the compiler might get what you wanted to do wrong, and it would take a it longer to look for those situations rather than simply looking for a semicolon at the end of the statement. Some higher level languages try to reduce semicolon use or remove it altogether in order to save a few keystrokes, this languages are more oriented toward the comfort of the programmer and generally come with all sort of syntactic sugar; one could argue that not using semicolons is a kind of syntactic sugar. The use or not of a semicolon in a language should be in according to what the language is trying to accomplish, Languages like C and C++ are mostly about performance, Java and C# are a bit higher in the abstraction sense than C and C++ and then we have things like Scala, Python and Ruby, which are made mostly to make programming more comfortable a the cost of performance,(Ruby openly admits this, and it's very pronounced on Python). So why do some languages "need" semicolons?
• Makes compiling easier
• The designer of the language thinks it's more consistent
• Historical reasons (Java, C# and C++ are also C's children for example)
and one last thing is that Javascript actually adds the semicolons during compile or before IIRC, so it's not actually semicolon free.
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:32cba7b4-9272-4e9e-86bc-23c5cc3f9a9b> | 4 | 3.671875 | 0.996394 | en | 0.906512 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4701137/why-do-some-languages-need-semicolons |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I'm trying to edit the text inside of all of the tags named "Volume" in an XML file by multiplying that text by a number entered by the user. The text inside of the "Volume" tag will always be a number. My code works so far, but only on the first instance of the "Volume" text.
Here's an example of the XML:
<moreblah> sometext </moreblah> ;
<blah3> <blah4> 30 </blah4> <Volume> 15 </Volume> </blah3>
<moreblah> sometext </moreblah> ;
<blah3> <blah4> 30 </blah4> <Volume> 25 </Volume> </blah3>
And here's my Python code:
#import modules
import xml.dom.minidom
from xml.dom.minidom import parse
import os
import fileinput
#create a backup of original file
new_file_name = 'blah.xml'
old_file_name = new_file_name + "_old"
os.rename(new_file_name, old_file_name)
#find all instances of "Volume"
doc = parse(old_file_name)
volume = doc.getElementsByTagName('Volume')[0]
child = volume.childNodes[0]
txt = child.nodeValue
#ask for percentage input
percentage = raw_input("Set Volume Percentage (1 - 100): ")
if percentage.isdigit():
if int(percentage) <101 >1:
print 'Thank You'
#append text of <Volume> tag
child.nodeValue = str(int(float(txt) * (int(percentage)/100.0)))
#persist changes to new file
xml_file = open(new_file_name, "w")
#remove XML Declaration
text = open("blah.xml", "r").read()
text = text.replace('<?xml version="1.0" ?>', '')
open("blah.xml", "w").write(text)
print 'Please enter a number between 1 and 100.'
print 'Try again.'
print 'Exiting.'
xml_file = open(new_file_name, "w")
I know that in my code, I have "doc.getElementsByTagName('Volume')[0]" which denotes the first instance of the "Volume" tag, but I was just doing that as a test to see if it would work. So I'm aware that the code is working exactly as it should. But I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions, or could tell me the easiest way to apply the user input percentage to all of the instances of the "Volume" tag.
This is also my first attempt at Python, so if you see anything else that seems weird, please let me know.
Thank you for your help!
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1 Answer 1
up vote 2 down vote accepted
You'll be much happier if you use a more modern XML API, like ElementTree (in the standard library) or lxml (more advanced).
In ElementTree or lxml you get access to XPath (or something close), which allows for a much more flexible syntax in finding elements and attributes in XML documents.
In ElementTree:
volumes = my_parsed_xml_file.find('.//Volume')
...will find all occurrences of the Volume element.
If you stick with the current syntax, by doing:
...you're specifically asking for the zero-th (first) Volume. If you want to process them all, you want a loop:
for volume in doc.getElementsByTagName('Volume'):
child = volume.childNodes[0]
// ... rest of your code inside the loop
If constructs like loops are unfamiliar to you, you should probably step back and read an introductory programming guide, as things will get pretty complicated quickly without some fundamentals. Best of luck!
share|improve this answer
Thank you so much Liza! That worked. I ended sticking with the minidom instead of going with ElementTree though. The loop function works great, but the only problem is that the user must input a percentage for each instance of the Volume tag. Is there an easier way to tell the raw_input to look at the last input and continue using it? – user693333 Apr 8 '11 at 18:19
Nevermind! I got it to work...thank you so much again Liza! – user693333 Apr 8 '11 at 18:31
Great! Glad to hear it worked. Have fun with Python and XML, they're a great combination. – Liza Daly Apr 8 '11 at 19:51
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:33d8fe4a-7736-4c36-8804-c566450a88bd> | 2 | 2.421875 | 0.708098 | en | 0.806927 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5587644/editing-all-text-in-childnodes-of-xml-file-with-python |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I have an existing MFC application which runs fine in default DPI ( 96 dpi) in Windows 7. But when I increase the DPI by 150 % the UI gets distorted. I have fixed issues using scroll bars at certain level and referred to msdn article. I am wondering how can I get the current DPI of a system using MFC code so that set the height and widht of a dialog.
Please suggest!!
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3 Answers 3
First you need to get the device context for your screen. This is easy, just call GetDC, like this:
HDC screen = GetDC(0);
Then you ask for the device capabilities of that device context. In your case, you need the pixels along the X- and Y-axis per inch:
int dpiX = GetDeviceCaps (screen, LOGPIXELSX);
int dpiY = GetDeviceCaps (screen, LOGPIXELSY);
(see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd144877(v=vs.85).aspx for more information about GetDeviceCaps).
Finally, release the device context again:
ReleaseDC (0, screen);
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Following on from Patrick's answer, you might also like to read this Microsoft tutorial on writing high DPI aware user interface:
share|improve this answer
The below code snippet gave me the correct DPI in Win7
ID2D1Factory* m_pDirect2dFactory;
D2D1CreateFactory(D2D1_FACTORY_TYPE_SINGLE_THREADED, &m_pDirect2dFactory);
FLOAT dpiX, dpiY;
m_pDirect2dFactory->GetDesktopDpi( &dpiX, &dpiY );
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:50218d38-1cd7-44b6-b8df-7e7f68170975> | 2 | 1.679688 | 0.393477 | en | 0.809812 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5991546/how-to-get-the-current-dpi-of-a-system-in-mfc-application?answertab=oldest |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
For an iPhone Firemonkey application I am storing files (images) in the 'tmp' folder and using them in my application. I want to be able flush the cache by deleting say all of the '.jpg' files on demand, but I cannot seem to programatically match them in a FindFirst() call.
I am using a simple FindFirst() / FindNext() / FindClose() loop to list (and delete) the contents of a folder.
Under windows the code works perfectly. The same application under iOS (iPhone) is always returning a value of -1 (error) for the FindFirst() call, and SearchRec.Name is blank. I have tried using various file patterns including '.' with no success.
I know the files exist because I can read and write to them (under both iOS and windows) without error, and their contents is correct. A FileExists() check also returns True.
Also, if I specify a file pattern with no wildcard, to check for a known file (which really isn't the point of a FindFirst() call), the call never returns (again this is fine under windows)!
Has anyone had any success with this under iOS and can offer any thoughts?
EDIT: Code snippet as requested which demonstrates the problem. Note: _sFolderName contains the cache folder name which I have confirmed is definitely correct.
function GetCacheFileList : string;
iResult: integer;
sr: TSearchRec;
sTemp: string;
sFilename : TFilename;
sTemp := '';
sFilename := _sFolderName + '*.jpg';
iResult := FindFirst(sFilename, faAnyFile, sr); // ALWAYS RETURNS -1 under iOS
while (iResult = 0) do
sTemp := sTemp + sr.Name + sLineBreak;
iResult := FindNext(sr)
end; { while }
Result := sTemp
share|improve this question
Could you post some code to reproduce the issue? Did you use the specific POSIX path separator '/' instead of '\'? I'm not convinced the 'tmp' folder is the place to implement a cache. Did you try in another folder? – Arnaud Bouchez Nov 21 '11 at 7:00
Which code doesnt work? – Premature Optimization Nov 21 '11 at 7:08
Hi AB, yes the path separators are correct (for both windows and iOS). Have since discovered there is a /library/caches/ folder which I am now using, but same result. I will post some code above, but it is pretty unremarkable stuff. I have also been informed that there was a bug in FreePascal's file handling in iOS which may be fixed in 2.6.0rc1, which I will try in the next day or so when I get back to it. Thanks for your suggestions (+1). – Peter Nov 22 '11 at 21:23
3 Answers 3
up vote 0 down vote accepted
This has been fixed under XE2 update 3
share|improve this answer
I don't know if Delphi XE 2 is shipped with headers from iOS SDK, but you can generate them for FreePascal(read here). And then use this method via standard API:
{$modeswitch objectivec1}
iPhoneAll, CFBase, CFString;
TFileList = record
Count : Integer;
Items : array of String;
procedure file_Find( const Directory : String; var List : TFileList; FindDir : Boolean = FALSE );
i : Integer;
fileManager : NSFileManager;
dirContent : NSArray;
path : NSString;
fileName : array[ 0..255 ] of Char;
error : NSErrorPointer;
isDirectory : Boolean;
fileManager := NSFileManager.alloc().init();
path := NSString( CFStr( PChar( Directory ) ) );
dirContent := fileManager.contentsOfDirectoryAtPath_error( path, error );
List.Count := 0;
fileManager.changeCurrentDirectoryPath( path );
for i := 0 to dirContent.count() - 1 do
if FindDir Then
if ( fileManager.fileExistsAtPath_isDirectory( dirContent.objectAtIndex( i ), @isDirectory ) ) and ( not isDirectory ) Then continue;
end else
if ( fileManager.fileExistsAtPath_isDirectory( dirContent.objectAtIndex( i ), @isDirectory ) ) and ( isDirectory ) Then continue;
SetLength( List.Items, List.Count + 1 );
FillChar( fileName[ 0 ], 256, 0 );
CFStringGetCString( CFStringRef( dirContent.objectAtIndex( i ) ), @fileName[ 0 ], 255, kCFStringEncodingUTF8 );
List.Items[ List.Count ] := PChar( @fileName[ 0 ] );
INC( List.Count );
This function returns record TFileList with array of all found files(or directories). Then you can just pars names of files and do something with jpg-files.
share|improve this answer
Hi Andru, Thanks for your comment and the link to Phil's website (which I had previously bookmarked - he seems to be the go-to man on FPC and iOS). My first choice is to use the standard pascal calls as I ultimately want as much platform independence as possible (for windows and possibly android support in say XE3). Using cocoa (with a bit of conditional compilation) as you have described however is my fallback position and quite possibly one which I will go with. Appreciate your assistance (+1). – Peter Nov 23 '11 at 21:17
I don't know how well FindFirst, etc are supported on non-Windows platforms, but I do recall someone from the Delphi team saying once that the routines in the IOUtils unit are specifically designed to make file I/O work right for cross-platform coding. Have you tried using the file search methods on TDirectory?
share|improve this answer
Nice thought (+1), however as with a lot of the newer Delphi features, they aren't really supported cross platform since, in the case of iOS, the compilation takes place under XCode using the free pascal compiler, which doesn't support these features. – Peter Nov 21 '11 at 5:45
Findfirst works fine in general on FPC. But I don't use iOS, so it might be something iOS specific. I don't know if iOS supports ktrace/strace/truss like functionality, but that would be my thing to try. Afaik most of the pseudo OOP routines in recent delphi's call the old procedural versions. – Marco van de Voort Nov 24 '11 at 15:52
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:d0d931c0-cfef-473a-9dea-ce187d12bd1e> | 2 | 1.851563 | 0.021226 | en | 0.842446 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8207377/is-findfirst-buggy-under-xe2-firemonkey-using-ios?answertab=active |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
Consider this
Thread 1 in user program:
buf = malloc(9000);
memset(buf, 0xee, 9000);
read(buf, 9000); //for example gives pages [part of 7, 8, 9, part of 10]
Thread 2 in user program:
buf = malloc(9000); //for example gives pages [part of 4, 6, 5, part of 7]
memset(buf, 0xee, 9000);
read(buf, 9000);
Driver read:
//build dma sg list from pages
//the platform demands a cachesync
for(all pages) {
//start dma and wait for it to be done
wait_event_interruptible_timeout(); //blocks calling thread until dma done
for(all pages) {
if(read) SetPageDirty();
Note that page 7 is used by both transfers, and that was a big problem sometimes resulting in bad data (0xee is found in the end of one buf). Just to make it clear, the two reads runs on different DMA channels, so they can run simultaneously.
My solution was to page align the buffers in the user program so that 2 driver DMA will never share parts of the same page.
I wonder if there is another solution for this? I also wonder why exactly this was a big problem.
share|improve this question
This is probably quite platform specific - the requirement to invalidate the cache suggests you're running on an embedded system. Were the two buffers close enough to share a cache line, or are there other limitations in your platform errata? – Adrian Cox Mar 2 '12 at 9:49
Yes it's a ppc440ep, and the buffers are probably close enough. A cache line is 32 bytes, and i have only seen 4-12 bytes broken/unchanged. Can there exist 2 different versions of the same physical memory in the cache? And when i do wback in one thread, can it destroy data for the other? There are no erratas that are not considered as far as i know. But what about get_user_pages? What happens when it returns 2 different versions of the same page? If get_user_pages and page_cache_release from the different threads becomes interleaved. – Ronnie Mar 2 '12 at 10:43
I'm not totally clear of what get_user_pages/page_cache_release does, except giving med the physical addresses to the pages. There are no disc cache or anything on this system, only memory and cpu-cache. – Ronnie Mar 2 '12 at 10:50
1 Answer 1
up vote 1 down vote accepted
This is a limitation of your embedded processor, and DMA that isn't cache coherent. On high end PowerPC chips this problem goes away.
Your two buffers share a cache line at the point they meet. At the same time that one thread is in the driver writing the cache to RAM, the second thread is still in memset filling the cache line with 0xee.
DMA 1 writes your data to RAM, but the processor still holds a dirty cache line for that data, containing 0xee. When the second thread writes out the cache, it puts the 0xee over the data that came from DMA1.
The solutions are:
1. Cache-align your buffers (highest performance).
2. Use bounce buffers in the kernel driver (most compatible with existing user space code).
The get_user_pages() isn't part of the problem here - this is about hardware and timing.
share|improve this answer
I think you are right about it beeing a cache issue, but i also think i have seen errors without using memset, because there were no memset before debugging this problem... But maybe reading a buffer after DMA 1 is done, can make the cache read back 0xee into the cache before DMA 2 is done? – Ronnie Mar 2 '12 at 11:18
malloc will also touch data around the ends of the buffers for heap maintenance. That may be sufficient. – Adrian Cox Mar 2 '12 at 11:20
Yes, this sounds like an explanation. – Ronnie Mar 2 '12 at 11:23
Your answer made me think further.. and I realize there may be a 2nd valid explanation for this... when thread one is processing (reading) the data after DMA 1 is done, it will make the cpu read back 0xee perhaps mixed with DMA 2 data into the cache before DMA 2 is done (thus making dma_cache_wback_inv() useless for DMA 2). Because I have seen invalid data just after DMA is done, but then magically it is later correct... The solution is still the same - cache aligning the data (For us it's not a good option to double the memory used, and demand a memcpy). – Ronnie Mar 5 '12 at 14:03
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:c789ac30-049a-4b1f-b358-7c13c705eda2> | 2 | 2.25 | 0.228601 | en | 0.889328 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9529818/simultaneous-dma-to-user-memory?answertab=oldest |
RSA Debate
Round 1, Part 1
(posted Friday, September 13, 2002)
Darkstar, we have many disagreements on many, many, many subjects, but for this debate, I will focus on your so-called "Death Star chain-reaction theory". However, as a matter of basic principle, it is impossible to hold a rational discussion based on the evidence without first determining what the evidence is, ie- what is admissible. Therefore, we must deal with the issue of Star Wars continuity first.
When we try to rationalize a fictional universe, any fan can arguably use any rules of admissibility that he likes, and as long as he is CONSISTENT in the use of that definition, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it. I have even dealt with fans who refuse to recognize the Star Wars prequel trilogy! However, objective discussion and analysis is impossible without a widely accepted standard, so we generally defer to the copyright holder. There are TWO kinds of legal copyright: property rights and so-called "moral rights", which go to the legal owner and original creator respectively. In the case of Star Wars, the intellectual property rights are held by Lucasfilm, and moral rights reside with George Lucas. This is a trivial distinction since Mr. Lucas owns Lucasfilm, but it's a much bigger issue with some other sci-fi series.
In any case, you have the following to say on your Canon page:
"Recently, Lucas cleared up the messy issue by explaining that the books, games, and comic books are part of a parallel universe, another world created separately from his own (Lucas in Cinescape). By design, the settings in time of the parallel universe do not intrude on his movie time period, since LucasBooks disallows authors from playing with events and periods of time that Lucas intends to use. LucasBooks tries to use the events in the Canon universe in the parallel universe, but the fact that it is a parallel universe explains why Lucas isn't bound by it (as stated by Sansweet)."
You conclude (in your preface) that "the Expanded Universe is NOT part of the official story of Star Wars". Unfortunately for you, this is a non sequitur. Yes, official material is not canon, but the overall continuity includes more than just the canon! It also includes most of the official materials, as stated clearly by the Lucasfilm continuity editors:
Therefore, if you want to dismiss the EU, you must do more than merely show that it is non-canon; you must show that it is NOT part of the larger OVERALL CONTINUITY, whose existence you seem to deny. Of course, you feel that you can appeal to a higher power than Lucasfilm's continuity editors: George Lucas himself. To this end, you chose to reference "Lucas in Cinescape" with phrases taken out of context rather than the full quote. Luckily, I happen to have the full quote here. Mr. Lucas said:
"There's my world, which is the movies, and there's this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe - the licensing world of the books, games and comic books. They don't intrude on my world, which is a select period of time, [but] THEY DO INTRUDE IN BETWEEN THE MOVIES. I don't get too involved in the parallel universe." (emphasis added)
It's pretty obvious why you chose to take the phrase "parallel universe" out of context rather than providing the full quote, isn't it? Once we look at the full quote, we can see that he's actually saying that the official material is valid for all points in the Star Wars timeline other than the movies themselves! Your entire argument is based on a quote which, when viewed in its entirety, directly CONTRADICTS you!
Let us review. You said: "the Expanded Universe is NOT part of the official story of Star Wars". George Lucas said: "They don't intrude on my world, which is a select period of time, [but] they DO intrude in between the movies." Sorry, but George's opinion counts for more than yours. Of course, EU material isn't 100% reliable, but the same could be said of ANY historical source, which is why they must be evaluated as such. The canon films can be thought of as footage of "real" events, while the EU is relegated to the status of historical source (equivalent to books, government records, etc. in real life), but it cannot be discarded out of hand the way you would like, because George made it quite clear that the world of the books DOES "intrude" into his continuity.
I will refrain from going over old arguments. You have whined for days that it would be unfair to use your own history against you, and many observers will be unfamiliar with them anyway, so I will make a fresh start. Your basic claim is that the Death Star induces an exothermal chain reaction of unknown properties in Alderaan, rather than simply transferring a huge amount of power into it and destroying it. This strikes most people as absurd; after all, the opening crawl of ANH states quite clearly that the Death Star is "an armored space station with enough POWER to destroy an entire planet" (perhaps you've never watched the film).
In any case, you claim to have conclusive evidence that the opening crawl of the canon movie is wrong. According to you, the superlaser strikes Alderaan (and you deny the existence of its shield) but damages very little of the planet (you picked an arbitrary 20-30% figure out of thin air, as I recall). Instead of heating the planet or directly causing it to expand, you claim that the superlaser creates an "anti-Genesis effect" which moves over the surface of the planet, spreading outward from the point of contact until it eventually covers the entire surface (I have no idea what you're trying to accomplish by introducing Trek-based red herrings, but there it is). As evidence for your bizarre sci-fi technological cross-pollination theory, you cite the fact that the explosion of the far side of the planet lags behind that of the near side, thus implying that the heating/expansion effect of the superlaser's energy transfer is not instantaneously uniform throughout the entire planet's mass and proving the existence of your mysterious exothermal chain reaction (there are some monstrous logical and scientific problems with this "reasoning", but this post will be long enough as it is, so I will restrict myself to discussion of the evidence itself for now).
Note: all frames are digitized from my CLV laserdiscs and then inverse-telecined to the original 24fps theatrical framerate for timebase correction. The screenshots are taken from my best-quality Divx-encoded version of the film, not the lower-resolution low-bandwidth version which I made available for download from the Alderaan page (that one was transcoded from the master copy). If it should turn out that you have misrepresented the evidence, then any conclusions you have drawn from your analyses would be judged accordingly. You only made comments on a handful of frames, but I will include a large number of them for the sake of comprehensiveness, and to demonstrate some phenomena which apparently slipped under your radar:
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 0
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 1
According to you: "The white flash of the superlaser strike." Yes, there's a white flash, but you neglect to mention the "halo effect" outside the atmosphere on the right-hand side, and the unaffected oceans and clouds underneath. Perhaps you weren't paying close attention?
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 2
Rapid propagation of halo effect, which now covers nearly the entire hemisphere despite visibly unaffected oceans underneath. Note rapid propagation of halo effect (perhaps one quarter of the planet's circumference in 1/24 second, which is roughly 0.8c). The halo effect is probably a visible manifestation of the planetary shield's reradiation mechanism.
According to you: "The firey explosion begins, mostly near the beam." Again, I must ask: were you paying attention? There is no fiery explosion; there is luminescence but nothing is being thrown away from the planet, and we can clearly see unaffected oceans underneath. Moreover, your contention that it is "mostly near the beam" is simply absurd; the planetary shield is now visibly glowing over nearly a full hemisphere.
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 3
Dramatic intensification of halo effect, which is now so bright that it saturates the video medium. Note that the effect intensifies but does not travel much farther around the planet, which is typical of shield absorption/re-radiation characteristics as seen in TPM; they can only dissipate the energy over a limited surface area around the point of contact. The enormous rate of energy dissipation is obviously going to overload the shield's energy handling limits shortly. Without a planetary shield, it would be extremely difficult to explain why the propagation rate starts off so quickly and then slows down so dramatically.
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 4
Slight change in the halo effect's physical appearance, although the coverage area has not dramatically changed (note that the far side is still blue). However, the sudden unevenness and colour changes may indicate that the shield has failed. This would imply that the superlaser is drilling into the planet's mass already, although the sheer scale means that there will be a measurable time lag before the surface expands (even at 5% of c, it would take 1 frame for a lower mantle expansion to breach the surface and 5 frames for a core expansion to breach the surface). Intensification without forward progress is consistent with a shield, but not with your mysterious surface-level chain reaction.
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 5
Planetary explosion begins outright. The fire rings must have appeared somewhere between frames 4 and 5, and they are already 1500 km away from surface. Note that they are centred around the planet's core and aligned with the camera angle, not the superlaser.
According to you: "The rings and a band of brightness around the center of the beam appear. The band will encircle the globe". What is this band, Darkstar? I don't see any "band"; at best, there are irregularities in the brightness, which are hardly inexplicable in a chaotic explosion. You also say: "the first ring has appeared all the way around the planet, even though that left side (with atmosphere, even) still seems to be stable. (That's the last frame of the superlaser.) Assuming anyone was still alive at this point on the other side of the planet, they must've wondered what the hell was going on."
In short, there is a blue tinge at the far side which you use as proof that the far side is completely unaffected. However, one should not read too much into a blue tinge, as we can see in the screenshot below:
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 5, with frame 0 inverted and superimposed
We can see that the planet has already been heated up to such an extent that glowing material has been hurled at least 100-200 km away from the surface at all points around the planet, INCLUDING the far side. I doubt anyone would be lazily "wondering what the hell was going on" when the ground beneath his feet has been heated up to such an extent that it has shot up into the sky and out of the atmosphere!
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 6
Continued expansion. Rings expand another 4600 km, thus indicating average velocity of more than 1/3c. Planetary mass continues to expand and heat dramatically, which would be consistent with a blast that expands its mass from within.
According to you: "The next frame shows the superlaser target point much darker, with a band of greater brightness around it that reminds me of the Genesis Effect." I must ask: are you watching a different version of the film than the rest of us? Where is this "band of greater brightness" around the superlaser contact point? Are you referring to the fact that the entire planet is glowing and expanding, with two thirds of it expanding at a slightly greater rate? And did you notice that the reddish, or "darkened" region is centred around the MIDDLE of the planet, and not the superlaser contact point as you claim, which was well to the right? Your analysis is certainly starting off on the wrong foot when you seem to develop a case of hysterical blindness while examining the evidence! And what is this "Anti-Genesis Effect"? I don't see any "Anti-Genesis Effect!" All I see is a planet which is rapidly expanding, albeit with a slight asymmetry that is easily explained by energy propagation delay through the planet's mass.
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 7
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 8
According to you: "A couple of frames later, the band of brightness has expanded, as have the rings, and the dark patch where the superlaser hit is darker." Again, you seem to be inventing observations out of thin air. The dark patch is now well to the left, while the superlaser was well to the right. And the "band" is white-hot matter shooting into space around the entire planet.
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 9
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 10
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 11
According to you: "It is only when the leftmost section of the ring almost leaves the frame that the band of brightness seems to reach the leftmost horizon of the planet." You go on to conclude that the far side of the planet was basically untouched until this point! However, when we superimpose the colour-inverted planet on the frame, we get:
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 11, with frame 0 inverted and superimposed
In this view, it is clear that while there is SOME asymmetry in the explosion, it is easily explained through propagation delays, which are measurable on a planetary scale even at significant fractions of c. Perhaps you have a modified version of the film in your imagination? That is not a "band of brightness"; it is countless billions upon billions of tons of superheated debris flying away from the planet in all directions! The debris field is already 500 km away from the surface at the closest point, and thousands of km away at the farthest point. Again, I must ask if you have some kind of vision problem. This expansion continues for a while, so we skip ahead a few frames to:
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 27
Secondary burst begins (you can see that the initial burst is slightly up and to the left, although it is difficult to discern what's going on through the light and debris). Note that the fire ring has slowed down dramatically. After expanding at a rate of more than 1/3 c between frames 5 and 6, it has covered only 22,000 km in the 21 frames since then, for an average velocity of only 25,000 km/s. This indicates that it is SLOWING DOWN despite the lack of a natural braking mechanism in space! It would be a gross understatement to say that the fire rings are a curious phenomenon.
Of course, you didn't notice that, but you DID have enough time to say "This secondary explosion is apparently much larger than the first, though it doesn't appear as bright in the first moments (it may have on the opposite side of the planet). It appears to be centered somewhere behind the core of the planet. The second ring is also larger and much faster than the first. The secondary explosion also gives us our first observation of large debris material, appearing to come from the former location of the center of the planet, headed in the general direction the superlaser had come from."
Again, I must ask: are you inventing observations in your imagination now? If the second explosion is off-centre, why does its fire ring line up with the first one? And where is this debris heading TOWARD the Death Star that you describe? The next few frames clearly show an explosion that is skewed to the LEFT, not the right:
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 28
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 29
Second "fire ring" appears. Note that it matches the first one in both location and alignment, thus indicating that despite the irregular appearance of the "secondary burst", it is still roughly centred on the planet's original core location.
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 30
The second fire ring continues to expand, rapidly catching up to the first one which is mysteriously continuing to lose velocity.
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 31
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 32
The second fire ring has nearly caught up to the first fire ring.
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 33
The second fire ring meets the first ring.
Alderaan Explosion
Frame 34
The second fire ring has merged with the first fire ring and both are continuing outward. Note the lack of violent interactions between the two fire rings.
After apparently mutilating the evidence in your mind, you conclude: "This suggests that the superlaser only directly destroyed the part of the planet facing it in those first few milliseconds, since there would be no particular reason for a higher concentration of bulk material (from the core or otherwise) to head toward the original location of the beam. It would have to be either because that area of the planet no longer existed (providing no resistance), and/or because something (the secondary explosion, produced somehow by the bands) was giving it a good shove from behind. This also serves to explain why so much of the material of the secondary explosion seemed to fly away and behind the planet, while larger pieces flew forward."
However, since the explosion does NOT hurl any more material back toward the Death Star than it does in any other direction, your "observation" turns out to be a fabrication, along with any conclusions reliant upon it.
Of course, I recognize that you hang your hat mostly upon the "fire rings" rather than these grossly mistaken observations of yours, but we must deal with one point at a time, in a linear progression. Your analysis of the Alderaan blast appears to be based on either serious vision problems, dishonesty, or perhaps a seriously corrupted version of the film (perhaps you watched it on VHS and were unable to distinguish the well-known colour-bleed problems of the format from the underlying movie).
Are you willing to concede that you have either misrepresented the evidence or seen an extremely poor-quality copy of it? I have presented clear evidence that the entire planet is ALREADY expanding in frame 5, its asymmetry is actually skewed AWAY from the superlaser and not toward it as you say, there is NOT an unusual concentration of debris heading back toward the Death Star, the "dark spot" is NOT located at the superlaser contact point, and the two explosions are NOT significantly off-centre from one another. To contest these points would be nearly absurd, since the evidence is in plain view, from the highest-quality available source.
If you are willing to concede that your observations are faulty, we can move onto your "fire ring" fallacies in our next exchange (assuming that you pick up this challenge and continue this debate).
See RSA's response
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Melee Weapons
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Sanguine Widowmaker
A tool of war, given free will to foster stife and conflict, that used that very same free will to become a messenger of peace.
From the hilt to the tip of the three foot long blade, the Sanguine Widowmaker is a terror to behold - purple steel is covered in writhing red runes that, upon closer inspection, coalesce into scenes of people being slain and mutilated, burning towns and horrors from beyond. When drawn, it fills the air with a chilling sound resembling the whine of tortured infants and the crackling of a forest fire.
The sword’s guard is made of demon bone, painfully white, and the hilt is draped in human skin.
The history is long and mostly forgotten, and only the wisest sags know of its origins.
Once, the tribe of Bra-Koras, a mounain-dwelling clan of part time shepherds but mostly brigands and pillagers, was beset hard by its enemies, the Plainsmen, who were weak yet great numbers were theirs. Rummagil, the chieftain and shaman in one person, consulted with demons to grant him a weapon terrible enough to end this war. He was granted a blade that caused fear in all who gazed upon it and cut through flesh like it was mist.
Still, the numbers of his enemies were too great to overcome, and man by man fell around Rummagil, until, bereft of his comrades, he stood alone. Splitting skulls and severing heads, he fought like a thousand devils, but with his blood running from a myriad of scratches his strength left him, and he collapsed upon a heap of foes and friends alike. With his dying breath, he said: “Someone will win this war another day, and this sword shall be his sign!”
Only Rummagil’s wife was left alive, and taken as a slave. She later became known as the Mournful Widow, for she wept until her eyes went blind.
Memories, desires and fears mingled with the chieftain’s wish as they dripped from the souls the blade’s magic had maimed, and seeped into the blade, the wish forging them into a whole. The blade was taken as a trophy.
Centuries later, the Plainsmen lands have grown into an empire that ruled lands beyond all horizons, and millions of slaves toiled to maintain its glory. In the greatest of palaces, all trophies were displayed, amongst them this blade. A common man, Dietrich by name, discontent with his powerty, broke into the palace and stole the blade, along with jewelry and coin.
How surprised was he when it spoke to him, in a voice like steel being forged and bones snapping: “Not only you shall be lifted from your lowly stature, but the empire shall crumble. Follow my advice…”
Dietrich first fled the imperial heartlands, yet the pursuit drove him to side with rebels to find a hiding place, and that’s where his quest to shatter the empire began. Swift of mind and quick of limb, he assumed a leader’s position soon, and became a thorn in the side of the empire, one that would tear the side open.
All the time, he was advised by his blade, which, due to being not only a tool of war, but having absorbed memories from several dozen different men, began to get interested in his everyday life - interests, women, sports, music, it soon became his trusted friend.
Then, the day came when the rebel troops stood before the gates of Tehet, the imperial capitol, and tore them down. Great was the celebration, and the Emperor’s head was displayed on a pole. Dietrich was crowned, and all seemed well, until, the very same night, one of his generals murdered him, and all the other leaders, except for one, who fled the capitol with the blade, even as Betruk the Traitor spread his lies.
The treacherous general was crowned then, and took Dietrich’s wife for his own, yet he did not rule well, for he was selfish, wrathful and arrogant. Soon, there was another revolution, with Drannor, the general who escaped assasssination, being its leader. Flames of war were fanned again. This time, it was Betruk’s head that adorned a pole and served as food for ravens.
All the time, the Crimson Widowmaker was watching over Drannor, guarding him in his sleep, being his advisor and guide, and confidant. It was his trusted arm until one day, on the field of battle, he fell, having trusted the blade’s power too much and charging the enemy ranks solitarily. His beloved took up the burden of kingship, and became the first queen of Tahr-Shanir.
The sword vanished, until it was brought forth a century later, it’s bearer an inexperienced youth itent on uniting the fragmented lands of Tahr-Shanir, and so he did, and became a great ruler, until politics and treachery drove him mad, and he impaled himself on his trusty blade after discovering that his beloved wife has cheated on him with his most trusted general.
Again and again, the sword accompanied heroes, yet like heroes tend to, none of them died in bed. While many grieved for them, most grief was felt by the sword who had befriended every one of them, and it became weary. No longer would it lead its charges into battle, no longer would it help forge plans for war. People tend to die in wars, and it certainly had enough of death already.
Since then, it has given advice only for peace and negotiation, and dissuaded its charges from fighting, shielding them, yet preventing bloodshed in any way possible. With the intimate knowledge of the human mind it has gathered through the ages, it has learned to intimidate, sway and persuade rather than maim, mangle and decapitate.
It has accompanied Tramun the Sage, the advisor of King Lothran, the Peacemaker, who built the White Border of Illune, which could keep all foes at bay and thus made arms unnecessary and forbidden there.
It has the guide of Braniu Flower-Mane, who planted the bessed Cirrumu trees that increased harvest and warded off storms all over the countryside, and until today, the trees bear fruit that soothes the spirit and leads men to love and not to rage.
It was at the side of Tonmu Whiteshield, who led the oppressed people of Bilthis to the Isle of Rui, where they settled in peace, and do so today, in worship of their lamb-god.
And so it has since been travelling, once found in the hands of a king, once a hermit, then a farmer’s lad.
It is mellowed with age, and pleasant in its manner, never raising its voice, though the ominous sound when it is unsheathed remains, as does its intimidating appearance. It does not want to be widely known, and does not take credit for the deeds of those it aided. Indeed, all it wants is to keep people, especially those it grew fond of, safe.
As for manners, it is polite, and does only offer suggestions, though it feels free to offer comments on virtually anything from cooking to bed affairs. Not trying to be noxious, it is yet stubborn as hell and will try to be useful. Generally, if nothing extraordinary happens, it will behave like a man in his fifties after having led a successful life - jovial, self-confident, pleasant… yet it will become agitated if the owner tries to get himself or others killed - then the Sanguine Widowmaker can become masterfully unpleasant, chastising the offender like he was a little child, until he’s red with shame.
Though no longer warlike, the Sanguine Widowmaker is still driven to change things, and so it will try one of two approaches towards an owner: if he is ambitious and driven, it will try to steer his course to further peace, say aid him in taking a seat in a council, or help him become a king’s advisor, or perhaps gain admission to an university to learn and be able to foster understandning better.
If the owner is amiable yet not ambitious or competent, it
will aid him in leading a pleasant life, like settling down, having kids and the like. This is also true for old, jaded adventurers - after Rundorus the Mighty has persuaded the dreaded Dragon legions to build houses and cultivate turnips, he bought a piece of land right next to them, and came over for a game of bridge every weekend for the next twenty years to come.
If it dislikes a person who claims it, or does not see any more use in belonging to an owner, it will get lost, fall out of the scabbard or the like.
*Make it fight again! A mighty weapon is needed. Yet the only one available is a pacifist. How to you make it fight once more?
*Peace is a hard fight: Aid a general who has become peaceful due to his sword in defending his country, best if it can be done without shedding a drop of blood.
*How can my heart be at peace? A noble lady fell in love with a vigilante who saved her from robbers by disarming them with his runic blade and spanking their behinds. Find the mysterious stranger so that she can finally thank him.
Magical Properties:
The Sanguine Widowmaker is a mighty sword, sharp as a razor, able to cut an anvil if you try hard enough. It can shred souls, thus being able to harm spirits and make those slain unavailable for resurrection.
One who weilds it in battle will be shielded from arrows and similar missiles, only hand weapons being able to harm him.
Anyone struck by a blow of the Sanguine Widowmaker will feel a tingle of fear in his heart, and only the bravest of man stand their ground when facing its fury.
While it is truly formiddable, it will not use these abilities nowadays. Instead, it will unbuckle trousers and cut belts, strike with the flat of its blade or mangle armor joints, freezing the limb in place. Foes will be disarmed as their blades shatter upon being struck by the runic steel. If the situation is dire enough, it will cut tendons and cripple joints.
A strange property of the blade is that if the owner is male, he WILL live shorter than a woman he loves - even if that means that she’d live to be two hundred and two. Either his life will end earlier (most likely if he used the sword to fight) or she will just live longer, healthy and able to mourn his death. In the end, a Widowmaker will stay a Widowmaker.
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Comments ( 19 )
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January 13, 2005, 10:53
It is nice to see intelligent items having their own needs rather than just being someone to do PC's biddings and just be an extra NPC for the GM to play.
This is an item worthy of a novel. And given the size of the post, you are well on your way :)
The only comment I can really make on this one is that you could put an extra return between paragraphs to make it easier to read.
Cheka Man
January 13, 2005, 13:59
At first I thought...not another Magic Sword. But this is different, it has it's own personality. :) 5/5
January 13, 2005, 16:27
First let me voice my one, and only criticism. I dont like the physcial description of the blade, in that it is purple steel with glowing runes that writh about, and emitting the wail of tortured infants. This is a masterful post, but the description lacks the subtly deserving of such a weapon.
When drawn, young children will find themselves wailing. Their mothers will not be able to sooth them so long as the blade is drawn within their immediate vicinity (say 100 to 200 feet). Shadows cast by fires will take on the form of macabre plays of silent violence, massacres and slaughterings seen only in shade and shadow. Fires pop and hiss more vigorously when the blade is drawn. This way, it is the enviroment reacting to the drawn blade, rather than a moaning sword with wiggling squiggles.
Now for the praise. I was enthralled by this piece. I generally despize magical weapons as so few are done well, rather being Sword of +X superpower. I love the story, and read it twice just to make sure I didnt miss anything really good in it. Well done! Kudos.
January 13, 2005, 16:33
Okay, your desription is scarier, that's true ;)
Ancient Gamer
January 13, 2005, 23:34
I agree with Scrasamax concerning the appearance of the blade, other than that it is very, very good. 5/5
January 14, 2005, 4:58
I will think about the appearance and alter it a bit.
January 14, 2005, 5:30
I don't know - I quite like your original appearance. An excellent post though. 5/5.
January 14, 2005, 17:01
I love this idea. An intelligent item that will certainly not be able to be "bullied" by it's owner. It's good to see an item that is truly intelligent! 5/5
I wonder...when it speaks to it's owner, does it actually speak, or is it some sort of telepathic link? Or does the owner even hear actual words...is it just a feeling or a sense that he "knows" what to do?
Barbarian Horde
January 16, 2005, 19:27
Dragoon God here, I love how you made the history so extensive, and rich with detail. the sword is terrifying to look at, yet good hearted as any noble knight, with some awsome magic skills,great job!
January 17, 2005, 4:31
Thanks for the laurels...
As for speech, the Sanguine Widowmaker can speak out loudly yet rarely does so... most often, he will simply nudge a person he has not forged a relationship with yet into the right direction, and will speak into the mind of a friend.
February 9, 2005, 12:34
Pete, try to send here also Ranthor. It is also useful sword...but worst...but just a little bit :)
February 11, 2005, 1:12
Great storyline. Most people would have stopped with a really cool weapon concept but you went that extra, unexpected step.I didn't mind the appearance but anything involving "...the whine of tortured infants.." makes my fatherly skin crawl. Not a criticism, mind you just being a dad.
February 11, 2005, 2:55
Don't worry, I've got several younger siblings, several being justkids, and plan to have kids someday myself, and would never harm a kid, nor wish harm on a child.
Mature people can handle such topics responsibly, and certainly do not delight in them, but they may be useful for gameplay to evoke a certain emotional response - for example, if youwere amongst the players encountering the Sanguine Widowmaker, the response would be exactly as intended - to creep you out, get scared and certainly not trust that cursed piece of iron, even though it might state that its intentions are lily-white.
Perhaps there should be a box to check if a post is not suitable for audiences under a certain age, due to violence, or sexual content?
February 11, 2005, 9:47
Actually you should note it on the top of the post - first line, so they can't miss it... and if they do... and are offended... it is their own fault.
February 11, 2005, 12:20
Good hint, MoonHunter. Thanks.
Voted Michael Jotne Slayer
January 5, 2006, 11:53
Bravo. Splendid post. I must have missed this when it was posted.
Voted Murometz
April 1, 2006, 21:58
Only voted
Voted valadaar
August 21, 2006, 20:20
Only voted
Voted Kassil
August 30, 2006, 5:34
Only voted
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By: Cheka Man
A demagogue imimates the warrior-king or military officer of a long past age-his followers have the uniforms and weapons of that past time and are a dangerous group.
Ideas ( Society/ Organization ) | September 28, 2005 | View | UpVote 0xp
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I spend a lot of my job writing documentation for the installation of software on my employer's servers. Sometimes this is quite complicated, so I do the initial work inside a virtual machine running in VirtualBox, and take snapshots at each successful milestone.
Depending on what my machine is up to, the amount of changes that have been made since the last snapshot and so-on, the snapshot generation can take a number of minutes to complete. During this time the virtual machine is still responsive and I can continue using it.
If I kick off a snapshot, am I able to continue working, knowing that the machine's state was stored at the beginning of the snapshot process, or is there a risk that I could end up with the snapshot containing half of the next step in my work, and I should therefore wait until the snapshotting process has finished before continuing my work?
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1 Answer 1
up vote 10 down vote accepted
No, you don't have to wait until a snapshot has created completely. The VirtualBox documentation sheds some light on the technology behind snapshots:
When a snapshot is taken, VirtualBox "freezes" the [virtual disk - I.K.] image file and no longer writes to it. For the write operations from the VM, a second, "differencing" image file is created which receives only the changes to the original image.
You can read more about it there:
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Your Answer
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I've the following data in an excel spreadsheet:
Date (dd/mm/yyyy) Value
01/04/2011 123.45
03/04/2011 7234.25
16/05/2011 80.00
11/06/2011 223.36
12/06/2011 455.97
29/06/2011 2345.12
I want to insert a chart with Month in the X axis and Value in the Y axis (that is, value sumarized by month).
Can I do that with a scatter chart (or using any other excel feature) without adding auxiliary calc in other cells?
If I can't, how can get the chart described with auxiliary calcs?
Note: I'm using excel 2010
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2 Answers 2
up vote 3 down vote accepted
Use a Pivot Chart and add month/year grouping on the Date field and your summarization choice (sum, average, count, etc.) on the Value field.
share|improve this answer
Yes, the built in tools make sense. – jonsca Jul 9 '11 at 3:17
A B C D
1/12/2011 1 200 200
2/13/2011 2 34 34
3/24/2011 3 1 79
3/26/2011 3 78 22.5
4/10/2011 4 10 0
4/12/2011 4 12.5
Where the formula in D is =IF(YEAR(A:A)=2011,SUMIF(B:B,"="&ROW(),C:C),0) and where column B is defined by Month(a:a)
It checks to make sure the dates are in the current year (skip if you don't need this), and then sums the values from months 1,2,3,4... into rows 1,2,3,4.
Then, make your chart out of column D like you normally would.
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I inadvertently Americanized your dates, but same idea. – jonsca Jul 8 '11 at 21:21
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When trying to install Windows 7 x64 on a new PC with a formatted hard drive I get the following error when extracting files:
I've googled for the error and came up with a few tips about taking out one of the RAM sticks but that has not solved anything. The same error comes up when trying to install using a pre-RTM release of Windows 7 which I know is working.
Edit: I tried using a DVD with Windows 7 x86 on it (both the image and the DVD are fine, I've checked them before), without any luck.
I've also tried installing Windows XP SP3, as Noam Gal suggested. The installation gets stuck at checking the computer hardware (the first step after inserting the CD).
This has happened before, when I tried to install an OS on my old PC. The connection between the 2 PCs is the hard drive; it's the same one. I'm convinced it is the culprit, but I have no idea what to do. How can I format it so that this behavior stops? The hard drive is physically ok, it works without any problems.
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3 Answers 3
up vote 3 down vote accepted
Errors during a clean OS install are almost always hardware problems. Seriously!
Some ideas:
1. Make a memtest86 bootable cd and running a memory test for a few hours. This will ensure it's not faulty memory.
2. Run Prime95 in torture test mode overnight to make sure it's not a heat / stability / cpu issue.
3. Possible is bad installation media (DVD) or a faulty DVD drive. You could try installing win7 from a USB key -- copying all the Win7 install files to a large USB stick, make it bootable, and try that as well.
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The problem is the computer's brand new. I'm leaning towards hardware related myself, but I think the hard drive is responsible. I've had problems installing XP in the past, but Vista worked and I assumed the problems had gone away. – alex Oct 8 '09 at 5:27
It was a RAM problem after all. I managed to install Windows 7 after countless attempts. When it crashed, Windows decided to perform some hardware tests; the result of those tests was RAM failure. – alex Oct 10 '09 at 18:01
It sounds like this error is associated with a corrupt DVD or installation media. If you burned the DVD yourself, try burning it again at the slowest speed possible.
There also could be a problem with the DVD reader. If you can, try extracting the .iso to a removable hard drive and install it from that. This way you can avoid errors that come with such a temperamental medium, such as DVDs and their readers. Check out this guide from BlogsDNA for an in-depth guide on how to do this.
If you are still getting the error, it is possible that the .iso file is corrupt. Try downloading it agin (if you can). Make sure you are getting it from a reliable source (such as straight from Microsoft).
share|improve this answer
As I said in my question, the same thing is happening with an older installation DVD that I know works (I've actually used that one before). – alex Oct 8 '09 at 5:30
See me recent edit: "There also could be a problem with the DVD reader..." – David Pearce Oct 8 '09 at 5:32
I never thought of the DVD drive. I'll try installing from an USB stick, as Jeff suggested. I did burn the DVD myself, but this wouldn't be the first time, and I've never had problems before. But I have had problems with MSDN AA iso images before. The image I'm using is straight from the Microsoft servers. – alex Oct 8 '09 at 5:35
I had a similar issue on a brand new computer. Tried changing the dvd, re-burning it, changing the dvd drive.. Always got the same problem. I also tried installing from usb (Formatted my ipod for it), but never got it to boot from it (I tried following all the instructions on the web)
At the end, I installed XP on the machine, just to prove to myself the drive was functioning, and the hard drive was not broken. The XP installed just fine. I then decided to give the 7x64 another try, and it just worked.
Have no idea why it happened, but at the end I got a working 7x64 on the new pc. Hope this tip works for you as well.
share|improve this answer
I really hope I don't have to jump through so many hoops just to install Windows 7. – alex Oct 8 '09 at 7:14
Well, I don't think it's that bad - instead of having to switch dvd reader/mobo/memory/hard drive, you just click through an xp install, and then re boot to the 7x64 install. It shouldn't take that long. And hopefully it'll work :-) – Noam Gal Oct 8 '09 at 9:41
I wasn't able to install XP either. I've added more info in my question just to let everybody know what I've tried up to now. – alex Oct 9 '09 at 6:48
Your Answer
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Wednesday, 7 November 2012
Mail article on EU banning books dismissed as 'nonsense'
The Mail claims the EU is now looking to ban...the Famous Five:
James Chapman explains:
Skip straight to the end and the 'spokesman for the London office of the European Commission' is quoted saying:
'This is nonsense. "Brussels" has no legal powers to intervene in which books are available in UK schools, it is a matter for the UK and for schools.
'The European Parliament committee report - which anyway represents just the committee's view - does not suggest banning books.
'And even in areas where it does call for EU level action and where that is legally possible, that can only be done if the Commission makes a proposal - it hasn't - and if the European Parliament as a whole and a large majority of member states then adopt it.'
So eventhough the paper has a quote saying the story is 'nonsense' they run it as 'Brussels wants to ban some books' anyway.
In fact, the report says nothing at all about banning books from schools or anywhere else - the word 'book' isn't used at all. It suggests 'study materials' could be introduced to counter 'gender stereotypes' and suggests there is a need to:
raise awareness in Advertising Standard Committees and self-regulatory bodies about the negative influences of gender discrimination and stereotypes in the media.
Enid Blyton isn't mentioned, either.
The report also looks at the labour market and says:
disproportionate representation of women in part-time jobs and the gender pay gap clearly show that gender stereotypes result in gender discrimination on the labour market.
It makes some suggestions which it believes may remedy this. But Chapman doesn't mention any of this, which seems curious, given the Mail's front page story today, which focuses on another report on the gender pay gap:
That article doesn't mention the report from the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality either.
1. I can't quite believe the Mail are still dredging up "they all want to ban Enid Blyton" like this. The earliest such Mail article I'm certain of is from 1964!
Note also their pretence at caring for their (compared to most other papers) disproportionately female readership, while in reality laughing behind their backs.
2. Brilliant juxtaposition of the 'look we care about women, honest' headline with an article praising Nadine Dorries, who wants to reduce the abortion limit.
3. And have you seen this staggering exchange of emails between an MEP and the Mail on this article?
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.
| <urn:uuid:c7b10558-4367-4457-9260-eddca10138c3> | 2 | 1.5 | 0.022608 | en | 0.959767 | http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/mail-article-on-eu-banning-books.html |
You are viewing tallcedars
Time for a new cellphone? "iPhone or Droid?"
I suppose that this would mean more to me if I actually had cellphone coverage here.
Cookie Meme
A good idea from a famous blogger:
"The first five people who respond to this post will get a batch of cookies made by me brought to or delivered to their house sometime in 2009.
"So long as they repost this in their journal. Those of you who don't bake can still participate by promising on your journal to order or ship a box or bag of Milanos or something.
"Because the World needs more cookies."
I'll even make an attempt to match your favorite (no guarantees if it's not chocolate chip).
Where did that come from?
When I read a book with a fictional setting (an invented town or an entire world), one important aspect that helps makes the book work for me is a high level of convincing detail about the world. Authors that can provide this in a natural way and make me believe that it could just be have my undying respect. China Mieville's Perdido Street Station is one recent example that does this well.
Here's a piece:
that includes an interesting list of resources for world builders.
What's wrong with Windows - an example
I was trying to explain to our builder last week why Windows worries me and why it is that I so rarely use the OS these days. Sometimes it's hard to know where to start. If only I'd had this article at hand:
It's the start of a new year. With that comes a flood of end of the
year retrospectives. It's also the end of an eight year presidency in the
United States. That's eight times the fun when making up lists! After
so many years working as a physicist and computer scientist, it's no
surprise that I like numbers in my lists. That's probably why I found
Harper's Index:
so compelling. Some of of the more striking entries:
Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they
used to represent as lobbyists: 98
Years before becoming energy secretary that Spencer Abraham
cosponsored a bill to abolish the Department of Energy: 2
Days since the federal government first placed the nation under an
"elevated terror alert" that the level has been relaxed: 0
Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated
by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50
Estimated number of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq that were based
on information from a single defector: 100
Number of times the defector had ever been interviewed by U.S.
intelligence agents: 0
have filed for disability with the VA: 35
Number of all U.S. war veterans who have been denied Veterans
Administration health care since 2003: 452,677
Portion of all U.S. income gains during the Bush Administration that
Percentage change since 2001 in the average amount U.S. workers spend
on out-of-pocket medical expenses: +172
Number of times FDA officials met with consumer and patient groups as
they revised drug-review policy in 2006: 5
Number of times they met with industry representatives: 113
Number of Republican officials who have been investigated by the
Justice Department since 2001: 196
Number of Democratic officials who have been: 890
Number of White House officials in 2006 and 2007 authorized to discuss
pending criminal cases with the DOJ: 711
Number of Clinton officials ever authorized to do so: 4
Percentage change since 2001 in U.S. government spending on paper
shredding: +466
Percentage of EPA scientists who say they have experienced political
interference with their work since 2002: 60
accrued obligations: $10,350,000,000,000
Percentage change in U.S. discretionary spending during Bush's
presidency: +31
Percentage change during Reagan's and Clinton's, respectively:
+16, +0.3
Estimated value of Henry Paulson's Goldman Sachs stock when he
became Treasury Secretary and sold it: $575,000,000
Rank of Bush among U.S. presidents with the highest disapproval
rating: 1
Is it art?
A serious piece in the London Review of Books on the cultural significance of video gaming. It was prompted by the observation that the industry now outsells music and video combined in the UK but yet somehow it's still an underground subculture.
I suppose that this should concern me, given what I've spent so much time doing the last 40 years.Meh... | <urn:uuid:e7caaa80-d487-4d34-8148-1b7eb5e8b364> | 2 | 1.507813 | 0.21507 | en | 0.953519 | http://tallcedars.livejournal.com/ |
The Secret Service, UUCP,and The Legion of Doom by Kevin Mullet, University of North Texas ([email protected]) UUCP and UNT Back in 1978, a couple of bright fellows at AT&T's Bell Labs, where the Unix operating system was developed, wondered if computer files could just be copied from one computer to another over a cable. State of the art data transfer back then meant writing data to paper cards or magnetic tape and reading them in on another computer. The chaps with the bright idea were M.E. Lesk and A.S. Cohen and the program they wrote to implement the idea was Unix to Unix Copy, or UUCP. The idea caught on just about the same time Unix was taking off in popularity. As the number of computers that could UUCP to each other grew, the first wide-area network was born. It slowly grew to the size it has today of over 11,000 nodes, or individual computers. The UUCP network, named after the primary software used for communication across the network in its early days, now provides much more than simple file copying. The UUCP network now provides electronic mail, network-based news services and, of course, file transfer services between each computer on the network. Electronic mail, or e-mail, is a kind of computer-based postal system where people can send messages back and forth to each other electronically without ever having to print them out on paper. UUCP news is not unlike e-mail. The network of computers where people read, write and distribute news is called Usenet. Most, although not all, of this service takes place on UUCP. Because of its popularity, though, the service is also available from the NSF-Internet and BITNET wide area networks. Usenet news is comprised of several hundred newsgroups. These newsgroups are forums for ongoing discussions on an endless variety of topics ranging from specific computer languages and architectures to cooking, horseback riding, politics and religion. When a person sends e-mail to a news group, the message is automatically sent out to every computer on the network that subscribes to that particular news group. That way, each person who reads and posts to a news group is literally carrying on a dialogue with hundreds, often thousands, of other people at the same time. At NT, the most popular way to be a part of these Usenet news groups is with the ANU program on the VAX Cluster. Through ANU, anyone with a VAX Cluster userid can take part in up to 366 different newsgroups. Messages from all over the world can be read from the user's terminal. Usually this system works flawlessly, but a few weeks ago something happened. A computer and UUCP network node partially operated by AT&T called ATTCTC was seized by the US Secret Service as evidence in an ongoing nation-wide investigation of data piracy, credit card and long distance dialing abuse, and computer security violation called Operation Sun Devil. When that happened, the umbilical cord between NT and UUCP was severed. An understanding of why this impacted NT requires an understanding of how UUCP works. The great strength and weakness of many wide area networks is their reliance on "store and forward" technology. Wide area networks which use store and forward schemes typically communicate only with computers, or nodes, that are geographically close to them. If a node on one side of the world has some e-mail, news or a file to send to a node on the other end of the world, it simply passes the data to a computer close to it along with instructions about the eventual destination. That computer, in turn, passes the data on to a computer close to it until, many nodes later, the e-mail, news or files reach their intended destination. The great strength of this scheme lies in its economy. Any particular site need only pay for connections to a nearby neighbor to access the rest of the world. This way, a large number of sites can affordably interconnect in a global wide area network. The frailty of this technology is its weakness. On a network where the cost is so low to connect, many sites don't arrange redundant routing in case a critical node goes down. NT was such a site. When ATTCTC was seized, all the nodes "downstream" from it, including NT, lost their UUCP access. All these sites had to scramble to contact other geographically close UUCP nodes that were "upstream" of ATTCTC to arrange for new UUCP access. Three days later, thanks to the Computer Science department at the University of Texas at Austin, NT was back online to UUCP, but for some other sites on the UUCP network, the story was just beginning. The rest of the story This account is based largely on the grand jury indictments against alleged Legion of Doom members and accounts by actual Legion of Doom members who posted to the Usenet group comp.dcom.telcom Sometime in December of 1988, Robert Riggs, a 20 year-old student of DeVry Technical School, hacked his way into a computer at Bell South telephone company headquarters in Atlanta. Bell South provides telephone service for Alabama, Missippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. Riggs was a member of a group called the Legion of Doom. Members of this organization are hackers who illegally compromise the security of various computer and telecommunications installations on a regular basis in order to enhance their reputation within the computer underground. Once he gained access to the Bell South computer, Riggs stole a document describing some of the workings of the emergency 911 service. On 23 January, 1989 Riggs copied the file through the UUCP network to Jolnet, a public access Unix system in Lockport, Illinois and made it available to Craig Neidorf, an editor of an underground on-line magazine for hackers and phreakers (hackers who specialize in compromising telecommunications security). Phrack, the magazine edited by Neidorf, is published electronically through the UUCP and NSF-Internet networks and on numerous BBS's across the country which specialize in disseminating information about hacking and phreaking. The magazine, a mainstream publication in the computer underground, is generally considered required reading for hackers and phreakers. The content of Phrack ranges from actual and fictional accounts of breaking into computer systems to technical details of computer security and telecommunications systems. Sources close to the Phrack publishers assert that the magazine has always been careful to avoid publishing anything that was overtly illegal. Neidorf, a 19 year old political science major at the University of Missouri, used his userid on a school unix system to retrieve the Bell South 911 file from Jolnet. Once he got the file, he edited it, as advised by Riggs, to conceal its source. Neidorf and Riggs intended to eventually write an article about the 911 system in Phrack. The actual 911 file in question is a six page, 20 kilobyte document describing some technical and administrative details of the emergency 911 system that Bell South uses for its nine state service area. Through the 911 system, Bell South customers can dial 911 and be instantly connected with a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). Computers called Electronic Switching Systems (ESS's) are critical to telephone routing. Once someone in the Bell South service area calls 911, an ESS ensures they are connected with an appropriate PSAP. The 911 system then allows an emergency operator to determine automatically what number and address the caller is calling from and alert the appropriate emergency service dispatchers. Obviously, the details of security around such a system should be very closely guarded. The potential for loss of life and property if such a system were maliciously compromised is enormous. The Plot Thickens Unknown to Riggs and Neidorf, Richard Andrews, the system administrator of Jolnet discovered the Bell South 911 file on his computer soon after it was transferred there. Andrews sent a copy of the file through the UUCP network to another computer system called "Killer" that was owned and operated by an AT&T employee, Charles Boykin. Andrews requested that Boykin forward the file to the appropriate authorities. Andrews didn't prevent further access to the file, delete it or frustrate the efforts of Riggs and Neidorf. He also kept a copy of the file for himself. Several months later, Andrews received a call from someone at AT&T who asked for another copy of the file. Not soon after that, the United States Secret Service came paid him a visit. Andrews has been cooperating with the authorities ever since. It is largely through his cooperation that federal indictments have been returned against five alleged members of the Legion of Doom: Robert Riggs, Craig Neidorf, Adam Grant, Franklin Darden, Jr., and Leonard Rose. On February 3rd, 1990, after receiving Andrews' cooperation for over a year, the Secret Service raided Jolnet and seized it as evidence. Killer Falls In 1989, the privately-owned UUCP node known as Killer, through which Richard Andrews alerted AT&T of the stolen 911 file, was moved to the Dallas Infomart. It was used by its owner, Charles Boykin and AT&T as a public demonstration system. It was given a new name, AT&T Customer Technology Center, or ATTCTC. In the years since 1985, when it began operation, Killer/ATTCTC became a critical node on the national UUCP backbone. Computers throughout the southwest, and people who used them, depended on ATTCTC for Usenet news, electronic mail and UUCP file transfer services. On the 20th of February, 1990, without any advance notice, ATTCTC was permanently shut down, leaving NT with no UUCP access. AT&T claims that the closure was due to lack of funds, although the system was privately owned and operated by Charles Boykin. Sources close to the Texas Unix community assert that ATTCTC was shut down and seized by the US Secret Service because two of its userids belonged to suspected members of the Legion of Doom. Various credit card numbers and long distance dialing codes were allegedly found in files owned by these userids. The Next Dominoes to Fall In Austin, there's a small company called Steve Jackson Games that makes role playing games (a kind of grown-up make believe). In their offices, SJG ran a computer called Illuminati. This system was used by staff and customers to develop new game ideas. SJG ran a BBS on Illuminati though which customers could provide feedback based on testing of potential new games. One of these games was called GURPS Cyberpunk, named after the Cyberpunk genre of science fiction in which the plot often involves extensive penetration of computer security. The author of GURPS Cyberpunk, Loyd Blankenship, researched ways in which to lend a realistic "look and feel" to his game. In his research, he developed extensive contacts with the hacker and phreaker underground, and acquired a comprehensive library of Phrack magazines, which he stored on Illuminati. On the morning of March 1st, 1990, the staff of Steve Jackson Games arrived at work to find that the Secret Service had forced their way into the building and were searching and seizing "computer hardware and software and records relating to computer hardware and software" for evidence in a "nationwide data piracy case" which Steve Jackson later learned was the Bell South 911 case. When all was said and done that day, the Secret Service had taken the Illuminati computer, all staff personal computers and printers, modems, software, spare hardware, all material related to GURPS Cyberpunk, a laser printer, a bag of nuts and bolts and some candy off the desk of Creede Lambard, who ran the Illuminati BBS. On the 20th of February, a member of the Legion of Doom who identified himself as "Erik Bloodaxe" posted an anonymous electronic mail message to the Usenet news group Comp.dcom.telcom saying, among other things, that: "Frank [Darden, Jr.], Rob [Riggs] and Adam [Grant] were all definately [sic] into very hairy systems. The had basically total control of a packet-switched network owned by Southern Bell (SBDN) ... through this network they had access to every computer Southern Bell owned [...]" On April 1st, in New York Newsday, a story appeared saying: "A government affidavit alleged that in June hackers believed to be Legion of Doom members planted software ""time bombs"" in AT&T's 5 ESS switching computers in Denver, Atlanta and New Jersey. These programs . . . were defused by AT&T security personnel before they could disrupt phone service." Elsewhere, Leonard Rose, sysop of a computer system called Netsys, was out driving his car one day when federal authorities pulled him over and arrested him. On the 15th of May, he was indicted with five felony counts and charged with various violations of interstate transportation laws and the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse act. Federal prosecutors allege that Rose hacked his way into an AT&T computer and stole some of the source code for version 3.2 of the Unix operating system. He is also charged with distributing two "trojan horse" programs that would infiltrate a Unix computer and replace the legitimate login program. Once in place, the trojan horses acquired a valid userid and password each time a new person logged into the system. Rose, it is alleged, would later retrieve the list of stolen userids and passwords and gain any degree of access to a system that he wanted. So far, during the course of their investigation, the US Secret Service and the FBI have raided 27 computer sites across the US and have seized the equivalent of 23,000 computer disks from suspects accused of contributing to over $50 million in system thefts and damages. The investigation continues into people who have violated the security of federal research centers, schools and private businesses, and extends far beyond the theft of a single six page text file from Bell South headquarters. Craig Neidorf, the 19 year old University of Missouri student who allegedly received the 911 file from Robert Riggs, has pleaded not guilty to charges of violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. Charlie Boykin, the AT&T employee who ran Killer/ATTCTC and was initially alerted by Richard Andrews about the 911 file theft was previously an active member of the Texas Unix community. He hasn't been seen at any Unix function since the closure of ATTCTC. According to the Associated Press, U.S. Attorney William Cook was granted a motion to prevent the 911 text file from becoming part of the public record during the trial. The trial of Riggs and Neidorf began on April 16, 1990. The Austin-based company Steve Jackson Games has been devastated by this affair. In the days since the Secret Service seizure, SJG has suffered a monetary loss of $100,000, had to lay off 8 of their 17 staffers, and cancel sixty percent of their 1990 product releases. Jackson has approached the American Civil Liberties Union for assistance. The Real Issues: What's the big deal? That depends on who you ask. The Secret Service would probably tell you that any violation of computer security is a serious affair. Unfortunately, the current criminal justice system evaluates all property crime in monetary terms: if it doesn't cost a lot of money, then there's not a big crime involved. The Chicago indictment against Riggs and Neidorf charges them with the theft and interstate transport of something valued over $5,000, namely the 911 file. In other words, the crime lies in stealing something worth a lot of money, not potentially endangering the safety of people in nine states. Typically, computer crime is only investigated if a large monetary loss can be proven. Some users and system operators of networked large multi-user systems would probably tell you that the big deal is that such computer systems aren't traditionally covered by common carrier statutes. Common Carrier laws are the laws that say if someone plots a crime over the telephone or through the US mail, the telephone company and the US Postal System cannot be held accountable for what was plotted over their common carrier. This is not the case with computer bulletin boards and network nodes, however. Federal authorities are placing a burden of responsibility on owners and operators of such computers to know the legality of everything stored on their computer system. On a system such as the NT VAX Cluster, that means knowing completely what's on 4.3 gigabytes of disk storage, and reading over 100 megabytes of wide area network traffic each week. In other words, someone would have to read up to sixty four thousand pages of text each week in order to be completely appraised just on new information that is either stored on the VAX cluster or passes through it on their way to another computer each week. If the NT Computing Center employed five people who could read 100 words a second to do this, and they worked twenty four hours a day without stopping, it would still take them twenty three days to read a week's worth of wide-area network traffic. And to make matters worse, NT is, for all practical purposes, an end node on the wide area network circuit. Most traffic that passes through here is eventually bound for someone at NT. For most wide area network nodes, this is not the case. A site like UT at Austin, or Rice University has traffic passing through it, briefly being stored before being forwarded, for many national as well as international sites. For those sites, not only would they need to hire many more people, but they would need to be foreign language interpreters as well. Imagine a company that owns a telecommunications satellite being held responsible for all the conversations in all the languages that are going through it at all times. It's a ridiculous thought and no legal authority would expect that of RCA or NASA. However, the equivalent is expected of every BBS in the country and every wide area network node at this moment. Unless lawmakers grant the same legal protection to computer bulletin boards and network nodes as the US Mail and telephone carriers, computer users in the not-to-distant future will only be able to look back at the age of electronic mail and Usenet news. People like the Legion of Doom have forced federal authorities to make apply existing laws to computers before they have sufficient technical preparation to do so. Unfortunately, it looks like the only solution to inappropriate seizures of computers by the Secret Service and FBI is the education that lawmakers and law enforcers will receive through the courts. Once more phreakers and hackers are arrested and tried will it become apparent that seizing the computers they use as conduits makes as much practical sense as seizing the laser printer at Steve Jackson Games not to mention the candy on Creede Lambard's desk. In the case of computer security, the best and only effective offense is a good defense. No computer system is impregnable, but there is a point at which every hacker will decide that penetrating a system is more trouble than it's worth. It is especially important that all managers and system administrators of computer BBS's and network nodes be mindful of this. Just as barbed wire spawned a burgeoning wire cutter market, the popularity and usefulness of computer-based communication will ensure that there are always going to be hackers and phreakers. There is a fine line between making a computer secure enough to avoid compromise by a hacker, and accessible enough not to discourage legitimate use. The best managers of computer systems will continue to walk that line without disturbing the network of trust that makes such systems the powerful tools they are. | <urn:uuid:0d5083ed-90c9-447a-ad9d-cb685a98794d> | 2 | 2.1875 | 0.28186 | en | 0.966635 | http://textfiles.com/bbs/lod_ss |
Stop Funding Creationist School Vouchers (Guest Voice)
Stop Funding Creationist School Vouchers
by Zack Kopplin
School voucher programs in the United States have long sparked controversy over the question of whether public tax dollars should be used to enable students to attend private and parochial schools.
They should not. School vouchers are corporate welfare for creationist schools. My research in Louisiana discovered that at least twenty schools in Louisiana are receiving millions in public money and teaching creationism.
Texas, the state where I currently live as a student at Rice University, seems to be following Louisiana’s anti-science path, and we may have a creationist school voucher program passed here. Last August, I testified before the Texas Senate Education Committee, and urged them not to create a school voucher program like we have in Louisiana. A major proponent behind the Texas voucher scheme, State Senator Dan Patrick, dismissed my criticisms of creationist vouchers as something only happening in Louisiana.
I realized I had to investigate voucher programs across the country. Working with MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show, I discovered and exposed over 300 schools in nine states and the District of Columbia teaching creationism and receiving public money.
I found schools in Indiana, viewed as the gold standard for school voucher programs, bringing students to the Creation Museum. I found 163 creationist voucher schools in Florida, one of which called evolution “the way of the heathen.” A school in MIlwaukee asserts, “although the world may promote its philosophies of… evolution as the truth, we assert that God’s Word is Truth.”
These schools I discovered are only the tip of the iceberg. I have only exposed schools that have publicly promoted teaching creationism or using creationist curriculums on their websites. Hundreds or even thousands more of these creationist schools could be receiving public money under the radar.
My research in Louisiana and nationally shows how little scrutiny these voucher schools have received and how much more they need. Many of these schools are not qualified to be receiving public money. We must stand up and urge our public officials to end this anti-science policy. We must ensure public money goes to schools that teach our students evolution.
Zack Kopplin is a student at Rice University. He has won the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in Education and the National Center for Science Education’s Friend of Darwin Award. He is leading the repeal of Louisiana’s creationism law and he exposed creationist voucher schools.
You can see his work on the issues at and
January 18, 2013 interview on Current:
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Author: Guest Voice
• cjjack
Why is it that in the 21st Century, people are still fighting against teaching their children long-established science?
I doubt that a school teaching that the sun revolved around the earth, or that thunder and lightning were caused by angry deities wouldn’t be handed tax payer dollars in order to continue instructing students in such things.
• ShannonLeee
State money of federal money? At the national level, it would be hard to find support for teaching that evolution is not a valid theory, but I bet in good old Southern states, you have a lot of support for it. If ignorant people want to spend their tax money on teaching ignorance…so be it.
Whether or not it is a form of child abuse is a different question.
I am assuming that these private schools are testing well nationally. Many of them do…much like home schooled kids.
I know Kansas gives Pell grants to college kids that attend private christian colleges that teach creationism.
• The_Ohioan
As long as the students are not going into scientific fields, will they be less competent if they don’t accept the evidence of how species develop and adapt? It would be interesting to know how many of these students go from Christian schools to Christian colleges and end up in politics or the military.
I don’t doubt views on climate change and legal rights for gays may affect a political career, but evolution? Not sure how that affects anyone other than the individual. If we want to limit tax dollars to those schools where we agree with their total cirruculum, the possibilities for defunding education are endless.
God moves in mysterious ways and if one of them is evolution, I, personally, have no objection.
• zephyr
Is there no end to the dumbing down? Citizen tax dollars should NOT fund the teaching of either pseudo science or superstition.
• ProfElwood
Part of the freedom in education is the freedom to teach things that some people don’t like. I find the reaction a bit funny, because it’s exactly the same as when evolution started to be taught in colleges.
• rick_kelly
They’ll be less able to tell truth from fiction. Understanding how to find reality in the daily tidal wave of opinion and nonsense is an important skill, and to try to find truth is a moral imperative. Believing whether the Earth is round or flat doesn’t affect policy decisions in local politics, but would you vote for someone who believed it was flat?
Zach, keep fighting the good fight. You’re doing a great thing and you have the support of all honest, thinking people.
• The_Ohioan
Ah, when you find reality in the daily tidal wave of opinion and nonsense, be sure to let us know. Some people find trying to overturn Roe v Wade a moral imperative. Some people find trying see that no voter is kept from voting is a moral imperative. Trying to find truth is trickier and if it’s a moral imperative we are in some trouble (as anyone who has had a class in situation ethics can attest).
I wouldn’t vote for someone who believed the earth was flat, but I wouldn’t vote for anyone who denied evolutionary principles, either. Nor would I expect anyone in the field of science to deny them. But should anyone other than a scientist, who must rely on the evidence to proceed with sciencentific discoveries, believe in either evolution or creationism? Not necessarily, because what they believe doesn’t affect scientific findings (though it may affect laws, if they are a politician, which is another matter as I suggested earlier).
Any child who wishes to go into the science field and has been taught creationism and evolution, or just creationism, will soon run into difficulties when trying to succeed in his/her field. As they will with politics. Finance, plumbing, construction, not so much.
• ShannonLeee
A school can teach both evolution and creationism, as long as they are appropriately taught. Creationism as a faith based belief and evolution as a respected scientific theory.
One should taught in social science, the other in natural science.
• sheknows
How can this even be happening? Finding this level of ignorance in our population in the 21st century is like finding…well, people walking next to dinosaurs.
I believe the whole thing may be illegal anyway since a Judeo- christian religious view of creation discriminates against 1. other beliefs 2. other religions. In order to get state funding wouldn’t they have to teach ALL religious theories of how the world was made, and how people got here? I believe the Hopi say we come from star people, and some say we are descended from spiders or worms …. There are even those who say we evolved slowly over aeons of time from single celled creatures…………
• ProfElwood
It’s called vouchers. Parents send their kids to the school of their choice, which would include religious schools. Secular schools, both public and private, still exist, and all schools would still be held to state guidelines. If the Hopi want a school, they make one, and people can choose to go to it or not.
Personally, if they did a better job of teaching, I would be happy to send my kid to one.
• hyperflow
Prof Elwood: do you have a good source for this? it is an interesting assertion
” it’s (sic) exactly the same as when evolution started to be taught in colleges.” | <urn:uuid:dc7b860a-d85a-40e7-9a09-3ccabfb1c8d8> | 2 | 1.539063 | 0.056687 | en | 0.966051 | http://themoderatevoice.com/174001/stop-funding-creationist-school-vouchers-guest-voice/ |
They were born 8½ miles apart the same year Woodrow Wilson was elected president, the Girl Scouts were founded and the Titanic sank.
Bill Roberts, 101, grew up in Swoyersville; Arthur Pesotine, 102, in Duryea. More than 100 years, 18 presidents and two world wars later, the World War II veterans live a floor apart at the Gino J. Merli Veterans Center in Scranton.
The center is honoring the centennials with a birthday party on April 16. A formal dinner will be held at 5 p.m. with family members, staff and residents. The all-day celebration will feature a Hawaiian luau and an appearance from an Elvis impersonator.
The world has changed since Mr. Roberts and Mr. Pesotine came home from war, but their memories stay vivid. They recall their stories like they were watching them on YouTube.
Mr. Roberts was a tank operator and fought on the front line for nine months. A radio operator, Mr. Pesotine was in Austria when the war ended.
"The German Army dressed in dead American's uniforms," Mr. Roberts recalled. He so vividly remembered tying a white ribbon on his arm so American soldiers would know whose side he was on. He even asked the nurses at the center for a white ribbon to wear now.
Mr. Roberts made it through the Battle of the Bulge but not before landing on Omaha Beach.
"You never knew when a shot was going to get you," Mr. Roberts said.
Mr. Pesotine started off as an operator but wasn't familiar with Morse Code so he moved over to radio. He worked closely with a colonel and every four or so days had to go up to the front lines with him.
"He was either brave or out of his mind," he said of his boss.
At the front, where Mr. Roberts was stationed, Mr. Pesotine, who served in the Army for one year, said he could hear rifle bullets flying over his head.
Mr. Roberts served in the Army for five years and received the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Good Conduct Medal, American Defense Service Medal and European/African/Middle East Service Medal with five bronze stars. He was stationed in Europe for one year and seven months before returning to the United States to serve four more years.
Mr. Pesotine traveled from New York to Scotland then to England and crossed the channel to France before ending up in Austria for the end of the war.
After armies surrendered and peace treaties were signed, Mr. Pesotine was ready to look for family in Austria, his father's home country. He was sent home too quickly, but not before he ran into a German soldier with connections to Northeast Pennsylvania.
While walking down a street post-war, a German soldier, who Mr. Pesotine said spoke perfect English, was yelling "is anyone here from Scranton?"
After establishing he meant Scranton, Pa., the soldier told Mr. Pesotine his uncle was a mining engineer in the old coal town and he had visited a few times.
When the private first class arrived back in Scranton, he was too impatient to wait for a train. He began walking on Spruce Street toward East Mountain when a person pulled over and gave him a ride home to his family.
Mr. Pesotine, reflected on the ride in his room at the center. He never got a chance to thank the Good Samaritan and said he wishes he did.
The second-youngest and last surviving of 16 children, Mr. Pesotine received the Good Conduct Medal and European/African/Middle East Service Medal.
After the war, both men said they had trouble finding a job.
"They were saving jobs for men still serving," Mr. Roberts, who returned home before the end of the war, said. A neighbor hooked him up with a job at a tobacco factory but after coming home sick almost every night, Mr. Roberts said he decided to find other employment.
He ended up working at Bergman's Department Store in Edwardsville, a job he held for 20 years, then at a locomotive manufacturer that made trains for the Turkish Government. He married his wife in 1950 and said he lived out of a garden the two of them shared.
"She cooked," he said.
Mr. Pesotine was married before the war and became a welder after. He was riding his quad well into his 90s.
Sitting in a lounge at the veterans center, Mr. Roberts at 102 dished out facts and dates like he had a calendar and journal in front of him.
He even marveled at how far technology has come, saying he can't believe how far in advance you can get the weather.
"I'm glad I served," he said.
They've lived to see the war they fought won and countless wars after. Nameless actors have portrayed them in movies and books, and battle fields they fought on turned into memorials and national parks. This month, they'll get to celebrate their life.
"I never thought I'd live to be 100," said Mr. Roberts.
Contact the writer:, @kbolusTT on Twitter. | <urn:uuid:58af86af-054c-4364-821f-47598130b3f5> | 2 | 1.8125 | 0.034493 | en | 0.98719 | http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/two-centenarians-at-veterans-center-recall-lives-during-and-after-world-war-ii-1.1665548 |
Top Definition
To follow another car through a yellow or red traffic light.
To continue going through a stop sign behind someone else in a chain like fashion
"Man you gotta chain dat shit!"
"The cops can't get you if you chain it!"
"Man I was chainin it the other day and they guy behind me got T-boned."
ayon kay Pete Blake and Doug Branson ika-02 ng Hulyo, 2006
Libreng Koreo Araw- araw
| <urn:uuid:2afd743b-aed4-4b47-a0cf-5f45aecff9ab> | 2 | 1.75 | 0.722549 | en | 0.661961 | http://tl.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Chainin%20it |
Tolkien Gateway
Revision as of 00:40, 20 July 2011 by Morgan (Talk | contribs)
First Sight of Ithilien by Ted Nasmith.
Ithilien (S, pron. [iˈθiljen]) was a region and fiefdom of Gondor. Ithilien was the only part of Gondor on the eastern side of the Anduin, wedged in between the river and the Ephel Dúath. The region was further divided into North and South Ithilien.
Ithilien was a fair and prosperous land during the Second Age and the first part of the Third Age, when Gondor was strong and Mordor deserted. Of old its chief city was Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Moon, but when this was captured by Mordor it was renamed Minas Morgul, the Tower of Black Sorcery. After this event, the majority of the people of Ithilien fled across the Anduin to escape war, but the Stewards of Gondor still kept scouts there, operating out of secret locations such as Henneth Annûn. Those who stayed fled in T.A. 2954 when Mount Doom erupted.
During the War of the Ring, in early May T.A. 3019, Gollum leads Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee through Ithilien on their way to Cirith Ungol and into Mordor. After witnessing an ambush of Haradrim, the hobbits were found by Faramir, the son of the Steward Denethor, but are allowed to continue when he is satisfied they are not agents of Sauron.
Ithilien is a Sindarin name meaning "land of the moon".[1] It has been suggested that the name consists of the elements Ithil ("moon") + the affix end.[2]
2. Compound Sindarin Names in Middle-earth at (accessed 20 July 2011) | <urn:uuid:b1c839b2-1c3d-4c75-81bb-4599a533c94b> | 2 | 2.5 | 0.045474 | en | 0.957389 | http://tolkiengateway.net/w/index.php?title=Ithilien&oldid=164571 |
Tolkien Gateway
Revision as of 14:26, 12 August 2010 by Mith (Talk | contribs)
Nenya as conceived by The Noble Collection
Nenya (Q, pron. [ˈneɲa]), the Ring of Water, is one of the Rings of Power, specifically, one of the Three Rings of the Elves of Middle-earth. The name is derived from the Quenya nén meaning water. Nenya as an adjective means "watery" or "like water", and its plural form is nenyë.
Nenya was made by Celebrimbor and the Gwaith-i-Mírdain of Eregion in the Second Age, along with the other two Elven Rings, Narya and Vilya. Their existence was hidden from Sauron, so they were untouched by his evil.
Nenya, also known as the Ring of Adamant, is described as being made of mithril and set with a "white stone", presumably a diamond (though never stated explicitly, "adamant" is an old synonym for diamond). The ring was wielded by Galadriel of Lórien, and not normally visible; while Frodo Baggins can see it by virtue of being a Ring-bearer, Sam Gamgee tells Galadriel he only "saw a star through your fingers" (This appears in many editions as "finger"—which sounds more magical, since it suggests that her finger has somehow become transparent—but The Treason of Isengard, ch. 13, note 34, mentions it as an error.)
Nenya's power was preservation, protection, and concealment from evil. Galadriel used these powers to create and sustain Lothlórien, but it also increased in her the longing for the Sea and her desire to return to the Undying Lands. After the destruction of the One Ring and the defeat of Sauron, its power faded along with the other Rings of Power. Galadriel bore Nenya on a ship from the Grey Havens into the West, accompanied by the other two Elven Rings and their bearers. With the ring gone, the magic and beauty of Lórien also faded and it was gradually depopulated, until by the time Arwen came there to die in Fourth Age 121 it was deserted and in ruin.
Rings of Power
The One Ring
Three Rings
(Narya · Nenya · Vilya)
Seven Rings
(Ring of Thrór)
Nine Rings | <urn:uuid:7b13970b-1232-4346-a6d8-54bbd89071c8> | 3 | 2.703125 | 0.073455 | en | 0.972633 | http://tolkiengateway.net/w/index.php?title=Nenya&oldid=120123 |
Tolkien Gateway
Revision as of 21:20, 13 November 2008 by Ederchil (Talk | contribs)
Gildor Inglorion, "Three is Company"
They were of the Maiar, spirits of the same order of the Valar, but lesser in power (Sauron himself was one of the most powerful of the Maiar), sent by the Valar to help and assist the peoples against Sauron. While many were sent out, only five are known to have been sent to the north. Their Quenya names were Curumo, meaning "Skilled One"; Olórin, meaning "Rememberer", "Dreamer", or "Thinker"; Aiwendil, meaning "Bird-friend"; Pallando and Alatar.
They came to Middle-earth roughly around the year 1000 of the Third Age. It seems that each was assigned with a colour for his clothes, white being indicative of the chief. Two of them were blue. It is not known if the colour had a special meaning concerning their rank, abilities or nature.
The wizards already appeared old when they entered Middle-earth. They were deliberately "clothed" in the bodies of old Men, as the Valar wished them to help the inhabitants of Middle-earth by persuasion and encouragement, not by force or fear. However, they aged very slowly and were in fact immortal. Thus, they were, physically speaking, "real" Men, and felt all the urges, pleasures and fears of flesh and blood. While in this form, although immortals by age, their physical form could be by violence — thus, Gandalf truly dies in the fight with the Balrog, but is "reborn" as his mission is not yet complete.
Gandalf by John Howe
Very few of Middle-earth's inhabitants knew who the Wizards really were; the Wizards did not share this information. Most thought they were Elves or wise Men (Gandalf represents this interpretation, meaning Wand-elf, because the Men who gave him the nickname believed he was an Elf). They attracted few questions due to their gentle nature and dislike of direct interference with other people's affairs. In spite of their specific and unambiguous goal, the Wizards are nevertheless capable of human feelings; thus Gandalf feels great affection for the Hobbits. On the flip side, they could feel negative human emotions like greed, jealousy, and lust for power. It is hinted in the essay in Unfinished Tales that the Blue Wizards (see below) may have fallen prey to these temptations.
Two of these, the Blue Wizards, went into the East and do not come into the stories of Middle-earth. Their Quenya names were Morinehtar, Darkness-slayer and Romestamo, East-helper, respectively (in Unfinished Tales their names were Alatar and Pallando). The other three were called Saruman, also known as Curunír; Gandalf, or Mithrandir; and Radagast.
Saruman originally had the greatest power of the five Istari and was the head of the White Council. In the year 2759 of the Third Age, he was invited by the rulers of Gondor and Rohan to settle in Isengard. Saruman was learned in the lore of the Rings of Power, gradually becoming corrupted by the desire for the Rings and by Sauron's direct influence on him through the palantír of Orthanc. Eventually he became ensnared in Sauron's power, and assisted him in the War of the Ring until he was defeated by the Ents and Gandalf, who broke his staff and cast him out of the White Council. Saruman's death came at the hands of his servant Wormtongue in The Shire, after the destruction of the One Ring.
During the War of the Ring, it was Gandalf who led the Free Peoples to victory over Sauron. He also defeated Saruman. After the destruction of Sauron, Gandalf left Middle-earth and went over the Sea, along with the Ring-bearers and many of the Elves.
In the course of The Lord of the Rings, it is never made clear what exactly Gandalf and Saruman are (though Treebeard informs Merry and Pippin that they landed in the Grey Havens from across the Great Sea 2,000 years ago, little else is revealed in the narrative). In a certain point, Pippin seems to wonder what his friend Gandalf really was, and notices that it was the first time in his life he did so. The essay given in Unfinished Tales was originally begun in order to be included in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, but was not completed in time.
Choice of the word
Saruman · Gandalf · Radagast · The Two Blue Wizards | <urn:uuid:e699f719-ccf8-4e04-932e-c4aaa8b55c64> | 2 | 2.375 | 0.028766 | en | 0.981179 | http://tolkiengateway.net/w/index.php?title=Wizards&oldid=73111 |
It's us who decide, not Monsanto!!!
Friday, 15 February 2013
Technology bits, 02, 2013
As the new 2013 rows out, I though it's a good time to publish all the drafts left behind in the past year. So here it is, a technology bits compiled just for you. I don't have the time to comment each of the news sepparately, but still they are quite interesting and I think they are quite useful if you are to measure the pulse of the past year. Note, here I have ommitted physics news, since I paste them into the Department of Theoretical Physics Facebook page. You are more than welcome to join if interested, since 90% of my posts there are dedicated to cool scientific news I stumble upon.
1. Stronger than steel, novel metals are moldable as plastic
2. New laser technology prepares to revolutionize communications
3. New Car Engine Sends Shock Waves Through Auto Industry
4. Cheaper and cleaner electricity from wave-powered ships (w/ video)
5. UK scientists want human-animal tests monitored
6. Soft memory device opens door to new biocompatible electronics (w/ Video)
7. Energy-harvesting shock absorber that increases fuel efficiency wins R&D 100 award
8. Italian scientists claim to have demonstrated cold fusion (w/ Video)
Stronger than steel, novel metals are moldable as plastic
March 1, 2011
( -- Imagine a material that's stronger than steel, but just as versatile as plastic, able to take on a seemingly endless variety of forms. For decades, materials scientists have been trying to come up with just such an ideal substance, one that could be molded into complex shapes with the same ease and low expense as plastic but without sacrificing the strength and durability of metal.
Now a team led by Jan Schroers, a materials scientist at Yale University, has shown that some recently developed bulk metallic glasses (BMGs)-metal alloys that have randomly arranged atoms as opposed to the orderly, found in ordinary metals-can be blow molded like plastics into complex shapes that can't be achieved using regular metal, yet without sacrificing the strength or durability that metal affords. Their findings are described online in the current issue of the journal Materials Today.
The materials cost about the same as high-end steel, Schroers said, but can be processed as cheaply as plastic. The alloys are made up of different metals, including zirconium, nickel, titanium and copper.
New laser technology prepares to revolutionize communications
March 28, 2011
As fiber optic technology continues to advance, it faces challenges from both its physical properties and its use of infrastructure. One emerging high-speed solution being developed at Stevens Institute of Technology uses lasers to transmit data through readily available open space, with the potential of expanding past the limitation of fibers into a system known as optical free space communications. Dr. Rainer Martini has overcome a number of free space challenges to develop a high-speed communications technology that is not limited by a physical conductor. With an optical system that is stable enough, satellites may one day convert to laser technology, resulting in a more mobile military and super-sensitive scanners, as well as faster Internet for the masses.
A laser's beam must be optically modulated in order to transmit large amounts of data. Optically-induced amplitude modulation (AM) of mid-infrared lasers was realized by researchers at Stevens a few years ago, but AM signals are at the mercy of dust and fog. Now, Stevens researchers led by Dr. Martini have developed a technique to optically modulate the frequency of the beam as well (frequency modulation; FM) – resulting in a signal that is disrupted significantly less by environmental factors.
The new research stands to revolutionize communications, rendering environmental barriers meaningless and allowing mobile units not tied to fiber optic cable to communicate in the range of 100 GHz and beyond, the equivalent of 100 gigabytes of data per second.
Electronic modulation of middle infrared quantum cascade laser is limited to 10 GHz, and optical modulation of frequency and amplitude offers a viable alternative.
Their optical approach has a number of applications, including frequency modulation in a middle infrared free system, wavelength conversion that will transform a near infrared signal directly into a middle infrared signal, and frequency modulation spectroscopy.
sourceMy comment:
New Car Engine Sends Shock Waves Through Auto Industry
Robot uses supersonic air jets to climb on walls and ceilings (w/ video) - ( -- Instead of using sticky footpads to climb on walls and ceilings, a new robot takes advantage of fast-moving air that can generate an adhesion force on just about any kind of surface. The robot’s grippers, which don’t ever actually touch the surface as the robot climbs, operate on Bernoulli’s principle of fluid dynamics. - Awesome! Just check the video on the site!
July 20, 2011 by Deborah Braconnier
( -- At the Clean Technology 2011 Conference and Expo in Boston, Andre Sharon presented a new concept of using ships equipped with a wave-power system to harvest energy and deliver it back to a power grid on shore.
The proposed ship would be 50 meters long and is designed to harvest the through a system of buoys hanging from pivoting arms on the side of the ship. The would bob up and down with the movement of the waves and cause the pivoting arms to drive a generator and create one megawatt of electrical power an hour. The power will be stored in an on-board battery with a capacity of 20 megawatts. The ship will be required to be out at sea for at least 20 hours in order to provide a full charge.
Current wave-power systems can generate electricity at a cost of between $0.30 and $0.65 per kWh, but Sharon calculates that the wave-power ships would be able to generate power for $0.15 per kWh which is comparable to offshore wind energy and cheaper than solar power. source
UK scientists want human-animal tests monitored
LONDON (AP) — British scientists say a new expert body should be formed to regulate experiments mixing animal and human DNA to make sure no medical or ethical boundaries are crossed. In a report issued on Friday, scientists at the nation's Academy of Medical Sciences said a government organization is needed to advise whether certain tests on animals that use human DNA should be pursued.
Scientists have long been swapping animal and human DNA. Numerous tests on mice with human genes for brain, bone and heart disorders are already under way and experiments on goats implanted with a human gene are also being done to study blood-clotting problems. Controversy erupted several years ago in Britain after scientists announced plans to make human embryos with the nucleus removed from cow and rabbit eggs. Authorities allowed limited experiments and ruled the embryos should not be allowed to develop for more than two weeks.
Scientists identify seventh and eighth bases of DNAFor decades, scientists have known that DNA consists of four basic units -- adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine. Those four bases have been taught in science textbooks and have formed the basis of the growing knowledge regarding how genes code for life. Yet in recent history, scientists have expanded that list from four to six. Now, with a finding published online in the July 21, 2011, issue of the journal Science, researchers from the UNC School of Medicine have discovered the seventh and eighth bases of DNA. These last two bases – called 5-formylcytosine and 5 carboxylcytosine – are actually versions of cytosine that have been modified by Tet proteins, molecular entities thought to play a role in DNA demethylation and stem cell reprogramming.
A heart of gold: Better tissue repair after heart attack (Update)
September 25, 2011 by Emily Finn
A team of researchers at MIT and Children’s Hospital Boston has built cardiac patches studded with tiny gold wires that could be used to create pieces of tissue whose cells all beat in time, mimicking the dynamics of natural heart muscle. The development could someday help people who have suffered heart attacks.
The study, reported this week in Nature Nanotechnology, promises to improve on existing cardiac patches, which have difficulty achieving the level of conductivity necessary to ensure a smooth, continuous “beat” throughout a large piece of tissue.
The researchers plan to pursue studies in vivo to determine how the composite-grown tissue functions when implanted into live hearts. source
Cloaking magnetic fields: The first 'antimagnet' device developed
September 23, 2011
The development of such a device, described as an 'antimagnet', could offer many beneficial applications, such as protecting a ship's hull from mines designed to detonate when a magnetic field is detected, or allowing patients with pacemakers or cochlear implants to use medical equipment.
The antimagnet has been designed to consist of several layers. The inner layer would consist of a superconducting material that would function to stop a magnetic field from leaking outside of the cloak, which would be very useful to cloak certain metals.A downside to using this material, however, is that it would distort an external magnetic field placed over the cloak, making it detectable, so the device would need to be combined with several outer layers of metamaterials, which have varying levels of magnetic field permeability, to correct this distortion and leave the magnetic field undisturbed.
The researchers demonstrated the feasibility of the cloak using computer simulations of a ten-layered cylindrical device cloaking a single small magnet. source
World's largest fusion device goes back to work - September 5, 2011- European scientists working on the Joint European Torus (JET), the world's largest magnetic confinement fusion device, are about to embark on the first round of experiments following a 22-month period where the device was out of action whilst being upgraded and commissioned.JET's researchers are investigating the potential of fusion power as a safe, clean, and virtually limitless energy source for future generations. The research is coordinated under the European Fusion Development Agreement (EFDA), signed by all 27 Member States as well as Switzerland. The JET project forms part of the preparatory stages leading to preparation for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) operation.
July 14, 2011 by Lisa Zyga An energy-harvesting shock absorber that can be installed in a vehicle’s suspension system to absorb the energy from bumps in the road, convert the energy into electricity, and improve fuel efficiency by 1-8% has recently won the R&D 100 award.
The new shock absorbers were designed by Professor Lei Zuo and graduate students Xiudong Tang and Zachary Brindak at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook, with funding from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
Zuo’s team developed and patented two different types of shock absorbers: linear and rotational. The new linear shock absorber consists of a small magnetic tube with high flux intensity that slides inside a larger, hollow coil tube. The rotational version employs a compact motion magnification mechanism.
Due to bumps and vibrations from normal driving, the sliding tubes or rotating generator can produce an electric voltage. When installed in a medium-sized passenger car traveling at 60 mph, the shock absorber can generate 100-400 watts of energy under normal driving conditions, and up to 1600 watts on particularly rough roads. Trucks, rail cars, and off-road vehicles get a return of 1-10 kilowatts, depending on road quality.
The harvested energy is then used to charge the battery and power the vehicle’s electronics, which is typically 250-350 watts with optional electronic systems turned off. This energy reduces the load on the vehicle’s alternator, which usually has a capacity about 500-600 watts. In this way, the harvested energy could increase fuel efficiency by 1-4% in conventional cars and by 8% in hybrid vehicles. As a side benefit, the shock absorber also creates a smoother ride due to the ability to adjust the suspension damping and implement self-powered vibration control.
The electricity-generating shock absorber can be retrofitted into today’s vehicles by replacing conventional shock absorbers - in which the vibration energy is wasted as heat - without modification of the vehicle suspension structure. The researchers estimate that the installation cost can be recouped in 3-4 years for typical passenger vehicles, and 1-2 years for trucks.
January 20, 2011 by Lisa Zyg( -- Few areas of science are more controversial than cold fusion, the hypothetical near-room-temperature reaction in which two smaller nuclei join together to form a single larger nucleus while releasing large amounts of energy.
Rossi and Focardi say that, when the atomic nuclei of nickel and hydrogen are fused in their reactor, the reaction produces copper and a large amount of energy. The reactor uses less than 1 gram of hydrogen and starts with about 1,000 W of electricity, which is reduced to 400 W after a few minutes. Every minute, the reaction can convert 292 grams of 20°C water into dry steam at about 101°C. Since raising the temperature of water by 80°C and converting it to steam requires about 12,400 W of power, the experiment provides a power gain of 12,400/400 = 31. As for costs, the scientists estimate that electricity can be generated at a cost of less than 1 cent/kWh, which is significantly less than coal or natural gas plants.
Rossi and Focardi explain that the reaction produces radiation, providing evidence that the reaction is indeed a nuclear reaction and does not work by some other method. They note that no radiation escapes due to lead shielding, and no radioactivity is left in the cell after it is turned off, so there is no nuclear waste.source
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Something you say when you do something awesome.
Shot Clock: 3...2...1
Ball: (IN)
Me: Boom!
Mary: Whoever makes a shot first wins.
Jane: K.
Mary: Boom
B to the J to the P tarafından 1 Nisan 2010, Perşembe
boom a word created by choppz origin New York New short another way to say hi and bye
person 1 boom my nukka whats going on
person 2 boom whats good
person 1 aint shit what r u doing
person 2 shit im about 2 hit up this chick and see whats good
person 1 iight i see u hit me up later
person 2 iight boom
person 1 boom
Sol Smith tarafından 8 Temmuz 2010, Perşembe
1. It makes everything OK (no insult can be taken seriously if followed by a boom)
2. Replacement for cool, sweet, nice etc
personal twists on the word (ei song style, amount of times said, etc) are encouraged!
example 1
Person #1: if you spent less time smoking cigs you could spend more time in the shower.
Person #2: how about you spend less time talking and more time with my c()ck in your mouth, BOOM!
example 2
Person #1: Just found 1000 bucks in my checking account for no reason!!
Person #2: BOOM!
Gonzohky09 tarafından 19 Nisan 2010, Pazartesi
Word used to provide enfisis.
person 1: "How was the game"
person 2: "It was like BOOM!"
Saxel tarafından 26 Haziran 2010, Cumartesi
Boom: meaning I told you so, or I just did something great or something great happened! Basically meaning in your face.
you outscore your friend in a game! in that instance you would say "BOOM"!
I was like boom, when i slapped her in the face!
TM Watson tarafından 5 Şubat 2010, Cuma
A Simple Word used to show randomness and Happiness. It Can be used in many ways.
This word has a multi meaning including: yay!, Wewt! and wow!
"<random IRC'er> Boom!"
Its Often used as a Entrance Word
<Random1> god damn this song is awesome
<Random2> Bordom...
<Random3> Boom!
It can basically be used anywhere
Geno-Blumaru tarafından 7 Şubat 2006, Salı
the sound of an explosion
distant explosion did you hear that boom a suicide bomber died
alphapyr0h4x0r tarafından 8 Mart 2010, Pazartesi
Ücretsiz Günlük Email
ücretsiz Günün Sokak Argosunu her sabah almak için aşağıya email adresinizi yazın
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Eleanor Roosevelt
Elenor Roosevelt
(1884 – 1962)
American Humanitarian Reformer, Diplomat and Writer
One of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, Eleanor Roosevelt has left a lasting legacy through her humanitarian accomplishments as reformer, diplomat and writer. Her personal life also reflects a singular triumph of self-realization in the face of formidable emotional and societal obstacles.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City into a life of wealth and social privilege (her uncle was President Theodore Roosevelt). Shy, introverted and physically plain, she also suffered the loss of both parents at an early age. After her marriage to her distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1905, she spent the next several years as wife and mother to their six children.
In the post-World War I years Eleanor Roosevelt become independently active in a variety of political and social causes, such as the League of Women Voters, the Women’s Trade Union League and the women’s division of the Democratic Party. By the time of her husband’s election as President in 1933, she was poised to assume an increasingly public role as spokesperson for a number of other groups: African-Americans, youth, the poor and others in need of a humane political voice.
As First Lady for an unprecedented 12 years, Roosevelt’s behind-the-scenes influence was great. Additionally, her widely distributed syndicated newspaper column, radio show, formal press conferences and extensive travelling furthered her promotion of liberal humanitarian causes. Perhaps her most publicized activity in this regard was her resignation from the Daughters of the American Revolution when that group refused to allow African-American singer Marian Anderson to perform in the Constitution Hall in Washington (which was owned by the organization). Anderson later appeared to widespread publicity and great acclaim at the Lincoln Memorial.
The Roosevelt marriage having evolved into an intellectual and political partnership, Eleanor Roosevelt subsequently developed her own circle of close women friends, several of whom were lesbians. Her most intense emotional attachment was with a prominent newspaper correspondent, Lorena Hickok; their surviving correspondence (about 3,500 letters) gives strong evidence of a lesbian relationship.
Following the death of Franklin in 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt maintained a highly visible and active life in national and international politics. Appointed in 1945 by President Harry S. Truman as a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations, she became chair of the committee that produced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. She continued to write a variety of newspaper and magazine columns, as well as a number of books. Until the end of her life, Roosevelt was an influential member of the Democratic Party. She died in New York City.
Criticized during much of her public life for her outspoken liberal views, Roosevelt was virtually universally admired during her later years (Truman dubbed her ‘first lady of the world’). In subsequent decades, that reputation has endured and further intensified.
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Last night at a party with lots of expats and Georgians the topic came up that foreigners don't need any special visa or work permit to work in Georgia while they are visiting the country as tourists.
But can this really be true? Both Georgians and foreigners there said it was but I want to find an authoritative source because the consequences for working illegally can include deportation or being banned from future visits. I wouldn't want to tell people to come and work here on their travels if the advice could get them in trouble.
share|improve this question
This would probably be the best question to ask CRA or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Karlson Dec 28 '11 at 17:26
I had hunted around on the MFR site a bit with no luck. I'll try the CRA one too thanks. – hippietrail Dec 28 '11 at 17:36
I don't think that sites will yield you anything. Contacting the agencies might. One thing that was surprising on MFA site that there was no work visas. So they are either not issued or not required. – Karlson Dec 28 '11 at 17:38
Yes I noticed that myself. – hippietrail Dec 28 '11 at 17:58
1 Answer 1
OK, it's a topic that comes up not just for Georgia, but several countries. We were told by many sources that in Argentina paying tax was 'optional'. Lots of anecdotes about not really needing a work visa. That sort of thing.
However, when it comes down to it, the Georgian government certainly exists. And so do their police, and justice system. No doubting that.
And as we would have it, the Georgian Govt has a Visa web site. And on it, yes, in addition to tourist, spousal, visitor, residence and other visas, there is the Employment Visa.
So, legally and technically speaking, it is NOT 'permitted' on a tourist visa, because otherwise there'd be no need for the Employment Visa. The tourist visa permits access under which you cannot engage in business, use government benefits or study. And you cannot stay permanently. However, hypothetically you may get away with it. You might over-stay, and when you finally leave, encounter a lax border guard who doesn't care, and so you were 'permitted' to overstay. Similarly, you may be 'permitted' to work on a tourist visa, but if ever it comes down to it, an overzealous cop, an angry co-worker (or jealous local), it may not take much and you'd have nothing to defend against the written law, other than 'I was told it was ok'. Which unfortunately, does not work out as a defense.
That's a bit of a rant with some sense in there, I hope, but the point is - legally, no, but you may get away with it.
share|improve this answer
I think there's actually the possibility that you're still making an assumption. Technically I'm on a visa waiver and don't have a visa, just a stamp in my passport. It could well be that people on these are allowed to work but people who need actual visas, like my friends here from Arabic speaking countries, might not be allowed to work and that this employment visa exists only for them. It's really hard to know for sure but many countries have very convoluted rules. – hippietrail Jan 31 '12 at 12:38
Hmm, quite possibly. I was going on the question which said 'tourist visa'. This seemed to exclude one directly from employment, as they're separate visas. Waivers do make things interesting ;) – Mark Mayo Jan 31 '12 at 12:41
@hippietrail A stamp on a passport is STILL a visa; it's just not one that you have to apply for. – Ankur Banerjee Jan 31 '12 at 12:44
Yes when I asked my question I wasn't certain how best to word it. Also the links to the various visas on the government page are all broken. The two I needed to check both led to blank pages at http://www.visainformation.mobi/?f – hippietrail Jan 31 '12 at 12:51
I just discussed this with a Tbilisi native and a German friend who has been working here, under contract, and paying taxes. Both insist that it's definitely legal to work here without a special visa. At least for Europeans or people from rich/white countries. They don't know what this employment visa is about and suspect it could be out-of-date information. But we still lack solid government-backed facts... – hippietrail Jan 31 '12 at 13:38
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24 February 2012
Say "adieu" to the word "mademoiselle"
I noticed the story in the Guardian this week -
It was once the preferred form of address for the fashion designer Coco Chanel and a handful of Gallic screen stars. But, now considered an unnecessary and unjustified reference to women's marital status, the French government has decreed the honorific Mademoiselle should be phased out from official forms.
After a campaign by feminist groups, the French prime minister's office has issued a circular saying the Mademoiselle option should be removed from all administrative documents in the vast state bureaucracy...
- but found a more detailed explanation in a prior report -
The honorific [mademoiselle], etymologically related to "damsel", certainly has a medieval ring to it. There is definitely something belittling about the term, as it originally implied the woman was a virgin and not yet the symbolic property of her husband, as madame implies...
- and also this -
During the pre-revolution ancien régime its use was clearly prescribed: a laywoman or commoner was always addressed as "mademoiselle" to denote her lowly status. Madame was reserved for women of high birth. Marriage had nothing to do with it. Today, "mademoiselle" is most commonly used to denote an unmarried woman who is young or young-looking. After a certain age, wed or not, you become madame. But what is that age? How youthful or fresh-faced do you have to be? Is the butcher who says "mademoiselle", to a woman who is neither, being flattering or facetious? And while frankly I don't care if Catherine Deneuve, 67, and Jeanne Moreau, 83, like to be called "mademoiselle", as is their quirky right as "actrices", it does seem ridiculous.
I don't have any personal comment to add; perhaps"mademoiselle titam" will offer one...
1. Mademoiselle is totally useless in administrative forms. Indeed, mademoiselle is commonly used for non-married women in France, but it implies an inferiority (the two explanations you give are perfectly accurate). I'm quite happy they get rid of it.
As for my nickname, I love it because it is oldfashioned, and refers directly to a time when actresses, ladies standing out were often called Mademoiselle. I would not want to be called mademoiselle on a daily basis.
Funny thing: in Québec, where I live, Mademoiselle has disapeared a long time ago. I like it, it makes men and women very equal.
2. In Spanish-speaking countries, all women whose marital status is unknown are "señorita", indicating that they are, I guess, young and lovely even if they're not. In Germany, gnädige Frau is the polite terminology, being more respectful than Fräulein. Or so it was years ago when I was teaching.
3. In business especially, the German "Fräulein" has been replaced by "Frau" for the same reasons. The "lein" ending makes it the diminutive form, literally "little woman".
4. And here I write in "Miss" whenever I can because I'm a single woman and proud of my success without "belonging to" or being "partnered with" a man. I am annoyed that all too often my only option is Ms.; I'd really prefer to have Miss or Rev. (if I have a choice, I use "Rev.") on every official form. Technically, I'm Rev. Miss, of course, but nobody gets THAT formal any more!
1. I am a young, recently married woman, and it frustrates me too that the only option I am generally given is "Ms." I wanted to be "Miss" before, and now I want to be "Mrs." I appreciate the security I have as a female in today's [American] society. Most men in my generation don't even know that there's a difference between "Miss" and "Ms."; the original purpose of "Ms." is passé. I somehow feel that "taking back" these older honorifics and having more choices is a truer celebration of our progress than continuing to limit ourselves. I was completely secure in myself as a "Miss," just as I am as a "Mrs." Being called "Ms." by default seems like I'm being handed a courtesy screen to hide behind. The presumption that I should want or need such a thing doesn't suit me or these times.
5. The analogous situation in the German language occurred in 1972 when the option for "Fräulein" was removed from forms by the Ministry of the Interior following the protests of the late 1960s.
I think France is a bit behind the curve in this regard.
Many young women in Germany consider it offensive now. Even the German style guide Duden indicates that women should only be addressed as Fräulein when they specifically request this form of address.
6. It may have disappeared from administrative langages, it's not dead yet.
Actually some feminist argue in the other way, saying that "mademoiselle" now claims a right of a woman to stand by herself.
Others, including me, even joke about adding "Gentilhomme" or "damoiseau" for single men instead. XD
Anyway, i believe this administrative detail is really really far from the main fight for equality. Free leads : the image of women in publicity and in early education.
Mademoiselle will certainly stay in use anyway for young women. We don't say "Monsieur" to call an adolescent or young adult, we use "jeune homme" instead.
In day-to-day use, I don't think mademoiselle still has any sexist connotation.
There's also something about the seductive language included in this. How are we supposed to charm young women ? Or even just talk about them ? Madame sounds old, just like Monsieur. Not very flattering ! xD
As said above, mademoiselle sounds much more old fashioned and "de bon goût". (Tasteful, I guess, not sure about the translation.)
By the way, it is funny too in an other ridiculous way : the only alternative is Madame, which was used as well to designate a woman who owns a brothel ! :D
If feminists realize this, i fear we will soon have no more words.
7. I must draw a line in the sand. I will not sing "Madame From Armentieres" and I am sure that she would agree with me.
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Estados Unidos Norteamericanos Pero No Tan Norte
United States of America of Mexico
Mexico police state flag
Flag Coat of Arms
Anthem: "José Can You See"
Mexico today
Capital Mexico City
Largest city Taco Bell
Official language(s) Spanglish, Aztec, and something resembling Spanish (ya mero)
National Hero(es) Subcomandante Marcos, El Peje, El Tigre, Zorro, and Pancho Villa
of Independence
From Spain: 1610
From USA: Pending
From Soccer: Never
Currency Peso, Dollar, and Marijuana
Population Five; the rest are chilangos
Major exports Hydrocarbons, narcotics, warm bodies, such as cooks and gardeners
Major imports All its culture and other American hand-me-downs
“Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result, means that you are in Mexico.”
Mexico is a Latin American country that pairs total social dysfunction with a population that never asks why nothing works but patiently waits for things to be different later.
Mexico is bordered to the north by the United States, though the border is vague and moving further north; and on the south by several even scarier places such as El Humidor, with which the border doesn't matter.
Mexico comprises 31 states, two territories aptly referred to as "B.C.", and three districts: a Federal District that is like Washington, D.C. but even smoggier, and the districts of Cancún and Acapulco, except that they are districts of the United States.
Mexico was originally populated by the Aztecs and Mayans. They perfected the ritual killing of youngsters, long before the invention of the automobile, and predicted that the world would end soon. They were conquered by the Spaniards, who preached that the world would never end. In 1821, Mexico declared its independence, and modern Mexicans wonder why it is taking so long for the world to end.
Among American Presidents, Barack Obama surely thought he was in Mexico when he promised Americans that things would be different if they would only "hope" for "change." And, ¡ay, Chihuahua! he got away with it. And George W. Bush surely meant Mexico when he referred to the people who "are only doing the jobs that Americans won't do (at least, at the shabby wages we want to pay them)." These jobs include serving spicy meals that induce pain the next day, blowing off court dates, and making snap decisions to leave the expressway despite cruising in the fast lane.
The Aztec Empire
The Holy Fire Dragon Xiuhcoatl goes out for a morning stroll.
The name Quetzalcoatl means "freaky fucking weird ass snake demon rape thingy."
The Aztecs first occupied Mexico. They used a highly accurate calendar. However, as it had no concept of time zones, it is utterly useless today, except as something to put on the backs of coins, and as a basis for conspiracy theories and feature films about the arrival from outer space of giant illegal aliens.
The Aztecs are best known (thanks to minorities scholar Mel Gibson) for human sacrifice. But new archaeology suggests they never practiced it. The conquistadors who saw blood splattered on every wall were actually visiting an Aztec hospital after a successful heart-removal procedure. Even today, some tourists mistakenly believe they are in an Aztec temple when visiting a Mexican hospital that still specializes in such procedures. The well-organized Aztec ambulance system could transport patients from Huitzilopochtli to Tlaxcatlan Hospital in under three hours. The Aztec language, and the resulting epidemic of sprained tongues, is what made effective health care so vital.
In short, Aztecs were cute, cuddly, soft-spoken, and damned good at crossword puzzles and cross-stitch. Their placid and idyllic culture (except for the occasional ritual murder of children) would still be with us today if it hadn't been for the arrival of bothersome white people.
Spaniards Gone Wild
Aztec spanish fight
The Aztec response to Spanish colonization of Mexico is still used today as a prime example of diplomacy at work.
Francisco Hernández de Córdoba was the first European to visit Mexico. He came in search of slaves. However, on outlining his proposition (historians believe it went like, "Would you like to engage in hard labor for no pay until dying at a very early age?") his troops were chased back to their boats.
Later, Cortes took the precautionary move of burning the boats so there would be no turning back. Taco Bell had not reached the coast in those days, so Cortes and his men crossed the rugged mountains to the Valley of Mexico to meet with King Moctezuma. Amazingly, Moctezuma believed that Cortes was the god Quetzalcoatl, who according to prophecy would return some day and teach the Aztecs words they could actually pronounce. This would not be the first time Mexico's leaders would sell their people a pig in a poke. By the mid-1500s, the Spaniards had taken over.
Modern Mexico is a delightful blend of all these cultures. From Spain, the Mexicans took bullfighting, bull-running down narrow city streets, and bull-throwing in 31 separate state legislatures. From the Mayans, we see a tendency to leave the native land; also, a tendency not to know the correct date. And from the Aztecs, the Mexicans preserve the unique tradition of violence, in the form of pointless coups, civil wars, military juntas, and hostile takeovers.
Spaniards gone away
In 1810, Miguel Hidalgo shouted the famous Grito de Dolores that statesmen repeat each Independence Day:
Cquote1 Hey Dolores, look at me! I'm up here on stage! Erm, Long live our Lady of Guacamole! Death to all Spaniards! Is this thing on? Cquote2
The Mexicans got the message and told the Spaniards to piss off. Only eleven short and bloody years later, Hidalgo had been captured and executed, likewise the next guy, and Iturbide received his orders to finish off the rebels. But he switched sides and defeated the Spaniards. Then he switched sides again and made himself the government. The Mexicans could not do anything because, at that point, they were too dizzy.
Heady with the victory that had made the Spaniards go away, the Mexicans turned their attention to making Iturbide go away. A man named Santa Ana proved up to the task, and the task was putting himself in Iturbide's place. He became President four times, often even as the result of an election. Santa Ana fought fierce military battles with the United States. They featured showy victories at places like the Alamo, which made it easy to forget the losses, which included all of Texas, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming. Can't win 'em all. Arizona he didn't lose in battle but sold fair-and-square.
First attempts at turbulent government
In 1858, the Mexican Congress elected Ciudad Juárez to be President. He was driven out of Mexico City and started his own Mexico in a city named Ciudad Juárez. The two Mexicos started fighting, and the United States allied with Juárez, until he got very late paying his bills. Napoleon thought he had a solution (just take over the whole country), but it didn't last. Juárez took back over, had a pleasant little firing squad for his replacement, and enjoyed five more good years until Porfirio Díaz took over.
Patriotic themes
The battle for the throne of the Mexican Empire is depicted in the popular SEGA Genesis game.
The turbulent periods in the Mexican past provide many patriotic images that inspire citizens during the turbulent periods in the Mexican present.
Grito de Guerra
The Grito de Guerra (call to arms) rouses Mexicans to defend the Fatherland against hypothetical future invasions (not that invaders are exactly lining up to be the first) using the key tactic of making loud noises, which most Mexicans do capably even in peacetime. The Grito is featured in the Mexican National Anthem, which was written by Bocanegra during a brief period of spousal abuse. His part in the abuse was to write a song with ten tedious verses. The song is abbreviated at soccer matches so that it will be over before halftime.
Niños Héroes
The Niños Héroes (Baby Heroes) illustrate the other prime Mexican strategy for fending off foreign invasion: Play the guilt card. This commemorates the Battle of Chapultepec, although the defenders, six military cadets, were not exactly babies, and were not exactly heroes. However, in this Mexican version of the Alamo, the six responded to certain defeat not by fighting to the last man, but by wrapping themselves in the Mexican flag and jumping off the wall to their deaths, a military version of the modern, "You can't fire me, I quit!" This is why the current Mexican five-year economic plan so strongly resembles a suicide pact.
Even more turmoil
A poster put up by the border patrol.
In the 1960's, a rise in crime began. Famous criminal Speedy Gonzales stole approximately 6 million Old New Pesos (which would have ensured the fill-up of his getaway car) from Mexican banks in Monterrey, Cancún, and Toluca. President Sylvester "The Cat" Stallone made repeated attempts to apprehend Speedy, each one resulting in hilarious Technicolor pratfalls.
In 1972, a massive grass-roots campaign elected a write-in candidate named Pedro. Now, as often happens when you land at the airport and tell someone you have a car reservation with Avis, a throng of Mexicans sprang up, all of them claiming to have the desired name. One of them took office, quickly captured Gonzales, and ushered in the modern era of Mexico. The country fell into a dark phase where corruption and narcotraffic reigned, to be distinguished from the previous and following phases where corruption and narcotraffic reigned.
But two Mexican patriots, El Mariachi and El Chapulín Colorado (The Red Grasshopper) became vigilantes. They constantly battled Mexican drug lords and the crime network of El Santo. Between 1975 and 1980, this duo managed to lower crime throughout Mexico. You can still see them in action from the comic books of the period.
This movement came to an abrupt end in 1980, when El Santo passed away. He was succeeded by Antonio Banderas, who eliminated the vigilantes within months.
The Mexican capitol. In the background is a Pemex refinery producing perfectly safe amounts of Skittles.
Mexico operates under the Constitution of 1917, written by the same inspiration that also gave us the Soviet Union, and with mostly the same effects. The official name of the country is The United States of America of Mexico. Many other things about Mexico are also copied from the U.S. One thing that is not, is the requirement that amendments to the Constitution be approved by a lot of people, and the hefty document that has resulted is used more often to lift small children to the dinner table than is the Mexico City telephone book. The Constitution is also used more often for that purpose than it is used to determine whether an action of government is legitimate or not.
Mexico serves as a useful laboratory to prove that attractive reforms often proposed in other countries, such as a longer Presidential term, a prohibition on re-election, short, structured campaigns, and compulsory voting, do not change a thing.
The Pemex logo features a red droplet that represents an oil worker's blood.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party had complete control of the Mexican government since 1929. One can see how revolution can be institutional by looking at the water in a toilet just after operating the little lever. Vested interests could still purchase favors, but by competing inside the party rather than with the party. However, in 2000, Mexico surprised everyone by holding a fair election, which the National Action Party won. The result was neither national action nor anything much different from the other guys. After 12 years of pro-business government (for those in the business of running drugs), the people decided that corrupt autocracy had been just fine. Departing President Felipe Calderón, having been unable to change anything substantial about Mexico, proposed to just rename it, so as not to ape the name of a neighboring country. He suggested The People's Republic of Mexico.
The government is not the only thing that imitates the United States. Everything else does too, only it has "mex" added as a suffix. The telephone monopoly is Telmex, the petroleum monopoly is Pemex, and the country itself was recently renamed Mexmex.
The Mexican legislature wins originality points by being called "Congress" and consisting of two chambers. One is the Chamber of Deputies; which would leave the Chamber of Sheriffs. In each house, half of the seats are voted on through representative districts. Half of the remainder are decided by dividing Mexico into five parts based on nothing and having everyone vote on their favorite car. The political parties decide who gets these seats, one of the many ways that relieve Mexicans of their surprise (and of anyone to complain to) when what they vote for is not what they get. The other seats can be acquired for cash.
The bureaucracy
Every family has one member employed in government. He uses his staff car to run errands for family members, sometimes even for aunts and uncles. Most of these errands involve waiting in line, which he can do with confidence that the citizens waiting in line to see him will stay there even longer. Being a member of the bureaucracy usually ensures a person of an ample supply of Christmas gifts for the entire family.
Foreign policy
Mexico's border policy depends on whether we are talking "northern border" or "southern border."
To the south, policy involves an absolute prohibition on anyone entering or leaving, a system of strict work permits, and frequent imprisonment of offenders in squalid jails on vague charges, all of the above depending on whether suitable bribes are paid.
To the north, policy involves nuisance fees that must be paid with a U.S. credit card and frequent overtures to the U.S. President and Congress to let Mexican citizens swarm in with impunity and not use English, all of the above depending on whether suitable bribes are paid.
Mexico's relations with the U.S. involve a cultural exchange program in which Mexico's "Roads Scholars" assemble at educational centers like Home Depot, waiting for a ride to private homes to build roofs and discuss macroeconomic policy.
Main article: Failure
The Mexican economy has been plundered for over 90 years and continues to provide for the entire nation. There is frenzied activity as throngs of consumers move from one line to another and exchange pieces of paper for new, improved pieces of paper, many of which now have holograms.
Main article: Pez
Honey, we're rich!!!
Mexico's currency is called the pez. That is, each of Mexico's currencies is called the pez; and you need to learn the pictures and maybe check the fine print with the year of issue to tell whether you are being given New Pez, Really New Pez, New Improved Pez, or those worthless Old Pez. There is always a cartoon advertisement on television with decimal points playing hopscotch over zeros (three at a time) to give a cheerful illustration about how the $40,000.00 in your pocket will henceforth be known as $40 and will still not pay the complete bill for lunch. This is the reason why, up in the hills, they don't ask, "How many pez for that chair?" but "How many thousands for that chair?" and they don't mean thousands.
The Norma Oficial Mexicana is an assurance of quality like the traditional guarantee that most Mexican prostitutes are virgins.
About the only thing on which the Mexican Constitution is clear is that nobody owns anything. You are welcome to maintain that house on Enemies of the Proletariat Avenue, and you can exercise "stewardship" forever over that small piece of the National Patrimony, but don't think that you own it. Foreigners can also be stewards of property, only not within 200 km of a national border or 300 km of a coastline. Unless you find a Mexican willing to sign the legal papers for a small fee.
If the place comes with a maid and a chauffeur, and if they belong to a union, their rights to the place may be in competition with yours as the new "steward." Likewise if there is a gentleman living in a tent in the back yard. The key thing to remember is that money talks--and not the amount you paid to acquire the place.
Your children, on the other hand, will generally do what you ask them to. This is why most Mexicans realize that the only way to build a nest egg for retirement is to have fourteen kids. It helps that locally available condoms comply with the Official Mexican Standards for quality. These quality standards, known by the Spanish acronym NOM, certify the highest dependability that mind-numbing regulations and bribe-taking inspectors can deliver. The only higher rating is the triple award, pronounced "nom nom nom."
The terrifying Mexican businessman survives by consuming failing American corporations. In completely unrelated news, have you checked your GM stock lately?
“Iss not that we don' have jobs! Iss our job to be here!”
~ Customs Agent Juan Enchilada de Serrano on NAFTA
NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) has resulted in many new jobs for Mexicans, mostly ensuring that all products have tedious labels in three languages that are too small to read. NAFTA is enforced by a network of Walmart stores, which now exist in every major city. The people don't shop there, however, as they find full shelves disconcerting and there are no cockroaches for the children to prod and tease.
As the National Action Party is known by its Spanish initials, which spell out "bread", NAFTA is sometimes referred to as naphtha, which is the same technique of convincing the Mexican people of something by suggesting that it might be good to eat.
NAFTA comprised more than 1000 pages, which is 1000 pages more than you would need if you were really after free trade. But inspectors to confirm that every shipment complies with the detailed rules for "liberalization" are another great new jobs program.
Carlos Slim
It is no stranger that they call this guy "slim" than that they call Enrique Peña Nieto "President."
Since the treaty took effect in 1994, the Mexican people have been terrified of losing all their jobs to superior American quality—almost as terrified as the American people are of losing all their jobs to cheap Mexican labor. If the zone's 210,000,000 jobs all left at the same time, they would surely all wind up in the middle of the Rio Grande. This would hamper barge traffic but might increase the river's utility for sneaking into the United States.
Carlos Slim
The most remarkable thing of all is that this dirt-poor economy has produced the world's richest person. If no one is allowed to own anything in Mexico, no one told Carlos "Slim" Helú. This billionaire businessman has his own section in an article in UNCYCLOPEDIA, even though he is not really a "businessman," in the usual G-7 sense, and he is not really slim.
Mr. Helú owns a controlling stake in Telmex and thus derives a chunk-of-change, which is not slim either, every time a telephone is installed in Mexico, and may obtain a portion of the extra payment made to ensure that the installation is made without waiting the usual six months.
Mr. Helú is about to demonstrate Mexicans' notorious adaptability, as a majority of the nation has torn the telephone off the wall and gone cellular--even before the U.S. did.
Toll roads
Grade separation
Mexican expressways employ "grade separations" to obviate traffic lights or stop signs. (The British term would be "fly-overs.")
Some Polynesians think the reason cargo planes with hot meals landed during World War II is that there were airports; and they still build bamboo "control towers" and wait. Likewise, Mexico decided it could be as rich as the United States by merely building Interstates. These now go halfway to everywhere the traveler wants to be. Moreover, new speed bumps in the old road at every little village induce the traveler to take the expressway.
Unfortunately, someone learned about tolls during a visit to Tokyo, and the resulting fares mean that the only people who use expressways are truckers and Americans. Most tolls are still collected by private enterprise, at toll booths consisting of a tree felled across the road. The highway-user's only protection against the highway-man is not to disclose that he has a lot of cash in the vehicle. This can only be achieved by not using the toll roads.
Mexican Army helicopters run on the tears of orphaned children.
Mexico's armed forces are non-nuclear, instead relying on the piñata and the jumping bean. Like those of Japan and Costa Rica, it is never to be used in conflicts against other nations. The southern border is defended by the fact that neighboring countries are even more disorganized and generally at war with one another instead. The northern border is not defended at all; that would keep everyone from getting to work in the morning.
The Mexican Army is prepared for the next period of total anarchy and insurrection. It will have hot meals ready for all the U.S. forces sent in to restore order.
Between conflicts, the Army trains by stopping and inspecting cars on rural national highways. Soldiers are paid a stingy salary but can supplement their income with tips.
The typical Mexican soldier carries both a battle rifle and a submachine gun. He can switch weapons by pressing Y, and jump by tapping the A button.
The wise tourist who hears a tout suggesting that he "come to the bitches" understands that it is just the persistent Mexican way of pronouncing English, and that the tout is actually suggesting a day trip to the ocean shore. However, regarding bitches, both Tijuana and Juárez have a thriving theater district where the same co-star with a variety of barnyard animals.
Cancún and Acapulco are tourist spots to U.S. standards, and compare favorably to any other place to spend spring break. Any waitperson is trained to explain to the customer in either language how the local water treatment plant was built to international standards (not just to "nom nom nom") and there is little risk of a debilitating bacterial infection. Nevertheless, the tourist need not tempt fate by ordering his mixed drink on the rocks.
The Gulf Coast is the only place left in the world where Americans are warmly welcomed, as the usual clientele is Canadian, and Americans, by comparison, do tend to tip in double digits.
Countries and territories of North America
America: United States of America | Confederate States of America
Countries and territories of The World
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For those without comedic tastes, the so-called experts at Wikipedia have an article about Danube.
The Danube in Europe
The Danube (Chinese: Teh N00b) is the best river in the world. It is located in Europe, the best continent in the world. Just thinking about it can give someone a triple orgasm. It was created by God in order to bring friendship between Hungary and Romania, two city states on the Danube who have been at war since the time of Alexander the Great of Macedonia. The Danube has a nice Delta, where the Tyrannosaurus Rex can still be seen. It is also home to SpongeBob SquarePants (the former Bulgarian king) and Gypsies.
The river originates in the Nazi Forest mountains of Germany, near the town of Ewigejude. It flows eastwards for a distance of 18,235,796 km (18.235.796 km), and it ends up in the Blackadder Sea, called thusly because Blackadder III won it at a poker game with the British prince George the Fatass.
Known in history as one of the longstanding frontiers of the Roma (Gypsy) Empire, it conveniently stops at many cities in Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and of course, Hungary and Romania. Each of these countries claims that the Danube is "their" river, and so far have fought a couple dozen wars just to impose that, plus a mock war started by Bulgaria on April Fools'Day.
Origin of the name
The origin of the name is controversial. Different historians and squirrels have contradicting theories. One theory is that it comes from the Slavic "Dan ube" (Marvellous Day), a term introduced by Svatopluk (Slavic version of Chuck Norris) after he conquered half the known world and managed to shave without cutting himself. Slavs are nice, hairy people, living in most part of Europe, except Great Britain (yes, Britain is in Europe, kinda). Another theory says that it comes from old Germanic "Drfgkmggkggglglanube", meaning "This river is as long as my piss after consuming my weight in beer". The old Germanic people considered that if you used too many vowels, your penis turned into a vagina. The most plausible theory is that it is a Pelasgian (first people in Europe and wonderful fashion designers) word, from the phrase "Da-mishto-nu-shucar-be", "Danube" for short, meaning "This river is whack". Gypsy historians have argued that it is actually a Gypsy word, because every Gypsy uses "mishto" and "shucar" once in every 4 words. Danuube was also used for trexs as a mating place where they would get all drunk and make sweet love. From there untimly death from the brutes of halo 3 were eaten up by the trexs horny ass ways. so the last brute sucked every trex in a whoping thirty minutes. this started the the brutes to be gay. And suck dick for a living. Danube is famous site for seeing a trex once every twenty years
794px-Danube flooding in Novi Sad, Serbia 2006-04-08
The Danube in all its majesty
In its tumultuous course, the Danube threatens many towns and communities. Some of these communities decide to pay a yearly tribute to the Danube, rather than be made into a "Danalak". The Iron Gates were constructed between Romania and Serbia as a testament to the might of this cruel river. People however just make the Germans pay most of the tributes, like in the European Union, which was Danube's idea, btw. to the brutes fat asses this started to be a cultural thing to suck dino dick for ever and to also pick the leader of the tribe. Danube was also where scientis to find brute females dead after 5 brute babys so the brute scients the gayest brutes of them all. said that the brute females would have more brute boys than girls. this failed so for ten years brutes were straight. and the brutes started to have sucide the brute boys were dying slowy. Danube was also the most fucked place in germany furing this time Bc 1500
Danube Delta
The Danube Delta was formed by the accumulation of sediments brought by the Danube throughout the years. Recently, these sediments consist mostly of used condoms and Mars chocolate bars. There is a small community of Neanderthals living in the Delta, who practise a primitive form of fishing. The least talented of them become talk show hosts. They are the only ones able to communicate with the Tyrannosaurus Rex, who hid behind a plankton and survived the other dinosaurs. Many migratory birds can also be seen, but only when the T-Rex is asleep. The Delta is also home to a lighthouse, an old mill, and a nuclear power plant. The people working in the power plant say that the fauna of the Delta is amazing, and it is the only place where sabertooth pelicans and three-headed cormorants can be seen. UNESCO has officially declared the Delta to be "Not a total piece of crap".
Human history
The oldest human settlement on the river Danube is the town of Nagycrap, in modern Hungary. It was inhabited by highly sophisticated Sumero-Scythians, who built palaces of pure gold and experimented with space flight. It is said that they left for Mars one day, but they vowed they would return just in time to mix with Huns and Avars (who together with donkeys gave birth to the modern Hungarians). The river was later part of the Gypsy Empire's "Limes Germanicus" (literally, Germ Frontier, as using soap was prohibited in the empire, and eternal damnation was upon the one who used it anyway).
Some other early cultures include the Proto-Disco culture, not to be confused with the ancient culture of Funk from what is now Oregon in the United States. The Ustasa culture, discovered in modern Croatia, is characterised by homes and temples built entirely from willow trees. As a symbol of their connection with their ancestors, modern Croatians hang a Serb on a willow tree every Thursday ("Ustasa" means "Thursday" in modern Croatian), on a bank of the Danube. The Cucumber Pot culture, developed in modern Bulgaria, was characterised by ritualistic cucumber shaped pots, from which sacred wine was drunk. The priests would dress in chicken costumes and throw themselves in the Danube, saying a prayer in order to not get wet. If the priests came out of the Danube wet, their heads would be cut off and ritualistically eaten. The "Slota" (Slaughta in English) culture developped in modern Slovakia, and its representatives made boats from which they attacked the town of Nagycrap. If they ever found a Sumero-Scythian who was looking away, they would immediately slaughter him, screaming "Ajde na pizdu materinu" ("This is because you will turn into a Hungarian"). We couldn't forget the Pelasgian culture, found in modern Romania, led by Giorgianus Armanianus, who was sometimes called "Danubianus" because of the habit of Pelasgians of adding "anus" at the end of most words. Papyrus found in the region revealed that the ancient Pelasgians considered that being a fashion designer doesn't necessarily mean you are gay. The ones who were found to be gay, though, would be drowned in the Danube.
Economics of the Danube
Drinking water
The Danube is a source of water for many people, except the Germans and Austrians, who prefer to drink beer prepared from dandruff, rotten boughs and mountain goat's piss. The Danube is the only source of water for Hungarians, who worship their only lake, Balaton, like an almighty god. Serbs and Croatians try to use the water to fabricate chemical weapons, as they consider chemical warfare more civilised than fighting with your bare hands. Romanians oscilate between using the water for drinking or for washing their cars or even their Dacias (Renault toy cars).
Navigation and transport
The Danube is used to connect South-Eastern Europe to Atlantis, the land of Christopher Columbus and tiny cowboys. Atlantis uses the Danube to export beef jerky (mostly to Romania and Bulgaria), and imports fake watches and used tennis shoes. It was suggested that a Danube channel be build to reach Hyperboleea, considered by some historians as the original homeland of most Europeans from that region. Indeed, Hyperbole Day is the national holiday of Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria, being unofficial in Serbia, Croatia, Slovakia and Ukraine. Transport on the Danube is sometimes made more difficult by the USA, which randomly bombs bridges in order to fight the smuggling of cocaine and to prevent Arabic students from reaching Eastern European universities.
Important National Parks
Hitler was born near the Danube
The Danube is like the only beam of light for some of the countries it passes through. In celebration of it, national parks were built in several countries, where people can go and pay their respects to the generous god-river. This national parks include the "Beer da'know" in Germany, a tribute to the Unknown Beer. Germans are said to drink anything as long as it has a beery colour. In Hungary, there is the Duna-Horthy Mocskos Park. There, the spirit of the great admiral Horthy (Hitler's tennis partner) is considered to still roam around the Danube bank, asking people for loose change so he can give the Fuhrer a call. In Serbia, there is the famous Pigeon National Park, a testament to the brave heroes who managed to drown Albanians in the mighty river (Serbians call Albanians "pigeons" because all the good insults were taken). In Romania, there are two important national parks, the Iron Guard National Park, built as a testament to C.Z.Codreanu, who died for the cause of having kittens in every school and never prohibiting Jews to attend college or get a job or live. The other one is the Biosphere Reserve of the Danube Delta, where the Tyrannosaurus Rex and a younger version of J.R. from Dallas can be seen. The visitors are instructed not to feed the poachers. In Bulgaria, there is the "Persian National Park", because historians worldwide agree that Bulgarians originate from sophisticated Persians, not some crappy vulgar sandmonkeys.
See also
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Sunday, June 8, 2014
The Steinberger Guitar And Those That Copied It
In 1975 Ned Steinberg graduated from the Maryland Institute of Art with a BFA in sculpture. He immediately went to work for an industrial furniture company designing space age office furniture. At the time he was sharing an apartment with bass luthier Stuart Spector.
Steinberger Protype
By 1977 Steinberg designs the NS model bass for Stuart Spector. He makes several prototypes of the graphite composite L-2 bass. In 1979 his L-2 bass is displayed at the summer NAMM show.
Steinberger Prototype
He sold the prototypes to John Entwhistle, Tony Levine and Andy West (the Dregs.) In 1980 Steinberg is awarded a patent of his L-2 bass and Steinberg Sound is founded. The following year the L-2 is exhibited at the Frankfurt Musik Messe and is an instant hit.
That same year Steinberg is awarded the coveted Designers Excellence Award from the Industrial Designers Society of America. Time Magazine calls it one of the five most amazing designs of the year. The first Steinberger basses, were built in 1979 in Brooklyn, New York by Ned Steinberger.
A company, Steinberger Sound, was duly set up to manufacture the basses and later the guitars on a larger scale at Newburgh, New York, however demand always outstripped supply and the company was eventually sold to Gibson in 1987.
When we think of a Steinberger what comes to mind is a headless bass and guitar that is shaped somewhat like a cricket bat. The more famous Steinberger design was the L-Series bass guitar. Steinberg came up with a proprietary graphite and carbon fiber mix that comprised the main body and a face plate.
The strings were tuned at the bottom of the bottom, eliminating the need of a head stock. The tuning hardware was unique with its 18:1 gear ratio. This gave a slower, but more precise adjustment to the strings and virtually prevented slippage.
Depending on the tailpiece, calibrated or uncalibrated double- ball end strings were used, the former required to use the transposing feature of the TransTrem vibrato unit.
Steinberger L-2 with TransTrem
One other unique feature of a Steinberger was the patented TransTrem. This was not just a vibrato, but a unique transposing unit.
The TransTrem proportionally adjusted the string tensions to enable accurate tuning and detuning by depressing the lever. This provides somewhat of a capo effect.
During the years that Ned Steinberger owned the company, several innovations and designs took place. He created a P-Series guitars and basses which featured a smaller wooden body with a bolt-on composite neck.
The S-Series guitars and basses feature a headstock. An estimated 300 to 350 were built.
The M-Series was designed by bass player, Mike Rutherford and British luthier Roger Giffin. These guitars had a double-cutaway wooden body with a bolt-on graphite neck. The headless neck and tuning system was maintained as was the optional TransTrem unit.
The K-Series Bass and Guitar was designed by Steve Klein. This instrument featured and ergonomic body with the headless graphite bolt-on neck. Klein’s forte was ergonomic guitars.
The Q-Series was made in the 1990’s prior to Gibson’s takeover. It was similar to the M-Series, but the body underwent a revision.
Gibson still retains rights over the "Steinberger" name. Ned Steinberger, can not call any further guitar projects he build Steinbergers.
NS Design Violin
Since selling his company, he has gone into business operating NS Design which he started in 1990.
NS Design Bass Cello
Steinberger now builds electric versions of bowed stringed instruments such as violins, violas, cellos and string basses.
Ironically, due to the complex manufacturing process involved in creating Steinberger guitars and basses and the high prices they commanded, Gibson stopped production and quit selling new Steinbergers in 1990.
This was the same year NS Design started.
Due to ongoing interest in the “broom-like” graphite guitars from around the world Gibson revived production. Only this time, the bass or guitar is not fashioned completely from graphite. It is now part wood and part graphite composite.
The latest versions are manufactured in South Korea and known as the Synapse Line. They include two guitar models and a bass model. And though they look like Steinbergers, the bodies are slightly larger.
One of the models known as the Trans Scale Synapse guitar comes with an interesting feature. Its longer than average neck has a built-in adjustable capo.
By moving the capo closer to the end of the neck, the player can attain notes lower than a standard guitar without having to detune the strings.
Hohner licensed Steinberger
There are several companies around the world that have licensed the headless technology from Steinberger. These include Hohner, which produces an all-wooden version of the L-Series. Hohner calls this The Jack Bass. It uses the same patented locking and tuning system that Steinbergers utilize and requires double ball strings.
Cort Steinberger Bass
Cort produces headless guitars/basses with different body designs.
Currently two all-wood instruments are sold under the Spirit by Steinberg brand.
The Deluxe model features bridge and neck humbucking pickups with a single coil in the middle.
The Standard features a bridge humbucking pickup with single coils in the neck and middle position.
Washburn Bantam
The Washburn Bantam was an unlicensed 1980s imitation of the Steinberger headless style. The Bantam did not require the double-ball end strings of the Steinberger.
I recently updated an article about Duke Kramer, the man with ties to both Gretsch and Baldwin.
Kramer Duke Bass
It turns out Kramer Guitars manufactured a headless Steinberger clone called
the Kramer Duke. Although this looked similar to a Steinberger, the Kramer Duke came with an aluminum/wooden neck and a wooden body. Standard guitar or bass tuners were located at the end of the instruments body.
Kramer Guitars were also a Gibson acquisition. The Kramer name and the Spirit by Steinberg showed up on Gibson’s online budget site Yo-Music website which offered guitars and amplifiers at deeply discounted prices.
These are all Steinberger Basses and Guitars
Jackberry Gilard said...
Is there really such an instrument as the Electric Guitars? This article introduces the main factors to consider when attempting to choose the best electric guitar for you to play.
hạt điều rang muối vietnuts said...
haha so cute guitar
Marc said...
There is such an instrument as the electric guitar. The first time I saw one was when I was around 3 or 4 years old. It was a lap steel on a stand being played by someone on a local show called Midwestern Hayride. I've been hooked on them ever since. | <urn:uuid:70002530-1fa3-403a-bf75-a6d09f8c2651> | 2 | 2.109375 | 0.029494 | en | 0.955458 | http://uniqueguitar.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-steinberger-guitar-and-those-that.html |
Basics of Computational Number Theory
Robert Campbell
1. Introduction
2. Modular Arithmetic
3. Prime Numbers
4. The Structure of Zp
5. Other Fields
1. Programming Notes
2. References
3. Glossary
This document is a gentle introduction to computational number theory. The plan of the paper is to first give a quick overview of arithmetic in the modular integers. Throughout, we will emphasize computation and practical results rather than delving into the why. Simple programs, generally in JavaScript, are available for all of the algorithms mentioned. At the end of the paper we will introduce the Gaussian Integers and Galois Fields and compare them to the modular integers. Companion papers will examine number theory from a more advanced perspective.
Modular Arithmetic
Modular arithmetic is arithmetic using integers modulo some fixed integer N. Thus, some examples of operations modulo 12 are:
Further examples can be generated and checked out with the following short programs. Note that, as JavaScript cannot compute with integers larger than 53 bits, the largest modulus allowed is 26.5 bits, or about 94,900,000.
+ (mod ) =
* (mod ) =
Among the basic operations we have missed the division operator. If we were working in the integers we would almost never be able to define a quotient (unless the answer is itself an integer). In the modular integers we can often, but not always, define a quotient:
As the last example points out, modular division does not always produce a unique result, for other correct answers are 3 and 11 (as 3 * 3 = 9 (mod 12) and 3 * 11 = 33 = 9 (mod 12)). In particular, if the modulus and the divisor share a common factor (in this case 3 divides both 3 and 12), the answer will not be unique if it exists at all. We draw two conclusions from this - the first is that we would like to be able to spot such common factors, and the second is that we would like to avoid such situations. Usually we avoid the situation ever showing up by using only prime moduli. Spotting the situation is one of the results of the next section.
GCD - The Euclidean Algorithm
The Euclidean Algorithm solves two problems we have posed:
The largest number which divides two numbers n and m is called the greatest common divisor of n and m, and denoted gcd(n, m).
The algorithm to find gcd(n, m) runs something like this:
1. Write down both n and m
2. Reduce the larger modulo the smaller
3. Repeat step 2 until the result is zero
4. Publish the preceding result as gcd(n, m)
An example of this algorithm is the following computation of gcd(120,222):
120 222
120 222-120=102
120-102=18 102
18 102-5*18=12
18-12=6 12
6 12-2*6=0
Thus gcd(120,222)=6.
The following short program will allow you to compute examples of the Euclidean Algorithm:
gcd(, ) =
If you think carefully about the Euclidean algorithm you will see that at each step both numbers are formed by adding some multiples of the original numbers. Thus there are some numbers, a and b, such that gcd(n,m)=a*n+b*m. The Extended Euclidean algorithm can recover not only gcd(n,m), but also these numbers a and b.
The Extended Euclidean Algorithm & Modular Inverses
The Extended Euclidean algorithm not only computes gcd(n,m), but also returns the numbers a and b such that gcd(n,m)=a*n+b*m. If gcd(n,m)=1 this solves the problem of computing modular inverses.
Assume that we want to compute n(-1)(mod m) and further assume that gcd(n,m)=1. Run the Extended Euclidean algorithm to get a and b such that a*n+b*m=1. Rearranging this result, we see that a*n=1-b*m, or a*n=1(mod m). This solves the problem of finding the modular inverse of n, as this shows that n(-1)=a(mod m).
The Extended Euclidean algorithm is nothing more than the usual Euclidean algorithm, with side computations to keep careful track of what combination of the original numbers n and m have been added at each step. The algorithm runs generally like this:
1. Write down n, m, and the two-vectors (1,0) and (0,1)
2. Divide the larger of the two numbers by the smaller - call this quotient q
3. Subtract q times the smaller from the larger (ie reduce the larger modulo the smaller)
4. Subtract q times the vector corresponding to the smaller from the vector corresponding to the larger
5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 until the result is zero
6. Publish the preceding result as gcd(n,m)
An example of this algorithm is the following computation of 30(-1)(mod 53):
53 30 (1,0) (0,1)
53-1*30=23 30 (1,0)-1*(0,1)=(1,-1) (0,1)
23 30-1*23=7 (1,-1) (0,1)-1*(1,-1)=(-1,2)
23-3*7=2 7 (1,-1)-3*(-1,2)=(4,-7) (-1,2)
2 7-3*2=1 (4,-7) (-1,2)-3*(4,7)=(-13,23)
2-2*1=0 1 (4,-7)-2*(-13,23)=(30,-53) (-13,23)
From this we see that gcd(30,53)=1 and, rearranging terms, we see that 1=-13*53+23*30, so we conclude that 30(-1)=23(mod 53). (This can be confirmed by checking that 23*30=1(mod 53).)
The following short program will allow you to compute examples of the extended Euclidean Algorithm:
gcd(, ) =
Exponentiation - The Russian Peasant Algorithm
When computing a power of a number with a finite modulus there are efficient ways to do it and inefficient ways to do it. In this section we will outline a commonly used efficient method which has the curious name "the Russian Peasant algorithm".
The most obvious way to compute 1210 (mod 23) is to multiply 12 a total of nine times, reducing the result mod 23 at each step. A more efficient method which takes only four multiplications is accomplished by first noting that:
122=6 (mod 23)
124=62=13 (mod 23)
128=132=8 (mod 23)
We have now performed three squarings and, by noting that the exponent breaks into powers of 2 as 10=8+2, we can rewrite our computation:
=8*6=2(mod 23)
So our algorithm consists of writing the exponent as powers of two. (This can be done by writing it as a number base 2 and reading off successive digits - eg 1010=10102.) Now we multiply successive squares of the base number for each digit of the exponent which is a "1".
The following short program will allow you to compute examples of the Russian Peasant method for exponentiation:
^ (mod ) =
The (slightly cryptic) output of this program can be read as:
1. The base two digits of the exponent
2. The successive squarings of the base (ie b2, b4, b8, ...)
3. The product of the appropriate squares
Prime Numbers
A prime is a number which has no divisors other than 1 and the number itself.
Thus, 13 is a prime but 12 is not - it has divisors 2, 3, and 6. A number which is not prime is said to be composite.
The idea of primes raises several questions - how does one find a prime and how do you reduce a number into a product of its prime factors (ie how do you factor it)?
Finding Primes
There are two ways to find primes. The oldest is to search a large number of numbers, sieving out the non-prime (ie composite) numbers, leaving only the primes. The second method is to test an individual number for primality.
The Sieve of Eratosthenes is a recent method (dating from the 3rd century BC). The idea is this - write down all the integers up to some point:
Now cross out all the even ones larger than 2:
Now cross out all those divisible by 3 (other than 3):
At each step we find the next prime (number not crossed out) publish it as a prime and cross out all of its multiples. So, in this example we see that the numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and 13 are prime.
While the sieve is an efficient way to find a large number of successive primes it cannot be used to test an arbitrary number for primality. This can be done with a pseudoprime test.
A pseudoprime test would be more accurately called a compositeness test as when it is applied to an integer N it returns one of two possible results:
The value of using a pseudoprime test to test for primality is that it can be repeated. If the test always responds that the number might be prime then you get some confidence (but no assurance) that N is prime.
The following is the simplest pseudoprime test. In the literature it is normally not given a name but as it is based on Fermat's Little Theorem (stated in the next section) I will call it the Fermat test. This test runs like this:
1. Choose a base b for the test.
2. If b(N-1)=1(mod N) then N might be prime, if it is any other value then N is definitely composite.
Lets try a few examples:
1. Test 35=5*7 for primality:
1. Choose base 2
2. Compute 234 (mod 35) = 9
3. As the result is not 1 we conclude that 35 is composite.
2. Test 31 (known to be prime) for primality:
1. Choose base 2
2. Compute 230 (mod 31) = 1
So 31 is a pseudoprime for base 2.
3. Also compute:
330 (mod 31) = 1
530 (mod 31) = 1
4. From this see that 31 is a pseudoprime for bases 2, 3, and 5, and we conclude that 31 is probably prime.
3. Test 341=11*31 for primality:
1. Choose base 2
2. Compute 2340 (mod 341) = 1
So 341 is a pseudoprime for base 2.
3. Choose base 3
4. Compute 3340 (mod 341) = 56
So 341 is definitely composite.
The last example should be somewhat disturbing as it shows that a composite number can masquerade as a prime under the Fermat pseudoprime test. For this there is both good news and bad news.
More examples of this test can be computed by using the previously mentioned method of fast exponentiation:
^ (mod ) =
Element Orders
Why did the primality test work? The Fermat pseudoprime test, as well as a number of others, depends on a simple property of primes first noticed by Pierre Fermat in the 17th century:
Theorem: (Fermat's Little Theorem) If p is prime and 0<b<p then b(p-1) =1(mod p).
In order to winnow primes from non-primes we make use of the fact that for a prime p this is true for any base b, while for a non-prime q and a chosen base b the value of b(q-1)(mod q) is arbitrary and rarely equal to 1.
The smallest non-zero exponent e such that ae = 1 (mod N) is the order of a mod N. This is generally denoted o(a) (mod N).
A consequence of Fermat's Little Theorem is that, for prime p and 0<a<p, the order of a mod p divides (p-1).
The simplest way to factor an integer is to trial divide it by all of the primes less than its square root. For large numbers this is a very inefficient method, though. A number of better methods have been developed during the mid and late 20th Century, though. We will describe Pollard's p-1 algorithm.
To use Pollard's p-1 factoring method to factor a composite number N:
1. Choose a base b.
2. Start with an exponent of e=2.
1. Replace b with be(mod N)
2. If gcd(N,b-1) is not 1, publish it as a factor and STOP.
3. Add 1 to e.
The principle behind this method is again Fermat's Little Theorem. Assume for simplicity that the composite number N has two prime factors, p and q, so N=pq. Assume that b does not divide p (an unlikely circumstance). Now we know that b(p-1)=1(mod p). If we can magically find an exponent E such that (p-1) divides E, say E=k(p-1), then bE =bk =1(mod p). A potential problem is that we don't know the value of p in advance. We get around that by assuming that the largest prime factor of (p-1) is some bound B. If this is true, then by the Bth step of the algorithm we have computed gcd(N,b2*3*...*B-1). We expect that b2*3*...*B=1(mod p) so b2*3*...*B-1=0(mod p), and b2*3*...*B-1(mod N), must be a multiple of q. Thus we expect gcd(N,b2*3*...*B-1) will be q.
This method usually works if you are willing to run enough to large enough values of the exponent. Sometimes you are lucky, (p-1) has only small factors, and factorization is easy. Sometimes you are unlucky, (p-1) has a large prime factor and it takes a lot of work to factor N.
Factor with Pollard's p-1 method using base ... to get a factor of
The Structure of Zp
Primitive Elements & Cyclic Groups
A number g is primitive mod p if the order of g mod p is (p-1).
If p is prime, Fermat's Little Theorem that, for any g not divisible by p, g(p-1) = 1 (mod p). If r is not prime, say r = pq, then there are no primitive elements mod r. Conversely, it is (fairly) simple to prove that there are primitive elements mod any prime p.
When p is prime there are many elements which are primitive mod p, but there is no way to tell which elements are primitive short of finding their order. Thus 2 is not primitive mod 7 (21=2, 22=4 and 23=8=1 (mod 7), so the order of 2 mod 7 is 3), but 3 is primitive mod 7 (31=3, 32=9=2, 33=27=6, 34=81=4, 35=243=5 so the order of 3 mod 7 is 6).
(Strictly speaking, we have not given the correct definition of primitivity. A more correct definition is that g is primitive mod N if the successive powers of g mod N produce all integers less than N and coprime to N. This sharper definition allows us to state that there are primitive elements mod N if and only if N has the form p, pn, or 2pn, where p is prime.)
Now think about a number which is not prime, say N=pq, where both p and q are prime. Consider some a which is coprime to both p and q (in other words 0<a(mod p)<p, and similarly for q). Thus from Fermat's Little Theorem we know that a(p-1)(q-1) = (a(p-1))(q-1) = 1(q-1) = 1 (mod p) and similarly a(p-1)(q-1) = 1 (mod q). Thus a(p-1)(q-1) = 1. The order of a mod pq must divide (p-1)(q-1). In particular, as (p-1)(q-1) < (pq-1), we know that if N=pq is not prime, then no element has order N-1. We will use this to prove that a number is prime.
Among other things, we have shown the following, which is a sub-case of what is called Euler's Theorem. (One of the many theorems called "Euler's Theorem".)
Theorem: If N=pq, where both p and q are prime, and if b is chosen so that gcd(b,N)=1, then b(p-1)(q-1) = 1 (mod N).
Miller-Rabin Primality Test
The Miller-Rabin primality test is, like the Fermat test, a pseudoprime test. It uses a consequence of the structure of the group of units - that the only square roots of 1 mod a prime p are 1 and -1, but mod any odd composite N with n distinct prime factors, there are 2n square roots of 1. Thus, the Miller-Rabin test looks for square roots of 1, declaring N composite if it finds one other than 1 or -1.
Is prime? →
Proving Primality
Thus far, every test has been a pseudoprime test - it positively identifies composite numbers but can identify primes at best with some likelihood of error. We can use what we now know to produce a test which proves that some number is prime. We know that:
Thus, if we can find an element a such that it has order exactly (N-1) mod N, then we have proven that N is prime. Our approach is brute force - we try successive values of a and see if each is primitive. The work is not as bad as it sounds, though. For any a we first confirm that a(N-1)=1 (mod N). Now we know that the true order of a is a divisor of N-1. Checking an for every divisor n of N-1 is not bad. There is a second trick we can apply though. If the order of a is strictly less than N-1 then there must be some prime divisor p of N-1 such that a(N-1)/p=1 (mod N). Thus, our algorithm is:
1. Factor (N-1) = p1e1 ... pkek, where every pi is prime
2. For some sequence of a's (a = 2,3,4,5,... is probably good enough) If a(N-1)/p≠1 (mod N) for all pi, then a is primitive and N is prime.
Sometimes easier said than done, particularly the part where you factor (N-1).
Other Groups and Rings
Number theory is the study of more than just the integers. This is true both because various other algebraic structures are natural generalizations of the integers and also because they often give us information about the integers.
Gaussian Integers
The first generalization of the integers we will touch on is the Gaussian Integers, an extension of the integers by i, the square root of negative one.
The elements of the Gaussian Integers are all numbers of the form n+mi, where both n and m are integers. Addition and multiplication are done in the usual way.
Things start getting interesting when we try to decide what we mean by primes in the Gaussian Integers. The simple observation that (2+i)(2-i) = 4-(-1) = 5 shows that not every integer which is prime in the integers is prime in the Gaussian Integers.
Galois Fields
Galois fields (also referred to as finite fields) are extensions of the integers modulo some prime p.
We start with the integers modulo p and some polynomial which cannot be solved (ie factored) in this field. Lets continue with a two tangible examples:
Example: GF(23) = Z2[x]/<x3+x+1>
Our example will start with the integers modulo 2 (containing only the two numbers 0 and 1). In keeping with the usual notation we will call this F2. Given this field we now pull out of our hat the polynomial x3+x+1. Neither 0 nor 1 satisfies this polynomial mod 2. Now pretend that there is some solution or root of the polynomial, call it a and add this symbol to our original field. The thing we now have is called F2[a]. The elements of this thing have the form n+ma+ka2. Note that there are no elements that are cubic in a as a3 can be replaced by -a-1 as a was presumed to be a root of the original polynomial. In fact, as we are working modulo 2, so +1 and -1 are the same, we can replace a3 by a+1. Enumerating the 23=8 elements we have {0, 1, a, a+1, a2, a2+1, a2+a, a2+a+1}.
Example: GF(54) = Z5[x]/<x4+2x3+3x2+x+1>
Starting with the naive assumption that the defining polynomial x4+2x3+3x2+x+1 is indeed irreducible mod 5 (and thus that this is a finite field), we are in a position to try computing in this field:
GF with poly: (mod ) =
Add polys: * = (or )
Mult polys: * = (or )
A bit more interesting is computing powers of elements. Just as in the case of computing with the integers, we can efficiently compute using the Russian Peasant algorithm of squaring and multiplying.
An example of this efficient multiplication is computing a26:
GF with poly: (mod ) =
Power: ^ = (or )
There are a number of different ways in which we can use the basic Russian Peasant algorithm. The following slightly different approach is a little more difficult to understand but cleaner to program as it doesn't require temporary variables:
Finally, we are in a position to see if our polynomial is irreducible mod 5 (without actually factoring it - a problem for another day). The structure of finite fields is similar to that of Zp in a number of ways. An analog of Fermat's Little Theorem exists, so for any element b∈GF(54), we must have b(54-1)=1. Another similarity is that any Galois field is guaranteed to have primitive elements. In this case there are 54=625 elements, of which (54-1)=624 are non-zero. Thus, a primitive element will have order exactly 624. As in the integer case, we check this by noting that 624 has prime factorization 624 = (24)(3)(13).
So (a+1) has order exactly 624 and is primitive. Thus we have shown that the polynomial x4+2x3+3x2+x+1 is irreducible.
A. Basic Programming Notes
Size & Multiple Precision
Some of the more interesting questions in computational number theory involve large numbers. This can be a problem as most languages and machines only support integers up to a certain fixed size, commonly 264 bits (about 1.6×1019) or 232 bits (about 4×109).
This limit is further reduced by the fact that most of the algorithms require the computation of intermediate results twice the size of the number of interest. For example, the computation mod(a*b,m) is commonly found, where each of a and b are roughly the same size as m. For this computation to work, the intermediate value a*b must be less than the integer limit of the machine. Thus, on a 32-bit machine, the largest value of m for which this can be done is 216=65536. The examples in this paper are written in JavaScript, which allows 53-bit computations on any machine, thus allowing m to take on values as large as 226.5=94,906,265.
Programming Languages
The following are simple interpreted languages in which I have written basic number theory programs, suitable for classroom use and modification.
More details on programming for number theory can be found in a related document here.
B. References
Robert Campbell
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I've been asked to look at one of our legacy applications from a usability perspective. On one screen, we have a situation where data is displayed in two columns (eg. Key: Value) where we've right-aligned the left column and left-aligned the right column.
The result looks something like this:
I personally find this hard to read. The values run right up next to their headings, and it's hard to differentiate at a glance what is a value and what is a heading. (In the actual application, unlike my mockup above, there isn't even a space between the : and the value, so it looks like Name:Doe, John.)
I've tried left-aligning the first column (see JSFiddle), but the gap between the label and the value seems to lessen the association between the 'heading' and the value on the right.
I've seen the research done on aligning labels with input elements, that suggest that the best placement is either immediately above the input or right-aligned next to it, but does the same apply for simple text presentation? Is the above really the best way to go about displaying this data? And is there any research, similar to that done on labels for input fields, that is done for plain text?
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3 Answers 3
up vote 10 down vote accepted
I guess if you put the rows a bit further away, and perhaps give a visual clue on baseline it should work.
See: http://jsfiddle.net/s35bh/2/
A bit subtle perhaps, therefore not necessarily the best solution, and you should be able to do this through alignment and proximity rules, but it does the job.
My rule of thumb is: if you're out of options grid systems of swiss design can give to you, simply draw a line.
(This time, it's the white line between rows).
enter image description here
Or if we go back to the original solution, you could just simply signify the gap between columns (as per standard swiss-style grid based design)
enter image description here
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I really like your second solution, increasing the spacing between the label and the data. It should be relatively simple to implement and expert users won't be as affected by a drastic change in the overall look of the field. – Roddy of the Frozen Peas Oct 17 '12 at 18:38
Well, it works effectively only if it's part of a consistent grid, that is, the same gap, width, alignment edge is used elsewhere on the page or screen – Aadaam Oct 17 '12 at 18:55
Most studies I've read regarding label alignment are for consumer-based applications. With legacy apps used by internal users that look at the same screen day-in-day-out, users will quickly learn to rely less and less on labels. Instead, they rely more on positions and colors.
So another way to remedy your situation is to use the left-aligned version, but reduce the size of the label, keep the bold, but make it lighter color. Keep the emphasis on data, instead of labels, and don't over-design just to make visual correlation between them.
Here's a mockup.
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+1 for your first paragraph. I think this is why the existing solution has remained in place for as long as it has -- because the expert users are so used to the placement of the information that they completely disregard the fact that it's practically illegible to someone who does not stare at this screen for hours every day. – Roddy of the Frozen Peas Oct 17 '12 at 18:36
If the form is read-only: It is always best to recommended to right align the labels and left align the values of the variables. Do make sure there is at least 3 between the labels and the values for better readability.
If the form is write: Same positioning, however, indicate required fields by placing a star before the labels. Make sure the star has a different color usually something like red to indicate required fields.
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Public Statements
Where Are the Jobs?
Floor Speech
Location: Washington, DC
Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, Americans all over this country are asking, Where are the jobs? Where are the jobs?
We just heard from the previous speaker bragging about the Recovery Act, which has been an abject failure, an abject failure. There have been very few private sector jobs created around this country.
What has been created are a lot of government jobs here in Washington, DC. If someone's looking for a job here in Washington, they have a lot of opportunities because government continues to grow exponentially. Exponentially. But what's not happening are jobs are not being created out in Georgia or around this country where they're so desperately needed, private sector jobs.
I was talking to one of my county commission chairmen just recently and he said, Paul, 1 year ago in our country, the employment rate was 14.3 percent. I said, oh my goodness.
Of course, in my district we have a very poor district, except for the two major cities, Athens and Augusta, the Augusta area and the Athens area. And this is not one of those counties.
He said, a year ago the unemployment rate was 14.3. Now it's 10.7 percent officially. And I said, that is great. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Where'd the jobs come from?
He said, Paul, there aren't any jobs. People have just gotten discouraged and quit looking. They've fallen off the unemployment roles. There are no new jobs here. We're losing jobs and our people in our county are leaving. They're just disgusted. They're disappointed. And that's what's happening all over this country.
How do I know that? Republicans a couple of months ago launched a Web site asking the American people to speak out. It's called And we are asking Americans to go on to register--it's very simple, no cost--and to tell us what we should be doing here in Congress right now today not only to create jobs, but to get the economy back on track. How to deal with health care. How to deal with the issues that the American people are facing today. We are asking America to speak out.
You see, Mr. Speaker, we live in a republic. Representative government. And the only way we can continue representative government is if Representatives listen to the American people. And I've got a sad, sad thing to say--that the leadership in this House doesn't listen to the American people.
I will give you an example. When we were debating ObamaCare, three-fourths of America did not want that bill passed. Three-fourths of America said no to ObamaCare. Two-thirds today say--at least 60 percent or more--say repeal it. Repeal it. Our leadership here in the Democratic side didn't listen to the American people. President Obama didn't listen to the American people. They forced down the throats of the American public a bill, which is now law, that was designed to fail. It's designed to fail, America.
Why do I say that? Because it was designed to push people off private health insurance, designed to push people into a what's now called a public exchange. And that's going to force people into more and more government. It's designed to lead us where the President just before ObamaCare was passed into law said that he wanted to go, where everybody in this country would be on one insurance policy. One pool is what he said. That means socialized medicine, where bureaucrats here in Washington, D.C., direct the health care for everybody in this country, to tell doctors like myself--I am a general practice medical doctor--how to practice medicine, who we can give care to, what medicines we can use, what tests we can do.
And in fact right now today, the Federal Government tells me or other physicians across this country whether we can admit a patient that's on Medicare to the hospital or not. It's not determined by the doctor or the patient; it's determined by a government bureaucrat that's not a doctor, not even a nurse or even a health care professional.
But more importantly, what is ObamaCare going to do? I spoke to just recently the head of a manufacturing entity in my district in rural north Georgia that hires over 400 people. And he said, Paul, with the tax burden ObamaCare's going to put on me as a businessman, with all the big government programs, the stimulus bill and TARP bailouts and taking over of the private sector, he said, Paul, I'm trying to find a place to move my company offshore, away from America.
Think about that, Mr. Speaker. If we continue down this road that this leadership and the Democrats are leading us down, that plant will close. Over 400 people in rural north Georgia will be put out of work. They're going to lose their jobs. And in fact, we knew that while we were discussing ObamaCare. We knew that it was estimated by experts that at least 5 million to 5.5 million Americans were going to lose their jobs strictly because of ObamaCare. And that has not changed. We must repeal it and replace it with something else.
I introduced a bill, H.R. 3889, comprehensive health care reform system, totally constitutional according to the original intent of the Constitution. Totally in the private sector. Would radically change healthcare financing. Would radically lower the cost of health
insurance for everybody in this country. Would solve most of all of the problems with portability and uninsurability, et cetera. Would leave the doctor and patient in control of their health care decisions. It's 106 pages, a major piece of legislation, not almost 3,000 like ObamaCare was. And it's very simple. You can read it and understand what that bill says.
Our Speaker of the House, Ms. Pelosi, said we've got to pass ObamaCare to find out what's in it. Just the other day we heard about this financial reform bill that we've got to pass it to find out what's in it. The American people deserve more, Mr. Speaker. They deserve to know what's in a bill and deserve to know how it will affect them.
Mr. Speaker, we are killing jobs by bill after bill, by bigger government program by bigger government program. It's going to hurt our economy, destroy our economy. And we're borrowing from our children and our grandchildren's future.
Mr. Speaker, our children and grandchildren are very probably going to live at a lower standard than we live today if we don't stop this outrageous spending that's been going on ever since Nancy Pelosi has been Speaker of this House. And even more so since President Obama has been in office. It's got to stop. It's got to stop.
Now, I've done many America Speaking Out town hall meetings all over the 10th Congressional District in Georgia, just listening to my constituency. I have done these in small groups. We've done big town hall meetings. We've gone into factories and asked factories and companies to speak out and to tell us what we should be doing in Congress right now today. In fact, I went to the Coca-Cola plant in Athens, Georgia, and spoke to the employees there and asked them to speak to me, and encouraged them to go on
I did a town hall meeting in Columbia County in Evans, Georgia, and did the same thing. Did one in Athens, which is the most liberal county in my district. In fact politically, it's a speck of blue in a sea of red. It's a very Democratic county. It's where the University of Georgia is. It's a very liberal county. And I did an America Speaking Out town hall there. Invited the whole public to come, anybody who wanted to come, because I wanted to hear.
That's what America Speaking Out's all about. We want to hear what America thinks we should be dealing with here in Congress. And offer us suggestions of how to create jobs. We're asking where are the jobs? The policy that's being followed by the Democratic majority is taking away jobs. I already mentioned how ObamaCare is going to eventually put over 5 million Americans out of work, Mr. Speaker, just because of that one bill. The stimulus bill's going to put people out of work. It's put a few people to work, more government employees than private-sector employees.
But we're asking Americans to speak out, to go on to tell us what we should be doing here in Congress today, to offer suggestions, to vote on suggestions that are already made or comments already made. Americans can make their own comment.
These are just some of the things that--these are sheets actually that my staff wrote to suggestions of legislation that people in the 10th Congressional District of Georgia suggested that we do. No energy tax. Boy, if that energy tax--I call it tax-and-trade, my Democratic colleagues call it cap-and-trade--but it's about taxes. In fact, the President himself said that his energy tax, the tax-and-trade bill is necessary to fund ObamaCare. It's all about revenue.
The experts tell us that the national energy tax is not going to reduce carbon emissions worldwide. It's going to hurt our economy, and it's going to put millions of Americans out of work. And Americans understand that. And they said no to the energy tax. No to the finance bill that was just signed into law this week. Defund ObamaCare. No to socialized medicine. Repeal ObamaCare. Pass alternatives to health care reform.
I would love to see my bill, H.R. 3889, be put into place. In fact, I reintroduced it as a repeal ObamaCare to repeal all of this onerous bill, onerous law that's going to lead to socialized medicine here in the country, as the President has said that he wants to go to, and replace it with something in the private sector to maintain the doctor-patient relationship and to lower the cost of health care for everybody. Alternatives to health care reform.
Keeping bills germane. The American people have told me, even the liberals, in Athens, Georgia, ``We need to have bills that are germane.'' In other words, we shouldn't tack onto bills things that aren't germane to those bills.
The House passed, and in fact we're waiting on the Senate amendments to the emergency appropriations for the war supplemental bill, a $75 billion bill. Only $33 billion of that $75 billion have to do with the military and war supplemental. All the rest of that $75 billion is bigger government programs, bigger spending, that the Democratic majority pushed through.
Americans--liberals, conservatives, independents, Republicans, Democrats--have told me, keep bills germane. No to cap-and-trade. I can go on down this list, but the overwhelming thing I heard, Mr. Speaker, where are the jobs? What are we going to do to create jobs in the private sector?
And I've heard my Democratic colleagues just speak over and over again about how great this stimulus bill has been. It's been an abject failure. Where are the jobs, Mr. Speaker? Where are the jobs, Mr. President? Where are the jobs, my colleagues on the Democratic side? They're not there. In fact, the policies and the spending that we see going on over and over again from bill after bill since this President has taken office will actually take away jobs. And it's going to push jobs and manufacturers to go overseas.
I talked to one manufacturer and asked him, What can we do to get you to start hiring employees? And he said the best thing you could do is lower my corporate income tax rate. My Democratic colleagues say that we need to tax the rich, so we need to keep those corporate tax rates high. Mr. Speaker, we have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. It's 35 percent. Second only to Japan. In fact, I've talked to manufacturer after manufacturer and they tell me, ``Paul, if you just lower my corporate tax rate to 25 percent, that would help me be able to create jobs in my company.'' Just lower it 10 percent.
Mr. Speaker, I think corporate tax rates should be zero. In fact, Mr. Speaker, not only should corporate rates be zero but dividend taxes should be zero. Death taxes should be zero. Capital gains taxes should be zero. We should have an immediate write-off of capital expenditure for business, not have this prolonged depreciation schedule that the Internal Revenue Code forces them into. They have to write the check; they should be able to write it off. If we could change just the tax law, we would create jobs. In fact, I introduced H.R. 4100, the JOBS Act. My JOBS Act is an acronym for Jump-start Our Business Sector. What it would do is for 2 years, it would cut in half the payroll tax for business as well as for individuals. It would lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. It would suspend the death tax; suspend the dividend taxes for 2 years. And it would lower the two lowest income tax brackets down to 10 percent and 5 percent respectively.
And if you think about that, Mr. Speaker, what would that do from a monetary perspective? What it would do is it would leave dollars in the hands of small businesses and it would leave dollars in the hands of the American public; the consumers. That would give small businesses the opportunity to expand their business, to buy inventory, to modernize, to hire new employees. And it would give dollars to the consumers so that they could buy the goods and services that they need. It would give some stability to our economic situation so we don't see the stock market jumping up and down as we do today. It looks like a yo-yo. Why is that? Because there's so much uncertainty. And why is there uncertainty out there? It's because of what this Congress and what Nancy Pelosi and Company are doing right here and what Barack Obama is proposing for more and more government; more and more of the Federal Government taking over the private sector. That uncertainty is creating a lot of fear.
I've had businesses, small businesses, large businesses, in my district tell me they're sitting on cash but they're afraid to hire new employees. Why? Because of ObamaCare. Because of the debt. Because of the outrageous spending. Because of the so-called ``financial reform bill'' that was just signed into law this week. They're afraid, and I don't blame them. I've said in multiple floor speeches here that we have a steamroller of socialism being driven by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and fueled by Barack Obama. We need to put that steamroller of socialism in a parking lot. If we would do so, if we would put the steamroller of socialism that my Democratic colleagues are driving, if we would put that in a parking lot, we would put certainty back in the financial sector and we would see a growth in our economy. But with that uncertainty that our leadership of this House and the Senate and the President are giving to the private sector, we're going to see the business sector afraid; afraid to hire new people.
Some economists say we're fixing to go into a great depression. In fact, some even say we're going into a depression worse than we saw in the previous Great Depression. I hope and pray not. I pray that God prevents that. But whether we do or don't, I know this: The simple truth is bigger government, bigger government spending, more debt being created for our children and grandchildren to have to pay is not going to solve the economic problems of our country. We've got to stop the outrageous spending here that Congress has been doing, that this administration is doing, that the previous administration was doing.
I wasn't here during the first 6 years of the Bush administration. I was elected in 2007, is when I took office. But I voted against the TARP bill, the toxic asset relief program, because I thought it was wrong. It hasn't helped. The second tranche that President Obama forced through the Congress, it hasn't helped. Taking over GM and Chrysler hasn't helped. Taking over the student loan program; taking over the health care system hasn't helped. The stimulus bill has been an abject failure, by and large. The company that makes these huge signs to proclaim that Barack Obama and his policies are the messiah which costs Lord only knows how much has helped that company, but it hasn't helped the American taxpayer. It hasn't helped small businesses around this country by and large.
America Speaking Out gives the American people an opportunity to give us ideas about what they think, what America thinks about what we should be doing now to solve the problems. You see, I'm excited about the so-called ``Tea Party movement'' in this country. I've spoken to many Tea Party rallies. But, Mr. Speaker, there's a great misunderstanding, particularly in the press, particularly with my liberal friends, what the Tea Party is all about. We started a Tea Party Caucus just this week. I was one of the original signers of membership into the Tea Party Caucus. I've done a number of interviews. Just yesterday I did one on FOX. I just did one this afternoon. I've done many interviews recently. And it's very apparent to me and it's apparent to me to the questions that were asked during the news conference that we held yesterday, after the Tea Party Caucus started, that there's a tremendous misunderstanding, particularly by my liberal colleagues and by the press, about what the Tea Party movement is all about. And I'm excited about it.
The Tea Party simply is this: It's freedom-loving Americans, people who just basically want to live their lives without all the government intrusion. They're teed off. Tea in the Tea Party stands for Taxed Enough Already. It's an acronym. And they see the so-called ``jobs bill'' that my Democratic colleagues keep bringing to the floor of the House. I've already mentioned my JOBS Act which is an acronym for Jump-start Our Business Sector. I believe every one of the so-called ``jobs bills'' that my Democratic colleagues have introduced is an acronym for just one big slush fund, because that's what it seems to be.
The American people are angry. They're angry about not being listened to. They're angry about seeing their freedom being taken away; their jobs being taken away. The previous speaker during the 5-minutes was touting how great the stimulus act has been, but it's not been great. They have to try to spin how disastrous the spending bill has been. It's not created very many jobs. It's created some, but not very many. And certainly not very many in the private sector.
The American people are asking, where are the jobs? When are we going to get this economy back on course? We've seen a liberal icon, my Democratic colleagues, one of their icons, one of this country's icons, John F. Kennedy, considered to be very liberal at the time.
Today they'd call him a wacko, a crazy man, because he proposed tax cuts.
I hear from my Democratic colleagues that they want to tax the rich, they want to tax them even more. Well, who are the rich? It's the small businesses of this country. Most small businessmen and women file their taxes as a Sub S corporation, which means they file their business taxes on personal income taxes.
My Democratic colleagues say they're making too much money. We want it here in Washington to create a bigger government, a bigger socialistic government. And what's that going to do? It's going to kill jobs. It's going to take jobs away from millions of Americans. And my Democratic colleagues want to tax small business to the hilt. They're not happy with the high tax rates that small business are already suffering from. They want more taxes on the so-called rich, the rich of the little mom-and-pop grocery stores, the little hardware stores, the small community businesses, men's stores. It's not the Wal*Marts, the AT&Ts, the Boeings. Those aren't small businesses.
But we have developed policy, and the policy of the Democratic majority is anti-business, it's anti-freedom, it's anti-job creation. Why do they want to do that? It's because they believe, in my opinion, that government is the solution to everything. You see, they think, in my opinion, that government has to tell them how to run every aspect of their lives.
I'll give you some examples.
We've already seen where our Democratic colleagues want to tell us how much salt we can have in our food. I'm a physician, and I have prescribed low-salt diets to my patients. I don't use salt. I hardly ever pick up a salt shaker. I don't even salt watermelon or eggs when I eat those, or tomatoes. And I know as a physician we have plenty of salt for most of our bodily needs unless somebody has a particular reason that they lose salt in an abnormal way. Even athletes, for the most part, don't need salt. When I was playing football in high school, our coach would give us salt tablets. That was absolutely the wrong thing to do.
But my colleagues want to say they want to control salt in our food. They say they want to control what kind of light bulbs we can put--in fact, that's what they've done--what kind of light bulbs we can have in our lamps at home. They want to tell us what kind of cars we can drive, how much water comes out of our shower heads. They want to control every aspect of our lives, Mr. Speaker, every aspect.
There's a word for that, Mr. Speaker. That word is socialism. Central control from Washington, D.C. We have had a greater takeover of the private sector since Barack Obama's been the President of the United States than Hugo Chavez--we've had a greater takeover in the private sector in this administration than the communist dictator Hugo Chavez has nationalized the private sector in Venezuela. That's a shock to most people when you tell them that, but that's factual. We've had a greater takeover of the private sector under President Obama than Hugo Chavez has done in Venezuela.
It's got to stop. The American people are understanding that. They're sick and tired of it. They want their freedom back. They want their Nation back. They want their jobs back. They're asking where are the jobs, when are we going to put our economy back on the right track. That's what we're asking here as Republicans. We've got to stop this policy of bigger government and higher taxes, more intrusion in people's lives. And Mr. Speaker, that's all we've seen over and over again from the Democratic majority.
In fact, not all Democrats believe in that. I'll give you an example. During the debate on ObamaCare, I proposed--in fact, I wrote an op-ed along with Congressman Dent and Congressman Shadegg--one's from Pennsylvania and one's from Arizona--challenging our Democratic colleagues to introduce a Democratic bill that I had the language for. All they had to do was write the name of the sponsor in a blank and introduce it. It would be a Democratic bill. They could claim it to be ObamaCare.
It would do four things: cross-State-line purchases for businesses and individuals; number two, anybody in this country could join an association pool--all across the country, multiple associations--to have the opportunity to buy and own their own health insurance through the association; number three, to encourage States to set up high-risk pools to cover those who are uninsurable; and number four, to have tax fairness so that everybody in this country could deduct 100 percent of their health care and health insurance cost off their income taxes.
I had Democrat after Democrat tell me this: They said, Paul, that makes sense. It really makes sense. But I can't do it. I can't do it because my leadership would punish me if I did. If I introduced that bill and
tried to push it through the Democratic Caucus, my leadership would punish me for doing to so. I was told by Democrat after Democrat that they were focusing on only one thing, and that's ObamaCare as we know it.
The debate was over whether we were going to have a robust public option, a public option not so robust, or a public exchange. And that's what we wound up getting, which is actually ``public option lite''--public option on a diet. All three of those are geared and guaranteed to force everybody in this country into a government-controlled health insurance program controlled from Washington, D.C.
The only bipartisan vote on ObamaCare was ``no.'' We had Democrats and Republicans voting ``no.'' Every Republican voted ``no.'' Seventy-five percent of America said ``no.'' But we have it now as law because Ms. Pelosi and the Democratic leadership are not listening to America. They're not listening to America when America says, Where are the jobs? We're doing that. I'm doing that.
I hold America Speaking Out town hall meetings. Republicans are going to be doing that all over this country during this August district work period. We want to hear from America. I encourage every American who is concerned about where we're going as a Nation, that's concerned about public policy--whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, Independent, whether you're a liberal or a conservative, whether you consider yourself a moderate--I'm encouraging everybody in this country to go to and speak out. Give us your ideas about how to solve the problems, the economic problems. Give us your ideas about how to solve this unemployment problem.
I want to hear. That's the reason I've done many, I have even lost count, somewhere between 10 and 20 America Speaking Out town hall meetings and meetings with small business and large groups over the last several months, and I will continue to do so. Republicans are doing that all over the country. I wish my Democratic colleagues would do the same thing and listen to the American public.
Since last August, our Democratic colleagues went and hid because of the ire of the American public, at least most of them did, a lot of them did. Some you can see that didn't, you can see the result on YouTube right now today, Mr. Speaker. There's a tremendous anger expressed all across this country to our Democratic colleagues about that bill.
I held town hall meetings last August in the 10th Congressional District in Georgia, multiple of them, and I was cheered because I was against ObamaCare. I was cheered. America has an opportunity to speak out now through, but we need to change the policies, Mr. Speaker. We've got to stop this socialization, nationalization of our private sector. We've got to stimulate small businesses, and the only way we can do that is to give them the money they need to expand their business, to buy inventory. My jobs act, H.R. 4100, will do just that.
I hope, Mr. Speaker, that the American public that are watching right now will ask their Congressmen to cosponsor it. I ask my Democratic colleagues to cosponsor H.R. 4100, and let's make it a bipartisan jobs act, jump-start our business sector. The way I pay for all that is to take the unspent stimulus dollars to pay for the tax reduction. So it's paid for, won't create any more debt. It won't borrow from our children's and our grandchildren's future. It is a commonsense solution.
But that's not what we're getting from our Democratic colleagues. We're getting more government, more central control from Washington, bigger bureaucracy, higher taxes that are going to cost Americans jobs, send jobs overseas where people in the Philippines or in China or whatever are working and doing jobs that Americans could very well be doing. But Americans are not having the opportunity to do those jobs because the policies of Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid are driving jobs offshore, driving jobs away from America. We've got to change those policies.
We do that through tax cuts. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, President Kennedy, cut taxes, and what happened when he did? We saw a tremendous growth of the economy. President Reagan did the same thing, tremendous growth of the economy. George W. Bush cut taxes, tremendous growth of the economy.
The leadership of the House right now, today, wants to see those tax cuts that were put in place during all the years of the Bush administration, wants to see them expire. That's going to kill more jobs here in this country, and it's going to mean that farmers and small businesses are going to have to close down and sell their assets just to pay their higher taxes that are going to be required.
I'm told from some of my Democratic colleagues that there are many Democrats that don't want to see those tax cuts expire. There's some of our Democratic colleagues that understand that allowing those tax cuts to expire at the end of this year is going to cost jobs. So, again, the bipartisan approach to creating jobs is for us to at least keep those tax cuts because the jobs that are going to go away if those tax cuts expire won't go away. So we'll save jobs.
The President has a fondness to talk about the jobs he's created or saved. Well, nobody can know how many were saved. We've seen some kind of funny finance calculations or accounting here because I know of one instance, for instance, as an example, that one company got some stimulus funds and they gave everybody in their company raises. They didn't hire any new persons, not the first new employee. But the government counted every one of those increases in wages as a new job, as a new job. That's inane. It's disingenuous. It's deceptive. That's what we see over and over again.
We've got to stop that, Mr. Speaker. The American people deserve better, and I'm excited about the grassroots movement. If you want to call it the Tea Party movement, it's not just the Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Express, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks. I can go on and on about different groups, the 9/12 Group. There are many.
What my liberal colleagues and the press don't understand is that this is a grassroots organization, an effort, in all these organizations. It's not one monolithic thing. It is American citizens all over this country in their local communities that are speaking out. They're saying that they're taxed enough already. They see their jobs going away. They want to go to work.
They see that the policies that we have been handed by Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, those policies are destroying jobs. They're putting millions of Americans out of work. And what they see is more of the same, and they don't want more of the same. They're taxed enough already. They want to see some changes. And I'm excited because I believe we're going to see some big changes in November, big changes on November 2.
See, Mr. Speaker, the most powerful political force in this country today is written about in the Constitution of the United States, and if you look at the document, if you look at the document itself, our Founding Fathers when they wrote the document, those three first words of the Constitution were bold and much, much larger, about four times larger, three or four times larger than all the rest of the text. What are those three words? ``We the People.''
We the people are speaking. They're saying, Where are the jobs? Republicans are saying, Where are the jobs? What I'm hearing from the leadership on the other side, from Ms. Pelosi and company, We're going to give you more government, more taxes, more government control, bigger government, more government jobs, but less in the private sector is what the bottom line's going to be.
Mr. Speaker, we've got to stop this. We've got to stop growing government and shrink it. We've got to stop this outrageous spending. We've got to repeal or replace ObamaCare with commonsense solutions that will maintain the quality of health care in this country, continue to allow the doctors and the patients to make decisions instead of some Washington bureaucrat, which is going to happen under ObamaCare.
We've got to stop bailing out Wall Street and start bailing out small businesses by giving them the money that they need by allowing them to do business and leave the dollars in their pockets. Mr. Speaker, that's what's going to create new jobs. That's what's going to put our economy back on track. That's what's going to solve this economic down turn.
I heard, when the President signed the financial reform bill--so-called, which it's not. It puts in place permanent bailouts for Wall Street. It's going to hurt Main Street banks, the community banks. It's going to create bigger bureaucracy, more government jobs.
It is going to make it more difficult for small businesses to go to their local banker and get a loan.
The President, my liberal colleagues, blamed a lack of financial regulations on the economic down turn, but that is not what caused the economic down turn. They are blind. They want to blame, as the previous speaker to me just blamed, the Bush administration. That is what I keep hearing. It is all Bush's fault. When are they going to take time?
Mr. Speaker, when is Ms. Pelosi going to take responsibility? When is Barack Obama going to take responsibility for the disastrous, disastrous policies that they are forcing down the throats of the American people? It is past time for them to take responsibility, but they are not doing it.
They are blaming the Bush administration. What caused the financial collapse was the government. It is the Community Reinvestment Act, Freddy and Fannie, poor Fed policy.
There is some blame an Wall Street, absolutely. There is some blame, even in Main Street, Main Street banks. Greed is part of the cause of that, but it was policy that was established by Congress under the Carter administration with the Community Reinvestment Act, then a reform, so-called reform, which essentially forced banks to make loans to people who couldn't pay it back.
Then we have Freddie and Fannie who would buy off those loans, poor Fed policy, that kept the interest rates low so that Freddie and Fannie could set up these no-documentation or low-documentation loans. That is what created the bubble and the burst.
So it is government. Mr. Speaker, the best way to control quantity, quality and cost of all goods and services is a free enterprise system, unencumbered by taxes and regulations. You have two things. On the one hand you have government control, socialism. On the other hand you have the free market system, and the free market system will create jobs if we will allow it to do so.
That is not what we are getting. We are getting bigger government, which is going to kill jobs. We need to stop that, Mr. Speaker. We need to create what has made this country so rich, so powerful, so successful as a political experiment in all of history. We have got to go back to those foundational principles, those foundational principles that are expressed in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the governing force in the Constitution of the United States, as it was intended.
Psalm 11, God asked a question. He says, if foundation should be destroyed, what are the righteous to do? God goes on talking about that He is sovereign and He reigns.
But how does He reign in public policy? How does He reign in this country? Well, certainly our Creator reigns supernaturally, but He also reigns through those of us who know Him as Lord and Savior, those of us who look to our Creator for direction, those of us who look to the Judeo-Christian principles that our Founding Fathers held so firmly. And those principles are based on personal responsibility and accountability. Those principles are based on the free market system, on free enterprise, where people have the ability and opportunity to succeed.
But they also have an opportunity to fail. Without an opportunity to fail, you don't have an opportunity to succeed. We see class warfare by our Democratic colleagues, where they hate the rich. They want to tax them to the hilt. They want to have a redistribution of wealth, as President Obama keeps talking about.
But what is he saying? He is saying that he knows how to run everything in human endeavor. That is what the leadership here believes. They believe in central planning. They believe government knows best. They believe that government should tell us what to eat, what car to drive, and how to live our lives and what kind of health care we can have.
Those policies destroy the free market, destroy small business. We see examples all over the world. Socialism has never worked, never will work, and I don't care whose socialism it is, whether it is Stalin's, Mao Zedong's, Castro's, Hugo Chavez's or Barack Obama's. It is not going to work; it never will work.
We have got to stop it, and it is up to the American people to stop it. The American people need to speak out. Go on Demand from your Congressman, your Senator, that we stop this inane policy of creating bigger government, higher taxes, more regulation, more government, more control from Washington.
Say ``no'' to all of that and say ``yes'' to tax cuts, to the free market system, to freedom. They want socialism. I want freedom. America wants freedom. We have got to demand it, Mr. Speaker, and it is up to the American people to do so. America can speak out, can
speak out to my Democrat colleagues, can speak out to the President, can speak out to their Senators, speak out by going on Demand policy that's going to create jobs.
I see I have been joined by my great friend and an excellent Member of this body and the Republican Conference, my good friend, Steve Scalise from New Orleans, Louisiana. He knows about this inane, disastrous policy that this administration has put in place, how it has killed jobs in Louisiana throughout the gulf coast, directly as well as indirectly.
Mr. Scalise, thanks for joining us.
Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Thank you, Mr. Scalise, I appreciate that. And not only is it killing jobs, but it's going to make everybody's gasoline go up. It's going to make electricity prices go up.
I said here on the floor in a speech that the President's energy tax, cap and tax--or cap and trade, as they call it, some call it cap-and-tax, I call it tax and trade because it's all about taxes--is going to hurt the most vulnerable people here in America. It's going to hurt the poor people. It's going to hurt the seniors who are on limited income more than anybody else. And it seems to me that this disastrous economic as well as environmental disaster that has happened in the gulf is being utilized by this President to try to force his energy policy, his tax and trade bill.
I've been criticized by the liberals around the country because I've said it's going to hurt the poorest people in this country, and it will. In fact, the President himself said, ``It will necessarily make electricity prices skyrocket,'' make electricity prices skyrocket, necessarily, that's what the President said about the energy tax. It would necessarily make electricity prices skyrocket. Who's going to have the hardest time paying their electric bill? The poor folks in America, those people on limited income, the senior citizens, who can least afford to have their gasoline go up, to have their electricity go up. It's going to be disastrous. And it's going to kill jobs.
In fact, the President talks about all the green jobs that are going to be produced. Spain put in a similar type of tax, a similar kind of policy in Spain, and it did produce green jobs. But Mr. Speaker, for every green job produced I think it was 2.3 jobs were lost, a net loss of 2.3 jobs for every job that was created. For every green job that was created, every green job created they lost 2.3 jobs. And that's what our President wants to force on the American public.
I'm wondering whether he's closing down exploration in the gulf just to try to force through his energy tax. I don't know. But I've had people, as I've listened at my America Speaking Out town hall meetings I've had people across my district say that they wonder about that. I was doing an America Speaking Out town hall meeting in Athens, Georgia and a lady got up and she said she wanted to see all new energy exploration stopped, all new drilling for energy and gas to stop in this country. We had about 100 people there. I said, okay, let's find out what everybody else thinks. Now, mind you this is the most liberal county in my district, very Democratic. I didn't carry it as a Republican in any of my elections when there was a Democrat and Republican on the ballot. I did carry it in the special election when I was first elected, but not since. And I asked the public, we invited the general public, I said, how many of you in this audience want to see us stop any new exploration of oil and gas? Eight people held up their hands. Then I said, how many of you want to see us lift the moratorium and start back to exploring and tapping into our own resources here in America and continue drilling for oil and gas and continue developing our own natural resources our own energy sources? Everybody else. I think we had a total of 98 folks, so 90 people held up their hands that they wanted to see it continue, eight people said they wanted to see it stopped.
Over and over again I've talked during this special hour about how the leadership--Ms. Pelosi and company--have gone against what the American people want. They want to see jobs created. We asked them, where are the jobs? They want to see their economy stimulated, not government. We asked them that.
Mr. Scalise, I know that you've seen the disaster of the moratorium on the jobs in Louisiana, but it affects all the Gulf Coast States certainly, not only directly, but indirectly. In just the few minutes we have left, could you give us some examples of some of those non-directly affected people, the fishermen, the people on the platforms, et cetera, could you give us some examples of those people who have been affected by this moratorium?
Mr. BROUN of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, where are the jobs? We need to have different policies to create jobs than what we've been given by Ms. Pelosi and company.
I yield back.
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Essential Elements for an All-Weather Portfolio
Given the high degree of uncertainty in today’s global economy and financial markets, astute investors the world over are asking the question, “Are there investments I should be considering that can work in almost any market conditions? Do I have to be 100% correct on major economic forces such as inflation vs. deflation, or are there (to the extent possible) investments that can be considered all weather?”
Alternative investing provides a unique edge in comparison with traditional long-only investing. There are certain attributes which are associated with specific alternative investments that are designed to potentially perform in a wide range of market conditions. These attributes are expressed in three specific strategies which we believe are essential for an all weather portfolio.
The Investor Challenge
According to Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), “markets are efficient” and “investors are rational.” But past crisis periods, including the recent Credit Crisis, demonstrated that theory alone was insufficient to protect investors on the downside.
Modern Portfolio Theory assumes a normal distribution of returns from the market, yet we have learned that periods of volatile or extreme returns have occurred with greater frequency than a normal distribution would predict. These “fat tails” of abnormal events are not accounted for by MPT. Additionally, MPT relies solely on historical inputs. While history is important, it does not predict the future.
During times of duress, as experienced during the Credit Crisis, traditional asset classes often become more highly correlated with one another compared to their historical relationships. As a result, many investors may be “falsely” diversified because they have relied on past correlations when building their portfolios. When the Credit Crisis hit, most traditional asset classes fell in unison because they shared a common characteristic of reliance on credit availability.
All-Weather Alternatives
The desire to allocate to strategies that have the potential to perform well in a wide range of market conditions leads many investors to alternative investments. There are two components to a portfolio’s performance: 1) beta, or general market returns and 2) alpha, excess return (positive or negative) compared to the market, often referred to as manager skill. As investors deploy capital into low-fee, passive ETFs/Index funds to gain beta exposure, many turn to alternatives seeking alpha and to complement other portfolio holdings. Alternative investment managers may offer unique management skills and flexibility that have a potential alpha-generating advantage.
How have alternatives performed in crisis periods? When equity markets fell nearly 40% during the year 2008, the universe of hedge funds (as measured by the HFRI Hedge Fund Index) fell roughly half the distance of overall equities, providing a degree of capital preservation for the asset class as a whole. Strategies which incorporated hedging techniques demonstrated a greater potential for managing risk.
Other alternative asset classes also provided a counterbalance to this decline. During the same crisis period, managed futures (as measured by the Altegris 40 Index) demonstrated the potential benefits of non-correlated diversification, increasing by over 15 % during 2008.
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Harnessing the Power of Icon Standards
As effective as an icon's metaphor may be, truly powerful icons get strength from their universal recognizability and conventional usage — a standardization of sorts. We'll discuss icon standardization more in this article and then provide suggestions to a few current icon standardization movements which you can explore and incorporate into your own projects.
Why Use Icons?
Icons and symbols are powerful visual tools. Normally they stand for real life objects by representing them in actuality or through the usage of a metaphor. They can communicate in a single object what would otherwise require many characters or words, which is partially why icons are leveraged so often in software design. When used correctly, they can effectively communicate a message in a minimal amount of space.
In addition, icons and symbols allow users to identify a message or metaphor without adding to their cognitive load. For example, imagine if the dock in OS X used text instead of icons. This would require users to read and mentally process the text for each application until they found what they want.
Seeing the usage of text here makes the implementation of icons seem like a no brainer, and for good reason. The use of icons, especially in representing frequently accessed items, reduces the amount of information users' brains have to process and allows them to more easily scan and locate what they want.
Why Use Icon Standards?
A powerful use of icons and symbols is their ability to transcend human language.
Another powerful use of icons and symbols is their ability to transcend human language. Icons work best and are most powerful when designers harness the universality and recognizability of real world concepts. This is another reason why icons are used so often in software – they transcend language barriers, often preventing the need for localization and translation.
When designing icons for usage in software applications and other media, designers should consider whether there is already an existing convention or standard in use for what they are trying to communicate.
Standardized Icon Usage: An Example
As a simple example, say you had to design gender-specific action buttons. You could start by creating a button that says "Men" and another that says "Women". In addition, you could add colors that are traditionally associated with male and female genders.
But what if these buttons are meant for a large audience of over 50 countries and languages? You would most likely have to create a localization solution supporting language translation.
Or, you could harness the communicative power of icons and symbols. So how do you represent "men" and "women" visually? Rather than racking your brain over how to get people from 50 countries to understand your symbols, you could look for a standardized metaphor that is understood universally. You wouldn't have to think long before the commonly used "Men" and "Women" symbols came to mind.
It's likely you could harness the power behind the universal recognizability of these symbols in your action buttons. Now, this was simply used as an example and not as a design solution, but it helps represent the power of using symbols and icons to communicate.
Discovering Icon Standards and Conventions
The "men" and "women" symbols seen above aren't necessarily "standards" because they have been officially approved and licensed for usage by an international committee of design professionals. They have become standards because of their prolific and wide-spread usage. Because lots of people have seen them, lots of people know what they mean.
Familiarity and universality help make icons recognizable by wide arrays of people. However, discovering truly universal icons can be very difficult. Some standardized metaphors you may recognize, such as a piece of paper with a folded corner for "document", a magnifying glass for "search", and a shopping cart for, well, a "digital" shopping cart. Other metaphors are more difficult to quickly recognize such as "reputation" or "view".
A good method for determining whether a certain metaphor has a standard or convention is to simply Google image search the term you want to communicate. If you see a repeating pattern of similar icons you can probably assume that it is a conventional metaphor. Another option for discovering the universality of a symbol or icon is to show it to an array of people and ask them what first comes to mind when they see it.
Many icon standards and conventions are non-proprietary. This means they are not officially chosen and approved by an appointed body. Lots of standardized icons become well-known because designers or companies choose to use them in their products. As iconic metaphors become increasingly homogenized across software systems, they come closer and closer to becoming standards or conventions in the design community. A good example of how an icon became a standard is the feed (commonly called RSS) icon.
How an Icon Became a Standard
In the earlier days of the web, prior to about 2004, users began to jump on the RSS bandwagon subscribing to syndicated feeds. Because there was no standard metaphor or method for visually representing what a feed was, web publishers devised a wide variety of enigmatic icons to help indicate to users that their websites offered feeds.
Courtesy of RSS Board
One of the most common methods for representing feeds was the orange block with the text "RSS" inscribed on it. However, even though RSS was shorter and simpler than writing out "syndication", it only truthfully represented one format that feeds could be in. What was needed was a metaphor to describe the concept of feeds, rather than the text (RSS) of one particular feed implementation.
wide-spread adaptation … was the catalyst needed to establish the orange feed icon as a recognized standard.
With the goal in mind to create a simple icon that could be used to represent all syndication protocols, Stephen Horlander designed what we know today as the orange feed icon. The icon was originally created for Firefox 1.0. This by no means made the icon a standard. It's design, however, clearly represented the aspect of broadcasting and propelled it to be adopted by the Internet Explorer and Outlook teams. Opera soon followed suit and this wide-spread adaptation (especially by large technology companies) was the catalyst needed to establish the orange feed icon as a recognized standard.
The feed icon is a great example of the power of icons. Rather than presenting tiny buttons with technological words users won't understand (RSS, Atom, Blogline, XML, etc.) the simple feed icon can communicate the purpose behind the complex stack of feed technologies by saying: "We broadcast something. Subscribe to it".
Platform-Specific Icon Standards
Another example of an icon becoming a standard through widespread usage can be found in the "share" icon initially advanced by Apple . You may recognize the icon as it appears in many of Apple's applications from iOS to OSX. However, this icon is also finding widespread utilization by third party developers inside Apple's ecosystem.
As you can see, the "share" icon is found throughout many apps running on Apple's software platform. So, if you are developing for iOS or OSX and you need a share icon, it might be a good idea to follow the pattern that is being embraced by so many other designers (as opposed to creating your own icon for "share"). Users within Apple's ecosystem (and increasingly outside it) will more easily understand what you are trying to communicate if you use this symbol because, chances are, they've seen it before.
Icon Standards: Cast Your Vote
You might think that icons become standards because large corporations like Microsoft or Apple choose to use them, and that is partially true. But in reality, large corporations simply speed up the standardization process because their market reach helps expose large numbers of users to the icons. Repeated exposure to an icon's metaphor is what helps establish its familiarity with users and thus a visually standardized message.
When normal people see an icon and know what it stands for, that is an extremely powerful tool. That means you, as a designer, can help choose what icons become standards. By choosing what icons you employ in your next design project, you're essentially casting a vote that says "yes, this icon is a good representation of metaphor for what I am trying to convey and I'm going to expose my users to it."
Icons You Can Use In Your Next Project
Below you'll find references to a few icon projects that are proposing themselves as candidates for conventional, standarized usage.
• Purpose: The Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML) is an XML format for outlines most commonly used in exchanging lists of web feeds between feed aggregators. (To see an example of an OPML feed, click here).
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
• Homepage:
Geotag Icon
• Purpose: For those who don't know, geotagging is essentially adding geographical meta information to content such as photos. Similar to the feed icon, the Geotag icon metaphor is intended as a web standard to communicate the purpose of a complex technology to ordinary humans via a visual symbol.
• License: Creative Commons or GNU Lesser GPL
• Homepage:
Language Icon
• Purpose: Create an abstract, globally recognizable icon that can be used in software applications and on the web to select different language translations.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
• Homepage:
Open Share Icon
• Purpose: Help users easily identify content that is shareable. The icon itself attempts to communicate the act of sharing through the visual metaphor of one hand passing something onto another hand.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
• Homepage:
ShareThis Icon
• Purpose: Represent the generic action of sharing a web page from any source to multiple destinations such as email, social networks, and more.
• License: GPL, LGPL, BSD, Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
• Homepage:
• Note: Originally introduced with a Wordpress plugin, this icon is somewhat controversial because it is now officially trademarked (hence many people advocate the usage of the "open share" icon instead).
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Posts: 615
• Darwins +1/-0
even since it's inception into scientific stardom, most "proof" of evolution is merely negative theology. evolution's proofs rely on a specific victorian interpretation of what God is like and how he could create the world.
Please come back to us, once you have a better understanding about the theory of evolution.
Evolution (and the evidence for evolution) has nothing to do with theology. Unless you perceive biology, genetics, paleontology, anthropology and a large chunk of medical science as being theological disciplines of science.
Do you really think, if the TOE was just a theological concept it would see such widespread use in real science?
Ah, I think I can see where cvlspaz and Asmoday are getting a little confused. I've been a longtime fan of Darwin myself, so I've read a lot about him.
Darwin believed that God was a God of laws and order. He was never a creationist - in fact the whole Christianity versus Science war was a much latter phenomenon. A lot of people disagreed with Darwin, but few saw belief in Darwin's theories a sign of someone being a non Believer.
Darwin was a typical (for the time), liberal, Church of England Christian with a fairly broad, ambiguous view of God. He attempted to do for biology what Newton had done for physics - find out what the natural laws were that ran the universe. To Darwin, Natural laws = Gods laws. At least at first.
However, as he collected his evidence, which he did assiduously, throughout his life, keeping copious notes on every detail imaginable, Darwin began to struggle to incorporate the idea of God as Creator into his developing theories. 'God' increasingly became a cypher for some unexplainable origin point of the universe - a "blind watchmaker" as it has been described, a God who winds up the universe and then stands back from a discrete distance. At this point, Darwin was more a Deist than a Christian, and began skipping church to walk in the countryside, feeling that 'God' was to be found in his beloved nature, rather than a cold stone church.
However, it was the tragic deaths of several of his children, particularly his favourite daughter, that sent Darwin over the edge, and into atheism. His wife became more and more religious, struggling to find a reason for her terrible losses, whilst Darwin was unable to reconcile a loving god with the deaths of his innocent children. The nail in the coffin for Darwins faith was the existence of a sort of wasp that laid its eggs in a living caterpillar, which then hatched and the larvae ate the poor insect alive from the inside out. Any god who designed that, Darwin said, was a monster.
So Darwin did not lose faith and then develop the ToE, neither did he develop the ToE to explain away God, and neither did he believe the ToE was the fine detail of the Book of Genesis. He was a Christian, he died an agnostic. To this day, the majority of Christians in Britain accept the ToE. They do not see a conflict. They see Genesis as allergorical and non-literal. Christian Fundamentalism started in the States and was largely imported back here, where it has sadly taken root. Fundamentalism, for its own reason, has taken the ToE and decided to start the battle there - but they were the ones who declared war, not Darwin.
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Monday, March 31, 2014
Mum Bett - The Elizabeth Freeman Case
Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bett) - Source
New England, and Massachusetts inparticular, is not well known for its history of slavery or its slave narratives. No stories like Uncle Tom’s Cabin expound upon the horrors experienced by the New England slave. Yet, despite the assumptions that we Yankees have always been more high-minded when it came to involuntary servitude, slavery does have a long history in the northern states.
Unfortunately there are few New England slave stories which survive the editing of text book writers. Hence, the perception of New England as having escaped that particular historic guilt. However, in reality New England both participated in and profited from the trade of African slaves. Still, in New England the movement to end slavery on a state level began much earlier than it did country wide. In fact, one of the most famous New England slaves was a woman named Elizabeth Freeman who is well known for her fighting spirit and for being one of the first to sue her master for her freedom.
Elizabeth Freeman, more well known by the name Mum Bett, never learned to read or write. Any historic sources about her seemingly come from interviews or whatever as written about her by family and friends. Two of the most used sources appear to be an 1853 article in Bentley’s Miscellany, written by Catherine Maria Sedgwick, and the 1838 Retrospect of Western Travel by Harriet Martineau.
According to both sources, Mum Bett was a slave of pure African ancestry, who was owned by the Ashley family of Massachusetts. Bett was born sometime around 1742 in New York. As and adult she became the house slave of John Ashley of Sheffield, Ma. Sedgwick writes that the Ashleys also owned Bett’s sister Lizzie, though some sources claim Lizzie was actually Bett’s daughter.
One of the most repeated stories about Mum Bett concerns a physical altercation she had with her master’s wife, Hannah Ashley. Compared to John Ashley, Hannah did not seem to be very kind or understanding. Neither author writes of her in complimentary way. According to the story, at one time Mistress Ashley attempted to strike Bett’s sister (maybe daughter) with a heated iron shovel. Lizzie had been accused of stealing dough to make a small cake. However, Bett stepped in between the two and it was she who was struck instead. The attack cut and damaged her arm for months, leaving a scar for life. However, Sedgewick quotes Bett as saying:
“Madam never again laid her hand on Lizzy. I had a bad arm all winter, but Madam had the worst of it. I never covered the wound, and when people said to me, before Madam, ’Why Betty, what ails your arm?’ I only answered, ‘Ask misses.’”
Thus Bett seems like she must have been a real fighter who was often at odds with the lady of the house. In fact, Sedgwick describes Hannah Ashley as an untamable shrew and mentions several times that Bett willfully disregarded the commands of Mrs. Ashley. Still, Sedgwick also writes that Bett spoke kindly of John Ashley for the remainder of her life.
According to another story described by Sedgwick, John Ashley acted as the local magistrate in Sheffield during the years leading up to the Revolution. At one time, a teenage girl came to the Ashley home, seeking help from Mr. Ashley. The young girl was illegitimately pregnant and it appeared the father of the child was a close relative who had attacked her. Mrs. Ashley attempted to kick the girl out of the house, calling the child every awful thing she could imagine. Mum Bett shielded the girl and kept her in the house until Mr. Ashley arrived home. John Ashley listened to the girl’s testimony and did his best to save her from her situation.
The John Ashley House - Sheffield, Ma
It is unclear as to when exactly Mum Bett began to consider fighting for her freedom. Perhaps it was something that was always on her mind. Sedgwick quotes Bett as having said, “Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute’s freedom had been offered me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it – just to stand one minute on God’s airth a free woman – I would.” Perhaps, having endured servitude and the ill treatment of her master’s wife, she was just waiting for the right time.
The right time presented itself soon after the end of the Revolutionary war. During the bud up to the Revolution, the Ashley House had been a meeting place for Sheffield colonists to discuss their grievances against Britain and the king. It was at the Ashley House that the colonial documents called the Sheffield Resolves were discussed and written in 1773. These documents outlined complaints against the British government and listed individual rights that all citizens should be granted.
The resolves use language similar to that of the Declaration of Independence, which must also have been a subject of discussion at a home like the Ashley’s. Though the resolves do not mention slavery or slaves, it states in article 1, “RESOLVED, That mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent of each other, and have a right to the undisturbed enjoyment of their lives, their liberty and property.” It is conceivable that Bett was present during the meetings that resulted in the Sheffield Resolves.
However, Martineau states that Bett had overheard a man reading the newly written constitution of Massachusetts. The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts became law in 1780 and uses language similar to both the Resolves and the Declaration. According to Article 1:
No matter where exactly her inspiration came from, when Bett was later asked by Martineau where she learned of the ideas of freedom expressed in these documents, Bett replied, “By keepin’ still and mindin’ things.” Though Mum Bett could neither read nor write, she was certainly intelligent, and understood that these words should in theory apply to her. Thus, Bett soon contacted a local lawyer named Theodore Sedgewick (father of Maria Sedgwick). She reasoned with Sedgewick that the words she had overheard suggested that she should be a free person. Apparently, Mr. Sedgewick agreed and soon filed a suit against the Ashley’s to secure Bett’s freedom.
According to Berkshire County Court records, the case was decided in May of 1781 (Yorktown had only occurred in October). At the time, these newly formed United States were being governed under the Articles of Confederation, which left most of the sovereignty to each independent state. In addition, the Articles of Confederation did not recognize slavery at all, and certainly made no attempt at limiting it. Though many people, even in the southern colonies, believed slavery to be evil, there was the legitimate fear that legislating against the culture of slavery would doom the confederation right from the start.
Despite the uncertain future of the United States, the Berkshire court decided that at the time of her purchase Bett was not legally a slave and could not legally become the property of the Ashley family. Though the court record is not exact in its rationale, Bett was theoretically freed due to the language of the state constitution, claiming that all people are born free and equal. In addition, the court awarded Bett 30 shillings for the years she had been in servitude. According to Martineau, Bett first ensured her lawyers were paid well, then saved the rest of her money for when she wanted it.
After winning her freedom Bett took the name Elizabeth Freeman. She was asked by Mr. Ashley to return to his service as a wage earner. Bett declined and instead became the employee of her lawyer, Theodore Sedgewick. She served as a kind of governess, helping to raise the Sedgwick children. It was during her time with the Sedewick family, that Bett was nicknamed Mammy, and eventually Mum Bett.
Of course Bett lived at a very chaotic time in New England, and her adventures did not end with the Revolutionary War or the fight for her freedom. As Bett and the Sedgewicks lived in Berkshire County, they became subject to the turmoil of the armed uprising called Shays’ Rebellion.
Following the war and under the inadequate Articles of Confederation, Massachusetts and other states entered into a post-revolution economic depression. War veterans found themselves no better off after having secured independence. Many found themselves in debtor’s prison, unable to repay loans or pay newly levied taxes. The rebellion, named after leader Daniel Shays, lasted from 1786 to 1787. It pitted the more agricultural Western Massachusetts against what was perceived to be the more affluent Eastern coastal regions.
Daniel Shays - Left
Specifically the rebels felt oppressed by the taxes and debt collection policies of the Massachusetts state government in Boston. The Shaysites (as the rebels were called) marched on Massachusetts court houses in an attempt to end the prosecution of debtors. The rebels marched on the Springfield armory, hoping to bring the Massachusetts government to heel by force of arms. However, the Shaysites were defeated in February of 1787, resulting in the arrest of the rebel leaders.
As residents of Stockbridge, Bett and her employers were right in the middle of the conflict. In her writing, Maria Sedgwick is not highly complimentary of the Shaysites. She says, “Instead of exemption from taxation, which the ignorant had expected, a heavy imposition was necessarily laid upon them, and instead of the license they had hoped from liberty, they found themselves in legal restraints.” Of course, as her father was a member of the Massachusetts state legislature, and not one of those placed in debtor’s prison, she had a very specific point of view. However, Sedgwick also mentions that those who were deemed wealthy or “ruffled-shirts” were often victimized, imprisoned, and stolen from by either rebels or people taking advantage of the chaos.
During the rebellion most of the Sedgewick children were relocated to a safer area. However, the servants, including Mum Bett, stayed behind to keep the property of their employers safe. Bett must have felt particularly loyal to her employers, as she is said to have nightly defended her house with a kettle of boiling beer and a pair of loaded pistols.
Still, those who claimed to be part of the rebellion and some who just took advantage of the chaos did cause some trouble to the Sedgewick household. Rebels successfully stole Mr. Sedgewick’s horse named Jenny Gray. In addition, would-be rebels once invaded the house, led by a local broom maker, attempting to take anything worthwhile, including possible prisoners. Bett had previously secured her most valuable property, as well as that of others, in a locked chest to keep it safe.
The marauders demanded that Bett take them to the basement to find whatever was hidden there. On the way, according to Sedgewick, Bett made sure to point out the poorly made brooms made by the leader of the small rebel party. When the group came to the locked chest, they demanded access to its treasures. Bett put her foot down, calling them by name, as they were all well known to her. She explained that if they wanted what was inside, they would have to break it themselves. According to Bett, they slunk away like whipped dogs.
In time Bett was able to purchase a house of her own for her and her children. At the end of her life, when visited by local clergymen, she was asked if she was afraid to die. “No sir,” she said, “I have tried to do my duty, and I am not afeared.” Her very matter of fact reply is reminiscent of the way she lived. Upon her death in 1829, at about the age of 85, she was buried in the Sedgewick family plot in Stockbridge. Her tombstone stands as a touching reminder of the connection she made with the family she helped to raise. It reads:
"She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly 30 years. She could neither read nor write; yet in her own sphere she had no superior nor equal. She neither wasted time nor property. She never violated a truth, no failed to perform a duty. In every situation of domestic trial she was the most efficient helper and tenderest of friend. Good mother, farewell!"
The Freeman case and others like it set the precedent for future suits in New England. Massachusetts did not officially abolish slavery until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. However, after 1781 the practice of slavery declined in Massachusetts, until it was nearly extinguished by about 1790. Therefore, by the end of the Civil War, slavery had been extinct in Massachusetts regardless of written law.
Shamefully, I had not heard of Elizabeth Freeman until I began this research. Once again, her story reminds me that many very important pieces of history have been left out of text books. Though both the Sedgwick and Martineau sources have strange inaccuracies, I think Martineau said it best when she said, “A woman once lived in Massachusetts whose name ought to be preserved in all histories of the state as one of its honours.”
Certainly, Mum Bett's story is a valuable reminder that Massachusetts has not always been a haven for escaped slaves and freed men and woman. It should also remind us of the price our country paid for putting off the decision over the slavery issue for a future generation. However, it should truly inspire us to observe what this tough as nails woman was able to accomplish by just observing her surroundings and taking a chance. Imagine what we could all accomplish if we, as Bett would say, just kept still and minded things.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Jolly Jane - Part 2
Jachin House and the Davis family
Victims of Jolly Jane
After the successful murder of Mrs. Mattie Davis Jane was invited to stay the rest of the summer at Jachin House to help care for Mattie’s husband Alden, who was obviously grieving. The couple’s two daughters, Genevieve Gordon of Chicago and Minnie Gibbs of Pocasset, also agreed to remain in Cataumet to look after their father.
On the surface it all seemed to be a perfect plan. The sisters would have a trained nurse to help care for their father, and more, the nurse was already a close family friend. They did not know, however, that Jane was already planning their systematic destruction.
In the weeks after Mattie’s death, the Jachin House suffered several strange fires. Although they did not cause a great deal of damage, they appeared to come out of no where. In her later confessions, Jane would admit the pleasure she took from sparking the flames, then rushing to help put them out.
Jane’s first target after Mattie was her daughter Genevieve. Since Genevieve had traveled from Chicago to visit her family on Cape Cod, her husband had remained at home. Jane first began by planting doubts in the minds of Genevieve’s family, as to the stability of their loved one. Toppan insinuated that the younger girl was so isolated from her family in Chicago and was so devastated by her mother’s death that she was contemplating suicide.
Less than a month after Mattie Davis’ death, her daughter Genevieve retired to bed early one night with an upset stomach. Jane treated her patient with a dose of mineral water. Jane stayed with Genevieve throughout the night as the rest of the Davis family slept, secure in their knowledge that Genevieve was being cared for. However, on the morning of July 27 1901, Jane woke Minnie to inform her that her sister had died during the night.
The grave of Genevieve Davis - Cataumet Cemetery 2014
The people of Cataumet were shocked at the losses being suffered by the Davis family. Of Genevieve, the local doctor explained her death as another heart attack. However, Jane whispered among family members that she was sure the woman had killed herself with insecticide from the shed. Jane attended another Davis family funeral, happy as a Cape Cod quahog.
However, Jane was not done. Her next victim, Alden Davis, the patriarch of the family, fell ill in August of the same summer. Again, Jane treated the illness with a dose of mineral water. By the next morning the confused family found him dead. Unbelievably the same local doctor examined the body, saying that Mr. Davis died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
The graves of Alden P and Mattie Davis - Cataumet Cemetery 2014
The final member of the Davis family was murdered by Jane only a few days later. Minnie Gibbs returned exhausted from a day trip to Woods Hole. Once again, Jane used her doctored mineral water to treat her patient and poison her victim. Soon after the treatment, Minnie collapsed into a coma.
In her past, upon murdering her victims, Jane had crawled into bed with them. Cuddling with them as they breathed their last. During the night of August 13, however, Jane brought Minnie’s 10 year old son from his own room into hers while his mother lay dying a floor below. According to Harold Schechter, Jane admitted as much during her own confessions. Whether or not Jane molested the child is unknown.
Minnie was discovered by family the next morning. Remarkably, she was still alive, though now comatose. The local doctor was called who, after consulting with Jane, diagnosed Minnie with extreme exhaustion. The doctor prescribed complete silence and rest for Minnie, who remained under the care of Toppan. He said he would return later to see if she had improved. However, during the doctor’s absence, Jane administered to Minnie a fatal enema of whiskey, water, and morphine. By the afternoon, she was dead.
Davis Family Plot - Cataumet Cemetery 2014
Though several people seemed to suspect Jane had a hand in the death of the entire Davis family (who wouldn’t really?), she was able to escape yet again. This time Jane returned to Lowell to the home of the husband of her former foster sister, Oramel Brigham.
Since murdering her foster sister Elizabeth, Jane had seemingly harbored fantasies about marrying her sister’s husband. Therefore, she must have been annoyed to arrive at Oramel’s home to find him entertaining another woman. Though the woman was his 70 year old sister, Jane apparently felt threatened enough to offer her a dose of mineral water when the elderly woman complained of dizziness.
For years Oramel’s sister had suffered from heart problems. Therefore, when she slipped into a coma and died under Jane’s constant care one late August evening, the investigating doctor felt comfortable in diagnosing the death as a result of a heart attack.
After the death of Oramel’s sister, Jane made a last ditch effort to win the affections of her former brother-in-law. Toppan first began by taking it upon herself to manage the household affairs. However, Oramel was adamant that Jane would not be making her stay permanent. Next, she poisoned Oramel himself. Giving him enough poison that she would be required to nurse him back to health. Yet, once on his feet, he expressed his wishes that Jane should leave his home.
Finally, Toppan poisoned herself, nearly killing herself in the process. Oramel was forced to hire a doctor and a nurse to tend Jane and to make sure she no longer attempted to take her own life. Despite all of her best romantic efforts, when Jane had fully recovered, Oramel demanded that she leave.
Jane fled to a friend’s house in New Hampshire, where she spent the rest of September of 1901. Little did she know it would be her last few weeks as a free woman. The machine of justice had been set in motion months before, when she had been making her perceived clean getaway from her crime spree on Cape Cod.
It had finally been the father-in-law of Minnie Gibbs whose suspicions had seen through the facade of Jolly Jane to the monster underneath. Since the death of Minnie and her entire family, Captain Paul Gibbs had suspected Jane’s deadly hand in the death of the Davis family. With the help of friends and a Harvard university toxicologist, Captain Gibbs orchestrated the exhumation of the remains of Genevieve Gordon and Minnie Gibbs.
Therefore, on October 29, law enforcement arrested Jane Toppan at the New Hampshire residence of her friend. She was charged with only one murder, that of Minnie Gibbs. Of course her friends were shocked. What they did not know was that Toppan’s arrest actually saved their lives. Jane later admitted she was planning to kill the acquaintances with whom she was staying.
Jane was arraigned in the Barnstable County Courthouse, where she pleaded not guilty. As the entire country was swept up in the drama of Jolly Jane’s crimes, she spent her days feeling sorry for herself in the Barnstable jailhouse. The Davis family, she insisted, died of natural causes.
Though in retrospect her crimes seem a little obvious, the prosecution had one major problem. When the bodies of the Davis women were exhumed, the Harvard toxicologist did find traces of poison. This, of course, led to the arrest of Toppan in New Hampshire. The problem was that he found traces of arsenic, which Jane never used.
The assumption that Jane had poisoned her victims with arsenic was made based on the cases of previous female serial poisoners in Massachusetts, who had used arsenic. In addition, the poison was very accessible in 1901. It could be purchased from any druggist over the counter. Yet, despite exhaustive searches in North Falmouth, the prosecution obviously could not find any druggist who sold arsenic to Jane Toppan.
The prosecution’s case was further damaged when it was revealed that the undertaker, who had handled the bodies of the Davis family, had used arsenic in his embalming fluid. Jane’s lawyer jumped at the chance to claim that the Davises had dies of natural causes and any traces of poisons found had been from the embalming process.
Despite the lack of evidence uncovered by the prosecution, the daily newspaper articles featuring Toppan encouraged dozens of people to come forward with their own Jane Toppan stories. Slowly articles from all over New England began connecting a growing list of odd deaths, house fires, and missing money found in Jane’s past. Although she was only being officially charged with a single murder, the list of her probable victims grew from 4 to 12 over a few months. Even stories of her past as Honora Kelley were divulged to reporters by a woman claiming to be a cousin.
All the while, as Jane’s murderous past was brought to light for the country, Jane herself was quietly reading newspapers, exchanging mail with friends, and enjoying the home cooked meals of the wife of the Barnstable jailer, Mrs. Judah Cash. Many patients and friends who she actually hadn't murdered wrote, promising their moral and financial support for Toppan, whose innocence they seemed confident of. Whether or not Jane believed she was in serious trouble is a little unclear. Either way, the media of 1901 had thoroughly convicted her in the eyes of the public.
It was again Captain Gibbs, the father-in-law of Minnie Gibbs, who saved the day for the prosecution. Gibbs had been surprised to learn the prosecution suspected Toppan of arsenic poisoning. He had come to believe she was more devious than to use such an obvious chemical. Rather Gibbs suggested to newspapers that Jane had used doses of morphine and atropine.
The grave of Captain Paul Gibbs - the hero of this tale - Cataumet Cemetery
Armed with the suspicions of Captain Gibbs, the bodies of the two Davis women were re-examined, and were both found to contain lethal doses of both medications. Furthermore, a druggist in Wareham remembered Jane having ordered a large quantity of morphine, which he had shipped to her by train to Cataumet.
In addition, the bodies of the remainder of the Davis family were exhumed from Cataumet cemetery in order to be tested for morphine and atropine. Soon after the autopsies Jane was formally indicted for the murders of Alden Davis, Genevieve Gordon, and Minnie Gibbs. According to Mrs. Cash, the wife of the Barnstable jailor, Jane accepted these developments in her case. She retired to her cell, ate her dinner, and slept a restful night.
However, it was not new evidence which eventually cracked the Toppan case for Barnstable County, instead it was Jane herself. Wishing to evaluate his client’s mental state, her lawyer arranged for Jane to be evaluated by a group of impartial psychiatrists (called alienists at the time). It was during this evaluation in the spring of 1902 where Jane finally began to make her confession. At first admitting to the crimes for which she had been charged, then detailing her other misdeeds including arson and the multiple other murders she had committed throughout her life, at least 31 in total.
Jane explained the details of her crimes calmly and unemotionally. She explained that she felt no remorse for the murders, even those of her friends. In fact, she had murdered so often she struggled to recall the details of each crime. It had become a routine habit of her existence, just another old thing she did.
One of the psychologists who interviewed Jane, a Massachusetts doctor named Charles Stedman, later published his clinical assessment of her in an article entitled A Case of Moral Insanity With Repeated Homicides And Incendiaries And Late Development of Delusions. In his interview with Jane, Stedman makes several attempts to understand her crimes. Jane is very elusive about her motives, claiming at first to achieve a sort of sexual satisfaction from being with dead bodies. However, at last, even she seems confused about why exactly she felt the need to murder. According to Jane:
“I seem to have a sort of paralysis of thought and reason. Something comes over me, I don’t know what it is. I have an uncontrollable desire to give poison without regard to the consequences. I have no objection against telling my feelings, but don’t know my own mind. I don’t know why I do these things.”
Perhaps at the end Jane really did not know what caused her behavior. Though her initial claim of sexual excitement seems to be backed up by her own earlier behavior, Dr. Stedman was not convinced. He believed she made the claim only to show that she had no control and could not be held accountable for her actions.
Either way, in the eyes of her assessors, Jane did not need extra reasons to appear insane. Stedman’s final analysis stated clearly, “Therefore, we are of the opinion that she was insane and irresponsible at the time of the homicides with which she is charged.” He even went further, explaining that she would pose a serious threat to public safety if she were ever freed.
With the testimony of the psychologists and Jane’s new confession, all believed her trial would be a rather short one. This turned out to be correct. On the morning of June 23, Jane’s trial finally commenced. For all the build up and drama, it was a very quick affair. Based on the testimony of the three psychiatrists who interviewed Jane, a verdict was reached in less than 7 hours. Jane was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to serve the remainder of her natural life in the Taunton State Hospital.
Taunton State Hospital - 1987
Apparently Jane felt as though she had gotten away with her crimes. All articles at the time describe Jane as smiling as the verdict was read, some even say she laughed. Most even go as far to say that she nearly danced out of the court room in absolute glee.
Jane spent the evening with her friend Mrs. Cash and was escorted to the Taunton bound train the following day. During the entire trip to Taunton she seemed confident that she had gotten the better of the law, even going as far as explaining to reporters that she would most certainly be freed after only a few years.
In the days after her sentencing several new facts about Jane’s crimes stunned the public. First, Toppan’s attorney divulged that Jane had confessed her crimes to him months ago. In fact, according to him, Jane had eagerly confessed that she had killed at least 31 people over her years as a professional and private nurse.
Second, Jane’s confession was published in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. Though the confession was sensationalized and can not all be attributed to direct quotes from Jane, it did more or less accurately detail her crimes. In addition, it revealed Jane’s plot to fool the court assigned psychiatrists into believing that she was insane.
In her confession, she explained yet another cause for her behavior. According to Jane, “If I had been a married woman, I probably would not have killed all these people. I would have had my husband, my children, and my home to take up my mind.” Perhaps, in the end, she blamed the young man who had abandoned her after proposing marriage. Though, if he even existed, I think his decision probably saved his life.
Dr. Stedman continued to keep track of Jane during her stay in Taunton. For the first year, by most reports, Jane seemed to manage well. According to Stedman, “During the first year of her life at the hospital she was, as a rule, sociable, quiet, cheerful, amiable, and spasmodically helpful.” In fact she gained weight and wrote of her fondness for the other patients.
However, by 1903, Jane’s condition had deteriorated quite a bit. She began to make accusations against the hospital staff, claiming that they were attempting to poison her. She refused to eat and quickly lost the weight she was well known for. In addition, Stedman reports that her personal hygiene took a steep decline.
Jane Toppan - 1st year at Taunton State
By 1904, Jane had become emaciated by her refusal to eat, having lost half her body weight. The hospital staff began to force feed her through a tube, at which point she ate voluntarily for a time. The whole time, Jane mentally declined as well. She switched between manic laughter and delusional paranoia. Even if Jane was not clinically insane by modern standards at the time of her trial, it appears she may have been after her two year stay at Taunton.
Jane Toppan - after her 2nd year at Taunton
Despite the deterioration in her mental in physical health, Jane managed to live another 34 years in the Taunton hospital. She died August 17, 1938, at the age of 81. Rather than poison (which might have been appropriate), she died of pneumonia. Toward the end of her life, according to her obituary, Jane became a docile and cooperative patient.
Jolly Jane’s story illustrates several interesting aspects of New England history. First, the status of the medical profession in the early 1900’s was frighteningly primitive. Jane was able to fool just about every medical professional she came across and was only stopped due to the suspicion of an old Yankee sea captain.
Second, cases like Jane’s were just beginning to be heard of during her lifetime. Serial killers like H.H. Holmes and even Jack the Ripper were new to the time period. Though these types of crimes might still be appalling to modern people, they are certainly not unimaginable unfortunately.
Lastly, though events in Jane’s life might have obviously contributed to her behavior as a sociopath and poisoner, her crimes remain frightening and shocking. What is perhaps the most shocking is that her friends and neighbors never even guessed the chubby middle aged nurse everyone loved also habitually killed dozens of people for the simple pleasure of it.
Certainly this research will now make me think twice when, as I enjoy my sunny Cape Cod summers, and I accept a cool drink from a smiling friend, family member, waiter, or just about anyone really. I might wonder what or who is really behind the smile, where the drink came from, and just what the friendly deliverer might have opted to add. Yup, pretty creepy.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Jolly Jane - Queen of the Poisoners - Cataumet, Ma
During my research into New England history, I have been to supposedly haunted places, many graveyards after dark, and even to the resting place of a supposed Rhode Island vampire. Honestly, none of these places were too creepy. However, while researching the life and crimes of Jolly Jane Toppan, I can honestly say I felt shivers. These were the actions of a real monster. Yet when retracing the path of Jane from orphan to Cape Cod’s most infamous serial killer, though I was still had the heebie jeebies, I also had a greater understanding of just how she became the thing she did.
For this research, I used a great deal of information from Harold Schechter’s book Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer. Though Schechter details the crimes of several female killers, his information regarding Jane Toppan is particularly in depth and helpful. In addition, I've split this article in two in order to focus on Jane’s early life and her crimes connected to the Cape.
According to Schechter, the monstrosity that would become Jolly Jane began her life as Honora Kelley, the younger daughter of a very unusual Boston Irish couple named Peter and Bridget Kelley. Not much is known about Jane’s early life or her parentage, though there are several tidbits of folklore connected to both.
Apparently, Jane’s mother had died of consumption shortly before 1863, leaving her and her sister Delia with the unstable and most likely abusive, Peter Kelley. According to several newspaper articles published after Jane's trial, Peter Kelley was an alcoholic. He was known around Boston as “Kelley the Crack,” a reference to his erratic and sometimes violent behavior. Later in life, it is said Peter eventually lost his mind and sewed his own eyelids shut while working in a tailor’s shop. Some articles even stated that he had been institutionalized by the time Jane’s actions became public knowledge. Though, these stories may have been an attempt to “prove” that insanity was a trait that ran in Jane’s family.
Of course I cannot verify most of the information about Jane’s origins. Nor could I find a birth record for Honora or Delia. Furthermore, Jane Toppan seems to enter the historical record only after her father abandoned his daughters at the Boston Female Asylum in February of 1863. The asylum, which had been in operation since 1800, accepted orphaned children and children voluntarily surrendered by their parent or guardian. Honora and Delia were voluntary surrenders.
At the Boston Female Asylum, young girls would be instructed in domestic skills until the age of eleven. After eleven, girls could be placed in a home, seemingly under an indentured contract of around 7 years. During this time the indentured girls would act as a live in house-servant. Theoretically, it was a win-win for all parties. Foster families got cheap live in servants and the young girls supposedly received further education and experience. At the age of 18, the girls would be released from servitude with at least $50.
This is actually the New York Foundling Hospital
Perhaps similar to what the Boston Female Asylum was like
According to An Account of the Boston Female Asylum, “The greatest care is always taken in selecting places for those to be bound out.” Some girls surely received the promised benefits and perhaps a new familial support system, yet some probably left after additional years of abuse and the acquisition of new emotional scars at the hands of their foster families. Certainly this seemed to be the case for young Jane Toppan.
When Kelley the Crack left his daughters at the asylum in 1863 Delia was eight and Honora was six. It in not known how Peter Kelley treated his daughters. However, based on Jane Toppan’s later career, one can guess he was not a loving and doting father. By all appearances, little Honora Kelley seemed to receive a second chance at life when she was indentured at the age of only 8 to Mrs. Ann Toppan of Lowell, Massachusetts. Being “bound out” so young seems to have been contradictory to the rules of the Asylum. Why this happened no one currently knows.
Regardless, this is where Honora Kelley began her re-birth as Jane Toppan. Though never officially adopted (few girls were), she does appear on the 1870 and 1880 US Census among the Toppan family of Lowell as Jennie Toppan.
Toppan and Foster Family - 1870 Lowell, Ma
Toppan and Foster Sister - 1880 Lowell, Ma
At this time in her life Harold Schechter felt that Jane suffered a different type of abuse than she might have during those early years with her father. According to Schechter:
“That Jane was made to feel profoundly ashamed of her heritage is clear from her later behavior. As she grew older, she displayed the classic symptoms of ethnic and religious self hatred, lying about her origins to new acquaintances, and voicing anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiments more derogatory than the most bigoted remarks bandied in the polite, Protestant circles in which she moved.”
Though I can’t speak for how Jane felt about her own ethnicity, an examination of her early census entries conveniently leave out any hint of her Irish origin. In addition, they give a clear indication of the people who moved through her life between 1870 and 1880. Most important, other than Ann Toppan, were Ann’s daughter Elisabeth and her husband Oramel Brigham. Both 18 years older than Jane. According to their census and marriage records, Elisabeth was a house keeper and Oramel was a Rail Road employee, who later became a local Deacon.
A Jane grew into a young woman she was mostly well liked by her friends and family. People seemed to find her amusing and charming for the most part. However, there were darker aspects of her personality and behavior. Though dismissed at an early age, in retrospect they seemed to hint at what she would later become.
According to Schechter, Jane was a habitual liar. Some of her stories seemed strange yet harmless. For instance she told people that her father was a famous explorer and her brother was a famous Civil War hero. However, Jane was also known as a gossip and rumor monger, who would target students she had a personal grudge against.
Jane grew into adulthood with the Toppans. At the age of 18 she was released from her indentured contract with the agreed upon $50. According to Massachusetts vital records Ann Toppan died in 1891, unfortunately leaving Jane out of her will. However, Jane continued to live with Oramel Brigham and her foster sister Elizabeth, still acting as a live in house-servant despite being released from her contract.
As her 20’s passed her by, Jane watched her school friends begin to get married and have children. For whatever reason, Jane never did get married, though there are several newspaper articles telling of a near engagement that did not pan out. One article from the Seattle Daily Times even claims she had been given an engagement ring engraved with the shape of a bird by a young suitor named Charles May. However, Charles soon left for Holyoke and fell helplessly in love with the young daughter of a new employer. The story even states that Jane harbored a particular malice toward birds after this event. Schechter mentions that Jane gained an “unattractive” amount of weight at this time, topping about 170 pounds. Certainly newspaper articles published after her arrest never describe her as attractive.
Jane as a younger adult
Jane worked for Elizabeth until 1885. The circumstances of her departure are unknown. However, by 1887 Jane had applied to and was accepted at a Cambridge nursing school in the hope that she could make a career change. It was here, due to her charming personality and plump physique, that she earned the nickname “Jolly Jane.” The name would follow her throughout her life and add a certain morbid flair to her later crime spree.
At the Cambridge nursing school Jane was not terribly liked by the other students. As she did when she was younger, she spread terrible rumors about students she didn’t like and took great pleasure when those rumors resulted in her “enemies” being thrown out of school. However, to doctors and her superiors, she seemed very passionate and congenial. This is no doubt due to the fact that Jane was also an enormous brown-noser. As a student she took to her studies with enthusiasm and her patients often brightened to see her when she worked.
Jane would later admit that it was during her studies at the nursing school, when she began to experiment with medication. Schechter mentions that she conspired to keep patients in the hospital longer if he liked them, sometimes giving enough extra medication to make them ill, or doctoring charts to show fake symptoms.
Jane first experimented with morphine, injecting patients and watching them either die or recover at her leisure. Later, she added the drug atropine to her experiments. In the late 1800's both drugs were more or less over the counter medications used as common pain killers and to treat diseases like whooping cough. However, Jane discovered that with both chemicals she could vary the symptoms of her patients enough that even the doctors could not tell for certain what had killed them.
Sometimes Jane simply made her patients more ill with her experiments. Sometimes she outright killed them. However, sometimes she poisoned them only to near death, then took great pleasure in trying to save them. Jane later described this behavior in her confessions. She said:
“When the climax of my mania passed I realized what I had done. I have known that my patients were dying. Then my greatest thought was to resuscitate them. I have then worked over them, trying to bring them back to consciousness. I have sent for doctors and other nurses and tried my best to save them. Sometimes I have been successful, but many times the poison was too much. They were beyond recovery and they died.”
Jane would later describe this feeling of “mania” many more times. Often, because of her later behavior, the mania seemed to border on an almost sexual thrill at seeing her patients die before her eyes. Perhaps working as hard as anyone to bring them back to life gave her an additional feeling of godly control over life and death as well. It would be impossible to tell how many patients she killed during her training years at Cambridge Hospital. Schechter guessed it could have been dozens.
In 1888 Jane was able to transfer to Massachusetts General Hospital. Here, she continued her experiments. It was at Mass General where Jane Toppan ran into a patient named Amelia Phinney, whose later testimony would very clearly illustrate how scary and deranged Jane was becoming.
Mass General Hospital 1850's
According to a 2011 article from the Lowell Sun, Amelia Phinney had been admitted to Mass General for a uterine ulcer. The procedure to treat the ulcer had been painful, leaving Mrs. Phinney in a great amount of pain in bed. Here she was found by Nurse Toppan, who was temporarily filling the role of Head Nurse. Mrs. Phinney asked Jane for help with the pain. Toppan sat Mrs. Phinney up in bed, prompting her to sip from a cup of bitter tasting liquid.
Mrs. Phinney reported later that she became groggy and near unconscious, but through the haze she felt someone climb into bed with her. She must have been horrified to discover her unwanted partner was nurse Toppan, who petted her hair and “kissed her all over her face.” Jane even attempted to force Mrs. Phinney to consume more of the potion.
Fortunately the whole process was interrupted. Mrs. Phinney reported that Jane suddenly became distracted by something out of her vision. Apparently someone had walked into the room, disturbing Jane. Amelia woke the next morning with a severe headache, believing the strange experience of the previous night had been a terrible dream. It was not until 14 years later that Amelia Phinney realized she was lucky to be alive.
Despite this event and her diabolical experiments, Nurse Toppan was finally discharged from Mass General in 1890 for something as simple as leaving the ward without permission. Schechter concludes that Jane had amassed a considerable amount of suspicion during her time at the hospital. Things disappeared under her care, particularly cash and the expensive belongings of rich patients. Though nothing could be definitively proved, hospital administrators took this chance to remove Jane even before she received her nursing license.
For a time Jane attempted to return to her former school associated with Cambridge Hospital. However, other employees were beginning to suspect that Jane at the very least was irresponsible and dangerous to the patients. So, in 1891 Cambridge Hospital dismissed her as well, leaving Jane with only one real option to exercise her medical skills and her manic desire to kill. Jane became a private nurse for hire.
Over the next few years Jane became one of the most successful private nurses in the Boston area. Despite the rumors that followed her from job to job, she was highly sought after for her nursing skills and good humor (at least when her employers were around). Despite her success as a healer, bodies piled up in her wake. All murders were explained away by doctors as strokes or as the result of a strangulated hernia. In addition to murder, she had acquired the habit of stealing from her victims as well. Often leaving a grieving family confused about their loved one’s missing belongings. Later she would adamantly deny she was a thief as well as a murderer. She almost seemed insulted by the additional accusation, saying that money didn't matter to her.
Around this time in her life, Jane made her connection to the sandy shores of the Cape. Apparently, for many years during her adult life Toppan had spent summers in the Cape Cod village of Cataumet in Borne. She regularly stayed in a small cottage near to a larger former hotel called the Jachin House. In August of 1899, Jane contacted her foster sister Elizabeth in back in Lowell, who she had maintained a connection with. Apparently Elizabeth seemed to have been suffering from something like depression. Jane invited her to the Cape. claiming that it would cheer her up. Unfortunately Elizabeth accepted.
Jachin House and Davis Family - Cataumet, Ma
Elizabeth arrived on August 25 and spent the day with Jane at the beach. By August 28, she had unexpectedly fallen into a coma. Her husband Oramel was contacted via telegraph and arrived to spend a last few hours with his unconscious wife before she died in bed. The local physician explained the death as, again, having been caused by a stroke.
Not only did Jane seem to have once again avoided suspicion, she also convinced poor Oramel that Elizabeth had wanted her to inherit some of her belongings, which she later pawned. It would only be revealed at Jane’s trial in Barnstable that Oramel had suspected Jane in having a hand in his wife’s death. Unfortunately it would take the lives of several more people before he could be stopped.
What Oramel Brigham might not have known at the time was that Jane also had plans for him. Following her trial, newspapers widely reported that Jane had killed her foster sister because she wanted to marry Oramel herself. Her future actions would lend credibility to this theory as well. However, Jane’s murder of her foster sister was not her last Cape Cod murder. In fact, Jane’s greatest criminal connection to the Cape, and the crimes which eventually got her caught were all connected to the Davis family of Cataumet.
The Davises of Cataumet, who owned the once prosperous resort-like property Cataumet called Jachin House knew Jane very well. Since 1896 Jane had been one of their most favorite repeat guests. She was so well known and well liked that her Bourne neighbors often used her as a babysitter and, of course, a medical consultant. The Davises loved her and treated her almost as a member of their family, even giving her a large discount on her rental.
Yet, despite the generous discount, Jane Toppan owed the Davises several hundred dollars in overdue rent. By 1901 Mrs. Mattie Davis, the matron of the clan, had felt that Jane’s rent was finally due. She made plans to visit Jane at her residence in Cambridge in order to confront her about the money the family was owed. Of course, Mattie Davis did not know the danger he was putting herself in. She could not have known the friendly woman she knew as “Jolly Jane” had already previously murdered her former landlords in Cambridge for becoming “feeble and fussy” or “old and cranky” (Jane particularly did not like the elderly).
However, in 1901 Jane had wormed her way into the favor of her current landlords, the Beedles, by poisoning their housekeeper with morphine. When The Beedles fired their housekeeper for being drunk on the job (in reality she was passed out from Jane's poison), Jane was there to swoop into the new position and a comfortable new home.
When poor Mattie Davis arrived to confront Jane about the owed rent, it took Jane only a couple hours to decide to poison her into a coma with doctored mineral water. Toppan then contacted Mattie’s daughter and husband, informing them that their loved one had fallen ill. She spent the next few days re-dosing Mrs. Davis, allowing her to mysteriously regain consciousness, then plunging her back down into a coma. The family and even a local doctor could only look on in confusion and horror at the symptoms of Jane's latest victim.
Toppan finally allowed Mattie to die in early July of 1901. The official cause of death, according to local newspapers, was chronic diabetes. Jane accompanied Mattie’s remains back to Bourne, attended her funeral at Cataumet Cemetery like any other mourner and close family friend. However, in her later confessions, much of which was published in various newspaper articles of 1902, Jane expressed her true thoughts. She later admitted thinking of the mourners, who had traveled from as afar away as Chicago to say their last goodbyes to Mattie Davis, “You had better wait a little while and I will have another funeral for you. If you wait, it will save you going back and forth.”
Though no one, except perhaps Oramel Brigham, could have guessed, the entire Davis family was now in danger of being wiped out. Little did they know, their close family friend, Jolly Jane, was actually a serial killer who had finally and inevitably lost any control she ever had over her own behavior. Her manic urges and desire to snuff out the lives of her friends and family had now become a danger to everyone around her.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
The Mystery of Cape Cod's Boundary Stones
I was very busy this spring preparing an article for the June 2013 Summerscape, which is published by the Barnstable Patriot. My article article is now available online. I very much enjoyed participating in Summerscape this year and thank the editors for allowing me to do so. The subject of my research concerned the creation of the original town boundaries on Cape Cod, or at least one of the theories that tries to explain the boundaries. The research was absolutely fascinating and took me to places and sources I had never seen before. Through these sources it became clear to me that there are still so many things we do not know about the history of the Cape, how our town earned their borders is just one of them.
One of the biggest mysteries uncovered in my research has been the lack of information surrounding the various boundary stones one can find sitting on Cape town lines. Although a couple of these markers are registered as important landmarks by the National Register of Historic Places, there is still very little information explaining where they even came from, when they were placed at their current locations, and who placed them there.
In my article for Summerscape, I focused primarily on the stone uncovered by Michael Faber’s Cornerstone Project. This large flat boulder is located just off Rt. 6a, between Barnstable and Yarmouth. It very clearly has the letters "YxB" chiseled into its surface, signifying the boundary between the towns. However, as to who did the chiseling and when it was done . . . no one seems to know. The earliest concrete historical reference to the existence of the stone can be found in a 1907 Atlas. Although its existence in 1907 makes the stone historical at this point in time, there are some who believe it was created as part of the originally boundary between Yarmouth and Barnstable. This would date the inscription to around 1641.
The YxB Stone - Spring 2013
As the Summerscape article focuses heavily on the history of the “YxB” stone and the theories of the Cornerstone Project, I won’t restate huge portions of it here. If you’d like to know more about the stone, do check out the Summerscape link. Instead, I wanted to expand upon some of the other sources I didn’t use previously.
The other set of markers I researched, but did not devote as much space to in the article, were the boundary stones between the towns of Sandwich and Barnstable. One of these, a marker along Race Lane in Sandwich, has been recognized by the National Register of Historic Places since about 1987. This marker is a simple stone post a little over 2 feet tall. The letters "B/S" have been carved on its surface, showing the boundary between Barnstable and Sandwich.
Marker on Race Ln - you can just see the B/S at the bottom
According to their information, this marker was erected in 1639 when Myles Standish and John Alden were sent by the Plymouth Court to settle the boundaries of Sandwich. Of course, no one can prove this to be true. Even the records of the Plymouth Court are unclear about when the boundary between these two towns was officially established.
Plymouth Court records indicate that Standish and Alden were tasked as early as 1638 with the establishment of the Sandwich boundaries. However, the same records show that boundary disputes between Sandwich and Barnstable needed reconciling in both 1651 and 1652. However, it was not until June of 1670 that bounds were actually set in writing by the court. Though the Plymouth records make no mention of the creation of a stone marker, this particular boundary stone was referenced in a 1901 report on bounds of Sandwich, which is now housed in the Sandwich archives. Again, no mention of who created it or when it was put there.
Although some may argue that just because no one knows the exact origins of these boundary stones and their carvings, it doesn’t make them really mysterious. Cape Codders pass by them every day and they are as common as spring weeds on the side of our roads. Our forefathers just did not think to record exactly when they were placed, which is a shame because history geeks like me would like to know.
Still, the marker stones are part of a greater Cape Cod unknown. Truthfully, we only have bits and pieces of sources that explain the creation of the boundaries between the modern Cape towns. As I explain in the article, the Cornerstone Project has been trying to prove one theory; that these boundaries were surveyed and marked from a ship in Cape Cod Bay. While it is an interesting theory, I am still left without any rock solid historic facts as proof. Until then, as with other posts on this blog, the mystery persists.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Connecticut - First In Flight?
Whitehead (2nd left) in front of No. 21 "The Condor"
Most students learn in school, as I did, that Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first to successfully make a sustained, controlled, powered, heavier-than-air human flight in an aircraft they built. Most also know this flight took place in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. The string of adjectives is important because they were not the first to invent human flight, nor the first to even create controlled human flight. Still, the Wrights are so well known that the North Carolina license plate announces "First in Flight" to anyone taking a look. However, according to the state of Connecticut, this statement is no longer true.
Earlier this month the Connecticut State Senate passed House Bill No. 6671. Essentially, this bill paves the way for an annual holiday celebrating the Connecticut aviation industry. The bill is also designed to celebrate the achievements of a German immigrant named Gustave Whitehead, who some now claim was the true originator of the powered fixed wing aircraft and truly the first in flight.
Although supporters of Whitehead have claimed for decades that his flight preceded that of the Wright brothers, recently the argument has been rekindled by the evidence and website of an Australian researcher named John Brown. According to Brown, Gustave Whitehead first successfully flew an aircraft, design No. 21, which he called the Condor near Bridgeport, Connecticut in the early morning of August 1901. If correct, he beat the Wright’s Kitty Hawk flight by more than two years.
Brown presents several pieces of evidence to support the case for Whitehead. First, he claims to have uncovered at least 110 newspaper articles between 1901 and 1902 which reported Whitehead’s flying success. One of the most well known of these articles was published in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald. The author, Richard Howell, describes witnessing Whitehead’s first manned flight on the Condor. Further, he lists at least three other witnesses to the event, Andrew Cellie, James Dickie, and a local milkman.
The Herald article did include a photo of Whitehead and a drawing of the Condor in flight, which was supposed to have been based on a photograph taken at the scene. Of this original picture, Brown says it has been lost. Still, he claims to have now uncovered a copy of this visual evidence by examining the background of a separate panorama photo taken in 1906 at the first exhibition of the Aero Club of America. This photo shows a glider hanging from the ceiling in front of a wall containing photographs of what appear to be other aircraft. Several of these photos, according to Brown and other researchers, show aircraft built by Whitehead. One of them, Brown insists, shows the Condor in flight.
Drawing from the Bridgeport Sunday Herald
Though most of these background photos are unrecognizably blurred, Brown sites two articles, one published in a 1906 edition of Scientific American as evidence that he has found the correct picture. The articles describe the same wall of photos shown in the picture. According to the author, one of the wall photos showed “A single blurred photograph of a large birdlike machine propelled by compressed air . .constructed by Whitehead in 1901.” The author also goes on to say that this was the only photo of an airplane in flight.
Panorama of the Aero Club Exhibition - Whitehead section enlarged
On his website, Brown compares several of these photos with pictures of aircraft known to have been built by Whitehead. Indeed, he seems to prove that the majority of the pictures are not those referenced in the Scientific American article. However, Brown next examines one of the most blurred images to the drawing created for the Bridgeport Herald in 1901. Ultimately, Brown concluded that there were remarkable similarities between the two images. Enough similarities, in fact, to conclude the blurred image in the panorama photo is the long lost photo taken in Connecticut in 1901.
John Brown's comparison - Do these images show the same event?
Though the image Brown compares to the Bridgeport drawing is very unclear, Brown points out that it does seem to be situated with other Whitehead pictures, it does seems to show an aircraft above the ground, looks vaguely similar to other picture of the Condor, and is located pretty much in the same place as the mystery photo described in Scientific American. Therefore, he deduces that this blurred image must be the picture described in the article. Based on the evidence given, he surmises that Whitehead did fly before the Wright brothers.
Additionally, Brown goes on to explain that Whitehead next built an aircraft he called No. 22, with which he performed even longer flights. Brown sites the affidavits and statements from at least 17 witnesses to support the flights of No. 22. Replicas of this plane have been flown in both Germany and the US in more recent times.
Though there seems to be substantial evidence that Whitehead actually flew in 1901, others disagree. Tom Crouch, at the Smithsonian Magazine site critiques the Whitehead case. According to Crouch, who is the director of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, there is not enough evidence to support that the 1901 flight actually took place.
First, Crouch examined the written account published in the Bridgeport Herald. In the article, the author listed at least three witnesses to Whitehead’s flight. However, in 1936 a researcher from Harvard University named John Crane returned to Bridgeport in order to investigate the 1901 event. Crane could only find a single person who claimed to remember Whitehead’s sustained flight as reported in the Herald.
Furthermore, no relation, neighbor, or friend of Whitehead could remember to have even heard of the prolonged flight Whitehead claimed to have made in August of 1901. The one witness who claimed to have seen this flight was deemed less than credible by Crane due to the profit the witness was set to receive upon the publication of a book about Whitehead.
According to Crouch, the 1936 investigators even attempted to interview the witnesses referenced in the Bridgeport Herald. One witness could not be found, nor did anyone remember him. The other witness denied having ever seen Whitehead fly in August of 1901. He even went as far as to suggest that the Herald invented the story.
Crane did seem to attempt investigate the Whitehead’s case fairly. He did find several witnesses in the village who claimed to have seen Whitehead actually fly. What they could not agree upon was the duration and height of the flights they saw. Therefore, Crane concluded that Gustave Whitehead might have actually made several short, un-sustained, manned flights. Based on eye witness accounts these flights ranged from as low as 4 feet to as high as 25 feet and lasted anywhere from several yards to over 60 yards. However, they were not the sustained, controlled, powered flight as described in the original article.
At this point, despite the bill the Connecticut legislature has passed, whether or not Gustave Whitehead flew before the Wright brothers is pretty unclear. There are conflicting witness reports, no real conclusive photographic evidence, and other pieces of historic evidence don’t lend credence to the August 1901 event. For instance, though Whitehead went on to become a designer of airplane engines, no other aircraft designed by Whitehead ever actually flew until recently.
Still others point to the conduct of Orville and Wilbur Wright as evidence of a conspiracy. The brothers were secretive and were embattled in lawsuits against competitors. Critics point out that the Smithsonian currently holds a contract with the estate of Orville Wright. The contract dictates that the Smithsonian would lose custody of the aircraft of the Wright brother’s should they ever declare that another was actually first to fly. I must agree, on the surface that does not give me confidence in the unbiased historic opinion of the Smithsonian Institution on this matter.
However, I personally love this controversy. It demonstrates how history is constructed, de-constructed, and re-constructed. The very essence of this conflict stems from differing interpretations of the same sources, the sense of which I try to impart to my students all the time. Aspects of the arguments used on both sides of the issue are fascinating and at least sound enough to convince the law makers in Connecticut to legislate the recognition of Gustave Whitehead as the father of aviation. Perhaps the missing original photograph taken by the Bridgeport Sunday Herald, key to the entire argument, will eventually turn up. Until then, I am not convinced New England was first in flight. That honor remains with the Wright brothers and with the state of North Carolina.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Happier Than Paul Revere With a Cell Phone
I love this commercial. But I'm guessing it wasn't that easy to warn "every Middlesex village and farm." Still, even the wife thinks this one is funny.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Wampanoag Language Reclamation
Douglas Pocknett - from Boston Globe
It is now graduation season throughout our country. Thousands of our nation’s youth are completing one part of their lives and moving toward the next with pomp and circumstance. For most, graduation is a simple secular ceremony signifying the beginning of adulthood in our culture. It is repeated with minor variation year after year. However, on the Cape, the 2013 graduation at Mashpee High School has made history.
Earlier this month, a Mashpee Wompanoag student named Douglas Pocknett graduated from Mashpee High School wearing the ceremonial dress of the Wampanoag. Although Douglas is only the second Mashpee student to have done this, he is the first to have delivered a traditional Wampanoag prayer to the assembly in his own native language called Wôpanàak.
According to the documentary We Still Live Here, no one can say for sure when the last native speaker of Wôpanàak died. However, certainly the language was near extinction by the mid 1800's. Although Wôpanàak is an Algonquian language, it is distinct and separate from similar languages like Abenaki or Narragansett.
Remnants of the language exists in colonial documents and in Bibles written for Praying Indians. In 1993, the Wôpanàak Language Reclamation Project began under the direction of a linguist named Jesse "little doe" Baird. Baird began earning a Masters Degree in Algonquian linguistics at MIT. Through the cooperation of the various Wampanoag groups of the Cape and Islands, the project reconstructed a nearly lost language and began teaching the language to tribe members. It’s amazing to think that Cape Cod missionaries like Richard Bourne, who helped to translate Christian payers into the Wampanoag language, have now helped reconstruct that language.
Jesse "little doe" Baird
What is even more amazing is that Douglas Pocknett is a student of Jesse Baird. Pocknett was also the first Mashpee student to earn foreign language credits by studying his ancestral language, which is a practice I hope the Mashpee school system continues to expand.
I have been following the Wôpanàak Language Reclamation Project for a few years now. I totally respect the work of Jesse Baird and the Wampanoag groups that took part in the continuing reclamation of the Wampanoag language. I consistently remind any of my Wampanoag students of the project. Like any young student, I find they have varying levels of interest in their own ancestry. I did have one student this year who was interested in attending one of the language immersion summer camps though and another who was totally fascinated when I shared the news about the Mashpee graduation and Douglas Pocknett.
I must admit, I am also totally jealous. There hasn’t been a native speaker of Irish Gaelic in my family in at least three generations. Also, my maternal grandmother and her parents spoke French asa first language, which has now completely died out in my generation. Like I said, jealous. The difference, however, is that those languages continue to exist and are still used in large parts of the world. Certainly, I wish the Wmpanoag luck in the re-establishment of their native language in their native land. One day I would love to walk the lands of Cape Cod and hear the same language our Yankee ancestors did. | <urn:uuid:d627c461-5bf4-4a83-836b-5aaa72b56b63> | 3 | 3 | 0.023408 | en | 0.9852 | http://wickedyankee.blogspot.com/ |
6. User Tasks
Revision as of 13:20, 8 May 2007 by Kathy Glennan (Talk | contribs)
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Definition of users (p. 50, bullets at top of page)
FRBR has a much broader definition of users "The study assumes that the data included in bibliographic records produced for national bibliographies and library catalogues are used by a wide range of users: readers, students, researchers, library staff, publishers, distribution agents, retailers, information brokers, administrators of intellectual property rights, etc." (FRBR, p. 8, 1st paragraph). Would a broader definition also be useful here? Glennan 5/8/07
I am having difficulty interpreting the mapping in Table 4. Unlike FRBR, there is only one symbol, a black box. In FRBR the symbols in Table 6 mean "high value", "moderate value", "low value". I don't see any explanation in FRAD what the black box means. Does it mean something like "of value" as in "The 'known by' relationship is of value to the user task 'find' for the entity 'person'"? The paragraph after the user tasks on p. 50 offers no explanation at all either to what the black box means or how the Working Group arrived at its conclusions (whether to place a black box in the grid or not). Assuming it means "of value," I wonder why the "known by" relationship is not thought to be of value for identifying, contextualizing, and justifying the entity "person"? At least for justify, the "known by" is the supreme reason justifying the name--"documenting the authority record creator's reason for choosing the name or form of name on which a controlled access point is based." That particular relationship--the name by which the entity is "commonly known"--is the most important justification of all. So why isn't there a box in the intersection of "justify" to that relationship? Why aren't there boxes in the intersection of "contextualize" to attributes like "gender," "place of birth," "place of death," "affiliation," "field of activity," etc.? All of these contextualize: "place a person, corporate body, work, etc., in context ..." I'm not going to analyze the whole table, but I'm pretty clueless as to what the Working Group was thinking when it assigned black boxes to some intersections on the table and not to others. Bob Maxwell, May 7, 2007 | <urn:uuid:8a6b6678-7f79-4ee0-85a0-ff4e72fdbb80> | 2 | 2.046875 | 0.365358 | en | 0.940005 | http://wikis.ala.org/ccda/index.php?title=6._User_Tasks&oldid=2000 |
The Punt in relation to Wine Bottle Sizes
Wine Bottle Sizes
Wine bottle sizes have a rather fascinating story and history that goes along with the wine itself. One rather intriguing aspect of these wine bottles is called a punt. There really is no common explanation or even agreement why the punt exists but there are several theories.
Wine bottles at one point in history were free blown by using a blowpipe and something called a pontil. Creating wine bottle sizes in this fashion leaves what is called a punt mark at the bottom of the bottle. Bottle makes indented this mark so it would not scratch tables or simply tip over.
Another theory was that this style of wine bottle was used by the servants of wealthy men. Often times, the servants were very aware of what was going on in their village or town and became valuable tools to their masters. Legend has it that the code was developed that a servant would put their thumb in or out of the punt to deliver a surreptitious message about the guest to his master.
Of course there were many more common and useful tributes to the punt in various wine bottle sizes. It would act as a place where someone who was pouring it could put their thumb for stability and spills were much less likely to happen. This actually increases the strength of the bottle thus making it easy to accommodate the high pressure of champagne and sparkling wines. The punt is also attributed to decreasing the shatter rate of the various wine bottle sizes by significantly reducing the resonance factor of the bottle. From an aesthetic point, the punt actually acts like a conduit for refracting light in such a way that it enhances the color and beauty of the wine. Also, the punt makes the various wine bottle sizes heavier and thus presents more volume to a buyer without actually having anymore liquid thus tricking the consumer while making the seller happy.
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Road Kingdoms
Inside Aleppo: Why a Pacifist Teacher Keeps Going to School
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Aleppo’s first trick of the day is to make it feel like a beautiful morning anywhere on earth. It is 8 o’clock in the morning and the feeble sunlight has not yet managed to dissolve the blanket of fog covering the city‚ the remnants of the night just passed. The sky is distant. And so are the airplanes. “If we don’t see the plane, it doesn’t see us either,” says Abu Mohamed, a fighter from the Free Syrian Army, the rebel group that holds half of Aleppo. “This means we don’t need to worry‚ at least until the sun is up.” He invites me to take a seat in a popular bar in the Masakin Hananu district.
Behind a big black pot‚ a child perched on a stool stirs our fried food. We stretch our hands towards the fire to warm ourselves. The previous night we slept rough‚ sheltered by a Kurdish family in the neighborhood‚ with neither electricity‚ nor heat‚ nor phone‚ nor food. The aroma of falafel in the boiling oil fills the air. Humus and ful are already on the table‚ next to a small plate of fresh onions‚ green chilis and a kalashnikov. The television is tuned to the state channel‚ and the customers laugh at the stream of regime propaganda—the naked delusion of Assad’s government is as close to a joke as you’ll find in this war.
(PHOTOS: The Veils of Aleppo)
The second illusion of Aleppo is the calm outside. The marketplaces in the narrow streets are filled with people and merchandise. Fruit‚ vegetables‚ meat‚ household products. Traffic moves slowly along the main road. Minibuses used as collective taxis are parked by the edges of a roundabout. Their drivers call out for customers looking to travel to the cities north of Aleppo, in the liberated areas.
Everything appears to be normal, until you take a second look again. What you didn’t see before–and it’s hard to believe it had blended so well into the background—are the slumped ruins of buildings crushed by missiles. There is at least one on each block. Then you eavesdrop a bit on the conversations happening around you: pedestrians ask each other at every corner whether the street ahead is under fire from snipers. And finally your eye catches the parks. They have no trees left. Nothing remains of Aleppo’s parks, only fist-high stumps. And yet, there are people who keep on cutting even those stumps with an axe until they reach the roots, because any piece of wood helps through this cold, long winter of war. After six months of fighting, with no electricity, with gas and fuel at exorbitant prices, the people of Aleppo are burning their trees for fuel.
It gets worse for the parks, though. Look again, and you see the tombstones. It has become far too dangerous to reach the cemeteries from certain areas. So martyrs are buried directly in the park. Last time it happened was at a park in Bustan al-Qasr, on January 29, when the waters of the river Qwayq brought to the surface the bodies of 80 civilians executed, with a bullet in the head, by the regime and then thrown into the river. They were buried in a large mass grave in the park, under a plaque of sorts: three wooden boards that mourners had nailed together and driven into the dirt by the river’s edge. The living wrote “The Martyrs’ River” on the boards, in the hopes of not forgetting what had happened there.
The martyrs’ river itself is also a feint: sometimes a river, sometimes a grave, but its most important role these days is as a border, one of the most dangerous ones in Syria. Part of the river separates the areas of Aleppo which are under the control of the regime from the ones under the command of the Free Syrian Army. There is only one spot where it is possible to cross, but and even there only at great risk. The crossing is a shaky wooden plank, thrown across the two riverbanks. Hundreds of people in their muddy shoes tightrope across those boards every day. There are those who pay a visit to their families; those who smuggle goods across; and those who seek shelter on the side occupied by the regime, trying to escape from the continuous shelling on the insurgent areas. Then there are people like Abu Nur, who every morning defies the snipers’ shots to go to school, to teach.
Like his city, Abu Nur has his own illusions. He teaches, but he is not a teacher. Before the war broke out, he used to work as an engineer. An easy life. Middle class, thirty years old, a happy marriage, two beloved daughters, eight and ten years old. Abu Nur was one of those who used to say: “No to the regime, but also no to the war”. Particularly since his house is in the area of Aleppo under the control of Assad’s army. One day though the war knocked on his door.
“Do you remember,” he asks, “a month ago when a MiG belonging to the regime fired two missiles on the university? That same day a third missile hit the building just in front of our house. The splinters and the blast wave smashed the glass windows. I was in another room. When I rushed in I found my wife and my girls completely buried under a pile of glass and rubble. I lifted them from the ground, nothing had happened to them thank God, not even a scratch. But that day I swore to myself I would do something”.
So Abu Nur joined the civil movement that is secretly reopening the schools in the liberated areas of Aleppo. He takes me to a school of his in the Mashad area. From the outside no one can tell it is a school. It is just an ordinary building, partly damaged by mortar shells, in the middle of an anonymous backstreet. While we climb up the stairs, the voices of children become clearer. The apartment-turned-school is on the first floor. Each room hosts around thirty children. The chairs and desks have been brought from abandoned schools. But textbooks are missing—in fact, there are no books, or worksheets or posters or any kind educational material at all. As in the rest of the city, electricity comes and goes. At most it stays on for a couple of hours a day.
“The Free Syrian Army,” Abu Nur says, “has made its bases in some of the schools of the city and they have rendered all the schools potential targets for the regime’s air force. They’ve already bombed many of them. For this reason we cannot go back to the old schools. If they hit the children it would be a massacre. So we went in search of abandoned private houses. In each house we place about one hundred children, in three or four rooms. The teachers are all volunteers. We have no funding whatsoever. Many of them were teachers before. Others, like me, give a helping hand. Our aim is for the children not to miss the school year.
(MORE: Portrait of an Activist: Razan Ghazzawi, the Syrian Blogger Turned Exile)
From the windows left ajar, one can hear guns firing, mortars exploding. The frontline is just 300 meters away. The children don’t flinch; by now they are used to this. On the contrary, they enjoy recognizing and imitating the sounds of the weapons. The kalashnikov, the mortar, the dushka, the rpg, the antiaircraft artillery, the Mig, the Grad. As if it were all a game, some sort of “Old Mac Donald had a farm” in time of war.
Mariam sits in the front row. Her eyes are fixed on the sentences written on the blackboard with the curiosity of ten-year-olds everywhere. Then, in chorus with the other girls in the class, she repeats a piece of today’s English lesson: “The man who is there is my father. People who eat a lot get fat”. On her desk lay her three drawings. One depicts a princess dressed up in a light blue dress embroidered with gold, her hair in the wind, a smile on her face. The second drawing shows a yellow birthday cake and a circle of children. In the third one there is a girl who writes on her notebook, in front of a lit candle, just like the ones that light up the classroom when there is a blackout.
“We ask them to draw nice things, to help them escape from the context of the war,” the English language teacher says to me. It is 10 o’clock in the morning. The next class is religion, then comes math and Arabic. The children, by keeping busy, can forget what is happening outside their window.
But that trick can’t last for long. The same afternoon, after lunch, 200 meters away from the school, two missiles from the regime’s favored fighter jet, the MiG, strike a building. There are at least thirty dead, all civilians. By evening, the images of the strike are on YouTube, and I watch them while drinking a cup of tea in the old biscuit factory where I will spend the night with a Kurdish militiaman from the Free Syrian Army.
It is the usual low-resolution video, shot on the spot by Syrian media activists. A group of people runs to the place of the shelling to dig through the still smoking ruins with their bare hands in search of survivors. First they extract the body of one man, then another. Then a boy. Then a girl. All covered by rubble and blood. Such slaughter. I think of Mariam and the princess in her happy drawings, and the power of magical thinking. In Aleppo, where schools look like apartments and parks look like cemeteries and markets look normal until you think about the snipers, a little extra fantasy can go a long way.
Gabriele Del Grande is the founder of the migration blog Fortress Europe. He has reported from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria. His last book “Il mare di mezzo” (Rome, 2010) was published also in Germany and Spain. Follow him on Twitter at @adayinsyria or contact him directly
MORE: Syria’s Civil War: The Mystery Behind a Deadly Chemical Attack | <urn:uuid:950b2b5b-4e61-42d3-ade3-5358ae3e6b20> | 2 | 1.695313 | 0.029366 | en | 0.965601 | http://world.time.com/2013/04/19/the-illusions-of-aleppo/?iid=tsmodule |
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Fold Equity
What is fold equity in poker?
Fold equity is a poker strategy that has become more and more recognized over the last few years. In its most basic form, fold equity is the chance that your opponent will fold, based on your actions.
Fold equity has a lot to do with reading your opponent. You have to be able to determine how often you believe he will fold, according to the size of the pot.
If you surmise that he will fold approximately 30% of the time in a $100 pot, the fold equity becomes $30 (30% of the pot). Therefore, placing a $30 bet or raise has fold equity.
When to Use Fold Equity
Let's start by saying this: When playing small stakes poker, fold equity can be a very effective poker strategy. However, the higher the stakes, the more profitable fold equity becomes. It will be least effective at micro-limit stakes. Players are less likely to fold when there is so little at stake.
For obvious reasons, fold equity is pointless against a loose player who rarely folds anyway. Loose players are common in small stakes poker games, so be sure to make note of them quickly and avoid using fold equity when they are in the pot with you.
With that said, fold equity is most effective when semi-bluffing. It is difficult to utilize fold equity with any real success on a straight out bluff, simply because it is so hard to read an opponent with that much accuracy. Only the most hard core, psychologically adept poker players can put their opponents on a weak hand precisely enough to use fold equity with no hand of their own to speak of.
Integrating fold equity with semi-bluffs is much more effective. When it works, you claim the pot instantly. But when your opponent chooses not to fold, at least you have something worthy of falling back on.
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For example, if you flop a flush draw, fold equity can help you decide the proper move against a betting opponent - call, raise or fold. He limped in pre-flop, and now bets 5x the big blind. With little more than an Ace to your name, the flop comes down 8s-Jc-Qs. After reading him for awhile, you put him on a hand range of anywhere from 8-8 to Q-Q, or maybe a Straight Draw.
You have Ace high at the moment, but with As-9s, you have plenty of outs to a better hand, including any spade and a gut-shot straight draw with a 10.
What do you do - call, raise or fold?
Let's look at the option to call. You've already determined that your opponent probably has the best hand. Calling would only propagate a potentially bad situation. It also has absolutely no fold equity.
Maybe you should fold? It would be a safe move, but maybe not the best. You've already decided that this opponent has a 30% chance of folding, and giving up now has a 100% loss rate. If you fold, he gains from fold equity, not you.
Raising on fold equity is the correct decision here for a number of reasons. First off, you've put him on a fairly wide range of hands, many of which have very low potential for decent improvement.
Secondly, by raising, you're representing a much stronger hand than he has. That alone increases your fold equity.
To raise at this point will, more often than not, result in a fold; assuming you correctly read your opponent and done note taking throughout the duration of the session. Should he choose to stay in the pot, your semi-bluff can still produce a winning hand.
Ok enough about fold equity. Carbon Poker is a great place for online gaming fun, so visit carbon now and see for yourself (click on Tina below).
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Industry: High Tech
Founded in 1938, Samsung is a multinational conglomerate company comprised of businesses that range from consumer electronics, machinery and heavy industries, chemical industries, financial services, and various other enterprises.
The Challenge
Design a compact, user friendly physical keyboard for mobile devices, while maintaining a high accuracy of the user's intended input.
Dassault Systèmes Response
Engineers at Samsung used finite element models of both a human fingertip and a device key to simulate user input and identify the variables that lead to mistyping. By utilizing a Python script in Abaqus finite element analysis (FEA) software from SIMULIA, the engineers were able to automate a number of their tasks to reach a solution in a timely manner.
Using Abaqus allows Samsung to simulate human interaction with device interfaces to find the optimal design in less time and at lower costs then by normal trial and error. By significantly reducing the error in user input, Samsung is able to provide a superior consumer experience that can result in further sales of their products. | <urn:uuid:15bae697-397c-4424-ab32-b030f41b93bc> | 2 | 2.25 | 0.848884 | en | 0.894907 | http://www.3ds.com/customer-stories/single/samsung/ |
AAAI Publications, Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
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Can Approximation Circumvent Gibbard-Satterthwaite?
Ariel D. Procaccia
Last modified: 2010-07-04
The Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem asserts that any reasonable voting rule cannot be strategyproof. A large body of research in AI deals with circumventing this theorem via computational considerations; the goal is to design voting rules that are computationally hard, in the worst-case, to manipulate. However, recent work indicates that the prominent voting rules are usually easy to manipulate. In this paper, we suggest a new CS-oriented approach to circumventing Gibbard-Satterthwaite, using randomization and approximation. Specifically, we wish to design strategyproof randomized voting rules that are close, in a standard approximation sense, to prominent score-based (deterministic) voting rules. We give tight lower and upper bounds on the approximation ratio achievable via strategyproof randomized rules with respect to positional scoring rules, Copeland, and Maximin.
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10 Surgical Pearls for Open Globe Repair
1. General anesthesia or bust! The best situation is a controlled one under general anesthesia. If you practice in an area where open globe trauma is less common, confer with your anesthesiologist beforehand to ensure that the patient will be deeply sedated for the duration of the procedure (i.e., no bucking please), and that non-depolarizing induction agents are used.
One may be tempted to repair smaller lacerations under MAC (monitored anesthesia care). However, the injury may be more extensive than originally thought and the repair can become more tedious and difficult with a poorly cooperative patient.
2. Be careful when prepping and dressing the eye for surgery. If you are working with unfamiliar nursing circulators, gently remind them to not apply any pressure on the globe during the prepping process and to not instill any povidine iodine directly onto the eye. You can also offer to prep the patient yourself if you are inclined to do so. If available, use a lid speculum that will not apply undue pressure on the globe. Loose Jaffe lid retractors are great options.
3. No matter the condition of the globe, always close the globe (if possible). Although some eyes will have a very poor postoperative prognosis, all open globes should be closed initially, unless an expulsive hemorrhage has already occurred. The idea of potentially losing an eye via enucleation or evisceration is devastating and difficult to come to terms with, and patients need time to adjust to such a situation.
4. Examine and stabilize the globe. Realign the tissues and form a chamber with sutures and viscoelastic before further exploration of the globe. Your initial stabilization sutures will likely end up being removed and replaced before the end of the case. However, it is essential to gain control early on in the case with strategically placed sutures to close the eye first.
5. Cut the vitreous, but not the iris! Weck and manually cut any prolapsed vitreous that may be present outside of the eye. If possible, scrape and reposit any iris tissue that has prolapsed. Patients may be able to have further anterior segment reconstruction and iris repair in the future. Iris reconstruction is much easier to perform when there is a sufficient amount of iris tissue.
6. Identify the extent of the laceration or perforation. This one is fairly self-explanatory. Lacerations will commonly track posteriorly behind a rectus muscle, requiring further exploration after disinsertion.
7. If possible, be kind to the cornea. Oftentimes, patients have very good postoperative visual potential. Try to realign and reapproximate the corneal tissue properly. This can seem almost impossible in a complex laceration such as a stellate one, but try to take suture bites at even depths on both sides of the laceration. The sutures within the central cornea should be shorter than those aligning the periphery.
8. You may need more than just sutures to repair the globe. In the setting of a larger perforation, order emergency corneal tissue for a potential tectonic graft. Complex corneal lacerations may continue to leak with suture closure alone. Corneal cyanoacrylate and/or fibrin glue(s) can help seal such problematic wounds.
Bandage contact lenses are also very helpful to help tamponade and stabilize any slower leaks, such as suture track leaks. Additionally, aqueous suppressants can be helpful in sealing a slow leak in the post-operative period.
9. Irrigate out the hyphema, but leave the clot alone. Dislodging the clot can lead to another vigorous hemorrhage. If a hyphema does occur intraoperatively, viscoelastic and an increased intraocular pressure can help halt the bleeding.
10. Leave the violated lens alone! It is tempting to remove the lens material in the setting of a violated lens capsule. But the true extent of the lens violation and the status of the posterior capsule at the time of the original injury are very difficult to assess. It is best to leave this alone during the open globe repair. Such traumatic cataracts are best dealt with at a later time, under a controlled situation, after the capsule has fibrosed and stabilized.
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About the author: Elizabeth Yeu, MD, is an assistant professor at the Cullen Eye Institute, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. She currently serves as an examiner for the American Board of Ophthalmology and serves as an editor for the Academy’s Ophthalmic News and Education (ONE®) Network refractive surgery subcommittee. She is also an appointed member of the Academy’s refractive surgery Annual Meeting subcommittee.
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At least five killed in Egypt protests
Updated July 01, 2013 19:07:00
At least five people were killed and more than 200 injured during protests across Egypt. Some protesters demanded the resignation of president Mohammed Morsi, but others held their own rallies in support of the president. President Morsi said he will stay in office and called for national dialogue.
Source: PM | Duration: 3min 35sec
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, leadership, egypt
PETER LLOYD: At least five people are dead and more than 200 injured after protests erupted across Egypt.
Many Egyptians are demanding the resignation of their president, Mohammed Morsi. But after counter demonstrations, the president has declared that he isn't going anywhere.
Connie Agius reports.
CONNIE AGIUS: Thousands of protesters took to the streets across Egypt to mark one year since president Mohammed Morsi took office.
The demonstrations saw more than half a million people turn up in Cairo's Tahrir Square. And people flooded the country's second major city, Alexandria. Their message was simple.
EGYPTIAN PROTESTER: President of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, please get out. Get out.
EGYPTIAN PROTESTER 2: I'm demanding that he step down from office and leave.
EGYPTIAN PROTESTER 3: We don't want any more of the Muslims Brotherhood. We are not convinced with Mohammed Morsi and we're going to stay on the street until he leaves.
CONNIE AGIUS: They were the largest protests in the country since the uprising in 2011 that saw Hosni Mubarak lose power.
People on the streets say they're angry with the political dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood. They say the government hasn't done enough to help the economy and bring stability back to the country.
Doctor Robert Bowker is the former Australian ambassador to Egypt and a specialist on the Middle East at the Australian National University.
ROBERT BOWKER: They're basically looking for the removal of the president, president Morsi, and in addition to that some reforms to the constitution that Morsi's allies pushed through. They're looking for the removal of the prosecutor-general. They're looking basically to, if they can, to have the army intervene in support of those demands.
CONNIE AGIUS: But even though people are taking to the streets in protest, there are still many who support president Mohammad Morsi. Clashes between opponents and supporters have been reported in several cities across the country.
President Mohammed Morsi stayed out of sight, speaking only through his spokesman, Omar Amer.
OMAR AMER (Translated): The president has previously said that he is reaching out to everyone and that he is ready to listen to serious national dialogue. Egypt does not interfere in any domestic affairs in any European or American country. We also request that no one should interfere in our domestic affairs.
CONNIE AGIUS: But some analysts say the offer of dialogue is not one the opposition is likely to accept.
Dr Robert Bowker again.
ROBERT BOWKER: I don't think the opposition regards that offer as credible. They are basically at a stage now where they believe that only overwhelming political pressure and the removal of Morsi, or at the least the calling of fresh presidential elections will be sufficient to satisfy them.
CONNIE AGIUS: And he believes Egyptians may be in for a repeat of history with the involvement of an important institution.
ROBERT BOWKER: The army, I think, is likely to be forced to intervene if, as seems quite likely, there is no meeting of the minds politically between president Morsi and his opponents and the level of violence which is ramping up now continues to escalate. I don't think the army would be prepared to stand back and allow a situation which is tantamount to anarchy and rising violence.
PETER LLOYD: That's the former Australian ambassador to Egypt, Dr Robert Bowker, ending that report by Connie Agius. | <urn:uuid:858705c5-ae30-4f41-8956-be0352c36366> | 2 | 1.859375 | 0.022966 | en | 0.970177 | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-01/at-least-five-killed-in-egypt-protests/4792482 |
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Eavesdropping a waste of energy
Eavesdropping teenager
Despite being frustrating, reseachers say we have less control listening to a 'halfalogue' (Source: iStockphoto)
Ever wonder why overhearing a phone conversation is so annoying? American researchers think they have found the answer.
Whether it is the office, on a train or in a car, only hearing half of a conversation drains more attention and concentration than when overhearing two people talking, according to scientists at Cornell University.
"We have less control to move away our attention from half a conversation, or 'halfalogue', than when listening to a dialogue," says Lauren Emberson, a co-author of the study that will be published in the journal Psychological Science.
"Since halfalogues really are more distracting and you can't tune them out, this could explain why people are irritated," she says.
According to the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association there are more than 22 million mobile phones in Australia - one for each person.
Worldwide, there are about 4.6 billion mobile phones, according to the International Telecommunications Union, a UN agency. The number is equal to about two-thirds of the world's population, leaving few corners of the globe where public spaces are free of mobile-tethered babblers.
China has the most mobile phone users with 634 million, followed by India with 545 million and the United States with 270 million, figures from the US Central Intelligence Agency show.
Piecing together snippets
Emberson says people try to make sense of snippets of conversation and predict what speakers will say next.
"When you hear half of a conversation, you get less information and you can't predict as well," she said. "It requires more attention."
The findings by Emberson and her co-author Michael Goldstein are based on research involving 41 college students who did concentration exercises, like tracking moving dots, while hearing one or both parties during a phone conversation.
The students made more errors when they heard one speaker's side of the conversation than when overheard the entire dialogue.
The study shows that overhearing a phone conversation affects the attention we use in our daily tasks, including driving, says Emberson.
"These results suggest that a driver's attention can be impaired by a passenger's cell phone conversation," according to the study.
It recommends similar studies should be conducted with driving simulators.
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Ancient armoured fish had abs
reconstruction of the Devonian Gogo reef
Abdominal muscles have been discovered on ancient Devonian epoch armoured fish such as the Eastmanosteus (grey) and the Compagopiscis (beige) (Source: Brian Choo)
Muscle evolution Ancient armoured fish had complex musculature - including abdominal muscles - the discovery of uniquely preserved tissue on Australian placoderm fossils has revealed.
The discovery provides an insight into the early evolution of all vertebrates says the study's lead author Associate Professor Kate Trinajstic, a palaeontologist with Curtin University.
"Nothing like this has ever been found in the world," says Trinajstic.
"We've actually found the muscles and we've found them in such quantity and preservation that for the first time we can actually map all of the muscles on a fish."
Placoderms, the earliest-known jawed vertebrates, ruled Devonian seas for 70 million years.
Researchers long assumed these fish had primitive structures like sharks, but the discovery of tissue on the 380-million-year-old fossils, reported in the journal Science, proves otherwise.
"It tells us primitive doesn't mean simple. These fish had a unique and complex musculature which is unknown in modern fishes," says Trinajstic.
"Along with having a complex muscle system, they also have a differentiated vertebra column, that's quite an advanced feature."
One thing that sets placoderms apart from sharks is the presence of a notable joint between the skull and shoulder girdle.
"These guys had an incredible bony neck joint and they also had armour so they could only move their head up and down because they've got a hinge joint on the armour," says Trinajstic.
"They're the first animal with a neck, and the first animal with its shoulder separated from the back of the head.
Another defining feature is the presence of abdominal muscles.
"Sharks and bony fish have quite simple muscles and they don't have the abdominal muscles, but this really ancient fish has abs," says Trinajstic.
"The next time we see abdominal muscles similar to this fish, is in tetrapods, animals that walk on to land."
Unique preservation
The researchers used the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility to scan their fossils, so as not to damage the three dimensional preservation.
Trinajstic says the three dimensional preservation of these fossils, including their soft tissues such as muscles and nerves, is incredibly unique, because such tissues almost never fossilise.
The three species of placoderms -- Eastmanosteus, Compagopiscis and Incisoscutum -- were discovered in the the Gogo formation, near Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
The site is preserved like a snapshot of a Devonian ecosystem.
"This isn't a weird anomaly, we've got a whole suite of these fish preserved," she says.
The unusually high degree of preservation was caused by rapid burial once the fish died, preventing decomposition or decay.
"It's called the medusa effect where something's literally turned to stone," Trinajstic explains.
Bacteria is also thought to have helped in the process by encasing fossils in a microbial slime which held the remains together and also trapped minerals such as phosphorous, which aided in the muscle tissue being preserved.
Previous work by Trinajstic and colleagues showed these fish had teeth much like our own.
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Samih A Azar
''Random risk aversion and the cost of eliminating the foreign exchange risk of the Euro''
( 2010, Vol. 30 No.1 )
This paper answers the following questions. If the Euro foreign exchange risk is given, what is the cost of eliminating such a risk? How does risk aversion affect this cost? What is the relation between the insurance premium on the Euro and this cost? Is it possible to find out the level of risk aversion by looking upon actual risk-free yields? If risk aversion is random, how do risk-free yields move with the return on the Euro currency? Economists usually take for granted that preferences are stable. By contrast, business news networks mention frequently changing risk appetite, or changing investor sentiment, in order to explain market behavior. This paper shows that it is worthwhile to presume that risk aversion is random, because such randomness provides direct answers to the questions raised above.
Keywords: The Euro, foreign exchange risk, expected utility, cost of risk, risk aversion, risk compensation, insurance premium, risk-free yields, Monte Carlo simulations, bootstrap sampling, EU financial markets
JEL: F3 - International Finance: General
G0 - Financial Economics: General
Manuscript Received : Nov 13 2009 Manuscript Accepted : Jan 11 2010
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why some Asean countries adpot Internationa accounting standard and some not?
Recent economic upheavals, such as the Asian economic crisis, have demostrated the important of accounting for the world wide economy.more and more countries are supporting Internatioinal Accounting Standards, either by introducing International Accounting Standards(IAS's) into national laws, or by adporting IAS's as the basis for local standards, For these countries IAS's are seen as the best means available t enhance the credibility of financial report.
Identify two Asean countries rely on IAS's and one that does not rely on IAS's and what factors that have motivated them to adpot/non-adopt approach to financial report? what is the effect of divergent practices between them and are their result due to differenct accounting requrements?
Chew Bee Lau
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Noteworthy Chemistry
April 29, 2013
Combine light and base to make biaryls. Biaryls, versatile building blocks in organic chemistry, are made mainly by heterocoupling aryl halides with organometallics or homocoupling either of these reagents. Homolytic aromatic substitution (HAS) is a more efficient, cost-effective way to make biaryls. M. E. BudÉn, J. F. Guastavino, and R. A. Rossi* at the National University of Córdoba (Argentina) report the direct C–H arylation of aryl halides with benzene via base-promoted HAS induced by photo-irradiation at room temperature.
The authors’ proposed mechanism is shown in the figure. Radical anion [ArX]•– can be generated by electron transfer (ET), which emits an anion to yield radical Ar. The radical couples with benzene (PhH), which, in the presence of a base (B),gives coupling product ArPh.
The authors studied the reaction between PhI and benzene and found that, with 150 equiv benzene, 3 equiv t-BuOK, and 13 equiv DMSO, PhI is converted to biphenyl under photo-irradiation in 90% yield within 1 h. They showed that DMSO and light are indispensable for the reaction to proceed and that t-BuOK cannot be replaced by Et4NOH or KOH.
A variety of aryl halide substrates are compatible with the reaction conditions. Aryl iodides with functional groups ranging from electron-donating to electron-withdrawing at the para, meta, and ortho positions give coupled biaryls in moderate-to-high yields (44–91%).
Similar results are obtained for heteroaryl halides such as iodopyridines, 6-chloroquinoline, 3-bromobenzo[b]thiophene, and naphthyl and phenanthryl halides. Haloiodobenzenes can undergo dual phenyl substitution. When thiophene is used instead of benzene, the major products are C2 regioisomers. (Org. Lett. 2013, 15, 1174–1177; Xin Su)
Reduce a 14-step synthesis to 5 steps. The route reported by Huber, J. D., et al. (J. Med. Chem. 2012, 55, 7114–7140) to 4-(1-acetylpiperidin-4-yl)-N-(diaminomethylene)-3-(trifluoromethyl)benzamide, a sodium–hydrogen exchange type I inhibitor, requires 14 steps. The overall yield was only ≈20%, and the synthesis uses the expensive reagent bis(pinacolato)diboron, none of whose atoms appear in the final molecule.
X. Wei and co-workers at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals (Ridgefield, CT) developed an optimized synthesis that requires five steps and the inexpensive, readily available building blocks pyridine, 2-bromobenzotrifluoride, MeCOCl, and guanidine hydrochloride. The Grignard reagent generated from 2-bromobenzotrifluoride is treated with in situ–generated 4-acetylpyridinium chloride and 0.1 mol% CuI catalyst to produce the N-acetyl-1,4-dihydropyridine adduct in 76% isolated yield.
Hydrogenation and subsequent bromination proceed in 78–80% yield to give the substrate for a palladium-catalyzed methoxycarbonylation (90–93% isolated yield). The reaction of the ester with guanidine forms the HCl salt of the desired product in 90% isolated yield. (Org. Process Res. Dev. 2013, 17, 382–389; Will Watson)
Crystallization induces bent luminogens to fluoresce. Nonplanar 3-D π-conjugated systems have unique properties (e.g., concave–convex interactions and strong emission), but they are difficult to synthesize. Cyclooctatetraene (COT) is the simplest and smallest nonplanar cyclic unsaturated hydrocarbon; its tub shape is a building block for 3-D π-systems.
D. Kim, M. Iyoda, and coauthors at Tokyo Metropolitan University and Yonsei University (Seoul) designed and prepared bent π-conjugated dibenzoCOT molecules 1 and 2 with two cyano groups on each COT unit. They then studied the luminescence properties of the two molecules.
Molecules 1 and 2 are almost nonluminescent in solution and in amorphous states because of their structural flexibility. Their emission is activated by crystallization because their structures become rigid in the crystalline state.
Compound 2 exhibits pseudopolymorphism, which can be tuned by changing the recrystallization solvent. It is vapochromic; its emission color can be switched by exposing it alternately to THF and CH2Cl2 vapors. Its crystal structure changes quickly and reversibly; the authors believe that this is the result of a rapid equilibrium between 2⋅THF and 2⋅CH2Cl2 crystals.
Crystals of 2⋅CH2Cl2 also show unique thermochromic behavior. Their emission changes from green at ambient temperature to blue at the temperature of liquid-nitrogen. (Chem.—Eur. J. 2013, 19, 4110–4116; Ben Zhong Tang)
Mimic the mechanical gradient of a natural material. Beaks of squids contain a nanocomposite that provides a stiffness gradient between the hard rostrum material and the soft buccal envelope. Inspired by the design of squid beaks, S. J. Rowan and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland) and the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Center developed a nanocomposite with a mechanical gradient enhanced by hydration.
The researchers used allylamine surface–functionalized cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) embedded in a poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAc) matrix that contained a tetrafunctional thiol cross-linker and photointiator. UV-initiated cross-linking of the water-responsive, stiff CNCs via thiol–ene chemistry created noncovalent and covalent interactions between the filler network and the PVAc matrix.
Under uniform UV irradiation, the tensile storage modulus (Eʹ) increases with exposure time because the cross-link density in the hydrated and dry states increases. The most dramatic differences occur in a wet environment in which the covalent thiol–ene cross-links provide reinforcement in the absence of hydrogen-bonding interactions of the CNCs network in the PVAc matrix.
Patterning this bioinspired gradient nanocomposite for increasing cross-linking times (0, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 min) leads to increasing mechanical gradients when hydrated compared with the dry state. In the hydrated material at 37 °C, Eʹ rises from 36.5 MPa with no cross-linking to 191 MPa after 20 min of cross-linking. In contrast, the dry composite modulus at room temperature increases from ≈2430 MPa to 2690 MPa over the same period. This method is a good first step toward mimicking the mechanics of the squid beak. (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 5167–5174; LaShanda Korley)
Separate rare earths from transition metals with an ionic liquid. The miniaturization of electronic devices requires large amounts of rare earths (lanthanide metals), mainly for producing permanent magnets. Nd-Fe-B and Sm-Co magnets have higher energy densities than traditional ferrite magnets.
Electronic waste is an important source of rare earths, but separating them from transition metals is difficult. K. Binnemans and co-workers at the University of Leuven (Heverlee, Belgium) used an ionic liquid to separate the metals.
The authors chose the ionic liquid (IL) trihexyl(tetradecyl)phosphonium chloride (Cyphos) to separate the metals because iron and cobalt form stable, IL-soluble chloro complexes; and rare earths do not. The IL is used without cosolvents; HCl is the source of chloride ions.
The Nd/Fe and Sm/Co ratios are roughly those found in magnets. The Nd–Fe and Sm–Co separation factors are 5.0 × 106 and 8.0 × 105, respectively. The rare earths remain in the aqueous phase, whereas the transition metals are extracted into the IL phase.
After separation, cobalt can be extracted from the IL phase with water, but iron must be treated with Na2EDTA before stripping. (EDTA is ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid.) This method does not extract chromium, nickel, aluminum, calcium, or magnesium; but it demonstrates that nonfluorinated ILs can be used to separate rare earths from some transition metals. (Green Chem. 2013, 15, 919–927; José C. Barros)
Thiocyanate is a nontoxic cyanation agent for aryl halides. Nitriles are useful organic building blocks because the cyano group can be easily transformed into other functional groups. There is a gap, however, between the increasing demand for nitriles and the development of practical, safe cyanation methods. J. Cheng and colleagues at Changzhou University and Wenzhou University (both in China) report a palladium-catalyzed cyanation method for aryl halides that uses CuSCN as a nontoxic cyanide source.
The authors believed that CuSCN and palladium-coordinated arenes would form benzothioamides, which can decompose to aryl nitriles. In studying the model reaction between p-iodoanisole and CuSCN, they found that p-anisonitrile forms in 83% isolated yield at 100 °C in 36 h in the presence of 1 mol% PdCl2(dppe), 10 mol% HCO2H, and 3 equiv HCO2Na in DMSO–H2O. [The ligand dppe is 1,2-bis(diphenylphosphino)ethane.] The palladium catalyst, HCO2H, and HCO2Na are necessary for the reaction to proceed in high yield.
The same conditions can be applied to several substituted aryl iodides with moderate-to-high yields (33–84%). Electron-withdrawing and electron-donating substituents on the aryl substrates are compatible with the reaction conditions. Aryl bromides give lower yields of the corresponding nitriles than their iodo counterparts, and aryl chlorides do not react. Arylboronic acids and esters give low yields because of competitive homocoupling.
In the authors’ proposed mechanism, Pd(0) inserts into the aryl iodide to form ArPdI, which reacts with thiocyanate to form intermediate 1. HCO2H hydrolyzes 1 to release HCO2PdI and produce the aryl thioamide precursor to the nitrile. Basification of HCO2PdI releases CO2 and regenerates Pd(0). (J. Org. Chem. 2013, 78, 2710–2714; Xin Su)
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Introduce Yourself to Open Water Swimming
So you've been swimming the length of a pool for years and are ready to venture out and do some open water swimming? Open water swims have gained huge popularity in the last few years. Before you go dipping into your local shoreline, however, keep these tips in mind:
1. Never swim alone. For safety purposes, always swim with a group or bring a friend. Given the unknown elements a dangerous situation may arise, such as fog, currents or boats, and you will be better protected with others around.
2. Adjust to cold water. If the water you are swimming in is cold—below 66 degrees Fahrenheit—be prepared to go in with a wetsuit. Also, wearing a swim cap and earplugs can help keep your head warm. Enter the water slowly and only stay in for five to 20 minutes the first time out, gradually increasing your time in the water with each swim.
3. Get warm. Following your swim drink warm fluids, take off your wetsuit and dress warmly.
So, what other skills do you need to master the open water? Employ the two open water swimming fundamentals below and you will have no worries when it comes to your first (or your next) open water race:
In a pool it is easy to swim straight—you have lane lines and a black line at the bottom of the pool to keep you from going too far off course. Not being able to swim straight in the open water adds unwanted distance to the race, thereby slowing you down.
The solution is to periodically look up from the water, which is called sighting. Most swimmers, in fact, don't sight and end up off course—one reason not to trust that the person in front of you knows exactly what they're doing.
Sighting every six to eight arm cycles is an adequate count for a beginner. Lift your head at the beginning of a breath, just enough so that your goggles rise above the water line. As soon as you spot the shore or an object in the distance, continue your rotation and take a breath as you tilt your head to the side.
The best time to lift your head is when the arm of the side you breathe on is coming forward. As the arm passes by your goggle line, move your head to the other side and lay it down by your shoulder. Note: Practice this in the pool first. It takes some getting used to, but doing just two or three laps at each pool session can be very beneficial.
As in cycling and auto racing, following closely behind another swimmer is called drafting. Drafting is allowed in official open water swimming rules and the benefits are twofold. First, you are getting pulled a bit by someone else. This alone can give you a ten percent advantage over someone breaking through the water on their own. Second, you won't have to look up as often, as you can let your lead swimmer do that for you. However, you still need to sight; if they are headed off course you don't want a blind leading the blind situation.
Just like sighting, drafting is best practiced in a pool with your lane buddies. You want to be close to the person in front of you without touching their feet. Ultimately, you want to maintain a position directly behind the swimmer for the entire lap. Take turns leading. You'll quickly notice how much harder you have to work when you're in front.
Open water swimming can be challenging, but for many it's a nice change from "following the black line" at the bottom of a pool and a great way to add some adventure to the swimming experience.
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Investigation into allelopathic effects of weeds on the germination and early growth of spring wheat has been investigated in recent years, but one of the first investigations that caught the eye of Jim Bauder, soil and water quality specialist at Montana State University/Bozeman still is quite interesting. It happens that this research into the allelopathic effect was done by two high school students.
Bauder wrote about it as his agronomy note number 255 quoting Jeremy Brimhall and Marshall Overcast’s research, the two students at Northern Toole County Sunburst High School in Montana. He also credited the student’s teacher Lawrence Fauque. The rest of this write-up comes from Bauder’s number 255 report.
The title (abbreviated) of this more than modest investigation was “the allelopathic effects of selected weed exudates on the germination and early growth of spring wheat”. They hypothesized that certain plants, namely kochia, wild oat, and wild buckwheat, produce either root exudates (allelochemicals) or some other mechanism associated with water soluble chemicals that inhibit or adversely affect the germination and growth of spring wheat. They then set out a series of very rigorous and very controlled experiments to find out if their hypotheses were true.
Bottom line - from the abstract: Wild oat and wild buckwheat showed no effect on emergence, rate of growth, average vegetative dry weight or final height and had no effect on germination of spring wheat. In contrast, kochia had a significant negative effect on the emergence and average vegetative dry weight of spring wheat grown in pots.
A little background about this whole allelopathy thing - from the experts. “Allelopathy refers to the exchange of any chemicals known as secondary metabolites of plant, fungal, or microbial origin that influence the growth and development of other plants or microbes. Plants produce many organic compounds that they do not use directly. These compounds are known as secondary metabolites, and can appear in all parts of a plant, including leaves, flowers, fruit, stems, roots, rhizomes, seeds, and pollen. Plants eventually release their secondary metabolites into the soil during germination, growth, or decomposition. The purposes of secondary metabolites are various, and scientists know very little about them. Secondary metabolites such as alkaloids, phenolics, flavonoids, terpenoids, and glucosinolates which do not play a role in primary metabolic processes essential for a plant’s survival, and are produced as offshoots of primary metabolic pathways.”
And, according to Jeremy and Marshall, allelopathy is significant for weed-crop ecology in three respects: (1) as a factor affecting changes in weed composition, (2) as a source of weed interference with crop growth and yield, and (3) as a possible tool in reducing crop losses from weeds. If the allelochemicals produced by certain seeds that affect crops can be identified, then scientists may be able to neutralize their effects or lessen their severity. If that is possible, then weeds that are a nuisance in agriculture could be controlled in a more natural manner.
Allelopathic potential has been suggested for only about 90 species of weeds and only one allelopathic effect has been proven to exist. So, the work of Brimhall and Overcast seems pretty significant at this point. Little did I know that plants can demonstrate two different types of allelopathy: (1) true allelopathy involves one plant releasing exudates that immediately affect another plant; (2) functional allelopathy occurs when exudates released by one plant affect another as the result of transformation by microflora. I also didn’t know that true allelochemicals can be released by a plant in many ways. Volatilization occurs when plants release allelochemicals in gaseous form through their leaves. Other plants are affected when the absorb these chemicals from the air. Leaching occurs when plants store allelochemicals in their leaves. When their leaves fall to the ground and decompose, they release these chemicals into the soil. Exudation, which is probably the most common method, occurs when plants release allelochemicals directly into the soil through their roots. Functional allelopathy usually arises from decomposition of the exudates of plants or parts of the plants themselves by microflora. The products of the decomposition affect other plants.
Anyway, back to the studies of Jeremy and Marshall: kochia (Kochia scoparia), wild oat (Avena fatua), and wild buckwheat (Polygonum convolvulus) were tested on spring wheat (Triticum aestivum). In one of their studies, the three weed plants were grown in sterilized and unsterilized soil. These same pots were then used to grow spring wheat. Wild buckwheat (Polygonum convolvulus) and wild oat (Avena fatua) plants grown in both sterilized and unsterilized soil demonstrated no significant allelopathic affect on the emergence, rate of growth, final height, or average vegetative dry weight of spring wheat plants. These young scientists concluded that root exudates of wild buckwheat and wild oat plants have no significant effect on the early growth of spring wheat. Significance was found, however, in some of the experiments involving kochia (Kochia scoparia) plants. Kochia plants grown in unsterilized soil affected the total emergence of spring wheat such that it was significantly less than the respective control group. Kochia grown in sterilized soil also affected the total emergence of spring wheat negatively, but to a lesser extent. The average vegetative dry weight of spring wheat plants was significantly reduced by root exudates of kochia grown in sterilized soil but not in unsterilized soil.
In their second study, the same three weed plants were grown in pots and then the soil in which the weeds had been grown was leached. The leachate (drainage water) was used as a water stock for germination studies of spring wheat in petri dishes. Leachate containing water soluble root exudates, if at all present, of the three weed species demonstrated no significant effects on the total germination of spring wheat seeds in petri dishes. This occurred for all three weed species grown in both sterile and unsterile soil.
Bottom line here: The young scientist team of Jeremy Brimhall and Marshall Overcast did a great job of investigating allelopathy of wild oat, wild buckwheat, and kochia with respect to spring wheat. Their observations: something happens when kochia precedes spring wheat that reduces the performance of spring wheat. Allelopathy? | <urn:uuid:bd811b10-03d5-4f47-8647-59b1520fe46f> | 3 | 2.78125 | 0.01838 | en | 0.951327 | http://www.agprofessional.com/newsletters/infoblast/articles/Kochia-can-be-a-killer-on-spring-wheat-191687571.html?view=all |
There is a scientific definition and a more practical version of what LCO Promoter Technology is all about. I’m going to use statements and brochure information for the simple, practical explanation. There also is the extremely scientific explanation that has also been included with this agronomy news about LCO Promoter Technology.
It is fairly simple, when you consider the features and benefits to using an LCO, which stands for the active ingredient: Lipo-chitooligosaccharide. This is a natural biological molecule.
One simple descriptor is that it activates or turns on “a cascade of plant genes for enhanced development, growth and yield.”
An ease of use benefit is that it can be included as a seed treatment working with an applied inoculant to work with both rhizobia already found in the soil and the inoculants rhizoba.
LCO is proven to promote early-season plant vigor, which translates into healthier, faster developing plants. The examples in the past have been crops such as alfalfa and soybeans reaching their genetic potential, but the proof of success for LCO use with a large number of crops has increased greatly in the last couple years.
Getting plants off to a fast start also means facilitating improved stands of crops emerging from the soil. As the plant is growing, the LCO Promoter Technology enhances root system development and has potential for improved nutrient and water uptake.
The ultimate improvement that can be promoted to growers by ag retailers and seed representatives is better results from a farmer’s seed investment by using LCO Promoter Technology. | <urn:uuid:f98b404d-82fe-4d7a-8d2a-d3ad35b2744f> | 2 | 2.25 | 0.104223 | en | 0.954253 | http://www.agprofessional.com/newsletters/infoblast/articles/What-is-the-simple-explanation-of-LCO-Promoter-Technology-223115001.html |
Testing the AiResearch Advanced Extravehicular Suit’s range of motion in the 1960s. (Courtesy Bill Elkins)
Space Suits Past and Future
Bill Elkins has been outfitting astronauts since before NASA was born.
Bill Elkins has been called “one of the true fathers of the space suit.” Within months of the Sputnik 1 launch in October 1957, he began working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio on “restraint couches” for astronauts. In the late 1960s, as a chief engineer at Garrett AiResearch, his team outcompeted four established space suit manufacturers to win the NASA contract to build long-endurance lunar suits that were to have flown on Apollos 18, 19, and 20. His suit never made it to the moon, however, because NASA cancelled all landings after Apollo 17 in December 1972.
Since then Elkins, who is in the U.S. Space Foundation’s Space Technology Hall of Fame, has founded several companies. Today, at age 80, he lives outside Sacramento, California, and continues working, having founded bioCOOL Technologies in 2004 and the consulting firm, WElkins in 2007. He spoke recently with Air & Space Associate Editor Mike Klesius.
Air & Space: How did the first astronaut restraint systems compare to jet pilot systems already in use?
Elkins: A jet pilot restraint system has a hard backpan and seat. It mainly is trying to contain the pilot in the seat, in a sitting position. In an astronaut couch you’re lying on your back. [In the late 1950s] they were planning a cast, form-fitting, backpan restraint couch for the astronauts. But in tests at high G it was causing substernal pain, where the sternum of the occupant would compress into the chest. I designed a sophisticated hammock supported by a tubular steel frame. It left your body in a more normal, natural form at high G. The Mercury project was then transferred to NASA and I lost track of that research. In the end, they went with the harder, backpan restraint couch.
A&S: You once sustained 16.5 Gs, an apparent record for pulling Gs and remaining conscious.
Elkins: We were examining a worst-case G scenario for a Mercury launch. So they put me in the 20-foot-arm centrifuge at Wright-Pat. The G profile was based on the maximum G that could be experienced during the launch. If the escape rocket was fired at maximum dynamic pressure—Mach 1 at roughly 40,000 feet—then 15.5 G would be experienced by the astronaut. So we [added] one G…and “flew” it on the centrifuge. The whole run duration was about three minutes. I began to gray out a bit at 13 G. Then I was above 15.5 G for about six seconds. I “flew” a tracking task with my right hand, and I had a button I could press with my left hand to respond to peripheral lights. I recently discussed this matter with Jim Brinkley, who was contemporary with me at Wright-Patterson. He became the head of the Biodynamics Lab and is an internationally recognized biodynamicist. He confirmed, to the best of his knowledge, that the 16.5 sustained G remains a benchmark achievement. They shut down that centrifuge for good not long after we did those runs in December 1958. We burned it out, I guess.
A&S: How did you get into designing space suits?
Elkins: Those runs are what got me into the spacesuit world, first at Litton where I developed the RX (rigid experimental) series of suits, and then at AiResearch, where, in about two years, I became chief engineer and developed the EX-1A and the AES [Advanced Extravehicular Suit] that won the competition for the extended Apollo mission suit.
Early on, a physicist at Litton was developing a vacuum chamber pressure suit, but Litton thought they were causing permanent heart damage. I had miles of EKGs from my centrifuge runs, so I had a certified healthy heart and was chosen as the test subject to verify or deny the problem. The lab they brought me to was in Beverly Hills, California, of all places. For lunch that day, at a local deli, I made the mistake of ordering a corned beef sandwich with the hottest mustard they had, and shortly before the test began, I started getting some serious heartburn. Well, they put me in a pressure chamber and took me up to 400,000 feet equivalent. The doctor asked me how I was feeling, and I said, “Fine, but I’m feeling a little heartburn.” He said, “Lay back!” and made me swallow a nitroglycerin pill. A subsequent conference of heart specialists determined there was no problem with the vacuum chamber suit.
A&S: What’s the biggest challenge in designing an effective space suit?
Elkins: Well, a big one is mobility, specifically the joints. If you look at the Apollo [suit] joints, the farther you bent them, the more effort it took and the harder it was to hold that position. Those suits were spring loaded to come back to the neutral position. So it took a constant force to keep them out of neutral, and that was very fatiguing. But when you move a constant volume joint to a new position, no further force is needed. When I left Litton and went to AiResearch, I invented the toroidal joint. Toroids maintain constant volume so long as the centerline remains constant. At AiResearch I designed the EX-1A [suit], the first prototype suit to use toroidal joints, in 1967. It was an outstanding suit.
A&S: What were the advantages of the hard suit versus the soft suit? Why two totally different kinds?
Elkins: There are some advantages of the hard suit, although I did not remain a proponent of it. The hard suit had value for being able to go to much higher pressures. The higher you go, the less likely you are to have the bends when exiting a higher-pressure space vehicle. So if you were wearing one, you could scramble to do an emergency [spacewalk] because you didn’t have to pre-breathe for four hours. It’s a very mobile little spaceship, if you will. Vic Vykukal, a NASA Ames engineer, also did pioneering work on the hard suit. Although it demonstrated excellent mobility, it was heavier because of the hard structural components, and the joints did not exhibit the long-life capability of the toroidal joint.
The soft suit came from a line of pressure suits used by the Air Force and Navy. BF Goodrich’s soft suits for the Mercury project were evolved from a Navy pressure suit. David Clark made soft suits for Gemini. Then ILC came into the Apollo program. They all came from that same soft emergency pressure suit lineage. It was a question of cultures and politics within the R&D labs. There was the West Coast technology such as Litton, and NASA’s Ames Research lab; but then the older timers from the East who knew soft suits. Ultimately, soft suits won out.
A&S: It’s often pointed out that the moon suits were so heavy. What was the single heaviest element?
Elkins: I think it was the PLSS, portable life support system [backpack]. The suit by itself would weigh about 60 pounds.
A&S: What was driving the desire for design changes in lunar suits for the extended Apollo missions?
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Lesson Twenty Eight: Signs of a Hypocrite
Imam As-Sadiq (a.s.) said:
Luqman said to his son:
"لِمُنافِقِ ثَلاثُ عَلامات: يُخَالِفُ لِسانُهُ قَلْبَهُ وَ قَلْبُهُ فِعْلَهُ وَ عَلانِيَتُهُ سَرِيْرَتَهُ"
There are three signs of the hypocrites : their tongue is not consistent with their heart, nor their heart with their deed , nor their outward with their inward.1
Brief Description
Hypocrisy is a painful , loathsome trait originating from low personality and weak will. To make themselves look better than they are , their tongues will tell a different story from what is in their hearts, they will not walk their talk, will not practice what they preach. They are a weak people , afraid to reveal their true selves , lacking the will and determination to improve themselves. They appear in different garbs and are treacherous with everybody, even themselves. Even more dangerous are the societies that display a good looking exterior but have bad, rotting , interior. Their tongue and the mass media, is in stark contrast with what is going on in the heart of these societies.
• 1. Bihar al-Anwar book, volume 15
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Obama branded Libya's orders to shoot protesters as "outrageous" and called on the world to speak as one [Reuters]
Barack Obama, the US president, has said the violent crackdown in Libya violated international norms and that he had ordered his national security team to prepare the full range of options for dealing with the crisis.
"I have also asked my administration to prepare the full range of options that we may have to respond to this crisis," Obama said in his first televised comments on the Libya crisis on Wednesday.
The US president said he would send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Geneva for a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council at the weekend and for talks with allied foreign ministers.
The Obama administration said earlier that it was looking at imposing sanctions on Libya to punish it for a violent crackdown on protesters seeking ouster of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The State Department said freezing Libyan assets, including those belonging to Gaddafi, were among the options being considered, and some US legislators urged direct action such as imposing no-fly zones.
Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington DC, said that the immediate priority of the US administration was the safe evacuation of Americans from Libya.
'Outrageous violence'
"It is imperative that the nations and peoples of the world speak with one voice," Obama told reporters.
The US president branded Libya's crackdown and orders to shoot protestors as "outrageous" and called on the world to speak as one to hold the government accountable.
Obama urged an end to attacks on peaceful protesters but stopped short of calling for Gaddafi to step down as ruler of the oil-producing North African nation and did not lay out any specific measures under consideration against the Libyan government.
Obama said Washington was coordinating further steps with allies and the international community.
Obama has faced criticism in some quarters for not speaking out sooner, but US officials say they have tempered their response to ensure Americans in Libya were safely evacuated and out of harm's way.
But US options to influence events in Libya are limited, unlike in Egypt and Bahrain where Washington was able to bring pressure to bear as a long-time ally and benefactor.
Source: Agencies | <urn:uuid:1b77cee7-0364-4d35-bf91-455a56f16a5d> | 2 | 1.804688 | 0.022855 | en | 0.969026 | http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2011/02/2011223225218542841.html |
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Printable Version Pronunciation: in-vay-gêl Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, transitive
Meaning: 1. Cajole or lure into doing something, to persuade using questionable tactics. 2. To obtain by cajoling or persuasion based on questionable tactics.
Notes: Today's word contains a superfluous "i" in its midst that is easy to overlook when spelling this word. This is the only caveat we have for inveigle. The person who inveigles is an inveigler up to inveiglement. There is not much else to say about this word.
In Play: From the Meaning above, we see that the sense of this word roves from inveigling people to inveigling things from people. Inveigling people goes something like this: "I don't know how I allowed May O'Naise to inveigle me into preparing a seven-course meal for her, but I'll never cook more than five courses for her again!" Inveigling things is slightly different: "I don't know how I let May O'Naise inveigle a seven-course meal from me but I'll never cook more than five courses for her again!" Either approach is fine.
Word History: Today's Good Word entered Middle English (1066-1485) as envegle "to win over by deceit, seduce", an alteration of Old French aveugler "to blind". The French verb is based on the adjective aveugle "blind, sightless", a descendant of Vulgar (Street) Latin *aboculus "blind" from Latin Latin ab "away from" + oculus "eye". It is probably a loan-translation of Gaulish exsops "blind" made up of exs "from" + ops "eye". Latin oculus turns up in several borrowed English words, such as ocular and the well-known two-eyed binoculars. In Old Norse the same root emerged as auga "eye". English borrowed the Old Norse vindauga "wind-eye" and honed it over the years to the window it is today.
Dr. Goodword,
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30 Dec 2012 QA-6
Is being gay an impression of the mind?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:
It could be, or it could also be biological.
You are made up of both, male and female, chromosomes. If the female chromosomes in you are active, but the body is male, then the tendencies can change. However, it is not for a lifetime. These tendencies may come for some time, and disappear. You can see many people who are straight, suddenly turn gay. And many people who are gay for a long time, they start getting married. I have seen all these different permutations, combinations, mindsets in people. So, it is best not to label yourself.
Sometimes, people force themselves to fit into particular categories. They say, ‘Okay, I am lesbian’, or, ‘I am gay’, and when these tendencies change, they get shattered later on. Sometimes, people become so homophobic that they start hating people with such tendencies, which is no good.
My advice would be to get out of labeling yourself based on some tendency of the body. Know that you are consciousness. You are love. You are scintillating energy. Your identification as energy, as love, and as a beautiful person is far, far better than identifying and labeling yourself with the physical tendencies that may arise in you.
When such tendencies come, you don't have to feel bad or guilty or anything. That is how it is! Accept it! It is a phenomenon in nature - there are different male or female tendencies, or emotions or attractions that are arising within you. There is nothing wrong about it.
You have to go beyond that! Beyond that is the spirit.
The spirit has no gender, it is beyond gender. The spirit is love, and that is what you are.
When you know this, you become very solid. | <urn:uuid:70174655-438f-4909-a657-8c418b4dc990> | 2 | 2.25 | 0.846056 | en | 0.973198 | http://www.artofliving.org/wisdom-q-a-30-dec-2012-qa-6 |
Why I Celebrate Death
Guest Author: Peter Harrison
I am a skeptic. I will accept any claim, regardless of how insane it might initially sound, if it is supported by robust and valid evidence. And for that reason, I am also an atheist. I have access to the internet and I am fairly outspoken. All of these facts together mean that I occasionally get into discussions and debates with theists on various topics. Recently, I had an email conversation with a theist (with slight creationist leanings) that eventually drifted to a discussion about death and the fact that I’m not afraid to die. To paraphrase, he saw death as a wholly tragic event with absolutely no positive aspects at all except that it acts as the point between this life and the afterlife.
To him, death is the horrifying experience of losing your life and everyone you care about, and an equally horrifying experience for those people still alive losing you in return, and all this pain can only be coped with by understanding that it is necessary in order to make the transition to your next life in heaven. He argued that without an afterlife, death is the single most terrible thing in human existence. He wanted to know how I could believe death is the end of my entire existence and still not be afraid of it. Theists suffer death in the same ways that atheists do, but at least they feel it isn’t the end of their existence. Apparently, a belief in the afterlife is the only thing that can allow us to accept death and come to terms with it. How can an atheist cope with death? Well, I can’t speak for all atheists, but I can certainly explain my own feelings regarding death.
Right now, I’m not afraid of death or dying. But I should point out that any fear I have had in the past was of dying, rather than being dead. Some people don’t seem to understand the difference. Dying could very well be a terrifying experience as you contemplate the fact that you are coming to the end of your existence. Dying is a process that the living go through. I can see why many people would be scared of dying, and having to say goodbye to loved ones. But death itself? That’s the easy part. I can speak from experience as I’ve been dead a lot longer than I’ve been alive. Mark Twain put it best:
I won’t mind being dead at all, so that isn’t the difficult part. It’s the living that is difficult, leading up to that death. Since I try my best to avoid holding beliefs that contradict reality, I do not believe that I will live on after death. When an organ is dead, and decomposed, it will not function. I do not believe I will be able to run when my legs rot, and I do not believe I will be able to pump blood around my body when my heart rots. I see no reason why my personality, memories or desires (which are all constructs of the brain) will continue to function when the brain rots. So I have no fear of the experience of being dead and never have. After all, I’ve already spent billions of years being dead and it didn’t bother me at the time.
This leaves the process of dying, and being aware that your life is coming to an end. How could I possibly be happy with that prospect? As my theist friend asked, “Do you care so little of life that it isn’t a big deal? And are you heartless enough to not care about your family?” Actually, I do care about living and enjoying my life. And I do care for my family and friends. I do not enjoy the thought of never seeing any of them ever again. Even though it won’t matter to me once I’m actually dead, the thought of knowing that I am spending my last hours with loved ones is not something I look forward to. And as I said, I enjoy living. I would rather be living an enjoyable life than be dead. Apparently this seemed like a contradiction. How could I not want to lose my life or my loved ones, and yet still accept death?
What he failed to realize was that I can simultaneously think that the experience of dying sucks, while accepting death. If I accept death, it doesn’t mean I’m happy about the whole experience. All the tragedy of dying is very real to me too. I’ve been very upset to see loved ones die, and I know it will upsetting to say my own goodbyes when the time comes. But you can still accept death for what it is without having to actually enjoy or like it. But you may think this is still a far cry away from the title of this entry. If you can merely accept death, but still see dying as a horrible experience, how can such a thing be celebrated? Surely the only people who could celebrate death would be the people believing it is a ticket to a better world? How can an atheist celebrate death? I celebrate death, because I celebrate life.
Everything I care about in my life, I have death to thank for (among other things). Death may be taking away life and loved ones, but it also plays its part in giving them in the first place. You are here today because of many events that have happened in the past. I’m not just talking about your parents meeting. I’m talking about speciation events. I’m talking about continents moving and breaking apart. I’m talking about endosymbiosis. If the history of life on earth had played out differently, you might not be here. If life functioned or evolved differently, you might not be here. Although natural selection isn’t the only process behind evolution, it has been a major player in making us what we are today. Millions and millions of years of adaptations have helped shape us. Without natural selection, you wouldn’t be alive, because humans would not have evolved. Evolution can certainly occur without natural selection, but we are just one result of adaptations on top of adaptations on top of adaptations. No natural selection, no humans. There are some requirements that must be met in order for natural selection to take place, such as variation that can be inherited, and competition for resources. Two of the biggest factors are reproduction and death. Both have been essential in the history of life that has led to you. With reproduction, traits can be passed on to future generations. And with death, traits can be lost forever. Traits that either improve the likelihood of successful reproduction, or reduce the likelihood of death before reproduction, can lead to very powerful evolution. If organisms didn’t die, things would have been totally different. Sure, we could theoretically engineer a population of organisms that do not die (i.e. they are essentially “immortal”) and they would still evolve. But death has played a magnificent role in the evolution of life including ourselves and all our descendants. Think of all those adaptations that help avoid death. Think of your immune systems, think of physical and mental adaptations that helped us and all our ancestors avoid predators and environmental dangers.
Death has helped give us the life you now enjoy living. Death has helped pave the way for your loved ones and your ability to care about anything at all. Yes, I think death sucks too. I don’t want to lose everything I care about. But I know that without death, there would be nothing Icould care about. I wouldn’t exist. How can an atheist come to accept death, even when it robs us of everything? Because if we didn’t die, none of that stuff we care about would matter at all. I enjoy life. I enjoy communicating with other people. I am happy that the people I care about exist. All of these things can only be because of the history of life on earth, including the deaths that have helped shape who we are. If I thought about death and wished that it never happened, I would be wishing away everything that is dear to me. I would be wishing away my chance to exist. I’d be wishing away our species, our genus, and much more. So it’s not about merely accepting death, it’s about appreciating death. The process of dying is bittersweet, because it is exceptionally sad to lose your loved ones, but death must be appreciated for bringing you this chance in the first place. Surely life with death is better than the alternative: no life.
Not only do I celebrate death because it allows life in a literal sense… But also because it allows life in a metaphorical sense, and this is something that atheists generally appreciate more than theists. Put as simply as possible, death makes life worth living. By understanding and accepting death, we can understand that our time here is finite, and that this is our only chance of being alive and making the most of it. This isn’t just a life you can ruin, and then get a second chance after you die. This is it. If you don’t want your last moments of existence to be spent considering your regrets, death should be the inspiration to get out there and live your life. Enjoy what it means to be alive. Enjoy communication with others, and enjoy the ability to think and change the world.
I celebrate death, not only because it is partly responsible for everything I care about (and the fact that I can care at all), but also because it makes life precious, more than anything else can.
• http://facebook.com/donsevers Donald Severs
Agreed. I fear dying, but not death.
Epicurus famously enjoyed his last day on Earth despite wracking pain. He said the memories of friendships and the joys of philosophy counterbalanced his present agony. I don’t buy it. We all emphasize what is happening at the moment. And we have an instinct for self-preservation; so even if we know death is inevitable, we can’t help but fear it and resist it.
I’d like to embrace Epicurus’s view of death:
Until death comes, we should enjoy life. My goal is to die once, rather than over and over through worry.
But when it comes, I may not be as equable as Epicurus claims to have been. And I’m not ashamed of that.
• Pingback: Tweets that mention Why I Celebrate Death | Atheism Resource -- Topsy.com
• Dave
Google 'Leslie Flint'.
Indisputable proof that there is life after death.
Most scientifically studied voice medium in history. No evidence of him being a fraud or a hoax despite all of this. Voices came regardless. One conclusion, and one conclusion only: we all live on.
• Peter
I like your outlook. How you chosose to look upon life is a choice. One could argue the opposite – that things only appear to matter for the brief instant in eternity that we are here so things really don’t matter at all. I know there is life after death – I can say this with absolute certainty. Life does matter. To have the outlook you have with the belief system you have is remarkable. I take my hat off to you.
• anti_supernaturalist
…there’s much to be done about religion’s denial of death on this side.
** Against atavistic near eastern mega-cults **
True believers from the big-3 monster-theisms, through donations multiplied by unconstitutional tax breaks, enable religious institutions to finance illegitimate demands for secular power.
* Follow the money — to the greatest Ponzi schemes on Earth
Religious institutions suck money, donated time, psychological energy. They misdirect the bulk into unproductive lifestyles, rituals, and ascetic practices. Life itself is not too precious to waste by indoctrinating and sacrificing “martyrs”.
Religious institutions exact much for sustaining a communal delusion centered on denying the finality of death. Theists engineered perfect Ponzi schemes — once “rewards” become post-mortem, the bilked can not complain. Not one law suit filed in two thousand years!
* Lousy mental hygiene begins with anti-intellectual irrationality
To deny death requires irrational commitment to cultic fables (faith), meaningless actions (ritual), and to their Illogical defense (apologetic). Founder of xian cult, P/Saul of Tarsus marketed to the dispossessed of the Eastern Roman Empire an easy-to-own inverted snobbery:
Not many of you were wise…; not…influential; not…of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things…to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things…and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are…1Cor1:26-28 NIV. Briefly, We stink but stinking is godly:
• Here is a short manual of xian nihilism in practice.
* Sadism
Wallowing in non-existent “sin”. Disdaining and desecrating “the world”. Projecting self-hatred. Perverting sexuality. Encouraging violent predispositions and murderous intentions against self and others. Glorifying pain and suffering.
* Male dominated social control
The true xian trinity: Male Supremacism, Misogyny, Paternalism. Pro-birth and anti-life. Intolerance towards any ideological alternatives. Killing abortion providers. Traitorous planning to overthrow US secular government — Dominionism.
the anti_supernaturalist
• http://www.dananourie.com/cosmicpathway Dana
I agree with your view on death as well, but I don’t think it comes entirely view an atheistic viewpoint. There are atheists who really, really don’t want to die because they are so attached to many things in life.
I find I am less attached to the “enjoyments” of life with the older and wiser I get. Let’s face it, most of life is a struggle, and it’s a constant chase after food, water, and entertainment.
I don’t consider life a miracle or a gift. Often it’s a pain in the ass, sometimes it’s pleasurable, but one thing is sure, it will end.
Anything born will die, and so death is perfectly natural. I am totally ok with dying, and my preference is to go quickly!
• http://twitter.com/#!/kmorys Morys
Thank you for your comment, when i talk to my friend, nobody seems to agree with me.
It makes so much sense though.
• Sam
Dear author of this article, I agree with your view point 100% in fact I became fearless after I stopped believing in religion,God,heaven and hell. Death is purely scentific. Death is a process in which ones brain stops and so do your fear,excitement,love,memories and all that you learned. So, when brain is alive man is not dead when death comes he shall not know. So I dont have to worry about something which does not come when I am alive. Than you for your article.
• Jon
I agree with you, but as a member of a younger generation, do you think Immortality is on the horizon, If so, worrying about death will become a thing of the past, rather like death itself actually | <urn:uuid:898f8b0c-67db-4e56-970a-3ee53d9fabaa> | 2 | 1.609375 | 0.03379 | en | 0.958691 | http://www.atheismresource.com/2011/celebrate-death |
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New technology suggests that modern humans were in Europe (southern Italy) 45,000 years ago. That is, using new technology, fossils previously thought to be Neanderthal are now being called Homo sapiens. Moreover, the same reclassification has been made for 44,000 year old fossils found in the UK. Prior to these findings the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Europe pointed to Romania about 40,000 years ago.
Per the article:
Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford, who co-authored the other Nature paper, said the new studies tell "us a great deal about how rapidly our species dispersed across Europe during the last Ice Age." He said the discoveries also mean "that early humans must have co-existed with Neanderthals in this part of the world, something which a number of researchers have doubted."
Before the findings of Benazzi and his team, the first known modern humans in Europe came from Romania and dated to 40,000 years ago. Early Upper Paleolithic modern human cultures are documented in the Near East to about 45,000 years ago, which previously left a gap of 5,000 years between these Homo sapiens and the ones from Romania. "With our findings, the gap is filled," said Benazzi, whose research was published this week in the journal Nature.
The findings have been published this week in the journal, Nature.
Tags: Europe, Humans, Jubinsky
Views: 177
Replies to This Discussion
Thanks for sharing. BTW, for anybody interested in the Neanderthals: If you ever get to Düsseldorf/Germany, the original Neanderthal is at the outskirts.
There is a really great museum there. I live only about 20miles away and I really like that museum.
I couldn't get to the source from the link. Is there a direct link to the article ?
the link to the article works, when I open it.
The link works for me too. You should be getting a Discovery article. The supplied link is not meant to take you to the Nature article.
So, I've read what there is to read.
It's poorly written. For example, it says 'Europe's earliest known modern humans existed around 45,000 years ago in a southern Italian prehistoric cave, according to new research.' I mean, we know our ancestors were in South Eastern Europe first because they followed a westward overland route into Europe.
I need to read the source article which I found is only available to journalists.
@ Napoleon:
There is first hand clarification in the article by the scientists who wrote both Nature articles as to the significance of the findings. Regarding this, in addition to the first hand clarification presented in the abstract the point is made that the findings fill a 5,000 year gap in the migration to Europe.
Good find!
Interesting. Some anthropologists believe the Neanderthals were out-competed by modern humans, Neanderthals eventually disappearing some 25,000 years ago. So it seems we co-existed with Neanderthals in Europe for many thousands of years. Anyone know of evidence of conflict between the races? What impact might such conflict have had on the demise of the Neanderthals?
I don't know if any outright evidence of conflict exists. I haven't heard of any. However, I suspect that the more technologically advanced modern humans would have reacted to Neanderthal in much the same way that the newly arrived Europeans in the Americas reacted to the native Americans.
Reasonable assumption. Many examples throughout history of peoples/civilizations conquered or annihilated by more advanced peoples. As glaciers receded at the end of the last ice age, huge swathes of open land were exposed, conditions suited to modern humans/Cro Magnons. Neanderthals were not fleet of foot; their powerful stocky frames were suited to ambush hunting with thrust weapons at close range. It's likely Neanderthals had not developed advanced tool technologies and weapons such as the bone-tipped long range spear which allowed modern humans to bring down prey from a distance. A remarkable thing about the Neanderthals is their apparent lack of cultural and technological advancement over many thousands of years. Confronted by modern humans and changing climate, it was adapt or die. Neanderthals could not adapt; they were driven out and eventually confined themselves to areas of southern Europe
I read before, that modern humans threw their spears, while Neanderthals used their spears only to stab. If the survival in the harsh climate really depended on the ruthless use of outgroups as resources, then throwing spears from a distance gave the modern humans an advantage in catching Neanderthals as food for cannibalism, as slaves or to take their supplies and furs away.
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Finding the best car for you
There's no best car for everyone, but there is a best one for you, and you should choose it based on your needs.
1. Who's driving?
Parents buying a car for a teenager should consider safety first. Usually, that quickly eliminates sports cars and SUVs. Kids drive differently when a bunch of others are in the car and they're trying to impress them. Young working adults probably are on a budget, so they should first consider an efficient economy car. Older people may need small vehicles that are easy to maneuver.
2. How old are the passengers?
Minivans are best if the primary passengers are small children, because sliding doors make it much easier to position toddlers in car seats. Both the very young and the elderly can get in and out easily.
3. How many passengers?
If you have three children, you might want to consider a minivan, station wagon or SUV that has third-row seating. If you buy a sedan that seats five, there's no room for company. An aunt or grandparent can't ride with the parents and children in the same car.
4. What's the primary use?
If you're buying a car for commuting, gas mileage and comfort will be major considerations. Sit in a car before you buy and see if it supports your back. Check out the climate control system. If you live in a cold region, pick a cold day and drive a car before the heater's been on. See how long it takes to get warm and how effectively it defrosts the windows.
5. City or country car?
If you drive a lot in the city, you should consider small economy cars and minivans that are easy to maneuver and ideal for traffic and parking.
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If you love performance driving or have to accelerate rapidly onto crowded freeways, a four-cylinder car may disappoint you. If not, a four-cylinder car can give reliable performance while cutting fuel, maintenance and auto insurance costs.
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Economy cars and hatchbacks usually get the best mileage, as do hybrid vehicles and Volkswagens with turbodiesel engines -- available in the Jetta and Golf -- that get up to 40 miles per gallon.
8. Is space important?
If you or your children participate in sports or have hobbies that need a lot of cargo space, you're going to need more than a car with a trunk. Look for a minivan, SUV, a wagon or a crossover.
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Some SUVs and vans are either too wide or too high for many garages. Measure before you buy.
10. Do you haul equipment?
Need a vehicle capable of towing a boat or RV? Many small cars simply don't have the horsepower, transmission and chassis to handle the demands. Even some SUVs are not up to the task, so check on the vehicle's towing capacity.
11. Are you choosy about color?
Naturally, you should pick a color you like, but keep in mind some unusual colors, such as yellow, can affect not only the car's resale value but also the cost to insure. Red generally costs the most because insurers associate red-car owners with being younger and more prone to get into accidents. White cars cost the least to insure.
12. How long will you own it?
Look at car guides and check out Internet sites to see which vehicles hold their value. Every car drops in value, but some drop much less than others. A Mercedes-Benz can retain 64 percent of its value over a three-year period, while a small two-wheel-drive Chevy SUV might keep only 17 percent.
Once you have narrowed your search, find comparable vehicles in that class. For instance, if you're interested in a Honda Accord, check out the Toyota Camry and the Ford Taurus to compare options, features, insurance rates and operating costs to find the best deal for you.
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Vol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
And he stoppeth one of three.
‘By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide, 5
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May’st hear the merry din.’
He holds him with his skinny hand,
‘There was a ship,’ quoth he. 10
‘Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!’
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.
The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale. He holds him with his glittering eye—
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child: 15
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner. 20
‘The ship was cheer’d, the harbour clear’d,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.
The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached the Line. The Sun came up upon the left, 25
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright, and on the right
Went down into the sea.
Higher and higher every day,
Till over the mast at noon——’ 30
The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
For he heard the loud bassoon.
The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner continueth his tale. The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;
Nodding their heads before her goes 35
The merry minstrelsy.
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
Yet he cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner. 40
The ship drawn by a storm toward the South Pole. ‘And now the Storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o’ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
With sloping masts and dipping prow, 45
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roar’d the blast,
The southward aye we fled. 50
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
The land of ice, and of fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be seen. And through the drifts the snowy clifts 55
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around: 60
It crack’d and growl’d, and roar’d and howl’d,
Like noises in a swound!
Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality. At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul, 65
We hail’d it in God’s name.
It ate the food it ne’er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steer’d us through! 70
And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog and floating ice. And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariners’ hollo!
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, 75
It perch’d for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmer’d the white moonshine.’
The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen. ‘God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!— 80
Why look’st thou so?’—‘With my crossbow
I shot the Albatross.
‘The Sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left 85
Went down into the sea.
And the good south wind still blew behind,
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariners’ hollo! 90
His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner for killing the bird of good luck. And I had done an hellish thing,
And it would work ’em woe:
For all averr’d, I had kill’d the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, 95
That made the breeze to blow!
But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus make themselves accomplices in the crime. Nor dim nor red, like God’s own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:
Then all averr’d, I had kill’d the bird
That brought the fog and mist. 100
’Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.
The fair breeze continues; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails northward, even till it reaches the Line. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow follow’d free;
We were the first that ever burst 105
Into that silent sea.
The ship hath been suddenly becalmed. Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
’Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea! 110
All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
Day after day, day after day, 115
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
And the Albatross begins to be avenged. Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink; 120
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 125
Upon the slimy sea.
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch’s oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white. 130
A Spirit had followed them; one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more. And some in dreams assuréd were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.
And every tongue, through utter drought, 135
Was wither’d at the root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.
The shipmates in their sore distress, would fain throw the whole guilt on the ancient Mariner: in sign whereof they hang the dead sea-bird round his neck. Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young! 140
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
‘There passed a weary time. Each throat
Was parch’d, and glazed each eye.
A weary time! a weary time! 145
How glazed each weary eye!
The ancient Mariner beholdeth a sign in the element afar off. When looking westward, I beheld
A something in the sky.
At first it seem’d a little speck,
And then it seem’d a mist; 150
It moved and moved, and took at last
A certain shape, I wist.
A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
And still it near’d and near’d:
As if it dodged a water-sprite, 155
It plunged, and tack’d, and veer’d.
At its nearer approach, it seemeth him to be a ship; and at a dear ransom he freeth his speech from the bonds of thirst. With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could nor laugh nor wail;
Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
I bit my arm, I suck’d the blood, 160
And cried, A sail! a sail!
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
Agape they heard me call:
A flash of joy; Gramercy! they for joy did grin,
And all at once their breath drew in, 165
As they were drinking all.
And horror follows. For can it be a ship that comes onward without wind or tide? See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!
Hither to work us weal—
Without a breeze, without a tide,
She steadies with upright keel! 170
The western wave was all aflame,
The day was wellnigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad, bright Sun;
When that strange shape drove suddenly 175
Betwixt us and the Sun.
It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship. And straight the Sun was fleck’d with bars
(Heaven’s Mother send us grace!),
As if through a dungeon-grate he peer’d
With broad and burning face. 180
Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
How fast she nears and nears!
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres?
And its ribs are seen as bars on the face of the setting Sun. The Spectre-Woman and her Death-mate, and no other on board the skeleton ship. Like vessel, like crew! Are those her ribs through which the Sun 185
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a Death? and are there two?
Is Death that Woman’s mate?
Her lips were red, her looks were free, 190
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.
Death and Life-in-Death have diced for the ship’s crew, and she (the latter) winneth the ancient Mariner. The naked hulk alongside came, 195
And the twain were casting dice;
“The game is done! I’ve won! I’ve won!”
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.
No twilight within the courts of the Sun. The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out: 200
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o’er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.
We listen’d and look’d sideways up!
Fear at my heart, as at a cup, 205
My life-blood seem’d to sip!
The stars were dim, and thick the night,
The steersman’s face by his lamp gleam’d white;
From the sails the dew did drip—
At the rising of the Moon, Till clomb above the eastern bar 210
The hornéd Moon, with one bright star
Within the nether tip.
One after another, One after one, by the star-dogg’d Moon,
Too quick for groan or sigh,
Each turn’d his face with a ghastly pang, 215
And cursed me with his eye.
His shipmates drop down dead. Four times fifty living men
(And I heard nor sigh nor groan),
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
They dropp’d down one by one. 220
But Life-in-Death begins her work on the ancient Mariner. The souls did from their bodies fly—
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it pass’d me by
Like the whizz of my crossbow!’
The Wedding-Guest feareth that a spirit is talking to him; ‘I fear thee, ancient Mariner! 225
I fear thy skinny hand!
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribb’d sea-sand.
I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
And thy skinny hand so brown.’— 230
But the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his horrible penance. ‘Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!
This body dropt not down.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on 235
My soul in agony.
He despiseth the creatures of the calm. The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I. 240
And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead. I look’d upon the rotting sea,
And drew my eyes away;
I look’d upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.
I look’d to heaven, and tried to pray; 245
But or ever a prayer had gusht,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.
I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat; 250
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky,
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.
But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men. The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
Nor rot nor reek did they: 255
The look with which they look’d on me
Had never pass’d away.
An orphan’s curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that 260
Is the curse in a dead man’s eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward; and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest and their native country and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival. The moving Moon went up the sky,
And nowhere did abide; 265
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside—
Her beams bemock’d the sultry main,
Like April hoar-frost spread;
But where the ship’s huge shadow lay, 270
The charméd water burnt alway
A still and awful red.
By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God’s creatures of the great calm. Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watch’d the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white, 275
And when they rear’d, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.
Within the shadow of the ship
I watch’d their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, 280
They coil’d and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.
Their beauty and their happiness. O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gush’d from my heart, 285
He blesseth them in his heart. And I bless’d them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I bless’d them unaware.
The spell begins to break. The selfsame moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free 290
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
‘O sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given! 295
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.
By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain. The silly buckets on the deck,
That had so long remain’d,
I dreamt that they were fill’d with dew; 300
And when I awoke, it rain’d.
My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
My garments all were dank;
Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
And still my body drank. 305
I moved, and could not feel my limbs:
I was so light—almost
I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blesséd ghost.
He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in the sky and the element. And soon I heard a roaring wind: 310
It did not come anear;
But with its sound it shook the sails,
That were so thin and sere.
The upper air burst into life;
And a hundred fire-flags sheen; 315
To and fro they were hurried about!
And to and fro, and in and out,
The wan stars danced between.
And the coming wind did roar more loud,
And the sails did sigh like sedge; 320
And the rain pour’d down from one black cloud;
The Moon was at its edge.
The thick black cloud was cleft, and still
The Moon was at its side;
Like waters shot from some high crag, 325
The lightning fell with never a jag,
A river steep and wide.
The bodies of the ship’s crew are inspired, and the ship moves on; The loud wind never reach’d the ship,
Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon 330
The dead men gave a groan.
They groan’d, they stirr’d, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise. 335
The helmsman steer’d, the ship moved on;
Yet never a breeze up-blew;
The mariners all ’gan work the ropes,
Where they were wont to do;
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools— 340
We were a ghastly crew.
The body of my brother’s son
Stood by me, knee to knee:
The body and I pull’d at one rope,
But he said naught to me.’ 345
But not by the souls of the men, nor by demons of earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the guardian saint. ‘I fear thee, ancient Mariner!’
Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest:
’Twas not those souls that fled in pain,
Which to their corses came again,
But a troop of spirits blest: 350
For when it dawn’d—they dropp’d their arms,
And cluster’d round the mast;
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths,
And from their bodies pass’d.
Around, around, flew each sweet sound, 355
Then darted to the Sun;
Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mix’d, now one by one.
Sometimes a-dropping from the sky
I heard the skylark sing; 360
Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seem’d to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!
And now ’twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute; 365
And now it is an angel’s song,
That makes the Heavens be mute.
It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook 370
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
Till noon we quietly sail’d on,
Yet never a breeze did breathe: 375
Slowly and smoothly went the ship,
Moved onward from beneath.
The lonesome Spirit from the South Pole carries on the ship as far as the Line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance. Under the keel nine fathom deep,
From the land of mist and snow,
The Spirit slid: and it was he 380
That made the ship to go.
The sails at noon left off their tune,
And the ship stood still also.
The Sun, right up above the mast,
Had fix’d her to the ocean: 385
But in a minute she ’gan stir,
With a short uneasy motion—
Backwards and forwards half her length
With a short uneasy motion.
Then like a pawing horse let go, 390
She made a sudden bound:
It flung the blood into my head,
And I fell down in a swound.
The Polar Spirit’s fellow-demons, the invisible inhabitants of the element, take part in his wrong; and two of them relate, one to the other, that penance long and heavy for the ancient Mariner hath been accorded to the Polar Spirit, who returneth southward. How long in that same fit I lay,
I have not to declare; 395
But ere my living life return’d,
I heard, and in my soul discern’d
Two voices in the air.
“Is it he?” quoth one, “is this the man?
By Him who died on cross, 400
With his cruel bow he laid full low
The harmless Albatross.
The Spirit who bideth by himself
In the land of mist and snow,
He loved the bird that loved the man 405
Who shot him with his bow.”
The other was a softer voice,
As soft as honey-dew:
Quoth he, “The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do.” 410
First Voice: ‘“But tell me, tell me! speak again,
Thy soft response renewing—
What makes that ship drive on so fast?
What is the Ocean doing?”
Second Voice: “Still as a slave before his lord, 415
The Ocean hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast—
If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim. 420
See, brother, see! how graciously
She looketh down on him.”
The Mariner hath been cast into a trance; for the angelic power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life could endure. First Voice: “But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?”
Second Voice: “The air is cut away before, 425
And closes from behind.
Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high!
Or we shall be belated:
For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the Mariner’s trance is abated.’ 430
The supernatural motion is retarded; the Mariner awakes, and his penance begins anew. I woke, and we were sailing on
As in a gentle weather:
’Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high;
The dead men stood together.
All stood together on the deck, 435
For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
All fix’d on me their stony eyes,
That in the Moon did glitter.
The pang, the curse, with which they died,
Had never pass’d away: 440
I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
Nor turn them up to pray.
The curse is finally expiated. And now this spell was snapt: once more
I viewed the ocean green,
And look’d far forth, yet little saw 445
Of what had else been seen—
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turn’d round, walks on,
And turns no more his head; 450
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
But soon there breathed a wind on me,
Nor sound nor motion made:
Its path was not upon the sea, 455
In ripple or in shade.
It raised my hair, it fann’d my cheek
Like a meadow-gale of spring—
It mingled strangely with my fears,
Yet it felt like a welcoming. 460
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sail’d softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze—
On me alone it blew.
And the ancient Mariner beholdeth his native country. O dream of joy! is this indeed 465
The lighthouse top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own countree?
We drifted o’er the harbour-bar,
And I with sobs did pray— 470
O let me be awake, my God!
Or let me sleep alway.
The harbour-bay was clear as glass,
So smoothly it was strewn!
And on the bay the moonlight lay, 475
And the shadow of the Moon.
The rock shone bright, the kirk no less
That stands above the rock:
The moonlight steep’d in silentness
The steady weathercock. 480
The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies, And the bay was white with silent light
Till rising from the same,
Full many shapes, that shadows were,
In crimson colours came.
And appear in their own forms of light. A little distance from the prow 485
Those crimson shadows were:
I turn’d my eyes upon the deck—
O Christ! what saw I there!
Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood! 490
A man all light, a seraph-man,
On every corse there stood.
This seraph-band, each waved his hand:
It was a heavenly sight!
They stood as signals to the land, 495
Each one a lovely light;
This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
No voice did they impart—
No voice; but O, the silence sank
Like music on my heart. 500
But soon I heard the dash of oars,
I heard the Pilot’s cheer;
My head was turn’d perforce away,
And I saw a boat appear.
The Pilot and the Pilot’s boy, 505
I heard them coming fast:
Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy
The dead men could not blast.
I saw a third—I heard his voice:
It is the Hermit good! 510
He singeth loud his godly hymns
That he makes in the wood.
He’ll shrieve my soul, he’ll wash away
The Albatross’s blood.
The Hermit of the Wood. ‘This Hermit good lives in that wood 515
Which slopes down to the sea.
How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
He loves to talk with marineres
That come from a far countree.
He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve— 520
He hath a cushion plump:
It is the moss that wholly hides
The rotted old oak-stump.
The skiff-boat near’d: I heard them talk,
“Why, this is strange, I trow! 525
Where are those lights so many and fair,
That signal made but now?”
Approacheth the ship with wonder. “Strange, by my faith!” the Hermit said—
“And they answer’d not our cheer!
The planks looked warp’d! and see those sails, 530
How thin they are and sere!
I never saw aught like to them,
Unless perchance it were
Brown skeletons of leaves that lag
My forest-brook along; 535
When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,
That eats the she-wolf’s young.”
“Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look—
(The Pilot made reply) 540
I am a-fear’d”—“Push on, push on!”
Said the Hermit cheerily.
The boat came closer to the ship,
But I nor spake nor stirr’d;
The boat came close beneath the ship, 545
And straight a sound was heard.
The ship suddenly sinketh. Under the water it rumbled on,
Still louder and more dread:
It reach’d the ship, it split the bay;
The ship went down like lead. 550
The ancient Mariner is saved in the Pilot’s boat. Stunn’d by that loud and dreadful sound,
Which sky and ocean smote,
Like one that hath been seven days drown’d
My body lay afloat;
But swift as dreams, myself I found 555
Within the Pilot’s boat.
Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,
The boat spun round and round;
And all was still, save that the hill
Was telling of the sound. 560
I moved my lips—the Pilot shriek’d
And fell down in a fit;
The holy Hermit raised his eyes,
And pray’d where he did sit.
I took the oars: the Pilot’s boy, 565
Who now doth crazy go,
Laugh’d loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro.
“Ha! ha!” quoth he, “full plain I see
The Devil knows how to row.” 570
And now, all in my own countree,
I stood on the firm land!
The Hermit stepp’d forth from the boat,
And scarcely he could stand.
The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to shrieve him; and the penance of life falls on him. “O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!” 575
The Hermit cross’d his brow.
What manner of man art thou?”
Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench’d
With a woful agony, 580
Which forced me to begin my tale;
And then it left me free.
And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land; Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told, 585
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me: 590
To him my tale I teach.
What loud uproar bursts from that door!
The wedding-guests are there:
But in the garden-bower the bride
And bride-maids singing are: 595
And hark the little vesper bell,
Which biddeth me to prayer!
O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide, wide sea:
So lonely ’twas, that God Himself 600
Scarce seeméd there to be.
O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
’Tis sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!— 605
To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay! 610
And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth. Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best 615
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.’
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,620
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turn’d from the bridegroom’s door.
He went like one that hath been stunn’d,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man625
He rose the morrow morn.
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BellaOnline's Digital Art and Design Editor
You Are The Director in Poser 6
You Are The Director
When you start Poser, you will be in the Pose Room. This is where you will build your scene. Poser calls the picture you are creating a scene. Why? In most 3D applications, including Poser, you view your artwork as if you were looking through a camera. These Poser cameras work like real-world movie cameras and have similar names such as main, auxiliary, posing, face and dolly. Because your point of view is through a camera lens, you call the image you are creating a scene. Working in a 3D application is like being a movie director.
Unlike 2D art where you are painting on a real-world or digital canvas and you only have that one view or picture to work with, when you work in Poser, you have many cameras and therefore many possible pictures to create. The view through each camera will give you a completely new canvas. Poser allows you to view up to four cameras at one time. Also, you can use the Camera Controls to drag and rotate the Poser cameras into any position you want so the number of 3D scenes that you can create is almost limitless. If the built-in cameras are not just what you need, you can create your own.
So, in the Pose Room is where you will set the cameras and create your scene. You will do this by posing digital humans and characters of all kinds, as well as props, in the scene. Poser has a large number of ready-to-use posable characters and props, called Content, in its eight libraries. You can also place a background image for your scene. This image can be as simple as a photograph of your favorite spot on the beach or as elaborate as a movie matte painting. Also, you will set the lighting, much as you would on a movie set. In fact, many 3D artists consider the lighting the most important part of the scene.
Many Scenes Make An Animation
You can use Poser to create 3D animations. Think of an animation as a group of static scenes put together to create the illusion of movement. Creating an animation in Poser is much like creating an animation in 2D animation programs such as Flash R. First, you will create several scenes to be used as keyframes that set the major points along the animation. For example, you might have three scenes of a bug crawling up the wall. In your first scene, your bug is on the floor. In the second scene, he is half way up the wall and in the third scene he is almost to the ceiling. When you place these scenes along the Poser timeline, Poser will generate the frames that fall in between (tweening) and in the finished animation, you will see the bug crawl up the entire wall. The big difference when working with 3D animations is that your bug can move within 3D space. So he can do more than crawl up the flat wall. He can also grow wings and fly around the room in 3D. You can even export your animations as Flash SWF files for your website.
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Bewildering Stories
Challenge 229
A Funny Thing Happened
on Our Way to Siberia
1. Slava Yatsko’s letter “Why the U.S. Should Stay in Iraq” is humor based on “the world turned upside down.” Nonetheless, some readers may take it literally. Bill Bowler has some questions:
1. What is irony? What is satire?
2. How can a statement mean its opposite?
3. How can a reader know when an author means the opposite of what he has written?
4. Why would an author hide his true message by asserting its opposite?
5. What did Sigmund Freud mean when he wrote of the “non-distinction of opposites” in the “id”?
Other questions:
1. What might President Bush think of Professor Yatsko’s article? Might he telephone congratulations or put Slava on a “no-fly” list?
2. What might President Putin think of Professor Yatsko’s article? Might he also telephone Slava to offer congratulations? Or might two burly gentlemen appear at Slava’s door to make other arrangements? A consideration: Slava can’t be sent to Siberia; he already lives there.
2. And now for some really difficult questions... Some stories have a quality for which the best word is “charm”:
1. What makes Walt Trizna’s “Elmo’s Sojourn” charming?
2. Do the Gylex and their invasion of Roth support or weaken the story’s charm?
3. What is the role of females in “Elmo’s Sojourn”? Would a more active and less protected role clash with the story’s deliberate old-fashioned flavor?
3. John W. Steele’s “A Spider’s Dharma” opens with the novitiate Jengbu’s boredom with the Arhat’s lecture:
I was among a group of about thirty chelas selected to study under the revered master. Though I felt fortunate to be a student of this living Arhat, I’d heard the sermon about ‘original cause’ more times than I cared to remember. I’d grown weary of trying to understand this teaching now being expounded yet again.
Should we conclude that Jengbu is a bad student and unworthy of the Arhat? What else does Jengbu tell us that might make us think otherwise? What does the Arhat seem to need to make his teaching more effective than it is at the outset?
4. Does Mary B. McArdle’s “Doorway” overstep Bewildering Stories’ guideline against sentimentality, the story’s inclusion in this issue notwithstanding? Does Joanna really need the reassurance of the mystical vision? Or can faith suffice?
5. In Donna M. Nowak’s “Barbie for Girls,” Muriel’s parents have been grieving her disappearance for three years, and yet Muriel is alive and well under Fenella Gilheaney’s protection. Do you find convincing Miss Gilheaney’s explanation of her and Muriel’s failure to reassure Muriel’s parents?
6. Rebecca Latyntseva’s “Desurrection” opens with:
Fluorescent astroturf unleashes sluicegates of tears,
artfully concaving into the abyss.
What is “fluorescent astroturf,” and what might it represent?
Responses welcome!
Copyright © 2007 by Bewildering Stories
What is a Bewildering Stories Challenge?
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Psalms 2
Chapter 2
2:1 Why do the a heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?
2:3 b Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
2:5 c Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.
(c) Gods plagues will declare that in resisting his Christ, they fought against him.
2:7 I will declare the d decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou [art] my Son; this e day have I begotten thee.
(e) That is to say, concerning mans knowledge, because it was the first time that David appeared to be elected by God. So it is applied to Christ in his first coming and manifestation to the world.
2:8 Ask of me, and I shall give [thee] the heathen [for] thine inheritance, and the f uttermost parts of the earth [for] thy possession.
(f) Not only the Jews but the Gentiles also.
2:10 g Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
(g) He exhorts all rulers to repent in time.
2:12 h Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye i perish [from] the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed [are] all they that put their trust in him.
(h) In a sign of homage.
(i) When the wicked will say, Peace and rest, then will destruction suddenly come, ( 1 Thessalonians 5:3 ). | <urn:uuid:8d7ab39b-1702-4294-92c9-657f0153c84e> | 2 | 1.59375 | 0.126668 | en | 0.958328 | http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/geneva-study-bible/psalms-1-75/psalms-2.html |
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What Is Schisandra Used for Today? | Dosage | Safety Issues | References
What Is Schisandra Used for Today? | Dosage | Safety Issues
Schisandra is a woody vine native to eastern Asia. It winds around the trunks of trees, covering the branches. The white flowers produce small red berries that may grow in clusters. Traditionally, the berries are harvested in the fall, dried, and then ground to make the powdered medicinal herb. The seeds of the fruit contain lignans , which are believed to be active constituents.
Schisandra has long been used in the traditional medicines of Russia and China for a wide variety of conditions including asthma, coughs, and other respiratory ailments, diarrhea, insomnia, impotence, and kidney problems. Hunters and athletes have used schisandra in the belief that it will increase endurance and combat fatigue under physical stress.
More recently, schisandra has been studied for potential liver-protective effects.
What Is Schisandra Used for Today?
Schisandra has not been proven effective for any condition. Research on the herb is limited to studies in animals, as well as human trials that are not up to modern scientific standards.
Animal studies suggest schisandra may protect the liver from toxic damage, improve liver function , and stimulate liver cell regrowth. 1-6 These findings led to its use in human trials for treating hepatitis . In a poorly designed and reported Chinese study of 189 people with hepatitis B, those given schisandra reportedly improved more rapidly than those given vitamins and liver extracts. 7
Other animal studies of schisandra have found possible anti-cancer properties. 8,9,10
Finally, weak evidence hints that schisandra or its extracts might enhance sports performance and improve mental function . 11-15
Schisandra comes in capsules, tinctures, powder, tablets, and extracts. Common dosages are 1.5 to 6 g daily.
Safety Issues
Studies in mice, rats, and pigs have found schisandra to be relatively nontoxic. 16 Noticeable side effects are apparently rare, though upset stomach and allergic reactions have been reported. 17
Safety in pregnant or nursing women, children, or people with severe liver or kidney disease has not been established.
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INTERNATIONAL DIGEST: Christians in Honduras thankful for president's removal
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Christians in Honduras say the June 28 removal of Manuel Zelaya as president was a defense of democracy and an answer to prayer.
Thousands of protestors marched June 23 in the capital city, Tegucigalpa, to protest Zelaya's call for a constitutional assembly to rewrite the country's charter. Zelaya had expressed a desire to serve more than the constitutional limit of four years, but the country's congress, public ministry, supreme electoral court and supreme court had all rejected Zelaya's call as unlawful since only Honduras' congress has the authority to convene such an assembly. When Zelaya moved to hold the election anyway, the supreme court ordered the military to remove him. The president was sent into exile June 28 and has appealed to allies such as Barack Obama, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and the United Nations to help restore him to power.
The week before the showdown came to a head, evangelical leaders in Honduras led peaceful demonstrations against Zelaya's efforts to keep himself in power, the Latin American Herald Tribune reported.
"It's sad to see the OAS and the UN forcing Honduras to take back this president," Maria Elena Umana-Alvarez, a Honduran evangelical leader, told Christianity Today. "We feel that what has happened is a reply to the fervent prayers of so many Christians. For many of us, it's not a coup, but the rescue of our country and our democracy."
INCIDENTS REVEAL ANTI-CHRISTIAN PREJUDICE -- Two recent incidents in Pakistan demonstrate the deep-seated prejudice against Christians that permeate segments of the country's Muslim majority.
In late June, a mosque leader in Bahmaniwala village used a loudspeaker to mobilize a mob to attack Christian homes, the Compass Direct news service reported July 3. At least 110 homes were ransacked and looted, women were beaten and cars were set ablaze. One woman was attacked with acid and later tried to commit suicide. A pregnant woman miscarried after being beaten.
The riot started after Sardar Masih, a lower-class Christian field worker, asked a Muslim man to move out of his way so his tractor could pass. Outraged, the man began beating Masih and when his family members intervened, a mob of 15 to 20 Muslims attacked them. The mosque leader then issued the call for villagers to "teach Christians an exemplary lesson" for blaspheming Islam. When Muslim leaders at the national level learned of the attacks, however, they condemned the violence and promised the government would pay for the damages. "Christians are our brothers and sisters, and what has been done to them is very unjust," Sheikh Wasim of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz told Compass Direct.
In May, a Christian man, Ishtiaq Masih, was beaten to death at a roadside tea stall for using a cup reserved for Muslims, according to the human rights group International Christian Concern. He had ordered the tea when his bus stopped in Machharkay village during a rest stop. When he tried to pay for his tea, the owner noticed the young man was wearing a cross necklace and called for his employees to beat him for violating a "Muslims only" sign at the stall. The owner and 14 employees beat the young man with stones, iron rods and clubs and stabbed him multiple times. He died later at a local clinic.
International Christian Concern encouraged concerned individuals to contact Pakistan embassies and respectfully express concern about the treatment of Christians in the country. The embassy in the United States can be contacted by phone at 202-243-6500 and e-mail at
SOMALI EXTREMISTS BEHEAD TWO BOYS -- Islamic extremists in Somalia beheaded two young sons of a Christian leader because their father refused to divulge information about a church leader.
Hussein Musa Yusuf, 12, and Abdi Rahaman Musa Yusuf, 11, were dragged from their home in Yonday village and murdered by members of the al Shabaab extremist group, Compass Direct News reported. The day before, group members had interrogated their father, underground church leader Musa Mohammed Yusuf, about his relationship with another Christian leader, Salat Mberwa. When Yusuf refused to talk, the men left, saying they would return the next day. Yusuf fled the village for a nearby city, Kismayo, and when the men returned to his home they killed his two oldest sons in revenge.
When Yusuf heard that his sons had been killed and that the militants were still looking for him, he left Kismayo and walked for more than a month to reach Mbwera's home. The Christian fellowship led by Mbwera raised money for Yusuf to reach a refugee camp in Kenya, Compass Direct reported. Soon after, Yusuf's remaining family joined him in the camp, where they live without shelter or belongings. Their 80-year-old grandmother was unable to make the trip to Kenya and her situation is not known.
The al Shabaab militants reportedly are foreign fighters recruited by the al-Qaida terrorist network in Somalia. They play a key role in al-Qaida's fight against the government of Somalia and have gained enough power in the capital city, Mogadishu, to carry out public amputations as punishment for robbery. More than 18,000 civilians have died and 1 million people forced to flee their homes in 18 years of turmoil in Somalia.
INDIA COURT RULES 'GAY SEX' LEGAL -- A court in India has invalidated a 150-year-old law that made homosexual relations illegal. In a July 2 ruling, Chief Justice A.P. Shah of the Delhi High Court said the law violated basic human rights guaranteed by the Indian constitution.
The law's wording outlawed "carnal intercourse against the order of nature, with any man, woman or animal," the Bloomberg news service reported. Offenders faced imprisonment and a fine, but prosecutions were rare.
During the court's seven months of hearings on the subject, advocates for the law argued the ban on homosexual intercourse protected public health and morals and reflected the public's conservative views, Bloomberg reported. Opponents argued the law violated privacy and equality rights guaranteed by the constitution and said it was used to harass and blackmail homosexuals.
India's National Aids Control Organization told the court the law obstructed its HIV/AIDS prevention program. The United Nations estimates about 2.4 million people in India are infected with HIV, about 1 million of them women.
Mark Kelly is an assistant editor of Baptist Press.
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Captain America
Captain America, comic-strip superhero created by writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby for Timely (later Marvel) Comics. The character debuted in March 1941 in Captain America Comics no. 1.
Origins in the Golden Age
Simon and Kirby created Steve Rogers, a would-be army enlistee rejected by recruiters because of his small size. Rogers volunteers to receive a top-secret serum, and he is transformed into a “super soldier.” Dubbed Captain America and clad in a red, white, and blue costume with a matching stars-and-stripes shield, Rogers joins the U.S. Army, acquires a kid sidekick—plucky regimental mascot Bucky Barnes—and embarks on a career of enthusiastic Nazi-bashing.
The early stories were simple, straightforward tales peopled with bizarre villains such as the Hunchback of Hollywood, the Black Toad, and Ivan the Terrible. Chief among them was the Red Skull, a seemingly invincible Nazi whose face literally was a crimson skull. The stories of derring-do were gripping and fast-moving, and the comic became one of the most widely read titles of the so-called Golden Age of comics. Audience identification with Captain America was central to that success. The first issue announced the creation of “The Sentinels of Liberty” fan club; eager young readers could join for just a dime, which entitled them to a membership card and a metal badge. The club proved so popular that its badge promotion had to be discontinued because of wartime metal rationing.
By the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, Captain America Comics had become the publisher’s top-selling title, and, over the course of World War II, Captain America and Bucky fought the Axis powers on multiple fronts. After 10 successful issues, the comic’s creators were enticed away to rival company DC Comics, but their replacements—novice writer-editor Stan Lee and various artists—handled things well. In 1944 the character received the honour of his own Republic Pictures serial, Captain America, which was confirmation of his iconic status. As the war wound down, the market for patriotic superheroes began to shrink, and Captain America and Bucky were literally put on ice. In a story set in the final days of the war, the pair attempt to defuse a bomb on a drone aircraft, but the plane explodes over the frigid North Atlantic, sparking a complicated chain of events that ends with Bucky missing and Rogers floating in the water, seemingly dead.
The postwar years saw a proliferation of differently themed comics: horror, funny animals, westerns, romance stories—everything, it seemed, except superheroes. With the disappearance of Rogers, the mantle of Captain America passed to a succession of replacement heroes, but they failed to resonate with the stalwart Sentinels of Liberty club members. Captain America Comics ended with issue no. 73 (July 1949), and, after two issues titled Captain America’s Weird Tales, the series was canceled. Barely four years later, however, Captain America returned in Young Men no. 24 (1953), and the Captain America comic resumed printing in May 1954. The book, which boasted Captain America…Commie Smasher! as a subtitle, was an obvious product of the McCarthy era. The public did not warm to it. The Captain America series was canceled for a second time in September 1954.
Rebirth in the Silver Age
In the early 1960s, with Marvel’s superheroes rediscovering a large and enthusiastic audience, the time seemed right to reintroduce Captain America. In Avengers no. 4 (1964), it was revealed that Steve Rogers had not died in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. He had been trapped in ice and preserved in a state of suspended animation. The newly formed Avengers find Rogers’s thawing body and revive him. Captain America immediately joins the Avengers and becomes something of an elder statesman among them. Within a year of his revival, he graduated to his own strip in Tales of Suspense, a title he shared with Iron Man, and was well on his way to becoming an icon again.
Despite Kirby’s return, the new Captain America failed to achieve the popularity of Marvel’s powerhouse headliners, such as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four. As an admission that the strip was at its peak during World War II, this revival almost immediately resorted to “untold tales” of the war. The character was nevertheless a cornerstone of the “Marvel Universe” in the 1960s, and, with Lee and Kirby at the peak of their powers, the stories were a compelling read.
The modern era
By the early 1970s Lee and Kirby had left the comic and sales were in decline when young writer Steve Englehart took Captain America into deeper, darker waters. In a lengthy tale that reflects both antiwar sentiment and cynicism born of the Watergate scandal, a conspiracy within the White House is revealed to be the work of the evil “Secret Empire,” and the government’s insidious corruption horrifies Captain America. Sickened at what he sees as the betrayal of his country, Rogers quits in disgust and briefly becomes a character called Nomad before his innate patriotism gets the better of him.
Kirby returned to Captain America as both writer and artist in 1975, and he moved the title away from the social commentary that was typical of Engelhart’s take on the character. A series of writers shepherded Captain America into the 1980s, and in 1985 Mark Gruenwald began a decadelong tenure on the book. Gruenwald’s run focused on superheroics at the expense of Rogers’s civilian persona, and it introduced Diamondback—a sometime villain who evoked shades of Catwoman—as a romantic interest.
Mark Waid took over as writer in 1995, and he refocused on the basics of the character: while Steve Rogers might be a “man out of time,” Captain America is a symbol for all times. Waid’s brief but influential run paved the way for the virtual reinvention of the character in 2005, when Ed Brubaker began his critically acclaimed stint as the writer of Captain America. While not shying away from comic conventions such as time travel, Brubaker’s Captain America was a soldier, and his adventures were noir-influenced tales of intrigue and espionage. Brubaker deftly reversed one of the most famous deaths in comics history with a story revealing that although Bucky lost an arm in the explosion at the war’s end, he survived, and his unconscious body was recovered by the Soviets. They replaced his missing arm with a bionic one and brainwashed him into becoming an assassin called the Winter Soldier. Between missions he was kept in suspended animation, and thus Bucky, though now an adult, was still in his early 20s. Upon the apparent death of Steve Rogers in 2007, Bucky assumed the role of Captain America, a mantle that he carried until his own apparent death in 2011. At that time Rogers once again became Captain America and Bucky resumed his clandestine operations—now as Captain America’s ally—as the Winter Soldier.
In addition to appearing in comics, Captain America was featured in numerous animated television series and an assortment of video games. Director Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) marked the character’s first appearance on the big screen in almost 70 years. Chris Evans played the star-spangled hero in a film that expanded on Marvel’s cinematic universe in a manner that delighted both comics fans and critics. Evans returned as Captain America in The Avengers (2012) and in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). | <urn:uuid:afe13adf-0c68-416e-9f43-73208c75d55c> | 3 | 2.984375 | 0.196903 | en | 0.973048 | http://www.britannica.com/print/topic/1488369 |
Diddelyada-Toot Chicks
Sisters of Swing trumpets the lives and songs of the Andrews Sisters
The Andrews Sisters, who rose to mega-stardom during the World War II Big Band era, were the Dixie Chicks of their time. That is, if you first replace the Chicks' antiwar sentiment with patriotism and then add an unbridled popularity no girl group since the Andrews Sisters has ever quite matched. OK, so they weren't the Dixie Chicks of their time. They were the Andrews Sisters. Enough said.
If you can adapt ABBA into Mamma Mia! and Billy Joel into Movin' Out, then there's absolutely no reason you shouldn't feel free to create a musical bio-play about the songs and tribulations of LaVerne, Maxene, and Patty Andrews. That's just what Beth Gilleland and Bob Beverage did. The result is the über-charming Sisters of Swing, which opened last week at Florida Stage.
During their long career, the Andrews Sisters recorded more than 700 songs and sold more than 90 million records. They were the first girl group to go platinum, and 46 of their tunes reached the Billboard charts' top ten, including their first big hit, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön," as well as other toe-tappers like "Accentuate the Positive," "Rum and Coca-Cola," and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." The sisters also appeared in a slew of movies, most notably the 1941 Abbott and Costello blockbusters Buck Privates and In the Navy. There may have been other sister acts back in the day, but it's difficult now to think of any more closely linked with patriotic home-front support of troops than the A-Sisters. To many, LaVerne, Maxene, and Patty were the home front -- airwave manifestations of the girlfriends and sisters our soldiers were fighting for and eager to come home to.
Adjan, Swiderski, and Graham: Mamma Mia! minus the baby-boomer schmaltz
Bruce Bennett
Presented through August 28. Call 561-585-3433.
Florida Stage, 262 S. Ocean Blvd., Manalapan
Getting behind home-front-girl iconography -- and having loads of fun with the Andrews Sisters' catchy songs -- is the well-realized intention of Sisters of Swing, written by Gilleland and Beverage, with musical arrangements by Raymond Berg. In this regional premiere, the play is jazzily handled by director Lynnette Barkley and musical director Christopher McGovern, who navigate a funny and moving musical trail through the women's lives, from childhood Minnesota talent contests through hardscrabble years on the vaudeville circuit and the eventual coming-of-age transformation into wartime songbird Florence Nightingales. If you think this sounds like just another musical revue geared toward the reminiscing blue-haired set, you'll be warm-heartedly mistaken. After all, using a post-Brian Setzer Gap ad syllogism... Big Band is cool. The Andrews Sisters are Big Band. Therefore, the Andrews Sisters are cool.
The play's Andrews Sisters -- Maribeth Graham, Irene Adjan, and Jennifer Swiderski -- are a great trio in their own right, magical and hard-working. But among the production's many surprises -- besides an excellent supporting six-piece band, a retro orchestra set, and clever musical arrangements that also include endearing audience participation -- is the ambitious legwork of the play's two male co-star Everymen, Terrell Hardcastle and Tom Kenaston. They become all of the boys who occupy the girls' lives -- soldiers, husbands, record producers, and radio announcers -- and also create scene-stealing impressions of Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.
When it comes to reassembling vulnerable human bones from the closets of icons, biographical playwrights unfortunately share a certain odd experience usually reserved for play reviewers. I'm talking about the vulture-like need to bleed their subjects' negative sides, no matter how small. For their part, Gilleland and Beverage explore the minor blemishes beneath the sweet sisters' makeup. As it turns out, LaVerne was a sad, jealous, maternal figure. Crazed Patty once staked out Doris Day's house, armed with a baseball bat, to catch her philandering husband. And why did sensitive Maxene turn into a pill popper? The authors kindly keep the lashing to a minimum, airing just enough dirty laundry between song sets to thoughtfully place the Andrews Sisters on the same human playing field as the rest of us. We all have our problems, after all, even if we're making ten grand a week in the early 1940s. Some of us just harmonize better amid our troubles.
As for play reviewers' vilified tendencies to, um, accentuate the negative? With regard to this Florida Stage production, sorry, but I've got nothing. Don't get me wrong. I tried really hard at first (hmm, what's up with the acoustics in this place?) to find dents. But five minutes into the second half, I simply stopped trying. You see, whatever energy created the Andrews Sisters phenomenon is rabidly contagious. The talented cast and crew of Sisters of Swing have caught that energy and are having as much fun giving good show as the real Andrews Sisters must certainly have exhibited. How's that for verisimilitude?
Real-life Patty Andrews, who still lives in California, is now 87 years old. LaVerne died of cancer in 1967, and Maxene joined the Big Band gig in the sky in 1995. Near the end of Sisters of Swing, the play's Patty reflects on how everyone she knew from the heyday is now gone: "I'm the youngest, but I'm older than any of them ever were." This beautiful and melancholy comment brings the Andrews Sisters' story full circle, back to their innocent childhood beginnings. And in a way, it also ties down their legacy. The historical lens will always focus on Patty as the youngest of an exuberant trio frozen in time, blemished or not, as "Greatest Generation" sweethearts.
My Voice Nation Help | <urn:uuid:23c8273c-2836-4284-a72f-0fcab35f7045> | 2 | 1.554688 | 0.019143 | en | 0.948957 | http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2005-06-30/culture/diddelyada-toot-chicks/ |
FORT COLLINS, Colo.—The federal government wants to step up watershed protection to reduce the risk of wildfires.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Colorado Sen. Mark Udall are in Fort Collins on Friday to announce a new partnership to reduce the risks to Colorado's water supply.
The event kicks off the Western Watershed Enhancement Partnership, which is part of President Barack Obama's Climate Action Plan that outlines a comprehensive approach to better prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change. | <urn:uuid:2fd27c77-9f18-4143-8e40-d87fb73fb84d> | 2 | 1.757813 | 0.165245 | en | 0.892994 | http://www.brushnewstribune.com/brush-columnists/ci_23691792/cabinet-members-udall-promote-wildfire-prevention |
Media & Press
Sunnier climes linked to lower rates of IBD
[Geographical variation and incidence of inflammatory bowel disease among US women Online First doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2011-301574]
Living in sunnier climates may curb the likelihood of developing inflammatory bowel disease, particularly after the age of 30, suggests a large, long term US study, published online in the journal Gut.
The findings, which back up previous European research, could eventually lead to new types of treatment as well as preventive measures, suggest the authors.
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Both conditions can be extremely painful and require extensive surgery, often severely affecting quality of life.
Despite recent advances in identifying genetic factors that might be involved in the development of IBD, the causes still remain largely unknown, and because the overall genetic risk is low to moderate, environmental and lifestyle factors are likely to have a key role, say the authors.
They base their findings on data obtained from two studies tracking the long term health of nurses, one of which started in 1976 (Nurses' Health Study I), and the other of which began in 1989 (Nurses' Health Study II).
Information on area of residence at birth and at ages 15 and 30 was collected for both studies, and any diagnosis of IBD recorded up to 2003.
The 238,000 participants, who were enrolled between the ages of 25 and 55, were mailed every two years to update their health information. None had any history of IBD when they enrolled in the studies.
States in the US were divided up into northern, middle, and southern tiers of latitude for each of the four time zones (eastern, central, mountain, and pacific).
The residence of just under 176,000 women was recorded in 1992, subsequent to which 257 cases of Crohn's disease and 313 of ulcerative colitis were diagnosed by 2003.
A diagnosis of IBD was significantly associated with increasing northerly latitude, with residence by the time a woman was 30 more strongly linked to the development of the condition.
Compared with women residing in northern latitudes, those living in southerly climes were 52% less likely to develop Crohn's disease by the age of 30 and 38% less likely to develop ulcerative colitis.
Smoking, which is thought to affect IBD risk, had no influence on the findings.
"A leading explanation for this north-south gradient in the risk of ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease may be differences in exposure to sunlight or UVB radiation, which is generally greater in southern latitudes," comment the authors.
They add that their results lend credence to the importance of biological pathways in influencing geographical differences in the development of IBD.
"Understanding such pathways could eventually lead to the development of novel lines of therapy as well as interventions that may modulate the risk of incident disease," they conclude.
Dr Hamed Khalili, Division of Gastroenterology, Gastrointestinal Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
Tel: + 1 617 724 6113
Click here to view the paper in full:
Gut is one of more than 35 specialist titles published by BMJ Group - | <urn:uuid:8abed00e-bfe1-457f-b395-10341096d165> | 3 | 2.921875 | 0.02814 | en | 0.965578 | http://www.bsg.org.uk/press/press-releases/sunnier-climes-linked-to-lower-rates-of-ibd.html |
Back in the game
Nigel Bowen
Australians spent more than $2 billion on gaming last year. So why is it so hard for local game creators to turn a dollar?
An early level in the Danger Rabbit game.
An early level in the Danger Rabbit game.
Gaming, long dismissed as a pointless, potentially perilous diversion for sexually frustrated teenage boys, has crossed into the mainstream. Having long ago surpassed the revenues generated by the film or music industries, it now seems set to take another quantum leap due to the mass penetration of mobile devices and the rise of "gamification".
More on that momentarily, but first a little history. Since the gaming industry began with Pong in 1972, it has worked much like the old Hollywood studio system, with a handful of well-resourced companies, called "producers", investing large amounts over long periods of time to produce elaborate games for consoles, be it Pac-Man for Atari or Grand Theft Auto for PlayStation.
But the public embrace of smartphones and tablet computers has precipitated something akin to the break-up of the Hollywood studio system. A small team, or even an individual, can now quickly and cheaply create a game (think Angry Birds) to be played on a mobile or iPad as opposed to an expensive console such as a Sony PlayStation, Microsoft Xbox or Nintendo Wii.
Nahele, Allan-Moon, the 19-year-old founder of the MoSoGa gaming studio.
If that wasn't already blue sky aplenty, just as what might be labelled the "leisure gaming" market is approaching saturation (93 per cent of Australian households now have a game-playing device), gamification has promised to get several potentially larger revenue streams gushing.
Gamification involves making, say, learning activities or work tasks resemble a video game, with the student or employee who "plays" them incentivised through getting (virtual) rewards. It's early days, but unimaginable wealth awaits the gamifier who works out a way to make workers more productive or students more receptive.
"After the GFC hit, almost all of the local studios collapsed and a lot of highly skilled individuals started to make their own games," says Nahele Allan-Moon, the 19-year-old founder of the MoSoGa gaming studio.
"That's resulted in a thriving indie scene, particularly in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. As with most industries, a small number of huge companies pocket most of the money, but there are also pools of cash there for smaller operators targeting niches."
Phil Mason, 42, chief executive of Bubble Gum Interactive, echoes Allan-Moon: "The growth of online and mobile broke down the barriers, allowing anyone to create and publish games. In the four years since I started Bubble Gum, I've been doing exactly that, attracting $3 million in capital and employing around a dozen staff in the process.
"We've had a lot of success making kid's games that work on a freemium model, whereby gamers can play for free but increase their engagement in the game through various in-app purchases."
The gaming entrepreneurs Fairfax spoke to painted a relatively rosy picture, insisting they hadn't had much trouble gaining access to skilled and passionate staff or capital.
When it came to government policy, all they wanted was for broadband to be rolled out as quickly as possible (just like albums and films, the trend is now for games to be downloaded rather than purchased in-store) and possibly for more generosity to be shown to those seeking early-stage capital.
"The government provides grants to games developers through Screen Australia but it could be doing more," says Lloyd Perry, 33, a game producer at Flow Spark Studios. "The Finnish government invested €65 million ($95 million) over six years in its domestic games producers and ended up with an industry that now generates €900 million a year, 90 per cent of which is from exports."
Unfortunately, neither the government nor any other institution can help local game-makers repeatedly capture lightning in a bottle, which, as in other creative industries, is the foundation of long-term profitability.
"A successful gaming company is built on successful games," says Adrian Vergara, 18, the creative director of Reach Game Studios. "The issue that everyone in the industry faces is that there is no sure-fire formula for producing a commercially successful game. Most of them disappear without trace, even when really talented people produce what is, objectively, a really great game."
But while the odds are stacked against them in a world where hundreds of new apps go on sale each day, our gaming entrepreneurs are cautiously optimistic that they will win the lottery in the not-too-distant future.
Perry's releasing Danger Rabbit, "a Mario-style platformer with a twist" on May 18; Mason's launching Cake Bake Blitz, a puzzle game with a Facebook social connect in June; Vergara should have Apathy, a sci-fi game, finalised by late 2014, and Allan-Moon has "some internal projects in the pipeline" that he is working on alongside jobs for external clients. If any of those games resonate with the public, their owners can expect to be LOLing all the way to the bank.
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St. Teresa of Avila
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By Catholic Digest Staff
St. Teresa of Avila
Feast Day: October 15
Despite her father being wealthy and respected in Spain, he was excluded from many state offices and religious orders on account of his own father having been a Jewish convert to Christianity. At that time, society looked down on converts, not considering them “true” Christians and believing that many of them had only converted to escape the Spanish Inquisition that had taken place less than 40 years earlier. This situation may have caused Teresa’s awareness of the unimportance of family titles, and fueled her desire to treat everyone as equals. Despite their background her family was extremely devout. Influenced by dramatic saint stories, when Teresa was a little girl she attempted to run off with her brother, both determined to become martyrs. An alert uncle intercepted them and brought them back home, where the siblings promptly built hermit cells for themselves in the family garden. Years later when she was a teenager, Teresa had grown into a charming girl who enjoyed dressing up with friends, wearing jewelry, and secretly reading romances. Her mother died when she was thirteen and her father sent her to an Augustinian convent that functioned as a finishing school for high society ladies. Given the choice between marriage and religious life, she chose the latter. Within a year she became dangerously ill, and at one point was so sick she was thought to have died. When she had finally recovered she returned to the convent and discovered that she had difficulty praying, but her determination paid off as she gradually became aware of God’s presence. She also realized that the convent she resided in, the Incarnation, in which outside family rank was retained and the women could come and go as they pleased with their servants, was in need of serious reform. “When I fell to prayer again and looked at Christ hanging poor and naked upon the Cross,” she wrote, “I felt I could not bear to be rich. So I besought him with tears that I might be as poor as he.” Despite tremendous opposition she founded the convent of St. Joseph, and later when anti-reformists tried to stop her progress, she enlisted the help of King Philip II in defense of what would become her Order of the Discalced Carmelites. She was canonized on the same day as Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, and Philip Neri.
Catholic Digest Staff | <urn:uuid:2841df69-f358-47ed-8c50-5e7d6d6728fb> | 3 | 2.859375 | 0.037097 | en | 0.99066 | http://www.catholicdigest.com/articles/faith/saints/2010/10-08/st-teresa-of-avila |
Africa’s Zimbabwe Problem
The United Nations defines sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The CSD was established in 1992 to promote sustainable development, review implementation of various environmental agreements, and provide policy guidance to local, national, regional, and international levels. Explicitly noted in the documents that the CSD is supposed to promote is the notion that “Good governance within each country and at the international level is essential for sustainable development” and that “Peace, security, stability and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms… are essential for achieving sustainable development and ensuring that sustainable development benefits all.”
Looking the world over, it is difficult to find many countries that fail to abide by these principles to a greater degree than does Zimbabwe. When Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980, he inherited well-developed manufacturing and mining sectors, a competitive agricultural sector, a thriving tourist industry, and sound infrastructure. The country has rich mineral deposits of asbestos, chromite, coal, copper, diamonds and other gems, gold, iron ore, nickel, and platinum. The country was rightly regarded as one of the bright lights in Africa.
Beginning in the late 1990s, Mugabe began facing serious challenges to his authority. In response to the growing opposition, he initiated a ruthless, seven-year campaign to maintain political power. During that time, Mugabe has targeted his opponents for abuse, legal harassment, and economic punishment, and used his authority to reward allies and elicit support from the police, the military, and other key groups. Notably, Mugabe started to expropriate large, mostly white-owned, commercial farms. With property rights and the rule of law severely weakened, credit and investment dried up, sending shockwaves through an economy that was heavily reliant on agricultural production.
Those policies have resulted in a precipitous economic decline, political repression, and a humanitarian crisis rivaling that in Darfur. Over the last seven years, Professor Craig Richardson of Salem College estimates the economy has shrunk by 40 percent, wiping out almost 60 years of gradual economic improvements. The standard of living has dropped to levels last seen in 1948. The World Health Organization estimates that Zimbabwe has the wor’d’s lowest life expectancy — 34 years for women and 37 years for men.
Unemployment is at 80 percent. The currency is nearly worthless and inflation currently exceeds 3,700 percent per year. Last week, the black-market exchange rate for one U.S. dollar reached 40,000 Zimbabwean dollars.
The economic meltdown has led to environmental devastation. Zimbabwe, once known for its flourishing wildlife, used to have a sophisticated tourism industry that accounted for up to 6 percent of the country’s GDP. Hunger and lawlessness have put an end to that.
Brian Gratwicke, an Oxford-educated environmentalist and Zimbabwean national who runs a U.S-based nature and wildlife website estimates that “Eighty percent of 250,000 head of game that lived on privately owned commercial farms have been poached by land invaders – often with the encouragement of senior ZANU-PF officials who wanted to wrest control of the farms from their rightful owners.” To make matters worse, Gratwicke argues, chronic environmental problems such as deforestation and overgrazing, water pollution, uncontrolled fires, human-wildlife conflict, and wildlife-borne disease are spreading through Zimbabwe.
On both environmental and development grounds, Zimbabwe is a terrible example to the rest of Africa and the world. Electing Zimbabwe to chair the committee charged with guiding U.N. policy in those areas is absurd.
The election of Zimbabwe to the chairmanship of the CSD cannot be dismissed as an unfortunate aberration. The nomination of Zimbabwe to the chairmanship was widely reported and strongly criticized by the U.S. and other countries. Despite that criticism, the African regional group in the U.N. refused to back away from nominating Zimbabwe. Moreover, the African group and the U.N. have made a habit of such outrageous appointments. For instance:
• Zimbabwe currently serves on the Executive Board of the World Food Program, despite the fact that Zimbabwe, considered the breadbasket of Africa only a decade ago, is now unable to feed itself and regularly appeals to international programs for food aid. The primary reasons for the devastation of Zimbabwe’s once flourishing agricultural sector are the politically motivated seizure of commercial farms, most of which were given to Mugabe’s cronies, and other anti-market economic policies.
• Zimbabwe was elected to the Executive Board of the U.N. Children’s Fund for a three-year term beginning in 2008 despite the fact that, according to UNICEF itself, one in four children in Zimbabwe are orphans. This tragic situation is in significant part due to the policies of the Zimbabwean government that have increased the spread of HIV/AIDS, reduced life expectancy, and eroded the health care system.
• Zimbabwe was elected to the Governing Council of the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-HABITAT) for a term expiring in 2010 despite the government’s Operation Murambatsvina, which demolished informal housing and markets and rendered 700,000 urban Zimbabweans homeless or unemployed. It is believed that 70 percent of the urban population may have lost shelter or employment and over 2 million (more than 15 percent of Zimbabwe’s population) are believed to have been indirectly affected by loss of customers, employees, or markets. The government told those affected to “return to their rural origins,” even though most had no such home to which they could return. Indeed, many had initially become homeless when the government sanctioned the seizure of commercial farms.
The ability of Zimbabwe to routinely be elected to such privileged positions in the U.N. is illustrative of just how little regard many states have for the purposes of the U.N. and the influence those states have over the decisions, elections, and activities of the organization.
This comes as little surprise to those who have followed the United Nations and its many failures over the years. Nevertheless, it should embarrass those governments in Africa that claim to be trying to improve the lives of their people, enhance the quality of government across the continent, and elevate the influence which the region is given in international fora and the seriousness with which it is taken.
There is something fundamentally wrong when African countries feel comfortable, and even are insistent, about putting a country like Zimbabwe forward as a candidate for influential positions despite that country’s record of violations and abuses directly related to the position it would assume. How can the rest of the world be comfortable giving Africa a permanent seat on the Security Council, for instance, if the continent cannot even rouse itself to put forward suitable candidates for lesser bodies?
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Jenkins & Duncombe 2008: Politics in the Age of YouTube
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The Electronic Journal of Communication / La Revue Electronique de Communication
Volume 18 Numbers 2, 3, & 4, 2008
Politics in the Age of YouTube:
A transcript of a public conversation 2/10/08
at Otis College of Art and Design
Henry Jenkins *
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Stephen Duncombe **
New York University
Context and Background: We are pleased to include in our Special Issue a printed version of a public conversation between Henry Jenkins and Stephen Duncombe, which was held in February 2008 at Otis College of Art and Design. Prior to this scheduled event at Otis College, Professor Jenkins gave a talk at University of Toronto and Dr. Boler inquired afterwards whether he had anything he might like to contribute to this EJC Issue. Henry Jenkins mentioned the forthcoming forum with Duncombe. Thus, quite fortunately, Boler and Gournelos had the opportunity to develop questions specifically related to the topics of this Special Issue, to which Jenkins and Duncombe were able to respond during their public conversation in February 2008. Titled “Politics in the Age of YouTube,” their discussion highlights how popular culture, user-generated content, and diverse forms of humor reflect and influence perceptions of politics and political candidates.
H.J.: I’m happy to be here and delighted to have a public conversation with Stephen. I greatly admire his new book, Dream, which has helped me think about issues in the current campaign. Tonight, we’ll walk through landmarks of the current political season and place them in the larger context of shifts that are occurring in the relationship between politics and popular culture, which are reshaping our conceptualization of democracy. This is a great time for this discussion, it being the week after Super Tuesday and the weekend of several significant primaries and caucuses in one of the most interesting political seasons of any of our lifetimes.
I wanted to start with the YouTube-CNN debates from last fall as an example of some of the political changes that are taking place. There’s something significant about the partnering of the new media icon YouTube and the old media icon CNN to construct a particular notion of democracy. In this debate, YouTube encouraged people to submit their questions for presidential candidates and more than 6000 video questions were submitted via YouTube in preparation for the democratic debate. CNN then vetted the questions and professional journalists chose which questions to present to the candidates. We can talk about what it means to have a participatory opening, but still have the final questions vetted or narrowed by professional newsmakers. But first let’s look at a key moment in that debate, which comes about half way through when this question gets asked:
S.D.: That question was directed to Dennis Kucinich, who with a straight face then went into a discussion about the connection between what he called global ‘warring’ and global ‘warming’ and then brought it back to touch on the snowman at the end. Within a few days the Republican contender Mitt Romney said that he thought the question of a snowman asking a question in a debate debased the whole idea of having political debates -- and this is when the Republicans were hedging around the idea of having a YouTube-CNN debate. I’ll turn this over to Henry because he’s written on this video and how to make sense of it in a political and cultural context.
H.J.: So one way to make sense of it is to look at the history of this video, which was made by two brothers in Minneapolis. The video’s life started out as a sophomoric parody made partially in tribute to Mr. Bill. In the original video a samurai comes in and lops off the head of Billiam the Snowman. And so it started off as two guys playing around with cameras, sticking their stuff on YouTube, the sort of sophomoric stunts that we’ve seen quite a bit of on YouTube. Now the fact that it’s a parody of Mr. Bill is not a coincidence. There are two things we should know about Mr. Bill. Firstly, that it emerged in an earlier moment of user-generated content in the 1970s. When Saturday Night Live was first going on the air, they did an open call for home movies to be submitted for broadcast during the program and Mr. Bill had won that competition and went on to get a contract from the network to produce 24 segments of Mr. Bill to be aired on SNL during the first few seasons of the show. More recently, the creator of Mr. Bill emerged as an environmental activist and was starting to use Mr. Bill to comment on the issue of the wetlands of Louisiana and that was widely played on Louisiana and Mississippi television stations prior to Hurricane Katrina, warning about the potential environmental consequences that would come from global warning. So both of these points would have informed the brothers’ choice: when they made the first video they were following the footsteps of Mr. Bill as he moved from being a simply comic figure into a political figure. The insertion of this video in a debate would have been the beginning of this process. Romney’s complaint that this trivialized the debate doesn’t acknowledge that the question asked is a serious one and a substantive one.
Secondly, we’ve heard politicians for some time use cartoon characters, packs of wolves, morphed images, little girls pulling petals out of flowers to talk to voters. Now voters were using the same kind of iconography to talk back to candidates. And the snowman video spoofs several key rhetorical devices of contemporary politics. One, the snowman spoofs the notion of protecting our children. The other is the notion of embodying an issue in the town hall tradition, where people are asked to speak on behalf of particular interest groups – this is a representative woman speaking about women, this is a representative African-American speaking about African-American issues. A snowman speaking on behalf of snowmen is a spoof of identity politics and one that forces us to think about political language.
S.D.: As a question, it’s an important one yet also relatively banal: what do you do about global warming? It’s the type of question that could be asked by a CNN commentator. But what I think is interesting here is the implicit question about who gets to ask questions and how they are asked. What was important about the YouTube-CNN debate is not the questions per se but that people were creating DIY videos in order to ask the questions—it reversed the idea of who gets to frame out and ask questions, even if they were vetted by CNN journalists. Another thing Henry touched on is the use of parody. One of the things both Henry and I have been interested in for quite some time is fan culture and DIY media, and one of the things I’ve been concerned with both as an activist and a theorist is use of parody, satire, and irony in politics. The mainstream politicians essentially ignored the humor of a snowman asking a question. This is significant bec ause parody and irony can disturb and upset the system – denaturalizing the natural, as it were.
H.J.: CNN justified its own gatekeeper role in the process by claiming that the public wasn’t taking this function seriously citing the fact that one of the most popular YouTube videos for the debate asked whether Arnold Schwarzenegger was really an android from the future sent back to deal with present problems. There was another one on Roswell and whether the government was hiding records on alien visitation and CNN cited these as signs of irresponsibility. If we think about contemporary politics in the age of YouTube, one of the things we’ve seen again and again is the public exploiting openings into the system provided it by trying to negate the rules of the system.
S.D.: That’s how I understood those mock questions, of which the snowman was the most acceptable. There’s two ways to read these questions. First, this is exactly why democracy should not be opened up to the people, as they’re going to ask ridiculous questions. But there’s another way to look at it, which is, [the videos] showed up the ridiculousness of the questions that are asked over and over again: the horse race campaign questions. What’s so ludicrous about a question asked about UFOs given the other “legitimate” questions such as “Did you really cry?”
H.J.:We can see the power to negate in the ‘vote for the worst campaign’: on American Idol, what kept Sanjaya Malakar on air last season for a long period of time was a large-scale organization that Howard Stern got behind that aimed to use the public vote to keep bad singers on the show for as long as possible, exploiting the mechanism and space for participation that the producers had opened, and saying that 'we’re going to demonstrate our power by making you do things we know you don’t want us to do by forcing your hand.' So voting for a question about whether Schwarzenegger is an android is a way of saying 'we’re going to challenge the normal frames.' The power of the mass media, its response to the public’s power to negate, is the power to marginalize.
A piece I’m working on right now talks about a guy who appeared on camera to ask a question wearing a Mexican wrestling mask. If you go to YouTube and trace that backwards that question was part of a larger debate about muzzling speech in the US and about the importance of speaking as an anonymous person in the context of this administration. But it also mobilized the figure of the lucha, the Mexican wrestler. In Mexico, wrestlers often speak politically on behalf of the dispossessed – and that association was not trivializing [the debate], rather it was aimed at connecting to a larger political movement that CNN was simply not ready to acknowledge and so just turned it into a joke. CNN stripped this guy of his voice when putting him into the broadcast, using him to illustrate how not to ask questions and be taken seriously. They showed him without explaining why he did it or even what he was asking about. CNN constructed him as an idiot rather than someone who w as politically engaged.
S.D.: Let’s talk about this use of humor and parody. It’s common knowledge now that The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart are primary news sources for young people. When many politically-minded people from an older generation hear this they wring their hands and ask, why aren’t people reading the New York Times, the LA Times, or tuning into CNN? But one of the things both of us are interested in is why people are turning to a comedy show that follows a show with sock puppets? and how do we understand this as increasingly part of mainstream political discourse?
H.J.: Comedy Central provided more hours of coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions than NBC, ABC, and CBS combined. The Obama keynote speech did not appear on any of the three major networks, but did appear on Comedy Central. So it’s not at the end of the day that Comedy Central trivializes news, it’s that news has backed away from some of its civic, educational functions in a significant way and Comedy Central provides a different way for candidates and politicians to relate to the public. There’s also been some comparative work on the range of guests appearing on ABC News’ Nightline and Comedy Central’s programs and it turns out that there’s a broader range of perspectives appearing on Comedy Central. The channel is also teaching you a healthy skepticism about how news and politicians construct reality for us, and that’s really powerful.
S.D.: There’s also an openness in its distance from the truth. When you watch Jon Stewart deconstruct something, you know what he’s doing: he’s making fun of it, he’s pulling himself back from it. This is not the distance that you get with a news commentator who’s ostensibly telling the truth. And there’s something more true, more accurate in that distance then there is in the faux objectivity of a standard news report. It reveals an important part of what politics really is: spin, perception, presentation and spectacle. I’ll never forget when I was at an election night party held by the left, liberal magazine The Nation. What news were we – sober, responsible, politically-minded intellectuals and reporters -- watching? The Daily Show, because it had more insight into what was really happening in the elections than CNN or FOX.
[Clip from The Colbert Report highlighting the “combination of comedy and political education that the show is involved with,” says Henry.] -- this clip has been subject to a takedown notice on YouTube.
S.D.: What’s wonderful is that two days after appearing on this show, [Mike Huckabee] takes Louisiana and Kansas.
H.J.: What’s amazing is he cites this appearance on some of his interviews on CNN and MSNBC as he’s trying to explain the outcome of the race and says that you have a better chance of figuring out the outcome of Texas [by playing air hockey, as on the show] than any other. His stance as someone who doesn’t take himself too seriously has helped defuse much of the anxiety of his being a conservative Christian or evangelical candidate. He’s been very adept at appealing beyond the Christian base with these tactics. He was doing these shows before he started taking off and when he had little budget. He may have built his visibility as a candidate by appearing on these shows. It might have paved the way.
S.D.: You could look at Huckabee’s use of comedy in politics with horror. Huckabee has a serious immigration policy, one I don’t agree with, but a serious proposal nonetheless. But what are we to do with Huckabee’s campaign advertisement in which he presents his immigration policy as Chuck Norris standing on the border? This is a dangerous sort of politics because it can’t really be questioned since there is nothing serious to interrogate.
But I find Huckabee’s use of humor very interesting, and also predictable given his marginal stance. Marginal candidates, and advocates of marginal political causes, have often used humor and parody. Think of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, in which he argues that if the Irish are starving they merely need to eat their children. And this is 1729.
The power of parody -- especially in marginal political groups -- is that it ends up creating a meaning system. What parody, satire, and irony do is say, “this is what we aren’t and let’s leave what we are open to be decided by the community.” And what this does is create a bond within the community. It also functions differently in that it’s not telling the answer. Think of ‘push’ politics or ‘push’ media which are more like a lecture telling the audience this is what my policy is. This is more like ‘pull’ media which says you have to fill in the gap and create the message as you smile and laugh and fill in the blanks. And that makes for pretty powerful politics.
H.J.: Huckabee embodies a shift in the relationship between the Christian right and popular culture. I write about this shift in Convergence Culture at some length: there’s a strand in the Southern Baptist and evangelical church in general that rather than wage a battle against popular culture it’s better to mobilize popular culture effectively by creating their own popular culture. We can see Veggie Tales as an attempt at Christian counter-culture, the attempt to mimic genres of entertainment and produce it for Christian youth so that they have their own version of things. The effort to produce The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is coming out of that: the producers of those movies have strong ties to the church and have used those ties to get people into the film.
But these efforts also show a critical stance on popular culture – what’s known as the Christian discernment movement – which is a media literacy movement which seeks to understand what non-believers believe by engaging in critical dialogue with popular media texts. They produce study guides on all kinds of films that you wouldn’t expect as part of a larger conversation. You’re seeing things like Fans for Jesus, or Aime Fans for Christ, and organizations of gamers that are exploring religious themes. You can position what Huckabee is doing as part of that continuum, it’s his saying 'we’re not opposed to popular culture, we’re not sticks in the mud.' The fact that Chuck Norris has written religious books and wasn’t just a campy icon who might appeal to young voters makes his partnership with Huckabee make political sense. He was already known in the Christian community to share a particular philosophy that Huckabee endorses. So t his is a message on dual levels: it’s both an endorsement and a spoof of an endorsement. It is both an acknowledgement of a Christian tradition and also an acknowledgement that the Christian tradition might be embracing rather than rejecting popular culture. And I think that’s part of what makes Huckabee a really interesting candidate.
S.D.: A commentator over the weekend said to Huckabee: “do the math, you can’t win this.” And he replied, “I didn’t major in math, I majored in miracles,” which, given that he’s a Southern Baptist minister, got a good chuckle. But I think we should take his mention of miracles seriously. What’s happening around the Huckabee right is sort of what’s happening around the utopian left. Both are using parody as a way of opening up what could be, posing the question: what if? Parody does this not by giving an affirmative answer—which shuts down the discussion -- but by stating the negative: this is what we don’t want. This, of course, leaves open the question of what we do want.
There’s a resonance between Christian idea of heaven and miracle and leftist utopianism. Let me give a satirical example of the latter: The Yes Men is a small lefty group of performers with nerves of steel. They pretend to be what they aren’t: figures from big business, policy wonks. They wheedle their ways into news conferences, pretending to be policy wonks making a case for slavery and they play this with a straight face and see how far they can get. Here’s one of their most effective and famous pieces: they were interviewed by the BBC on the twentieth anniversary of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal.
The idea was to push Dow, who had just bought Union Carbide, into a place where they had to say publicly what they’ve been saying privately: that they will not accept responsibility for the deaths in Bhopal. On the one hand, it was just a clever tactical prank, but instead of getting up on a soapbox and saying we believe that Union Carbide or Dow should take responsibility for the deaths in Bhopal, or that corporations are bad and don’t care about people, [The Yes Men] use a different language, a different technique, to make the same point. Again, they do not lecture, telling their audience what to think; they create openings and questions. And they aren’t unique in this type of political and communicative strategy. There are a lot of groups on the left fringe using irony and parody, and you see Huckabee using something similar on the right fringe.
Henry, why irony in this case? What does it get at that a standard demonstration against Union Carbide wouldn’t get?
H.J.: I think the Yes Men play an agent provocateur role, as you suggest. They change the discursive landscape by forcing the other side to reveal its true colors. I am reminded -- by looking at that clip -- of Hunter S. Thompson in the 1960s whose notion of gonzo journalism was to be this totally inflammatory persona who inserted himself in a certain situation -- the Super Bowl, the Republican national convention -- so that he would be shut down. And then he wrote about the experiences of repression and the ways in which the system shut him down. It’s about forcing the system to reveal its true colors – think of Abbie Hoffman.
S.D.: Yes, Abbie Hoffman used to swear when he was interviewed on TV knowing that what he said would get beeped out. But, as Henry suggests, the censorship did two things simultaneously: one, it showed the repressive power of the media, but it also opened up his interview to the viewer’s imagination and encouraged people to think about what he could be saying that’s so radical that network TV is beeping him out. It was a tactic, he wrote in his book Revolution for the Hell of It, to create blank space.
H.J.: Abbie Hoffman did this stunt where he throws dollar bills into the New York Stock Exchange, knowing the news media will have to show this spectacle of these guys who stop bidding and grope at the sky for falling money. That image revealed the underlying mechanisms of the system as it is being disrupted. Part of the role of the farce is to provoke a system.
There was a case recently in Australia where an Australian television show, The Chasers, tried to see how close it could get to George Bush’s compound at a global summit. They did it by putting guys in suits running alongside a limousine adorned with the Canadian flag. The guards, one guard after another, flagged them through thinking there was nothing threatening about the Canadians going into the summit space. The pranksters were getting really shaken up because they got within inches of the center where the big global summit was going to take place. They finally chickened out, but before chickening out completely, they had a guy in the limousine dressed up as Osama Bin Laden and they shoved him out of the limousine at the gates of the summit and watched all the security guards from all the countries race over to try and stop Osama bin Laden. They put all of this on the Australian television and it’s now, like everything else in our lives, circulating via YouTu be.
These are examples of parody forcing repression in order to reveal the hidden mechanisms by which society regulates what one can and cannot say.
S.D.: I think these activists who use humor in this way are doing something very interesting here: they imagine a world which almost can’t be. The Yes Men, for example, imagine – publicly and visually -- the world as a place where Dow would appear on the BBC and state that they were actually going to take responsibility for their corporate actions. As you watch this something stays; what remains is the absurd and simultaneously sane questions of “why is it so crazy that a corporation would do this?” “Why is this something that has to be a prank?” “Why is it that this will never happen in our world, in our lifetime?” This creates a certain utopian space. Satire and irony can close things down and make people dispirited. For example: all politics is a joke and the best you can do is get a good laugh out of it. But there is also that critical utopian moment where things get opened up.
There are two artists, Packard Jennings and Steve Lambert, that have done a wonderful project on the streets of San Francisco. They asked a bunch of urban planners and transportation engineers from that city to imagine what San Francisco could be like. Then they, in their own words, “exaggerated” the plans a little. They got the city to put up these huge street posters and kiosks showing the San Francisco of tomorrow, and the tomorrow they display is absurd, ridiculous. One poster promoted turning SF into a wildlife refuge with pictures of office workers eating lunch with mountain gorillas. Another suggested turning Candlestick Park into an organic farm and 49ers linebackers into human plows. These crazy ideas are, on the one hand, easily dismissed, but there is also something about the very impossibility of these plans that opens up a whole terrain for radical imagining. When we are talking about talking about greening a city, why do we limit ourselves to imagin ing a park here or a green space there? Why don’t we re-imagine what a green city could be? These impossible futures allow us to do that; they push our thinking past the possible while at the same time -- by positing absurd impossibilities --don’t limit this expansion with the “right” and final answer.
H.J.: So part of what a critical utopianism does is that it not only imagines a better world, but also uses that as a yard stick to measure the presence. When we imagine alternatives, we go back to the world we live in and ideally we also begin to think of the steps that will get us from the undesirable present to the much more desired future. When we do this in comic terms, we tackle a much older tradition of worlds turned upside down, topsy-turvydom, of carnivals, the idea of suspending the normal rules of operation, creating a counter-world where a hunchback could be crowned king. Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is the classic image of carnival in which the powerless become powerful and we imagine the redistribution of power. Historically, carnival has served both as the beginnings of actual street riots and peasant uprisings. It has also served as its own kind of social mechanism so there are societies where once a year women beat their h usbands and the women in the village take arms against the husbands who have been the most abusive to their wives. Anthropologists believe this serves some check on the abuse of power – the ability to do a comic reversal actually has this effect of forcing people to look at themselves with notions of public shame.
S.D.: In England it was called “rough music.” In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries people would go outside people’s houses and parade those who had violated community norms in the same way. The question always is: is that a safe release valve that makes us satisfied with the present or is it a stepping stone into thinking about a new future?
H.J.: As we look at the campaign season we are seeing this “rough music” directed at the candidates in a number of ways. This video about Hillary would be a good example of this. This video came out [a few weeks after the New Hampshire primary] and it does what satire does well: takes the sacred and makes it profane.
[Hillary's Inner Tracy Flick]
It’s an inspiring spoof. Partially it’s reactive to the Hillary Clinton crying video that people credited with having had a huge impact in New Hampshire, a video that itself circulates heavily on YouTube. Most of us read about the coverage and then went back to YouTube to find the clip and watch it.
Here the video producers are using YouTube to break that clip down and make fun of the construction of Clinton. Why should it matter so much one way or another that she cried in New Hampshire? Why have the news media pumped this into such a big event? Part of what is fascinating about this video is watching the footage of Hillary crying get recontextualized this way so quickly.
S.D.: Why this worked in a lot of ways is not because of Clinton crying, it’s about the meta-story of Hillary crying. Mainstream politics has become just a game so why not make that into a game. So in the film Election we see Reese Witherspoon getting angry and Clinton getting angry; revealing contemporary politics through this old Hollywood flick. To me then the question becomes: what does this do to politics? Does it open it up for new formations or does it actually close it down into a game of cynicism and culture?
H.J.: Part of what’s interesting is that Election itself was originally a spoof of the election that brought Bill Clinton to the White House. Tracy Fleck was supposed to be George Bush the senior who runs against the rogue figure, Bill Clinton figure, during that campaign. So the film was written as a reaction to one election, but the roles are reversed here. Part of the statement is that the Clintons are acting as everything they ran against. The young upstart is now the establishment figure; the Clintons are trying to run on experience when before they were making the case that inexperience was a virtue and that being from outside Washington would allow Bill Clinton to bring fresh perspectives and incorporate change. The Bill Clinton campaign was of a man from a town called Hope and the Obama campaign has successfully mobilized hope in this election. Obama stole the words 'hope' and 'change' out of the lexicon of the Clinton campaign and the Clintons are forced to campaign on a platform that sounds much like what they ran on before. The irony here, I think, is the inter-textuality in using Fleck as a stand-in for Hillary Clinton.
S.D.: I think one of the things you see through YouTube politics is DIY politics in its visual activist form. It is changing the way we do and think about politics. Politics is no longer just about rational discourse, or about the policies – it’s also going to be about laughing, it’s going to be about joy. Politics will be played out on the affective as well as the intellectual level. Often times this is understood as being dangerous: politics is supposed to be about reason and reason only; we are supposed to shy away from emotion because that leads to fascism and so on. But I also think that mobilized correctly, this sort of DIY absurdity and humor introduces something very exciting into this political season: the idea that politics is about emotions and how people feel about candidates and not necessarily how they think about the issues. This is not a new insight, it’s common fodder for political commentators. What’s new is how it&rs quo;s also happening on the margins. YouTube and DIY politics have been doing this affective political work for quite some time.
H.J.: I don’t think we have to show the Obama girl who made a brief appearance there: the reference of that constructed the campaign as a fan movement and this video uses fan knowledge of the election in a sophisticated way. An understanding of the video helps us think in new ways about these presidential candidates. Part of what’s happened is that we have changed the language of American politics, which tended to be wonkish in the Clinton mode, or tends to be in other ways exclusionary, it shuts people out through inside-of-the-beltway language. Such rhetoric doesn’t acknowledge the realities of their experience, it doesn’t touch their emotions at this point, at its best it’s hyper-rational. Instead, YouTube politics embraces a world where things we know as a consumer or as a fan become a valid point of entry into thinking critically about the political process. I think that is part of what has turned things around and why so many you ng people are participating in the process at this go around. Primary after primary, we are seeing many more people under the age of 30 than over the age of 60 voting. This is probably the first time this is happening since 18-year-olds got the right to vote.
I was waiting in line in Boston last week for the Obama rally. Eight thousand people were waiting in the freezing cold stretched around four city blocks to get in there. As I was listening to young people around me and how they got interested in the candidate, they kept making references to The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, the Obama girl, the 1984 video spoof []. The parodies are what got their attention and made them feel like this might be a different kind of political process. From there, they tried to get more information and eventually they were pulled to this event, which was not announced by mainstream media at all. Mainstream media simply said that Obama was going to be in Boston. If you were there, you heard about it from a social networking site, text messages, or cellphone calls.
I just saw a documentary about the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. Four thousand students converged on Chicago in 1968 shouting “the whole world is watching.” [In my opinion a much larger] number of people were in Boston waiting in line in the freezing cold for Obama. I have to say, I was a senior citizen in the crowd at the rally. My wife and I were there and we were by far among the top five percent in age: this was overwhelmingly an under-30 crowd and we were excited to see that level of youth participation.
S.D.: Moving from parody, we are going to look at a fan video done by a high-power fan, a member of the Black Eyed Peas, and Jesse Dylan (Bob Dylan’s son) for Barack Obama. The video illustrates this idea of affective activism or emotional politics, but instead of mobilizing irony or satire as we have been talking about up until now, this video makes an emotional appeal firmly rooted in the authentic.
H.J.: The comments we are hearing there are from Obama’s speech in the New Hampshire primary. It’s not a victory speech, but a speech delivered after coming in second, describing the uphill struggle he still imagines for his campaign. One of the things that strikes me when I listen to the original speech is that its cadence comes straight out of Martin Luther King. The rhythms in that speech have some of the same rhythms out of the Black church which made the “I have a dream” speech so powerful. Its rhetorical strategy comes out of Walt Whitman. If you think about how that speech is organized, we’re seeing him envision an America that spans across history and connects his struggle for elected office with a long set of struggles for change, for progressive reform, of various groups coming together and being woven together. He builds it from these evocative phrases, not even complete sentences. If you go back and look at Walt Whitman&rsq uo;s “I Sing the Body Electric,” you’ll see how Whitman describes America through the laborers, the city dwellers, and the farmers in these same kind of evocative phrases and gradually stitches them together into a unified whole. So Obama constructing a Whitmanesque vision of America, which is then layered over with a chorus singing along with him in his video. Obama is no longer speaking in a single voice, but in a collective voice with many people, and consciously choosing African-American images, Asian-American images, Chicano, and Latina images to try to construct a visual equivalent to that same narrative. Now, this is done outside of the campaign. This video was produced by from the Black Eyed Peas, who brought his friends together to work on it. He was not sanctioned by the Obama campaign, the video was outside of the campaign’s orbit and distributed almost entirely through YouTube, as far as I can tell. But it is hitting a massive number of peo ple.
S.D.: Last time I saw there were two million views.
H.J.: The campaigns are giving up control over the political process by allowing these other groups to participate. And these other groups are shaping the way we perceive the campaign’s message.
S.D.: We saw groups in the last campaign that took messages outside the official campaigns, the 527s, organizations like MoveOn and Swift Boat Veterans, but they were still political organizations. Now this is two well-connected individuals with a good studio and good video, but individuals nonetheless. You’re seeing more and more of this on YouTube. When I was searching for advertisements for Clinton and Obama, half the stuff that would come up would be these homemade advertisements.
One of the things I find interesting about this video is the form: there is the rhetorical style you mentioned, but there is the aesthetic form that works here too: the look and feel of the music video. And just like advertising, these videos have protocols embedded within them, ways of understanding and making sense in the world. When you watch a music video, it’s emotional, it’s collective, and it’s inspirational. I think one of the reasons this video promotion for Obama works really well is because that collection of emotional responses also resonates with his message of hope and change and “Yes We Can”.
One of the things I am very interested in is how spectacle works, and this is a spectacle. A spectacle uses a language of emotions which one could not articulate in a logical sentence. Some of this is done brilliantly here. “Yes, We Can,” for example. When they keep repeating “yes, we can,” translating it once into the famous Chicano farm worker’s slogan: “si, se puede.” they are positioning themselves and Obama as part of this tradition of coming out of the farm workers’ struggle, without ever openly acknowledging this.. But they are also making an implicit argument about how culture transfers. When “yes, we can,” or “si, se puede” becomes the rallying cry, it’s basically saying that we are going to adopt a slogan from those outside society and move it into the center. The immigration policies of most of the candidates suggest that the point is to Americanize immigrants; using “yes, w e can” as a rallying cry suggest the opposite: that we need to immigrant-ize America. It doesn’t matter what Obama’s immigration policy is, rationally speaking. It’s not Obama stating this as a platform slogan, but everything about that video that says this.
One more thing on Obama. I’m teaching a class on the New Deal and propaganda back at New York University, where we talk about rhetorical strategies. Clinton is absolutely right to ask of Obama is “what is inside the hope?” But as one of my very smart students pointed out, if you answer that then the power of the hope disappears, or at least is seriously limited. Keeping the idea of hope open and empty means that it gets filled in by the rest of us.
H.J.: That is part of the design. The “we” is perhaps the most important word here. My friend Justine Cassell at Northwestern University is a linguist and she did studies on the rhetoric of young people leading in online communities versus adults speaking in political speech. One of the things she noticed was that adult politicians use the word “I” overwhelmingly: “This is what I am going to do for you”; “this is why I am the best qualified person”; “this is my experience.” Young people online use “we” much more extensively: “what are we going to do?”; “what are our concerns?”; “what’s our agenda?”; “how do we get there?”
And Obama taps that same empowered “we” of all of us working together in an online community – within what I like to call collective intelligence culture – where people pool their knowledge and work towards a common goal is very different rhetorically. It’s no question to why we had Clinton evoking Lyndon Johnson versus Martin Luther King, trying to say that the power resides in the chief executive who leads the country, while Obama said no, that power comes from the bottom up, from the grassroots upwards. The King movement was a grassroots movement where King symbolized the vision or articulate the vision, but it was the many people who were marching in the streets who brought about change. One reason why young people feel such a connection to the Obama campaign may be its embrace of a rhetoric of shared responsibility and collective intelligence.
And it’s not just a rhetorical device. So when Clinton talks about her experience and he talks about new ideas, they are really setting up an idea of one person on top of the country (“commander in chief from Day One”) versus a collective process involving lots of people working together to bring about change. You see it in the ways that the Obama campaign mobilized around Facebook and MySpace. A social networking technology doesn’t necessarily just connect the candidate to the voter, but also connects voters to each other. What the Obama campaign is creating, then, is an infrastructure for youth-driven politics that will be in place for a long time to come as these people connect to each other as powerfully as they connect to the centralized campaign.
S.D.: I am going to rip something off from Henry’s last book, where he argues that while technology is important, there is something that is even more important going on, and that is protocol shifting. One of the things that both Henry and I are interested in is mass culture, partly because these are the places where protocols for thinking about how we operate in the world are articulated and then leak out into the political sphere. Sometimes this transfer from the cultural to the political happens consciously – and this is something I write a lot about in my Dream book and I try to do in my political activism. But sometimes this happens more or less unconsciously through the everyday process of people learning how to think on their computer or while watching TV and then demanding this way of thinking and way of being when they move out into the political sphere.
I was reading this French philosopher Jacques Rancière -- and I strongly advise doing this sitting at a pool when it’s 70 degrees out while thumping dance music is playing in the background, because doing this yesterday at the hotel where Otis put me up I think I finally understood Jacques Rancière for the first time. In any case, Rancière has this thing that he calls the “distribution of the sensible,” or, in this case, the redistribution of the sensible, by which he means that what the avant garde – be it aesthetic or political – can, and should, do is literally change what you can imagine or feel through your senses. What Henry and I are trying to say here is that something is happening that is redistributing the sensible, away from the leader-driven, expert-driven, bureaucratic, representational democracy towards a participatory, collective, emotive, affective, discursive democracy. And you see little snippets of it in the main stream campaign showing up in the form of the snow man, with this music video, and then refusals of it by Mitt Romney, Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Clinton and so forth. Others are open to it like Obama or Huckabee. But the language and the experience of politics is changing.
H.J.: The things we are learning to do through play are quickly being applied to political life. So the game, The Movies, comes out and one of its first applications is to make a film about French democracy. Machinima [films animated using game engines] quickly becomes mobilized as a resource for political change. Just as in a hunting society we learn by playing with bows and arrows, so in an information society, we learn by playing with information. We can see that pedagogy in place in the story of the snowman which we began with, where these kids in Minnesota made a spoof and then they made a film that put a spin on a political debate.
I didn’t talk about what happened next. When Mitt Romney refused to debate a snowman, they made a series of other snowman videos calling attention to Romney’s record and some of his stances and those began to get picked up by the mainstream media. At a campaign appearance in New Hampshire, Romney held up a sign that said, “Say no to Obama, Osama and Chelsea’s Mama.” That sign got photographed by a blogger. Then someone with a camcorder on their phone in Iowa cornered Romney and asked him about it and then podcast the video showing Romney saying to the guy, “just lighten up slightly.” Then, the phrase “lighten up slightly” was used in another snowman video. CNN then took that snowman video and the surrounding controversy and put it back on television. So the kids in Minnesota had the opportunity to use CNN to direct attention back to this controversy of Romney and the sign. It was this set of connected citizens around the country who started by playing and then got more savvy in terms of media.
Another example would be the HPAlliance [], which is an organization of thousands of Harry Potter fans working together to bring about change. Their argument is that kids in this generation learned how to read and write through Harry Potter. Now they are learning how to change the world through Harry Potter. They are calling themselves Dumbledore’s Army and mobilizing the idea that just as Harry Potter questioned authority, stood up for what he believed in, and organized his friends in the face of restrictions, that’s what’s needed for a political life and what it takes to change the world. They have organized campaigns around Darfur, genocide, labor conditions, and Wal-Mart, and are using the fan network to organize people politically. They are mobilizing the idea of resistance in the Harry Potter fantasy series to inspire political resistance in the real world. < /p>
S.D.: Since this is an arts school, a number of you must have read Learning from Las Vegas, which is a book by Robert Venturi and others about what architects can learn from Las Vegas. It is really a pioneering document of postmodernism, and that’s usually how it is remembered. But it is also about learning from popular culture. Venturi and his colleagues’ whole point is that architects create this idealized person and then build for that idealized person. Venturi and his colleagues argue for a different strategy: we have to step back and see what people really do and then decide how we are going to engage with what people’s real desires are no matter how banal or corrupt they may seem. (And Las Vegas can certainly seem that way.) There are two stances you can take towards popular culture and politics: one is to dismiss it and say that if people turned off their televisions, got away from their Game Boys, stopped listening to their iPods, a nd just started reading policy papers, this world would be a better place. It probably would, but that’s not going to happen. The fact is that people are engaged in popular culture and I think Henry and I are very interested in what you can learn from that: what are people doing to popular culture in a way of dialoguing with it, moving it to places which the creators never intended, and then moving it someplace else, into the political realm to see what happens to politics as it is transformed into a place we could have never imagined.
H.J.: Popular culture is shared culture. It is not defined automatically along the ideological axis. To paraphrase Obama, they watch 24 in blue states and The West Wing in the red states. The point is that the shows that might seem ideological are watched by a large number of conservatives as well as by liberals and represent a shared vocabulary they can use to talk to each other. So, in a sense, fandom provides a political space through which to explore common ground, alternative perspectives. Fan conversations allow us another space through which to compare notes about our hopes and dreams about what kind of society we want to live in. Here, conservatives and liberals can talk outside of the predetermined terms of more overtly ideological discussions. And now that fan language is being pulled back into the political process where it’s associated with candidates like Obama or Huckabee, both of whom are trying to position themselves in a post-pa rtisan world. Both are taking some positions that are traditionally Republican and some that are traditionally Democratic. Both are trying to create a language they think will appeal to independent voters. That’s why they are moving the images and practices of popular culture into public space, hoping to articulate a shared vision for the future grounded in our common fantasies. We had to escape the divisiveness of partisan culture before we could find any common ground about where this country needs to go.
S.D.: Often, the conversation stays within the tropes of popular culture and, as such, it can be banal, divisive and so on. But there are moments where you actually see the movement into a vibrant politicized culture. I find those to be very exciting moments as a language is developing which we actually don’t quite know the parameters of yet. What I think is interesting about Huckabee and Obama is, whether or not they win, what they have done is legitimize this discourse. And they will not be able to contain it if or when they get into power. My wife, who is actually a Clinton supporter, has asked me, “what happens if [Obama] gets into power and is not able to actually deliver any of this?” My response is that it doesn’t matter, the cat’s out of the bag. People are already dreaming and once that starts happening, you can’t stuff those dreams back in.
We’ve seen this at different times in our history, around Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was a skillful, but essentially average, politician, and yet he unleashed a set of dreams which he couldn’t contain. John F. Kennedy, too, was a middling politician, but he also unleashed a set of aspirations that he could not contain. Interestingly enough, culture was an integral part of both of their campaigns as well, and I think we’re seeing that again in this moment. Culture becomes a place in the free world where one can imagine: what if?
H.J.: We have been celebratory here about the ways popular culture is influencing the political process but we should also be clear that participatory culture does not always result in beautiful things. When you empower everyone in society to take media in their own hands and construct their own images, then some of the images that circulate are going to be nasty. As we look towards the fall campaign, as exciting as these various movements are, whether it’s Clinton or Obama, we are going to see some really ugly stuff. It will not necessarily be produced by the candidates, who will have a certain floor that they will not drop below, but by the public that will go way lower than that. We have already seen photo-shopped collages that represent Obama as Borat. We have seen those that represent Obama as the chauffeur who drives Miss Daisy, with Clinton in the back seat of the car. There is all kinds of stuff that evokes sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, anxi ety about young people, and, on the left, anti-Mormon perspectives that are mobilized through this participatory culture.
S.D.: I think that asks us to look at the answer differently. Henry has this idea of collective intelligence and I have this idea of a bell curve of meaning and I think they are getting at the same thing. If you put a lot of answers out there, a lot of visions out there, a lot of images out there, yes, you are going to get a lot of outliers on both sides that are reprehensible. But you’re also going to get a collective middle which is articulating itself and bringing up new ideas in ways that actually transcend that left/right divide in a very exciting way.
I remember Seattle during the anti-World Trade Organization demonstrations and the chanting of, “This is what democracy looks like.” My first thought was, “oh God, no.” If this is what democracy looks like we’re in trouble because basically we had these signs and they had those signs; we were for this, they were for that; this person was wearing this…It seemed like a mess of ideas. From the distance of a couple of years, those kids were right: this is what democracy looks like. It looks different. It’s not a disciplined party, it’s a lot of voices, but through all of them arises this collective intelligence.
H.J.: I have been haunted by that phrase “this is what democracy looks like.” So what is the image bank of democracy? What does democracy look like? In this country, we have images of the American revolution and we have the images that grew out of the New Deal and those images of Norman Rockwell, Frank Capra versus the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Boston Tea Party, the spirit of ’76: those were the kinds of image banks that both the right and left have drawn on for a long time to represent democracy. In that sense, democracy has no present, it has no future, it only has the past. There are only retro-images of democracy.
Recently, at MIT, we started the Center for Future Civic Media, and part of what we want to do is figure out what the future of democracy looks like. How do we envision a new set of ideas about what a democratic society could look like and how do we create those images so that they really take hold of peoples’ imaginations?
For me, as I think about civic media, I think about Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone, which has a lot to say about some of these questions. Putnam talks about the 1950s bowling leagues and the ritual of people gathering together on a Friday night as a community to bowl. While you’re bowling, you have to wait for the next guy, and while you’re waiting you have conversations and those conversations intertwine peoples’ lives. They have a sense of a civic identity, which Putnam felt was lost in the privatization of culture. He suggests that television pushed people into the home causing social isolation and the breakdown of civic consciousness. Putnam blames entertainment for abandoning news for entertainment. But I think there is a way of reading Putnam’s example in Bowling Alone, which is to say that what was powerful about bowling wasn’t bowling but the conversations that took place around bowling. Pop culture or games are no more trivial than bowling and in fact, they can perform some of the same functions in terms of providing a common ground for conversation. Whatever we’re doing when we form guilds and World of Warcraft communities, it’s not bowling alone, it’s much more in line with civic organizations that Putnam celebrated. What we may be seeing in the age of the internet is a digital equivalent of those bowling leagues that excited Putnam. We form community around things which seem trivial at first glance but become the common culture. And the conversation keeps expanding to aspects of our own lives, our hopes for the future of society and politics. Such play may be where we find out what democracy looks like for the next generation.
S.D.: What will democracy look like? Democracy, as we know it, essentially comes about with the word. We are moving into a different world, which is about the image and the word combined, which is about discussion as opposed to just dissemination. What’s coming may or may not look like what we’re used to democracy looking like. We’ve talked about the image of democracy. Maybe there won’t be an image of democracy; maybe there will be images.
H.J.: I am very interested in this concept of collective intelligence, which can be purely described as a world where nobody knows everything, everyone knows something, and what is known to some members is available to the group as a whole on an ad hoc basis. And I use that word ad hoc because it connects us to Cory Doctorow’s use of the word “adhocracy,” which refers to groups of people working together in short-term tactical alliances towards a common end that can disintegrate at any time but can get reconfigured when the next task presents itself. We might look at Wikipedia as an image of what democracy will look like. The pooling of knowledge, the creating of a shared space, where one has to work through and accept the diversities of ideological perspectives, where there is a notion of neutrality as a goal we work towards not by negating differences, but by acknowledging them and incorporating them into each entry. The collaborative basis of W ikipedia may be thought of as the basis of society. What if we took Obama’s “we” and connected it backwards in time with “we the people,” and forward in time to a Wiki-nation. What if the platforms of the candidates were constructed online in an open, transparent way by people pooling their visions for the future and collaborating to produce the political stances the next generation of leaders will embrace.
S.D.: I think that’s a nice place to open up [for questions].
Q. How does this DIY culture figure in a commercial space?
S.D.: I think there are two ways to look at it. As soon as DIY gets folded into a commercial space corporate values will take over. This is the standard co-optation critique. I am less interested in the critique and the inevitable disappointment that follows once it happens and more interested in the question of what will you do once that happens?
One of the things I love about Abbie Hoffman is that he shunted his purity-loving comrades aside and said, “look, I know I am going to get misrepresented. Now, how can I get my own misrepresentation to have its own political effect?” I’d like us, the DIY producers of video and politics, to think in terms of post-commodification. That is, not anti-commodification, but post-commodification. This means that we know that commercialization is going to happen so we think about how to play it to our political and aesthetic advantage? This moves us away from the purity and danger model which has been crippling DIY politics for years and years.
H.J.: I think YouTube or whatever has credibility only as long as it allows people to do what they want to do and there are ongoing efforts to create open source platforms that will offer alternative systems of distribution for citizen media. YouTube depends on being as open as possible with a broad range of participation. Now, what worries me about YouTube are the copyright issues, and the constant struggles between the corporate model over control of intellectual property. Much of the politics we have shown here involves mobilizing images owned by other people, repurposing footage. Even from the Black Eyed Peas counts on Obama not being upset that his speech has been repurposed and recontextualized in that video. If the corporations constrain our ability to use their materials effectively as part of the public culture, then they may shut down some of the new kinds of speech we are describing. If we can’t quote our culture back and use our symbols in powerful ways, then we are in deep trouble. Imagine if the guy who wrote The Night Before Christmas put a trademark on Santa Claus, what would have been the consequences of our society?
So we need to have this open society which enables this collaborative use of intellectual property. That may be the most important political struggle of our time: to have control over the ability to use our culture to comment on itself. That is where corporate control of media worries me much more than corporate concentration at the present time. Much of mass media may be in the hands of five people, but the tools of the online world are in the hands of many, many people. Part of what led me to write Convergence Culture was this sense: I was reading a book which said we live in a world without gatekeepers and anyone can say what they want, and another book was saying that media is controlled by five people that determine everything we access. And I said, “that’s true and that’s true, so why don’t we think about the relations between the two?” What is the interplay between those two realities that we are living in? Battles over copyright will det ermine the relative power of participatory culture and mass media. So it doesn’t worry me that YouTube is owned by Google per se. But I do worry a great deal that corporate interests will further restrict what we can say on YouTube.
Q. What about exploitation?
H.J.: That is an important issue. I have written that 2006 is when we all embraced the fantasy of Web 2.0 and 2007 was when we woke up to the reality of unequal relations between the distributors who are making money off user-generated content and the expectations of consumers. These conflicts reflect the different values of a gift economy, where consumers produce stuff and circulate it freely among themselves, and a commodity culture, where Web 2.0 companies want to turn a profit on the free labor of their consumers. There is a huge debate about unpaid labor and what that does to creative workers. It does not negate the fact that we can use these platforms effectively to bring about change. But it does say that one of the first struggles one is involved with involves the rights of unpaid creative workers.
Q. What about the notion of the quiet consumer? [Consumers, for example, sit quietly during the duration of a film.]
S.D.: That model of the quiet consumer that reigned from the 1950s into today’s intellectual model is no longer the model. I think we’re both saying that. It may not be that we talk during the movies, but what we do is talk about the movies to each other as soon as the movie stops. The internet is filled with amateur experts.
Q. But it’s too late then, the film is already over.
S.D.: No, it’s not too late because one of the questions that people producing new movies are asking is, what are our fans thinking? I am not saying that this is not problematic and Henry can say more about this. What both of us are critiquing is the model of the passive receiver because it’s an easy, convenient model, but ultimately disempowering model of thinking about mass culture because it makes us feel like nothing can be done. What we’re saying is that stuff is being done on the ground all the time, people are citizen-consumers all the time. What we would like to see, and we’re seeing glimmers of this now, is the move of those models of active creation into the realm of citizenship, political citizenship.
H.J.: One of the things we do is quote. We have been talking about making videos, but what we haven’t talked about is grabbing moments from the endless flow of mass culture that is around us and putting those excerpts onto YouTube. If we think about the Colbert appearance at the Washington press club dinner, which many of you in this room would have seen, I’ll bet you didn’t see it on C-span, which is where it was aired briefly and ignored by the mass media. I bet you saw it on YouTube where fans kept putting it up as copyright owners slapped it down again. If you saw Keith Olbermann’s early stuff critiquing the war in Iraq, it was often through YouTube that people were sending his commentaries to each other, and gradually, as the public bubbled up and started paying attention to MSNBC, he was empowered to be a more powerful voice against the current administration than before. It’s very different than Walter Cronkite deciding to turn against the war in Vietnam: there was grassroots support shown to Olbermann, forcing MSNBC to open up a greater space for him to offer some of those critical comments and differentiate themselves from any other news network through Olbermann’s comments. So there are a number of ways now that we individually and collectively affect the circulation of media. Some of you have seen the John McCain clip, where he makes a joke out of bombing Iran, and that was something that would have previously appeared on C-Span, but now, there are people quoting it, suspending it, and remobilizing it through these alternative distribution platforms.
S.D.: This is how we tell our stories now – we quote from the media and the culture around us. We can either bemoan the fact that the old ways of telling stories don't seem to be working anymore, or we can look at this and say, where do we want to take this? Where do we want to go with it? I think that the intelligentsia is split on this. I wouldn’t even say split: I would say the vast majority are bemoaning the fact that entirely “new” stories aren't being generated, that instead people would rather reassemble what's already out there. I think that sort of “critical” stance leads nowhere. First of all, this borrowing and reassembling of existent culture isn't new: it's the hallmark of older folk culture. But what I am interested in is not whether it's better to create out of whole cloth or poach or pirate what's already there, or whether this is a new or an old practice. The fact is that it is happening, and the younger politica l activists and artists who work in this new (old) style are doing it because it works. The old way of communicating information, telling stories, is not working any more. They are grabbing from culture – grabbing from anything they can to produce messages that resonate with people. Starting from this point takes you past a rather impotent stance of critique and leads you into the much more interesting territory of figuring out how to use this communicative style in a way that furthers creativity and political possibilities, and does so -- and this is crucial in a democracy -- in such a way that speaks to the majority of the population.
Q. What strikes me is that you are still being suspiciously utopian in your views and perhaps putting a little too much emphasis on media or convergence systems that really aren’t capable of doing what you’re saying. And while you’re talking about collective intelligence, I am trying to understand collective ignorance. Another thing that was not brought up in today’s talk was that we have more access to more information outside of YouTube to make intelligent decisions, but at the same time, this is superficial. This idea of collective ignorance was critiqued really brilliantly by Jon Stewart when he was on Crossfire and actually took issue with the notion of the failure of that particular form of media.
H.J.: So let’s talk about some of the limitations or challenges of this. As I said in the beginning, I think about this as a critical Utopianist. What critical utopianism does is envision a change and then pose a question: where are we at now, and what are the steps to get there? And that is part of a larger re-examination. I see, in this new technology, in these new cultural practices, enormous potential for change. I think we can see, symptomatically, some real changes taking place in the political landscape right now, like massive increases in voter participation in this campaign, which I think are partially fueled by changing the language and changing the points of access. That said, there are lots of things that worry me about the new environment: your phrase “collective ignorance” is a good one. It’s still not the case that whatever we do on YouTube outweighs what happens on mass media. We still should be very concerned about the messa ges mass media promotes even if we have the power to re-contextualize and critique them. What we build will reach a smaller subset of the viewership than the people who see anything that covers over the television screen. That is absolutely the case so there is still reason to worry about ownership and about control of message.
Secondly, we should be concerned about attempts to shut down the channels that we use to communicate. So the internet neutrality debates right now are an enormously important struggle over whether we will be able to distribute our messages with the same fluidity and speed that messages are distributed by commercial media. And that is a danger point in this.
Third is what I call the participation gap, which is fundamental. It is not just a digital divide, which we have talked about for the last 20 years, about who has access to technology. The digital divide was focused on issues of technical access, which have been largely solved. The overall majority of American youth have access to computers and network computing through schools and public libraries, if not through the home. But many do not have access to the kinds of cultural experiences, social skills, and cultural competencies necessary to become a full participant in this new society. There is a new hidden curriculum, which emerges from having easy access to these media technologies that affects students at every level. Researchers, for example have looked at the attitude towards Wikipedia among kids who only have access to the internet through school libraries rather than at home. The kids at home are more likely to understand how Wikipedia produces knowledge and to have critic al perspectives on it than those kids who have ten minutes of access and have to get in and find the answer on the page and then pass the computer off to someone else. So it’s a kind of knowledge needed to participate that is fundamental, and many groups feel excluded or are not able to participate.
As we look at something like YouTube, that is exaggerated in two ways. One is the comments section on YouTube becomes a forum for hate speech so that anyone who wants to have a rational discussion on YouTube content takes it someplace else: into Live Journal, into blogs, into the social networking sites. You can’t have it there, anyone who submits anything there is going to be berated, and if they are black or female or queer they are going to be berated in the nastiest language possible, so it is a poisoned well. Yet in the face of that people are still providing material, then retreating elsewhere to discuss it. The overwhelming majority of the top 100 videos on YouTube are created by white, middle-class males. The user-moderated system pushes content up that is valued by a majority. It is a majoritarian set of principles that determine what gets seen at the highest level of YouTube and there is nothing there addressing the need to protect the rights of minority perspective s or ensuring diversity.
The ideals of collective intelligence demand diversity of input. There is a real value for everyone in society to have the broadest range of opinions in a collective intelligence system because the value of the final outcome is only brought by the diversity of the perspectives that shape its decision making. We are all losing in a system that substitutes majority rule for the desire to raise diverse perspectives and ensure deliberative decision making. So I think we’ve got to question some of the current structure. So, if I am seeing a potential here for change and I am seeing change coming out of a flawed system now, then that doesn’t follow that we should sit back and passively say whatever happens next is going to be great. Rather, we need to fight to ensure that the participatory impulses in our culture are pushed further.
* Henry Jenkins is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of nine books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. His newest books include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. Until recently, Jenkins wrote a monthly column and blogged about media and cultural change for Technology Review Online. A longtime advocate of games culture, he currently co-authors a column with Kurt Squire for Computer Games magazine which seeks to promote innovation and diversity in game design. Jenkins recently developed a white paper on the future of media literacy education for the MacArthur Foundation, which is leading to a three year project to develop curricular materials to help teachers and parents better prepare young people for full participation in contemporary culture. He is one of the principal investigators for The Education Arcade, a consortium of educators and business leaders working to promote the educational use of computer and video games. He was also one of the principal investigators on collaboration with Initiative Media to monitor audience response to American Idol with an eye towards developing new approaches to audience measurement. He is one of the leaders of the Convergence Culture Consortium, which consults with leading players in the branded entertainment sector in hopes of helping them adjust to shifts in the media environment.
** Stephen Duncombe's interests lie in media and cultural studies. He teaches and writes on the history of mass and alternative media and the intersection of culture and politics. He is the author of Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy and Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture; the editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader; and the coauthor of The Bobbed Haired Bandit: A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York. He also writes widely on culture and politics for scholarly journals and collections, as well as popular publications like the New York Times, the Nation, and Playboy. In 1998, he was awarded the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching by the State University of New York, where he taught before coming to New York University. Professor Duncombe has been a lifelong political activist and is currently working on a book about propaganda during the New Deal.
Copyright 2008 Communication Institute for Online Scholarship, Inc.
| <urn:uuid:85ee4476-2974-4380-8eeb-6e4f430f012e> | 2 | 1.671875 | 0.032196 | en | 0.969194 | http://www.cios.org/www/ejc/EJCPUBLIC/018/2/01848.html |
making local government more ethical
The Responsibilities of a Local Government Official's Spouse
Ethics codes do not generally have rules about the involvement of spouses of government officials in citizen groups. But this can create serious appearance problems, as it has in St. Charles, Illinois, an hour west of Chicago, according to an article in yesterday's Chicago Tribune.
The wife of a St. Charles school board member is an officer for a group set up to promote a $114 million school building referendum measure that is not only in the town, but in the school board member's district. I'd like to take a critical look at what various people have said about this situation.
The school board member sees no conflict of interest. He said, "My wife is doing that as a citizen of the community. I never made her do it. She chose to help and be a part of it. That's something that she believes in."
The school board president took basically the same view, with a mildly feminist twist: "It doesn't make a difference to me, because she is a public citizen and has a right to her opinions and political actions. To be held back because of her husband's position isn't appropriate."
A member of the group opposing the referendum said that it undermined his confidence in the referendum process. "It creates a level of discomfort and brings into question the objectivity of the board." Note that his view says nothing of the wife, but turns the issue toward the husband.
The acting director of the Better Government Association is quoted as saying that the wife's involvement "creates the appearance of a problem." He thinks it is up to the community to decide. But he doesn't say how. The community can't do anything about the wife, only about the husband.
There are two problems intertwined here. One is the definition of a conflict of interest. The other is how to enforce a conflict when it is not the government official who has the conflict, but a family member.
The husband shows a lack of understanding of what a conflict is. Conflicts do not involve a person's motives, but rather appearances and pressures on their objectivity.
Appearances first. The wife is wearing two hats: the hat of school board member's spouse and the hat of officer of a group pushing a school building in her husband's district. To someone who opposes the referendum, it looks as if the husband is pushing for it through his wife, no matter how independent she might actually be. The appearance is of government officials manipulating public opinion indirectly.
To consider personal pressures, let's hypothesize that the husband is privately against the referendum. By becoming such a public proponent of the referendum, the wife has made it difficult for the husband to come out publicly against it, thereby rejecting his wife's strongly held views before the entire community. Should someone be faced with this pressure?
This kind of conflict is difficult to enforce. Should the husband be forced to recuse himself? This would take off the pressure and bring more trust to the school board, but the conflict did not originate with him, so it will seem unfair to many people to require anything of the husband. And yet the husband can take the high road and choose to recuse himself, even if no rule or authority says he must.
But what if the school board doesn't vote, or if the vote occurred before the group was formed. The husband can do nothing but suggest privately that his wife not become so involved with this particular issue. But as the husband and school board president said, it is up to her, even though she is not a government official. But what's up to her is not just the right to voice her opinions, but the responsibility to preserve trust in government by not creating a conflict for her husband.
Is this responsibility to one's community not every bit as much the role of a citizen as the right of free speech?
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics | <urn:uuid:d10e5b4e-c8a4-408d-86ef-b68e1c564608> | 2 | 1.898438 | 0.099096 | en | 0.984905 | http://www.cityethics.org/node/682 |
Nate Silver separates signal from noise at the Athenaeum
Nate Silver separates signal from noise at the Athenaeum
Statistician-extraordinaire Nate Silver spoke to a packed audience at the Athenaeum on Thursday, Sept. 19, about how we look at data and information, sharing insights from his famously accurate predictions of the state-by-state outcomes of the 2012 Presidential election, and conveying some best practices for accurately analyzing and using data and information, separating the “signals” from the “noise.”
Silver began with a history of key technologies such as the printing press, that spurred historical shifts, transforming how humanity dealt with information. He noted how history and prediction are two sciences closely linked, since historical data is often key to predictions. He discussed the changes that are occurring from the emergence of “big data” but warned that large volumes of data do not supplant the scientific method and theory, structure for organizing and understanding of data and information.
In discussing failures of prediction, Silver said not enough robust analysis of data can be one culprit. Another problem in our current age is the rapid speed of data transmission, which can spread false information quickly. These problems can be compounded by the bias of pundits and news sources, also by news organizations that are more apt to report false information in their rush to be the first to report a story.
In discussing the lessons of 2012 and how his organization,, got the Presidential election right, when so many got it wrong, Silver cited three simple steps that led to that accurate prediction:
1) Averaging all the poll data available—
“Reduce the noise,” he said. “Instead of being distracted by all the outliers here and there, the question is ‘what’s the central tendency.’” According to Silver, news organizations tend to focus on the outliers. “If you can count polls, you are ahead of most of the pundits in America,” he said.
2) Looking at the Electoral College path to victory for each candidate, counting up to 270– the number of Electoral votes it takes to win the election
3) “Thinking in terms of probability”
He continued: “A lot of models … are really just putting a lot of simple and intuitive things together in a coherent way.”
His suggestions for accurate analysis:
1) Think probabilistically
2) Survey the data landscape
3) Know where you are coming from—know your own positions, biases, and weak spots when looking at data, since they affect your perception of the information
4) Try and err
What makes data rich, according to Silver?
5) Quantity (“large volume of data”)
6) Quality (“reliable inputs”)
7) Variety (“observations collected under a wide variety of conditions”)
Nate Silver is one of the nation’s most influential political forecasters and popular statisticians. In 2008, Silver founded his blog,, which provides a data-driven analysis of everything from politics to technology to sports. The site drew acclaim for providing in-depth and accurate political forecasts of the 2008 and 2012 national elections. According to one statistic, on the eve of the national election in 2012, one in five people going to The New York Times website were visiting FiveThirtyEight.
Silver’s influential role in political forecasting was by no means a given for an economics major from the University of Chicago interested in baseball. In 2002, Nate Silver was working as a consultant for the accounting firm KPMG when he developed a new method for predicting the performance of baseball players, which was quickly acquired by the Web site Baseball Prospectus. Using his knowledge of statistics, Silver engaged himself for a time playing professional poker before becoming interested in political predictions. After the 2008 presidential election when he correctly predicted the results of the primaries and the presidential winner in 49 states, his blog became an overnight sensation.
In September 2012, Silver published, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—but Some Don’t. | <urn:uuid:2586b7c2-6877-42dc-abe5-9e3f753a838c> | 2 | 1.78125 | 0.022698 | en | 0.94586 | http://www.cmc.edu/news/nate-silver-separates-signal-from-noise-at-the-athenaeum/ |
Cleaning & Maintenance Management Online
July 2012 Feature 4
One's Art Is Another's Graffiti
The best technique for removing unwanted scrawls should be easy, effective, ecologically safe and economical.
September 18, 2012
Graffiti can range from a simple paint marker tag to an intricately painted mural and, depending on your location, be quite prevalent.
An act of vandalism, graffiti "art" has its own lexicon — check out the Wikipedia entry for glossary of graffiti — and rules that govern its application, the supplies used and its location.
It is a fascinating cultural subset that dates back to prehistory but often carries negative connotations — especially today, considering that it is predominately practiced in urban areas.Graffiti
While any unsolicited graffiti can be an eyesore and a pain in the pocket, politically-motivated or gang-related variations can pose a safety risk, too.
"Graffiti can impact the value of the property that is tagged, as well as the surrounding community," says Patty Ducey-Brooks, marketing manager for Motsenbocker''s Lift Off Inc. "Additionally, graffiti gives the appearance that other criminal activity may be occurring."
Quickly and thoroughly removing tags, "throw-ups," scribbles, pieces and myriad other forms of defacement can keep a property safe and in good repair.
According to Tim Winesburg, president of Multi-Seal Corporation, if graffiti is removed, the vandals are denied the attention they are seeking.
"Failure to promptly remove the marks only encourages others to also use the location," asserts Winesburg. "Fast removal stops them in their tracks and sends them elsewhere. Additionally, fresh graffiti is easier to remove."
But, the process should not be haphazardly performed; environmental and personal safety precautions must be heeded to avoid potential damage to structures, the ecosystem and, of course, yourself and your workers.
Safety As A Forethought
The shift away from petroleum-based solvents to more environmentally friendly cleaners is making graffiti removal safer without sacrificing performance.
While not applicable in every instance — sometimes, you need to break out the big guns — water-based formulations are able to remove markings without damaging surfaces or harming users and the environment.
"Some products are now going for the green," notes Winesburg. "While the industry is trying to make products safer, graffiti removers will likely remain stronger than general cleaners, as effectiveness is still the bottom line requirement."
In accordance with the least harmful mentality, the formulation administered should be the mildest product available that sufficiently removes markings without damaging the surface, the surrounding ecosystem or the user.
Environmental precautions notwithstanding, users need to ensure that they are protected from dermal contact with a graffiti remover.
Our skin is the largest organ in our body, and it is quite adept at absorbing potentially toxic chemicals.
Not uncommon to other tasks performed by custodial and maintenance professionals, personal protective equipment (PPE) should be used when attempting to remove any graffiti.
At a minimum, goggles and rubber gloves should be worn to protect against splashes and unwanted contact.
If high-pressure rinsing is utilized, a face shield and a rubber apron can be supplemental PPE to provide an added layer of protection.
While the goal is to always completely and quickly remove any graffiti, safety — both personal and environmental — should never be an afterthought.
Grouping Graffiti Removal
According to Ducey-Brooks, for each application of graffiti, there is a means to remove it.
Removing unwanted matter is achieved by one or a combination of two processes: Chemical and physical.
A third method, though not an actual removal process, is to apply a surface protectant that makes it difficult for paint, ink or dye to adhere to a surface.
Here is a breakdown of the graffiti removal methods and how they work:
• Chemical removers
Relying on a reaction between the product and the graffiti, chemical removers emulsify the marking and allow it to be removed from the surface.
Chemical removers come in several forms, including concentrated liquids and gels that are applied directly onto a surface and wipes impregnated with any number of chemicals, each formulated to remove markings on specific surfaces.
As with any cleaning chemicals, you should read the product label and follow directions accordingly to get the most out of a product without exacerbating an existing problem.
After the graffiti is no longer adhered to the surface, it can be wiped away, rinsed with water or power washed to ensure complete removal.
• Physical removers
Rather than chemical means, physical graffiti removal relies on agitation to force a marking from the surface on which it was painted, sprayed or otherwise applied.
This technique is employed with things such as sandblasting, dry ice blasting or even using high-pressure water to agitate a surface after a chemical remover has been used.
According to Winesburg, some are moving away from sandblasting and other similar physical processes because of the potential for damage to surfaces.
Aside from potential damage, alternative blasting media like walnut shells and sodium bicarbonate are limited in their efficacy, largely relegated for use in only the most environmentally sensitive areas or in instances where the price of removal is not a concern.
Physical agitation is often employed in conjunction with a chemical remover to speed up the process and to ensure more thorough removal without the need for repeating the process multiple times.
• Preventive coatings
By creating a barrier between a surface and any potential markings, preventive coatings help protect surfaces from graffiti.
Applied at the factory during manufacturing, during final construction of a structure or after graffiti removal has been performed, preventive coatings help protect your investment.
Preventive coatings are generally classified as one of two types: Permanent and sacrificial.
A permanent protective coating is one that is designed to withstand a series of cleanings, providing extended protection of a surface.
But, warns Winesburg, a permanent coating will not protect infinitely and may require reapplication over time, especially if harsh chemical removers or abrasive techniques are employed.
Sacrificial coatings are designed to deteriorate during cleanings, providing protection only one time before they require reapplication.
While selecting a graffiti removal process or protective coating is a maintenance expenditure, it should not be done on upfront price alone.
Other factors to consider are cost in use, ease of cleaning, durability and appearance — even a clear coating can alter the appearance of a surface.
Also, because labor accounts for 90 percent of a cleaning and maintenance operating budget, selecting a low-cost graffiti removal method that requires a significant investment in time can prove rather costly.
"Anyone involved in graffiti removal needs to understand the importance of using products that work, won''t damage property and aren''t dangerous to the user," recommends Ducey-Brooks.
Another thing to keep in mind is that not all graffiti can be fully removed, even after multiple cleanings using various removal processes.
Sometimes, a shadow will remain where the prominent marking once was.
In such a case, specific chemicals are made to delve deeply into pores and finish the removal.
However, some markings could be permanent, and the only solution may be replacement, painting, staining or otherwise refinishing the surface.
As Winesburg points out, taggers use graffiti as a way to call attention to themselves or the group with whom they are affiliated.
And, because they hold no regard for defacement or damage to property, it is wise to invest in a graffiti removal program that minimizes potential damage from the onset and discourages taggers altogether. | <urn:uuid:0f8216b4-7ba2-43a7-a41e-ddb41086e879> | 2 | 2.25 | 0.022945 | en | 0.930357 | http://www.cmmonline.com/articles/print/one-s-art-is-another-s-graffiti-2 |
British Politicians Clinch Deal to Regulate Scandal-Hungry Press
Britain's three main political parties struck a compromise deal on a new regulatory system for the country's newspapers in the early hours of Monday morning, a lawmaker said, hours before what was to be a divisive parliamentary vote on the issue.
The government came under pressure to put a new regulatory system in place after a judge-led inquiry and a series of arrests laid bare a culture of phone hacking and malpractice in some parts of Britain's scandal-hungry press.
The deal is expected to see a new press regulator set up, the introduction of fines of up to 1 million pounds ($1.5 million), and an obligation on newspapers to print prominent apologies where appropriate.
"I think we have got an agreement which protects the freedom of the press, that is incredibly important in a democracy, but also protects the rights of people not to have their lives turned upside down," Harriet Harman, the deputy leader of the opposition Labour party, told ITV TV.
Culture Secretary Maria Miller, a member of the ruling Conservative party, played down how much her party had been forced to compromise.
A deal spares Prime Minister David Cameron what was shaping up to be an embarrassing political defeat in parliament that would have deepened rifts in his coalition government and ends a long-running debate that has exposed close ties between politicians and the press.
Harman said the deal would be put to the lower house of parliament later on Monday, but that she hoped a vote could be avoided and that "everybody will be agreed".
The three parties got a deal after agreeing to enact legislation in the upper house of parliament to ensure the new system cannot be easily altered or watered down later.
The three parties had been divided over whether a new press regulator should be enshrined in law and over how its members would be chosen. | <urn:uuid:849ab299-27a0-4794-9b40-cb8c8c745400> | 2 | 1.5 | 0.073805 | en | 0.974778 | http://www.cnbc.com/id/100562283 |
Who is arming the Syrian conflict?
Syrian rebel fighters look at a multi-rocket launcher in Tal Abyadh, a Syrian town close to the Turkish border, on Thursday.
Story highlights
• NATO country Turkey has most powerful military in the region
• Syria has long been the Middle East's top importer of Russian military equipment
• Rebels are mostly surviving on black market guns and arms taken from Syria's military
• Analyst says fall of heavily armed Syrian army would lead to worse situation than Libya
Syria's shelling of a border town in Turkey has sparked fears that President Bashar al-Assad's attempt to snuff out a rebellion at home could turn into a damaging regional war between the two neighbors.
Five civilians, all women and children, in the town of Akcakale were killed by Syrian artillery rounds in the worst single case of violence on the Turkish side of the border since Syria's unrest began last year.
What's behind Syria's shelling of Turkey?
While Syria hasn't confirmed its motive for firing into Turkey, rebels fighting an 18-month war against the Assad regime have allegedly been using positions on the Turkish border as a safe haven to regroup and re-arm following battles with Syrian troops.
Another explanation, says one expert, is that in a cat-and-mouse pursuit to neutralize rebel groups near the border, Syrian artillery units simply overshot their target.
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"These things happen in the fog of war," Jeremy Binnie, Middle East and Africa editor of Jane's Defence Weekly, told CNN. "If your artillery battery is 10 kilometers away and you're trying to call a strike down on the border, it's pretty easy to put a few rounds in the wrong place if you put in the calculations wrong."
Opinion: Why Turkey, Syria don't want war
The incident prompted the Turkish parliament to give the government powers to authorize troops to deploy to foreign countries, along with retaliatory Turkish artillery strikes on military positions in Syria -- but both sides have insisted they don't want war.
Which country, Syria or Turkey, has the stronger military?
Turkey, a NATO member, has the most powerful military in the region. Binnie says Turkey flies Western-made jets, and that its older equipment has been upgraded and supplemented with early-warning radar airplanes and unmanned drones.
Turkey also has a formidable ground force that has spent decades fighting the Kurdish separatist rebels of the KPP in the southeast of the country.
Analysis: Kurds add explosive element to Syria equation
Despite their robust military capability, and despite the fact the Syrian army has been worn down by 18 months of civil war, Binnie says Syria's missile capabilities mean Turkey's not interested in anything more than limited border excursions.
"Turkey wouldn't want to tangle with the Syrians, who do still have the ultimate deterrent of long-range chemical weapons capabilities," he told CNN.
What weapons do Syrian forces have? Where are they coming from?
Syria's greatest strength has also been its weakness in the current fight against rebels.
The Assad regime spent years buying up sophisticated long range missiles, air defense systems and chemical weapons to counter the threat of an airborne attack from Israel.
But the long-term focus on long range weaponry has left the regime unprepared to fight a guerrilla war in the streets of Syrian cities -- an approach that requires flexible, mobile infantry with stockpiles of smaller arms.
Syria has been the Middle East's top importer of Russian weaponry, most of which is now more than 20 years old -- and Binnie says the Syrian air force has been underfunded to the point of "regime forces dropping what amount to IEDs (improvised explosive devices) from helicopters."
Recently, Syria has attempted to get some of its Mi-24 attack helicopters refurbished by Russia -- a move which prompted an international outcry -- and has ordered Yak-130 advanced training jets and MiG-29 fighter jets that have yet to be delivered.
While the Kremlin has pledged not to deliver new weapons to Syria, it is unclear whether the Assad regime will get the weapons it ordered before the uprising began last year.
Syria's heavy weaponry and battle tanks may be Russian made, but wars of attrition like this also require huge amounts of small arms.
To that end, Iran -- Syria's other major regional ally -- has been using Iraqi airspace to fly small arms, infantry weaponry and personnel into Syria, according to U.S. officials.
Analysis: What does Iran get for supporting Assad?
Iraq says it is conducting random searches on Syrian-bound Iranian planes that use its airports, but as Binnie points out, "the Iraqis don't have any way to force Iranian planes to land."
In addition to the tanks and troops fanned out across the country, Syria has also deployed communications interception systems to try to track rebels. CNN reporters who have been on the ground there say for the most part using a cell phone is out of the question, as Syrian forces can easily triangulate the user's location.
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What weapons do Syrian rebels have? Where are they coming from?
The rebels are severely outmatched, and most of their weaponry was either taken from Syrian military arsenals or obtained from local black markets.
In addition to individual infantry weapons like AK-47s, tripod-mounted PK machine guns, and RPG-7 grenade launchers -- the ubiquitous shoulder-mounted weapons seen on nightly news reports from conflicts around the world -- Binnie says rebels have also been seen with Strela-2 shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles.
Rebels have also commandeered Syrian tanks, but since they don't generally have the capacity to maintain and refuel them, according to Binnie, they've instead been stripping off the heavier guns and mounting them on civilian vehicles.
Binnie says the increasing number of improvised weapons and explosives being used in Syria shows the rebels, without a foreign power to supply them, may be struggling to maintain adequate levels of ammunition.
"Some of the weapons in Syria look very similar to what we've seen in the last year in Iraq, where they've finally ran out of all the ordinates that were lying around from the 2003 U.S. invasion and have had to improvise," he told CNN.
What other groups are operating in Syria?
Charles Lister, an analyst at IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, says militant groups "of all persuasions" are now operating in Syria -- and that some groups increasingly appear to be carrying out joint co-ordinated attacks.
While Lister says the majority of the militias now in Syria are not Islamic extremists, analysts believe a hard-line jihadist group known as Jabhat al Nusra, which has claimed responsibility for a string of recent suicide attacks across Syria, has close links with al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq.
"Their focus now is on recruiting suicide bombers. They want to copycat the Zarqawi model," Noman Benotman, a former Libyan Jihadist now with the Quilliam Foundation in London, told CNN.
More: Pro al Qaeda group steps up bombings
The "Zarqawi model" refers to the devastating campaign launched by al Qaeda in Mesopotamia leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi after U.S. troops occupied Iraq.
At the same time, Kurdish militias now control at least 10 towns and cities in north-eastern Syria, some near the Turkish border -- an issue Lister says is "of significant concern to Ankara", which has been battling Kurdish separatists along its borders for decades.
Report: Turkey's Kurdish conflict turns deadlier
Is Assad losing control of the Syrian army?
Not yet, it seems. Despite some high profile defections, Binnie says "we haven't seen significant Syrian army units going across to join the rebellion."
Binnie says: "The speculation is that the Syrian army is focused on keeping itself together more than deploying some of the potentially less reliable units into rebel held areas."
Like most of the nation itself, the majority of Syria's conscripted army is Sunni Muslim. Rather than send some less-than-keen battalions in to kill their own countrymen, Binnie says the approach may be to have the army bombard cities from afar, before sending in loyal militias to do the up-close fighting street to street.
"You give the militias the weapons and the mobility, and you just make sure that the army units which are largely Sunni conscripts just stay together," he told CNN.
The plan seems to be working; Binnie says many people have been surprised at how well the army has managed to maintain its cohesion during the rebellion.
Is Syria going to end up like Libya?
The world cheered the fall of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi -- but what has been left in his place are a number of well-armed militias operating beyond the control of a relatively weak central government operating in the capital Tripoli.
Analysts don't believe the Assad regime is in danger of collapse any time soon -- Syria's army is bigger and better organized than Gadhafi's was in Libya, and foreign intervention into the civil war seems extremely unlikely at this point.
But if the regime does fold at some point, Binnie says the weapons proliferation in Syria is going to be far worse than in Libya.
"Syria has a much bigger military, more missiles and chemical weapons, and the potential for major sectarian violence," he said. "So it's a little like Libya, but potentially much, much worse." | <urn:uuid:756f7310-a645-437c-905b-98cd04b929e1> | 2 | 1.804688 | 0.095185 | en | 0.960277 | http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/05/world/meast/syria-turkey-weapons-explainer/index.html?hpt=wo_c2 |
Crime and punishment in sport: Laying down the law?
Story highlights
• Fallout from racism case involving John Terry and Anton Ferdinand shows no sign of going away
• Fabio Capello lost his job as England coach; Terry lost the England captaincy and then retired
• In the U.S. the NBA and MLS have begun to explore new ways of punishing players.
"If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be punishment -- as well as the prison." Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A year after QPR played Chelsea at Loftus Road in an English Premier League game there is no sign of the rancor in the racism case involving John Terry and Anton Ferdinand diminishing.
Rancor which has prompted despair from media commentators at the systematic abuse players dish out to one another, their refusal to engage in the pre-match handshake ritual and abusive tweets from players and fans alike.
Prior to Chelsea left-back Ashley Cole labeling the FA as a bunch of twats in the saga, players' union chief Gordon Taylor, who is the Professional Footballers' Association chief executive, likened the dispute to a "mafia feud", while former English Football Association chairman Lord Triesman believes is is "unconscionable" the case has rumbled on for nearly a year.
Last month Chelsea captain Terry was handed a four-match ban and a $356,000 fine by the English Football Association after being found guilty of racially abusing Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand.
Terry's punishment came just days after he announced his retirement from international football, claiming that England's governing body had made his position within the national team "untenable".
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In July, the 31-year-old defender had been found not guilty of a racially aggravated public order offense at Westminster Magistrates' Court.
Published last week, the FA's 63-page report into the case made for uncomfortable reading as it detailed the dispute and its subsequent fall out over the last year.
Racism remains "significant" problem in English football
Prior to punishing Terry, the FA also had to deal with another racism case, handing Liverpool striker Luis Suarez an eight-match ban and a £64,000 fine after finding the Uruguayan guilty of racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra.
The rights and wrongs of Suarez's punishment and of the Terry case -- should the FA, for example, have charged the Chelsea captain after he had been cleared in a court of law -- have been played out endlessly in the media and across social-networking websites like Twitter.
But Terry's punishment and his perceived bitterness regarding the way he has been treated also raises questions about the way the FA, indeed all sports organizations, punish players.
Why for example does any punitive action taken not incorporate a rehabilitation approach as recently suggested by PFA chairman Clarke Carlisle?
With black youth unemployment approaching 50 percent in some areas of London, why doesn't the FA insist that Terry spends a significant number of hours working within an inner-city community project?
Likewise why doesn't the FA donate Terry's fine to grassroots projects actively involved in building better community relations?
Mourinho defends Terry in racism case
The FA's position is that it is a not for profit organization and all the money that it makes goes directly back into football, either through the professional game structure or directly as investment back into the grassroots structure.
"There doesn't seem to be much appetite for creativity from the Football Association," Piara Powar, executive director of Football Against Racism in Europe, told CNN, after being asked whether a "rehabilitation" approach might be more productive in the long term.
"Rehabilitation is a fundamental principle of British justice and we still believe in it," added Powar. "That is how our justice system works and the idea of rehabilitation should be applied to English football.
"The Terry case has dragged on for so long that it has allowed for some very mixed messages to come out, so I think a rehabilitation sanction is a really good idea.
"What can we think of that allows him to feel that he is not being persecuted?"
Liverpool's Suarez fined, suspended over racist remarks
However, one Premier League footballer has reservations about such an approach.
"I think that in principle the idea is a noble one," said the Secret Footballer, who writes anonymously about his experiences of playing in the Premier League.
"How would the FA pick an organisation or youth team without being biased?
"It's a bit like politics -- nobody is happy with the current situation but nobody seems to have a practical alternative.
"I think the FA are bound by what they can and can't do from a legal standpoint. Fines and bans are written in to contracts and players agree to the possibility of this action when they sign a specific contract with the FA.
"Most players do this anyway. Every team has a 'in the community' vehicle that it uses mainly to capture the next generation of supporters and players.
"All players take it in turn to meet the kids, answer questions, give out awards and play in a little game with them. "You won't read about that though because it isn't very interesting.
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"We're talking about punishment for racist abuse here. I certainly don't feel that coaching a group of kids for a week is a suitable punishment.
"As a parent would you want your Black or Asian child to be coached by a player that is only there because he has been charged and subsequently convicted of racist abuse? I don't think I would."
The Secret Footballer insisted that there was nothing more professional footballers hated than missing games.
"Missing games hurts footballers more than any other punishment, if we are to buy in to a zero tolerance approach, then the punishment needs to fit the crime and we should not be scared to level 10 game bans for players found guilty of racist abuse. Like Suarez."
In recent years it has been argued that leading sports bodies have not always been consistent in the way players, clubs and or federations have been sanctioned.
In November 2011, UEFA fined the Bulgarian Football Union $52,000 for its fans' racist abuse of England players during a Euro 2012 qualifier in Sofia in September last year.
Fast forward to Euro 2012 and UEFA fined Denmark's Nicklas Bendtner $125,800 for exposing boxer shorts adorned with the logo of an online betting company as he celebrated scoring against Portugal.
Likewise in November, FIFA president Sepp Blatter suggested that players who have been racially abused should shake hands with their opponent upon the final whistle and move on.
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A new approach?
Over in the United States, various different sports have been testing the water in trying to come up with different ways of punishing miscreant players.
Notably the NBA wants to penalize divers or "floppers" for repeated violations of an act the league says has "no place in our game".
However, the players' association plans to file a grievance with the league office and an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, arguing that it should have been consulted first before the new rules were implemented.
That NBA approach might win the support of Stoke City manager Tony Pulis, who called for the FA to punish Liverpool striker Suarez for diving after a 0-0 draw at Anfield on Sunday.
Major League Soccer's Disciplinary Committee has also been coming down hard on cheating players in the U.S., but retrospectively
Every week the committee -- a body of five people whose names are not public -- announces suspensions and fines for actions that were not caught by the referee in the previous weekend's games.
The league owners want to change the culture of the league from being "physical" to more "creative", but the players are unhappy that the league is "re-refereeing" games.
Meanwhile, back in England, intriguingly it is understood that a "rehabilitation" approach could be considered by the FA in the future. Watch this space.
Football Focus
• bpr south african soccor senzo meyiwa death _00000402.jpg
| <urn:uuid:bd3095e6-0d73-4a7f-8a07-4219b17f0fd8> | 2 | 1.65625 | 0.029907 | en | 0.966225 | http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/08/sport/football/football-terry-crime-and-punishment/index.html |
Will radar-rattling between Asia's powerhouses turn to conflict?
As this scene from Chengdu, China, in August last year shows, the dispute has sparked nationalistic anger in both countries.
Story highlights
• China-Japan tensions escalated after incident between respective navies
• Kingston: This is a militarized game of tag that could spark wider hostilities
• Both sides continue to press their claim over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands
• Code of conduct in disputed seas could prevent armed miscalculations
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this week condemned China's "unnecessary escalation" of tensions between the two nations over disputed islets known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan.
He was referring to two incidents in January when Chinese frigates reportedly locked weapons radar onto a Japanese vessel and a helicopter, a claim China denies. Once fire-control radar is locked on, a missile can be fired at the designated target, generating obvious risks of miscalculation.
READ: Barbs between China, Japan persist
At best this is a militarized game of tag but one that could, at its worst, spark wider hostilities. When Japan indicated that its jets might fire tracer bullets to warn off Chinese aircraft, a Chinese general responded that Japan should refrain from doing so, as this would be taken as an act of war. In this context, there is good reason to be concerned that Asia is sleepwalking its way towards war.
On February 6, Abe told the country's parliament, known as the Diet, "The incident is dangerous conduct that could have led to an unforeseeable situation. It is extremely regrettable that China carried out such a one-sided, provocative act when signs are emerging for dialogue."
READ: Can China, Japan avoid clash in 2013?
He added, "I ask the Chinese side to return to the spirit of mutually beneficial, strategic relations and prevent the recurrence of an incident like this. I strongly ask them for restraint so that the situation will not escalate further."
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Why is Japan feuding over islands?
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The probing has escalated in 2013 as both sides have scrambled jets and patrol boats shadow each other. Given the perilous state of bilateral relations, and recent efforts at fence-mending, why the radar-rattling? And why did Abe only go public with his concern a week after the latest incident?
READ: How U.S. can help avert Asia crisis
The Chinese Foreign Ministry initially seemed curiously unprepared for Abe's allegations, deflecting questions and suggesting reporters ask the relevant agencies involved. But the spokeswomen did say that Japan should stop conducting "illegal activities," meaning the deployment of Japanese ships and jet aircraft in the disputed seas and airspace around the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands.
China's Global Times pugnaciously dismissed Abe's allegations as a "self-directed and self-acted farce," staged in preparation for his visit to Washington later this month. Abe is known to seek closer security cooperation with the U.S. and has stated that he intends to revise the Constitution to ease constraints on the Japanese military.
It is not clear how Abe could exploit the incident to sway the Obama administration since it doesn't reveal anything about China that Washington doesn't already know and worry about. The radar incident may indeed play into Abe's hands, reminding Japanese that they live in a dangerous neighborhood. But given North Korea's missile and nuclear testing program, it's safe to say they already know that.
The Japanese media reaction has been predictably outraged, but the Mainichi did point out that China's actions signal frustration with the Japanese government's intransigent position of denying that there even is a territorial dispute. Japan knows from experience how frustrating this can be as Russia also maintains there is no territorial dispute regarding what Japan calls the Northern Territories, near Hokkaido. When former premier Yukio Hatoyama recently visited China, he caused a stir at home when he acknowledged that there is a territorial dispute, prompting the defense minister to call him a traitor.
So is this merely a case of Abe hyping the dangers poised by China to advance his agenda of constitutional revision? Or is China upping the ante in a calculated risk?
Probably a bit of both. Revising Japan's peace constitution is controversial with voters and Abe is eager to gain control of the Upper House of the Diet in summer elections. Since Abe has a lock on security issues, focusing on the China threat has its uses. Equally, Beijing is keen to remind Tokyo that this problem will not go away and that it will continue to press its claim to sovereignty and is willing to take disproportionate risks to pressure Japan into at last acknowledging there is a dispute.
In January, a succession of prominent Japanese politicians visited China, signaling a thaw in relations. Natsuo Yamaguchi, head of New Komeito, Abe's ruling coalition partner, delivered a letter from Abe to Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping. Xi responded quite positively to Abe's call for improving relations and a summit. His comments led to a brief toning down of fiery rhetoric in China. The incidents also follow China's efforts to involve the United Nations in the dispute to determine the validity of its claim that the islands are a natural extension of its continental shelf.
The radar-rattling also raises questions about who gave the orders or whether the frigate captains were acting at their own discretion. Monolithic images notwithstanding, this incident underscores the reality that there are various state actors in China with varying agendas. The problem is that the island dispute has become highly politicized in China and the genie of nationalism limits room for maneuver. Emotions run high and in such a context the current dead-end policy is the path of least resistance.
Is Asia heading toward war just as Europe did a century ago? There are also parallels with Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations 80 years ago in February 1933 over censure of its occupation of Manchuria and subsequent aggression throughout Asia until its defeat in 1945.
China suffered more than any other country from this rampage. Like China today, Japan felt that the international status quo was biased and denying what it deemed its legitimate aspirations. It decided to modify that status quo by force of arms. History doesn't repeat itself, but Mark Twain reminds us that it sometimes rhymes. In 1913 and 1933, there was a rational expectation that cooler heads would prevail and governments would come to their senses. Asia in 2013 may not be sliding towards war and China and Japan understand how mutually beneficial relations have been, and how much they risk losing, but we also know the folly of assuming risk away.
Leadership transitions generate risk because new leaders need to project strength, a need that complicates the compromises necessary to lower bilateral tensions. The zigzagging of diplomacy and confrontation on display highlights that re-shelving the sovereignty issue and managing this dispute won't be easy.
The increased diplomatic activity is a good sign, and should urgently focus on hammering out a code of conduct in the disputed seas and airspace that can help prevent armed miscalculations. Both nations have already agreed to establish an emergency hotline and it's now time to get that connected.
Let's hope that the various lessons of 1913 and 1933 are absorbed by all the relevant parties, including Washington, and Asia's two leading nations wake up before a nightmare descends.
Asia's disputed islands
| <urn:uuid:67d69b5b-2bcc-4b97-a6a4-91889049f7e6> | 2 | 2.28125 | 0.392809 | en | 0.956963 | http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/08/opinion/japan-china-relations-kingston/index.html?npt=NP1 |
The strange political bedfellows behind 'The Giver'
Story highlights
• "The Giver" is based on Lois Lowry's 1993 Newberry Medal-winning novel
• The film, which opened over the weekend, partners conservatives and liberals
• Conservatives like the message of the consequences of government overreach
• Liberal producer Harvey Weinstein says the film was made "without a political agenda"
High up in the Heritage Foundation's headquarters, a conservative "who's who" gathered last week to screen a movie. Conservative media critic Brent Bozell III, who once called much of Hollywood's work "clearly out of bounds, offensive and dangerous," heaped praise on the production and its producer.
The producer was famously liberal, award-winning movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who has produced some of Hollywood's most controversial films.
The film is "The Giver" -- based on the 1993 Newberry Medal-winning novel by Lois Lowry -- which hit big screens Friday. The dystopian story is based on a script shepherded into production by actor Jeff Bridges, a Hollywood liberal icon who some are floating as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Montana. (Bridges has ruled out a run.)
"The Giver," which stars Bridges and liberal donor and actress Meryl Streep, tells the story of Jonas, a boy living in a seeming utopia without hunger, pain or war who breaks free of the stifling, colorless "sameness" when he learns the true horror of how this idyllic state is achieved -- through coercion and memory suppression.
Box office report: 'The Giver' rounds out top 5
Conservatives like Bozell and Heritage Foundation president and former Sen. Jim DeMint see a not-so-subtle message against overreaching government power. "The Giver" demonstrates how even well-intended government can wind up crushing individual freedoms, turning utopian dreams into dystopian reality.
"It's refreshing to see Hollywood produce a cautionary tale that demonstrates the danger and sadness inherent in relying on government to protect us from all unpleasantness," DeMint told CNN.
Review: 'The Giver' based on cerebral gobbledygook
Weinstein disputes the political message that conservatives like DeMint see at the movie's core. He told CNN the movie was made "without a political agenda. Lois Lowry's iconic novel was written to make us all think about the importance of things like free choice, emotions and family, and the movie stays very true to that."
The film is being co-produced by Weinstein and Walden Media, a company owned by billionaire Phil Anschutz that has previously backed family-values fare like the C.S. Lewis-derived series "Chronicles of Narnia" and pushes "life-affirming" messages in its films. In addition to numerous business interests, Anschutz owns the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.
In contrast to Anschutz's tame productions, Weinstein has previously backed content like the "Kill Bill" franchise that has pushed boundaries for its ubiquitous violence.
Bozell, who as recently as January feuded with Weinstein over his films' content, offered praise for "The Giver" and Weinstein's production.
Trailer Park: 'The Giver'
"The movie is the complete package -- a good story, well told. ... I tip my hat to (Weinstein). It's really laudable that he would do this," Bozell told CNN.
Other prominent cultural conservatives are lining up to praise the film's message. Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia Charles Chaput dedicated part of his weekly column to the film, saying, "This is a wonderful film. Nothing in the movie version of The Giver will offend a family."
University of Southern California professor and expert on Hollywood politics Steven Ross chalks up the strange bedfellows behind "The Giver" to money.
"Politics is politics, business is business," he said. "Hollywood is first and foremost a profit-making industry."
'The Giver': Jeff Bridges' 18-year dream comes true
Ross thinks the partnership results in Weinstein's group hoping to tap a huge opportunity in the Christian and family values market, while conservative activists "are thrilled to get their message out into the mainstream."
Bozell agrees that conservatives need to embrace Hollywood's quality while staying true to their values; that family values and conservative-themed films need to be "more professional" to be effective.
For his part, Weinstein is "thrilled that the movie is getting fans from both conservatives and liberals. It shows how universal ideals apply to both sides of the political aisle alike, and maybe Washington and the world's leaders can learn something from 'The Giver.' "
Calls for comment by CNN to Walden Media and Anschutz were not immediately returned. | <urn:uuid:24efca17-6d4a-4700-b622-5553dcd6dd9c> | 2 | 1.632813 | 0.082878 | en | 0.952758 | http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/18/politics/hollywood-liberal-conservative-the-giver/index.html |
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Simulating Earth's Southern Ocean and Its Climate
Weijer, W., Sloyan, B.M., Maltrud, M.E., Jeffery, N., Hecht, M.W., Hartin, C.A., van Sebille, E., Wainer, I. and Landrum, L. 2012. The Southern Ocean and its climate in CCSM4. Journal of Climate 25: 2652-2675.
The authors write that "the Southern Ocean is a region of extremes: it is exposed to the most severe winds on the earth (Wunsch, 1998), the largest ice shelves (Scambos et al., 2007), and the most extensive seasonal sea ice cover (Thomas and Dieckmann, 2003)." And they indicate that various interactions among the atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere in this region "greatly influence the dynamics of the entire climate system through the formation of water masses and the sequestration of heat, freshwater, carbon, and other properties (Rintoul et al., 2001)."
What was done
In the words of Weijer et al., they "explored several key aspects of the Southern Ocean and its climate in the new Community Climate System Model, version 4 (CCSM4)," including "the surface climatology and inter-annual variability, simulation of key climate water masses (Antarctic Bottom Water [AABW], Subantarctic Mode Water [SAMW], and Antarctic Intermediate Water [AAIW]), the transport and structure of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current [ACC], and inter-basin exchange via the Agulhas and Tasman leakages and at the Brazil-Malvinas Confluence [BMC]."
What was learned
The nine researchers state that "the CCSM4 has varying degrees of accuracy in the simulation of the climate of the Southern Ocean when compared with observations," some of which we list as follows: (1) "the seasonally ice-covered regions are mildly colder (ΔSST > -2°C) than observations," (2) "sea ice extent is significantly larger than observed," (3) "north of the seasonal ice edge, there is a strong (-4°C < ΔSST < -1°C) cold bias in the entire Pacific sector south of 50°S and in the western Australian-Antarctic Basin," (4) "positive biases (1° < ΔSST < 4°C) are found in the Indian and Atlantic sectors of the Southern Ocean," (5) "significant differences are found in the Indian and Pacific sectors north of the ACC, with the CCSM4 model being too cold (< -2°C) and fresh (<-0.3 psu)," (6) "AABW adjacent to the Antarctic continent is too dense," (7) "North Atlantic Deep Water is too salty (>0.2 psu)," (8) "in the Indian and Pacific sectors of the Southern Ocean, north of 50°S and below 3000 meters, the too-salty AABW penetrates northward, resulting in a denser-than-observed abyssal ocean in CCSM4," (9) "the model underestimates the depth of the deep winter mixed layers in the Indian and eastern Pacific sectors of the Southern Ocean north of the ACC," (10) "in the southern Tasman Sea and along the eastern Indian Ocean boundary ... the model mixed layer depth is deeper than observed by more than 400 meters," (11) "in all sectors of the Southern Ocean, Model CFC-11 concentrations in the lower thermocline and intermediate waters are lower than observed," (12) "model CFC-11 concentrations in the deep ocean (below 2000 meters) are lower than observed in the basins adjacent to the Antarctic continent," (13) "model surface CFC-11 concentrations are higher than observed," (14) "the production of overflow waters in the Ross Sea is too low by about a factor of 2 relative to the limited observations," (15) "the depth at which the product water settles was also shown to be too shallow by about a factor of 2," (16) "the subtropical gyre of the South Atlantic is too strong by almost a factor of 2, associated with a strong bias in the wind stress," (17) the mean position of the BMC is too far south in the CCSM4," and (18) "the model variability in the position of the BMC is significantly less than observations."
What it means
In light of their several findings, Weijer et al. conclude that as the CCSM4 currently stands, it "may underestimate the sequestration of heat, carbon, and other properties to the interior ocean," with the result that its parameterizations may "lead to significant biases in the representation of the Southern Ocean and its climate," which is not a characteristic we would hope to see in our models.
Rintoul, S.R. and Sokolov, S. 2001. Baroclinic transport variability of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current south of Australia (WOCE repeat section SR3). Journal of Geophysical Research 106: 2815-2832.
Scambos, T.A., Haran, T.M., Fahnestock, M.A., Painter, T.H. and Bohlander, J. 2007. MODIS-based Mosaic of Antarctica (MOA) data sets: Continent-wide surface morphology and snow grain size. Remote Sensing of Environment 111: 242-257.
Thomas, D.N. and Dieckmann, G. 2003. Sea Ice: An Introduction to Its Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Geology. Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA.
Wunsch, C. 1998. The work done by the wind on the oceanic general circulation. Journal of Physical Oceanography 28: 2332-2340.
Reviewed 5 September 2012 | <urn:uuid:0862e1df-0825-4dd6-af98-46f8c2d51c73> | 3 | 3.46875 | 0.02622 | en | 0.921797 | http://www.co2science.org/articles/V15/N36/C1.php |
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How to release memory pages occupied by the thread stack when possible
, 7 Jan 2006
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Give me a thread and I'll show you a stack...
Before we start
This article assumes the reader has some skills in Win32 API. In particular, such terms as virtual memory, threads, thread stack, should be clear prior to reading this article. To learn those subjects, I'd personally advise a book of J. Richter's.
We'll discuss the Win32 thread stack allocation mechanism here. I believe this mechanism lacks some very basic functionality which may be useful sometimes. In some situations, a lot of system resources can be saved by a relatively easy way.
Thread stack
Every thread in Win32 has its own stack. It serves as a placeholder for automatic (local) variables, function parameters, function return address, and some other stuff. Whenever you call a function - more stack is consumed. And it is freed after the function is exited.
The stack allocation mechanism in Win32 is the following: each thread has its maximum stack size which must by specified upon creation. For the primary thread created by for the application by the system, it's written in the EXE by the linker; for other threads, the stack size is specified as an argument in the CreateThread function. If you give 0 to CreateThread, then it takes the same value used to create the primary application thread. The default value MS puts in the EXE is 1Mb. It can be overridden by the following:
#pragma comment (linker, "/STACK:0x500000")
// Default stack size is 5Mb.
Well, you'd probably ask why so much memory is reserved for the stack? The answer is that the memory is reserved, not necessarily allocated. Upon creation of the stack, the system reserves the specified size of the virtual memory in the process' address space, with only a few pages allocated. When the thread consumes all the allocated pages, new pages area allocated on-the-fly by the system. Up until the whole reserved range is allocated. If the thread attempts to consume even more memory - an EXCEPTION_STACK_OVERFLOW exception is raised.
The next question that would probably arise is why limit the stack at all? The answer is that the stack of the thread must be a contiguous memory block (in the virtual address space). When you start a thread, the system finds a free contiguous memory range in your address space with the adequate size. This range is marked as reserved (so that its parts won't be used for anything else). So that if you reserve too much space for every thread - you can run out of virtual address space, even though the system still has more memory. For 64-bit applications, you can freely give every thread 10Gigs, there shouldn't be a problem with that (well, I haven't checked that), but in Win32, with its 4Gb address space, with 2Gb accessible in the user mode, you should be careful about how much the stack of the thread is allowed to grow.
We said the system allocates the memory pages for the stack on-the-fly. How is this implemented? When the thread is created, the range for its stack is reserved and a few pages are initially allocated. The last allocated page has a PAGE_GUARD attribute. When it is eventually accessed, the system raises a STAUS_GUARD_PAGE exception, which is handled by the system. If there's no room for the stack to grow then an EXCEPTION_STACK_OVERFLOW is raised. Otherwise, the next consecutive page is allocated with the PAGE_GUARD attribute. In such a way, the stack for the thread becomes allocated.
Note: This means that the thread should access its stack page-by-page, without any trespassing. Otherwise, there's a chance to miss the guard page and fall on the unallocated one, which will lead to GPF (EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION exception). For example, you could declare a large array on the stack, and access it from the end. In order to avoid such situations, when you declare large variables on the stack, the compiler automatically adds the so-called stack probes (which is an explicit access of the stack in the needed order).
What is missing
Up until now, we talked about how the stack grows. But what if we'd like to shrink the stack? Consider a thread calls a very stack-consuming function (some deep recursion or etc.). During the call, memory pages are allocated (unless the stack was already large enough). Than, after the function exits, the stack remains allocated, even though the thread may never need so much stack ever again. There is no mechanism to automatically free unneeded stack pages. Once the page is allocated - there is no way back! What can be done in such a case?
See the following example:
void Consume900K()
volatile BYTE pSomeBuf[900*1024];
pSomeBuf[sizeof(pSomeBuf) - 1] = 30;
// Otherwise the buffer
// may be dismissed during optimization
MessageBox(NULL, "Default stack", "", 0);
"900K consumed for the 1st time", "", 0);
"900K consumed for the 2nd time", "", 0);
return 0;
Try running this program and check by the task manager how much committed resources (either physical memory or the page file) this program consumes. You'll see that on the second message box, this amount grows dramatically, by about 900K. On the third message box, however, it is not significantly changed.
I remember J. Richter wrote in one of his books that such a situation is unwanted, and an application should create another thread to perform the stack-consuming operation. After that thread exits, the whole stack will be freed by the OS. Well, needless to say, this method is not ideal. Creating another thread apart from the obvious overhead (context switches, and etc.) sometimes can create too much mess, since every thread has its own TLS, APC, messaging subsystem, and etc. Besides that, sometimes you don't know from the beginning that a particular operation could be significantly stack-consuming.
Explicit stack release
Once we know the mechanism used to allocate the stack, we can make explicit changes ourselves, can't we?
Let's start. The memory page on x86 32 bit processors is 4K, on Alpha processors, it is 8K. Fortunately, there's a programmatic way to determine the page size. Let's define a global variable (although I hate using global variables) g_dwProcessorPageSize, and initialize it by the following code:
g_dwProcessorPageSize = stSysInfo.dwPageSize;
Next, before we make changes to the stack, let us have some diagnostic function to view the stack:
void DbgDumpStack()
#ifdef _DEBUG
OutputDebugString(_T("### Stack Dump Start\n"));
PBYTE pPtr;
_asm mov pPtr, esp; // Get stack pointer.
// Get the stack last page.
VERIFY(VirtualQuery(pPtr, &stMemBasicInfo, sizeof(stMemBasicInfo)));
PBYTE pPos = (PBYTE) stMemBasicInfo.AllocationBase;
VERIFY(VirtualQuery(pPos, &stMemBasicInfo, sizeof(stMemBasicInfo)));
TCHAR szTxt[0x100];
wsprintf(szTxt, _T("### Range: 0x%08X - 0x%08X,
Protect=%X, State=%X, Pages=%u\n"),
pPos, pPos + stMemBasicInfo.RegionSize,
stMemBasicInfo.Protect, stMemBasicInfo.State,
stMemBasicInfo.RegionSize / g_dwProcessorPageSize);
pPos += stMemBasicInfo.RegionSize;
} while (pPos < pPtr);
OutputDebugString(_T("### Stack Dump Finish\n"));
#endif // _DEBUG
Note: The stack is used in the reverse order. The push command decreases the stack pointer, that's how the processor works. Hence the memory is allocated for the stack in the reverse order too. So, this function will first display free (unallocated) range of pages, and then would come a guard page, and then you'll see the committed pages.
And now, finally, let's try to make some changes to the stack. Make a function StackShrink which would de-commit as much stack as it is currently possible.
void StackShrink()
PBYTE pPtr;
_asm mov pPtr, esp; // Get stack pointer.
// Round the stack pointer to the next page,
// add another page extra since our function itself
// may consume one more page, but not more than one, let's assume that.
// This will be the last page we want to be allocated.
// There will be one more page which will be the guard page.
// All the following pages must be freed.
PBYTE pAllocate = pPtr - (((DWORD) pPtr) %
g_dwProcessorPageSize) - g_dwProcessorPageSize;
PBYTE pGuard = pAllocate - g_dwProcessorPageSize;
PBYTE pFree = pGuard - g_dwProcessorPageSize;
// Get the stack last page.
VERIFY(VirtualQuery(pPtr, &stMemBasicInfo,
// By now stMemBasicInfo.AllocationBase must
// contain the last (in reverse order) page of the stack.
// NOTE - this page acts as a security page,
// and it is never allocated (committed).
// Even if the stack consumes all
// its thread, and guard attribute is removed
// from the last accessible page
// - this page still will be inaccessible.
// Well, let's see how many pages
// are left unallocated on the stack.
&stMemBasicInfo, sizeof(stMemBasicInfo)));
ASSERT(stMemBasicInfo.State == MEM_RESERVE);
PBYTE pFirstAllocated =
((PBYTE) stMemBasicInfo.BaseAddress) +
if (pFirstAllocated <= pFree)
// Obviously the stack doesn't
// look the way want. Let's fix it.
// Before we make any modification to the stack
// let's ensure that pAllocate
// page is already allocated, so that
// there'll be no chance there'll be
// while we're fixing the stack and it is
// inconsistent.
volatile BYTE nVal = *pAllocate;
// now it is 100% accessible.
// Free all the pages up to pFree (including it too).
pGuard - pFirstAllocated, MEM_DECOMMIT));
// Make the guard page.
VERIFY(VirtualAlloc(pGuard, g_dwProcessorPageSize,
// Now the stack looks like we want it to be.
And that seems to be all.
To test this technique, let's also make a function that probes the stack to consume the specified stack size.
void StackConsume(DWORD dwSizeExtra)
PBYTE pPtr;
_asm mov pPtr, esp; // Get stack pointer.
for ( ; dwSizeExtra >= g_dwProcessorPageSize;
dwSizeExtra -= g_dwProcessorPageSize)
// Move our pointer to the next page on the stack.
pPtr -= g_dwProcessorPageSize;
// read from this pointer. If the page
// isn't allocated yet - it will be.
volatile BYTE nVal = *pPtr;
And, finally, make a test application:
SYSTEM_INFO stSysInfo;
g_dwProcessorPageSize = stSysInfo.dwPageSize;
MessageBox(NULL, "100K consumed", "", 0);
MessageBox(NULL, "Stack compacted", "", 0);
MessageBox(NULL, "900K consumed", "", 0);
return 0;
You can run this application and monitor it with the task manager. You can see that it frees the stack after it is used.
Where to use
You can place an explicit call to StackShrink after every heavy (stack-consuming) operation. Also, it should be called before a call to any Win32 wait function, because while your thread is asleep, there is no need to consume extra memory pages. If you're implementing a GUI application with the message loop, then it'd be a good idea to call StackShrink every time the message queue is empty (before GetMessage). For MFC applications, there is an OnIdle callback. If you're writing your own message loop, then instead of writing it like this:
MSG msg;
Redesign to do this:
while (true)
MSG msg;
StackShrink(); // just before we go asleep
if (GetMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0) <= 0)
I've tested this method under Windows XP, and it seems to work OK. I believe there shouldn't be any problem in any Win32-based OS, since their stack allocation mechanism is the same. The only possible problem I suspect is that the OS theoretically may hold, in addition, the information about the thread stack in some other place, so that making explicit modifications makes the stack inconsistent. For example, each thread has a TIB (thread information block) associated with it, which has members such as StackBase, StackLimit, and etc. But up until now, I haven't seen such a problem, so that it seems not to be such a place.
Another note: I've seen pieces of code where functions return addresses to local buffers. Example:
PBYTE StupidFunc()
// blablabla
BYTE pVal[0x1000];
// blablabla
return pVal;
Of course it is immoral to do so, it contradicts to the programmers' ethics. But the fact is that, it works! After a call to such a function, you can access the buffer it returns, until you call another function that overwrites that piece of the stack.
And now, if you place StackShrink after the call to such a function, you'll not only damage a couple of the first bytes in the returned buffer, but more likely, you'll make a part of this buffer inaccessible. So, such a dirty technique must not be mixed with explicit stack shrinking.
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About the Author
Software Developer (Senior)
Israel Israel
Comments and Discussions
GeneralQuite interesting but useless PinmemberElmue5-Aug-09 13:28
GeneralRe: Pinmembervaldok6-Aug-09 0:42
GeneralRe: PinmemberElmue6-Aug-09 5:30
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How Does “Rolling Admission” Work?
Question: Can you please explain what Rolling Admissions means and how colleges determine when to send out your decision?
“Rolling Admission†colleges and universities evaluate applications as they arrive, and decisions are mailed shortly thereafter—usually within two months. Places are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Thus, when considering Rolling Admission schools, it usually makes sense to apply as soon as possible. I say “usually” because, if your junior grades were weaker than your norm or if you’re hoping to improve SAT or ACT scores, then it can be wise to postpone your application until you have stronger stuff to show the colleges.
Note, however, that Rolling Admission plans may have financial aid and/or housing “priority deadlines.” Try to apply well in advance of these since latecomers can be disappointed.
Most Rolling Admission schools will tell you (either right on their Web site or by phone, if you call to ask) what sort of turnaround time to expect … two weeks, two months, etc. Sometimes this can vary depending on the influx of applications at the time you submitted yours. Also, if all of your materials have not arrived, then your application may be put back on the shelf, and you will be stuck at the end of the queue. This can postpone your verdict for weeks … or forever, if your materials don’t show up eventually.
Thus, as an applicant, it is your responsibility to make sure that all application components have reached their destination. (Just because you’re certain that you sent them doesn’t mean that they were received or properly filed.) If you haven’t gotten a response from a Rolling Admission college within the time frame you anticipated, then you should check right away–if you haven’t done so already–to make sure that your folder isn’t gathering dust in the “Incomplete” pile.
Hope that helps. Good luck to you as your college verdicts “roll” in. | <urn:uuid:8629179d-9c9a-45cd-a1b3-6dbf68f02b73> | 2 | 1.65625 | 0.0398 | en | 0.946025 | http://www.collegeconfidential.com/dean/how-does-rolling-admission-work/ |
Colleges and Universities in South Carolina Consider Campus-Wide Smoking Bans
Access DeniedThe University of South Carolina as well as six other colleges and universities in the state are considering banning tobacco on campus, according to the University Herald, which specializes in university-related breaking news. While there are similar smoking bans and tobacco bans at other universities in the United States, this move comes as a surprise in South Carolina, which is one of the nation’s leading tobacco growers and producers.
As the largest university in the state, the University of South Carolina campus-wide tobacco ban would be big news and send quite the message. This ban would mean that the 40,000 people who live, work, study and play on the University of South Carolina campus would no longer be allowed to smoke. In fact, people who are visiting the university for a football game would not be able to smoke on university property — even in the tailgating parking lots.
The ban would prevent people from smoking cigarettes of any type, including electronic cigarettes (also known as e-cigarettes) and smokeless cigarettes. Harris Pastides, the president of the University of South Carolina, has stated that the university is exploring the ban in order to promote health and wellness across the campus. Pastides was formerly the dean of the School of Public Health at the university, so his passion for this ban does not come as a surprise to many.
Throughout the 2012-2013 school year, a task force made up of about 40 people discussed creating this particular tobacco ban. The members of the task force are all members of the University of South Carolina community. Ultimately, this group came to the decision that a tobacco ban would be beneficial for the public health of the campus as well as the image of the University of South Carolina. The final decision rests in the hands of Pastides. While he has publicly said he is leaning towards going tobacco-free, he will probably not make the final decision until the end of the summer.
University officials can expect reactions to be mixed if they do decide to move forward with the smoking ban. While some students will enjoy being able to walk through campus without dodging cigarette smoke and looking at littered cigarette butts, others will feel like some of their freedom is being taken away by their university. Colleges across the country who have made similar bands have found that some students will go to great lengths to try and get the bans repealed. For instance, the University Herald notes, some students at Clemson University have formed petitions in order to protest their campus-wide smoking ban.
If the University of South Carolina and other colleges and universities across the state do move forward to become a tobacco-free campus, they will be in good company. According to American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, there are just under 2,000 schools across the country who have banned smoking and tobacco from their campuses. In many ways, it appears the days of smoking after class are nearly gone. | <urn:uuid:a4975392-a727-46e5-adab-fce6557821b7> | 2 | 1.6875 | 0.065903 | en | 0.969964 | http://www.collegesanduniversities.com/colleges-and-universities-in-south-carolina-consider-campus-wide-smoking-bans/ |
Nonischemic Central Retinal Vein Occlusion
Nonischemic Central Retinal Vein Occlusion
Case 2:
Resolving Central Retinal Vein Occlusion
Inability to focus and blurred vision in the right eye of recent onset prompted a 71-year-old woman to seek medical attention. Her vision had deteriorated progressively over 2 weeks; now her visual acuity measured 20/100 in the right eye and 20/25 in the left eye. There was no afferent pupillary defect, and the intraocular pressure was normal in both eyes.
The patient was taking hydrochlorothiazide, 5 mg/d, for longstanding hypertension and aspirin-meprobamate, 200 mg/d, for arthritis and headaches. Her blood pressure was 128/70 mm Hg, and auscultation revealed no carotid bruits. The patient's complete blood cell count; erythrocyte sedimentation rate; and C-reactive protein, blood glucose, and lipid levels were all normal. A carotid duplex ultrasonogram showed no hemodynamically significant stenosis and essentially normal velocities of blood flow.
A slit-lamp examination revealed mild nuclear sclerotic cataracts in both eyes. A dilated funduscopic examination disclosed a moderately congested optic nerve with dilated and tortuous retinal vessels (A). Scattered throughout the fundus were dot, blot, and flame-shaped hemorrhages. A few yellowish white cotton-wool spots were also seen. A fluorescein angiogram confirmed a nonischemic central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO).
The patient returned 5 weeks later. The vision in the right eye had improved to 20/40. A dilated funduscopic examination found resolving optic disc congestion, less dilation and tortuosity of the retinal blood vessels, and resolving retinal hemorrhages and cotton-wool spots (B).
Spontaneous improvement can occur in CRVO, especially if the condition remains nonischemic (ie, if neovascularization of the iris or retina does not occur). All patients with ischemic CRVO and those at high risk for conversion to ischemic status (ie, who show capillary nonperfusion on fluorescein angiographic examination) should be followed up monthly for 6 months. Up to 30% of eyes with nonischemic CRVO will become ischemic in 3 years.1
If fluorescein angiography is not available, a relative afferent pupillary defect test may provide additional diagnostic and prognostic information and help determine the risk of ischemia and neovascularization.2 If an afferent pupillary defect develops, ischemia of the retina will likely ensue.
1. Greenberg PB, Gupta G. Current management of retinal vein occlusion. Retinal Physiol. 2005;2:18-23.
2. Hayreh SS, Klugman MR, Beri M, et al. Differentiation of ischemic from non-ischemic central retinal vein occlusion during the early acute phase. Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol. 1990;228:201-217.
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What's So Special About Process Control Projects?
Modern project management approaches are a good start, but these projects require special techniques
Many process control application projects experience cost overruns, late completion, difficult startups, failure to achieve promised operating performance, and high maintenance costs. The causes include poor definition, scope changes, difficult technology issues, unexpected problems, and many others--all of which are actually due to poor project management.
Failures in process control project management are becoming worse as younger engineers who are more adept at the new technologies but have little feel for even informal project management concepts are finding themselves in lead engineering roles. At the same time, owners are requiring more competitive fixed-price work and shorter schedules, and are putting much more emphasis on achieving expected project results.
General project management techniques have improved significantly in recent years through the work of the Project Management Institute (PMI), the Construction Industry Institute (CII), and other groups. At the same time, many areas other than facility engineering and construction are discovering the discipline, and all seem to be putting more emphasis on good project management. Along with improved techniques, there is much more emphasis on:
* The role of the project manager as the person in responsible charge, not just a referee for problems.
* General management skills such as team-building, motivation, and communication.
* Comprehensive planning and control of the entire project including cost, not just schedule (as was often the case in the past, particularly for non-capital projects); quality (really working to manage it); risk (not to be feared but as just another feature of projects to be managed); scope (documentation); and change management.
* Using projects and project management concepts to manage much of the work of a company, not just things that have traditionally been done as projects.
* The Project Management Office (and its financial benefit) to support common methodologies.
PMI was formed just over two decades ago. Its membership has been growing at an average rate of more than 20% per year and is now nearing 100,000. The flagship PMI document, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) (1), has a circulation of nearly one million copies and is the worldwide standard for methodologies and terminology for all types of projects. PMI certification for project managers, the Project Management Professional (PMP), has done a lot to disseminate the PMBoK terminology and methodology. More than 50,000 project managers met the rigorous requirements of experience, eduction, and testing needed to achieve PMP certification.
Process Control Projects Deserve More
However, process control application projects often have little formal project management. In fact, the lead engineer may be so focused on technology that he or she tries hard to avoid any project management responsibilities at all. It is even less likely that newer techniques are implemented.
Process control projects typically include some or all of these tasks:
* Gather data from an operating manufacturing plant via sensors.
* Use those data to automatically do something to the operation.
* Convert the data into knowledge to better manage and improve the operation.
* Integrate with the supply chain.
* Provide a fully functional operator interface.
* Manage plant assets.
These projects are called by a variety of names including industrial automation, instrumentation and control, automation and control, control systems, or process automation as well as process control. They have so many differences from other types of projects that even the best generic project management techniques are not enough. And while the PMBoK fully applies to nearly all projects including process control, extensions to the PMBoK are encouraged and have been developed for a number of specific areas--but not yet for process control. Little information specifically on process control projects has even been published. One of the few sources of specific information is a new ISA course.
Ten special characteristics of process control projects (Table I) are covered here with some techniques for handling each one. Some of these techniques are generic and some are unique to process control. The techniques apply equally to situations where the lead engineer is working for an internal customer, and where the lead engineer is a systems integrator or consultant and the customer is the lead individual employed by the owner.
1. Big Opportunity
Process control can deliver significant manufacturing cost savings in raw materials, energy, and labor; capacity increases without capital expenditure; supply chain improvements; and/or product quality and other strategic improvements. You should:
* Assign process control engineers to manufacturing units to work on long-term improvements. (A good rule of thumb is one process control engineer for each $50 million of product.)
* Ensure the process control engineers in manufacturing avoid firefighting and just working on routine small projects. (A good rule of thumb is that each engineer should deliver $50k of new benefits for each month worked.)
* Recognize that while benchmarking and plant assessment indicate how a plant's control and information systems compare to current best practices, these techniques will not identify specific benefit opportunities in a particular plant, and can even lead to improvement projects with little real value.
* Use a specific, formal methodology for identifying and prioritizing opportunities, using outside expertise if needed, and only implement projects with real benefits.
2. Lots of Hardware and Software
Process control projects have many components to select, specify, purchase, integrate, debug, and install. The task of determining the optimum choices of equipment and software is challenging, and mistakes may be made due to the sheer number of things to keep track of. You should:
* Complete high-level design (front-end or basic engineering) before any detailed engineering is done.
* Pre-select and partner with suppliers whenever appropriate so more joint effort can go into selection, specification, and installation design.
* Develop a detailed procurement plan.
* Develop a detailed quality control plan.
3. Technology Changes Rapidly
Projects often involve doing things for the first time. There is risk that systems or equipment will not work as expected or advertised, particularly in combination. The capabilities of the systems may not be fully exploited due to lack of knowledge. Debug activities can be difficult and lengthy, with risk of significantly increased costs and schedules. Engineering performance may be lower than expected because of unfamiliarity with the technology. You should:
* Work out all the unknowns before working on the familiar areas.
* Ensure that the technology is understood before doing any detailed engineering.
* Implement a thorough risk management program: treat risk as another aspect of the project to be managed.
* Realize that it is not possible to accurately estimate cost and schedule until technical unknowns are worked out.
4. Real-Time Data Acquisition and Control, Possibly High-Speed
This can mean outstanding reliability, integrity, and on-stream time. There is an absolute requirement for response times that match the needs of the manufacturing operation, and potential for conflicts between process control and information technology (IT) systems. You should:
* Develop a network schematic early in the project that protects the integrity of the control system.
* Work closely with IT personnel to use the best networking and systems technology available.
* Determine ways to fully test the system before installation.
* Provide outstanding documentation and training to plant personnel so the integrity of the system can be maintained.
5. Custom Software Development
Many choices for exactly how things are done can cause inefficient configuration/programming and extensive rework if changes are made. You should:
* Fully determine what is to be done in the Customer Requirements Definition and detailed functional specifications before beginning any programming.
* Use standard approaches for alarm and abnormal condition management to improve integrity and reduce the number of decisions that have to be made on each project.
* Define testing procedures to ensure compliance with the functional specifications.
* Realize that in spite of best efforts, strange and unexpected problems may surface during operation. Therefore professional burn-in support should be available long-term as needed, preferably from the team doing the original design. This can easily be six to 18 months.
6. Intangible Deliverables
Milestones are difficult to quantify, and programming efficiency varies from person to person. This can cause difficulty estimating and controlling the cost and schedule. Historical and parametric cost and schedule information may not be useful. You should:
* Break work into small activities (eight to 80 hours per activity is a good rule of thumb).
* Do cost and schedule estimating against that activity list. (There is simply no other way to estimate and track reliably.)
* Measure progress using earned value and with no credit until an activity is complete. (Process control activities often appear nearly complete when there is still a lot of work to be done. The last 10% is a killer.)
Figure 1: Project Constraints
Treat customer satisfaction as a constraint in addition to the usual triple constraints of scope, cost, and schedule. Quality should be treated as an absolute to be achieved, not something to be balanced against cost and schedule.
7. High Customer Involvement and Expectations
Process control projects require a high level of detailed information from the customer , and the customer often expects fantastic results. It can be difficult to get all of the needed customer input early in the project, and that can lead to difficulty meeting all the customers expectations. The customer may require a completion date earlier than can be logically scheduled or a cost lower than can be realistically budgeted. To top it off, the customer may require a lump sum price before the details of the work are fully defined. You should:
* Hold a good kickoff meeting using an outside facilitator and develop customer satisfaction metrics.
* Ensure a complete Customer Requirements Definition and determine what customer input/approvals will occur after this Requirements Definition.
* Treat customer satisfaction as a constraint in addition to the usual triple constraints of scope, cost, and schedule (Figure 1). (Quality should be treated as an absolute to be achieved, not something to be balanced against cost and schedule. Grade can, however, be varied, but that is part of scope.)
* Work and control only to a feasible, though possibly very aggressive, budget and schedule. Reject the concept of "just try to do it" to impossible budgets or schedules. (Projects attempting impossible cost and schedule targets often cost more and take longer. This is because these projects cannot be properly managed and activities are done out of proper sequence which causes a lot of rework.)
8. Integration Across Department Lines
There may be many customers and stakeholders in different areas with different objectives and expectations, and it may be difficult to get all departments to fully review and accept the same plan. You should:
* Hold a kickoff meeting including all stakeholders and using an outside facilitator.
* Ensure everyone buys into the Requirements Definition.
* Develop a complete Network Schematic early in the project.
9. Large Potential for Interacting Changes
Changes are likely, and changes in one area generally affect other areas. This leads to disruption of the work due to changes after the design freeze at the end of front-end engineering; changes because the customer wants details done differently, not just for additional features; mistakes due to not implementing changes across all impacted areas; and rework causing lots of extra effort. You should:
* Do front-end engineering, including detailed documentation of how the system will work, screen designs, specifications, and many other things; and obtain customer approval.
* Be sure the customer representative youre working with has adequate experience, is given sufficient responsibility and authority to gather information from all the customers departments, and can arrive at decisions that will be honored by the customer.
* Complete the front-end engineering before any detail engineering is done.
* Do a thorough, formal review of the front-end engineering phase using an outside facilitator to be sure it is complete.
* Aggressively avoid changes after the design freeze unless the design creates an unsafe condition or just won't operate. Other potential changes should be delayed and installed after the project is complete if they are important enough. (The intent is not to stifle innovation by discouraging changes, but to get those changes made during the front-end engineering part of the project.)
* Carefully estimate the cost of any changes that have to be made after the design freeze. (The cost and schedule impact of changes is almost always much more than anticipated.)
10. Lack of Lead Engineers' Interest in People
Lead engineers are often uninterested in management, leadership, teamwork, and communications. They may not consider process control engineers part of the team in multidiscipline projects, or there may be no one leading the planning and execution of the process control project (or the process control part of a multidiscipline project). Too often, process control engineers just want to be left alone to do their own thing. You should:
* Make knowledge of project management concepts and willingness to do those tasks on projects a requirement for being a lead engineer--even on projects with just one engineer.
* Hold formal, structured reviews at key points in the project to check that the project is being controlled, the methodologies are being followed, and the deliverables in the preceding phases have been accomplished. These meetings must use a facilitator outside the project to be fully effective. A good review also has significant educational value.
* Assign the customers lead person and the project manager clearly defined responsibilities to give adequate oversight/supervision to the project.
Your Challenges
Process control projects and the process control part of multidiscipline projects face a number of challenges: they are often difficult technically, hard to manage, and face unrealistic performance expectations. Customers often give detailed input into how things are done, but they may not appreciate the effort required or understand the importance of following a work process, particularly with respect to the design freeze.
Lead process control engineers are often not managing the project. They need to become educated on modern project management techniques and the extensions needed for process control. They must act like project managers, at least for the project management tasks that need to be done on projects.
Performing organizations should adopt a standard project methodology or develop one specifically for their organization. They should train lead process control engineers on the methodology and on project management tasks. They must ensure that each lead process control engineer accepts that he/she must do project management tasks, not just provide technical leadership to the project. Performing organizations should assign a project sponsor for each project, and give him or her well-defined responsibilities. They should hold reviews at key points in the project using an outside facilitator, and always maintain customer focus. And focus on the customer.
Customers should use providers that demonstrate they have and are following a detailed, effective project methodology. Customers must support the methodology, particularly the design freeze concept. Finally, they must ensure that their project representative has sufficient experience and is given adequate authority.
1. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 2000, Project Management Institute, www.pmi.org
2. Trevathan, Vernon, Course MT-10, "Planning, Justifying, and Executing Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Projects," 2002, ISA, www.isa.org
Vernon L. Trevathan, PE, PMP, has worked in process control and project management for 40 years, mostly with Monsanto, in engineering and manufacturing management positions. He is an ISA Fellow, currently consults and teaches in project management for control, and may be reached at
Project Management Skills and Tasks
There are three main categories of non-technical tasks necessary to lead a project:
* General Management: communications, leadership, team building, motivation, problem-solving, and many other areas. These tend to be similar for all types of projects.
* Project Management Processes: general analytical project management skills as covered in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK), such as earned value, risk management, and work breakdown structure concept. Some of these need to be tailored to process control projects.
* Project Lifecycle: phases of the project. This is not covered in general project management literature because it needs to be different for each type of project. Many of the extensions needed for process control projects fall into this category.
PMP Certification: A Model for Control?
Project Management Professional (PMP) certification has been enormously successful and has become a key measure of a project manager's capability for job placement and advancement. It has brought more stature to the profession, which is important because most project managers (like most process control engineers) have graduated in some other field.
Certification has raised the educational level of project managers. The PMP requirements include initial and ongoing formal training, and many applicants report studying hundreds of additional hours for the exam. A side benefit has been the explosion of training courses and materials for project management.
Process control could achieve similar benefits from a certification program with real penetration. The certification would have to be standalone and not part of the U.S. Professional Engineer registration, which is not required for most controls work. Of course, because of the breadth of the controls field, an "Industrial Automaton Professional" certification program would need to include specialization in a half-dozen or so areas.
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Of Quids and Quos
The Biases of Justice Roberts
No matter whether th’constitution follows th’ flag or not, th’ supreme coort follow th’ iliction returns.
— Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Opinions
As usual, I am indebted to readers whose perceptive questions cause me to reflect on matters raised by them. The question this week is why Chief Justice John Roberts did not insert any smiley faces in his opinion in the case of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. It is obvious to any reader of the opinion that he was having a good time writing that opinion and the friendly gloss he bestowed on bribery would have been enhanced by a smiley face. Since we have incorruptible politicians running the country (except for the few who inadvertently end up in jail) Chief Justice Roberts and four of his colleagues assure us we need not be alarmed by the effect of gifts of large sums of money to the campaigns of those seeking elected office.
It is difficult, but not impossible, to select one sentence in 46 pages of the Chief Justice’s opinion that stands out as the most amusing. A good candidate is found on page 2 of his opinion, however, where he says: “We have said that government regulation may not target the general gratitude a candidate may feel toward those who support him or his allies, or the political access such support may afford.” For the benefit of my non-lawyer readers, “general gratitude” is not a term taught in law school nor is it a particular word of art. It simply describes the warm feeling a political candidate has upon receiving a large sum of cash from someone who, before the gift, was a complete stranger.
To bolster that bit of jurisprudential nonsense the Chief Justice hearkens back to an earlier triumph in judicial nonsense, Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm’n. He quotes approvingly from that opinion that: “Ingratiation and access . . . are not corruption.” (“Ingratiation” is the product of “general gratitude.”) Those are but a couple of the Chief Justice’s attempts at whimsical analysis. Early in his opinion he approvingly notes that the Court has historically said that Congress cannot “regulate contributions simply to reduce the amount of money in politics or to restrict the political participation of some in order to enhance the relative influence of others.”
What the Chief Justice means by “enhance the relative influence of others” is that if the election process were a level playing field, the poor and the rich would have exactly the same opportunity to influence the outcome of the election. Money would not make a difference. The result of that would be to deprive the wealthy of the ability to obtain “ingratiation and access” that large contributions give them.
Chief Justice Roberts observes that current law permits a voter to contribute up to $5,200 to nine candidates but not an additional $5,200 to a tenth. If there are more than nine candidates the wealthy voter would like to support, “the limits deny the individual all ability to exercise his expressive and associational rights by contributing to someone who will advocate for his policy preferences.” That he describes as a “clear First Amendment” harm. It penalizes the voter for “robustly exercising his First Amendment rights.” He observes that working for a candidate by going door to door on the candidate’s behalf is no substitute for giving money since if a voter wants to support 50 candidates the voter cannot possibly have enough time to do canvassing for all 50 candidates. By removing the limit on the total amounts a voter can give during an election cycle, a voter can contribute in a meaningful way to the campaigns of 50 or even 500 candidates.
If the reader wants one thing to carry away from the opinion the reader should focus on the Chief Justice’s elaborate discussion of quid pro quo. If there’s a quo for the quid, then it’s bad. “Access” and “ingratiation” are not quos because, according to the Chief Justice, they are not tangible benefits. A quo that has a tangible benefit for the donor is a no-no-quo.
That, to someone not as sophisticated as the Chief Justice and his four concurring colleagues, would seem to be a difference that makes no difference. As Justice Breyer explains in his dissent, “Bribery laws. . . address only the most blatant and specific attempts of those with money to influence governmental action. The concern with corruption extends further.” He observed that in an earlier case the court considered undue influence to be as corrupt as a quid pro quo agreement. Chief Justice Roberts and his colleagues do not see it that way.
There is much more to the Chief Justice’s opinion than limited space permits me to explain and reading a column such as this is no substitute for reading the entire United States Supreme Court opinion–unless a reader’s time is valuable. In that case this is an adequate substitute.
Only a Justice more interested in the outcome than the law could write an opinion like the one in the McCutcheon decision. Chief Justice Roberts is such a Justice.
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Subsets and Splits