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Originally created 02/26/97
Canada hands U.S. Devlin Cup defeat
When the seventh Devlin Cup was handed out Tuesday night at the Augusta State University Athletic Complex, it was the Canadians who prevailed once again.
The Canadian Junior National team, coached by Billy Gilliland, defeated the U.S. team to capture its sixth consecutive title. After a long hiatus, the rivalry was resurrected just last year.
This year's Devlin Cup, which was sponsored by the Greater Augusta Sports Council, was expanded to include Russia for the first time. The Russian team dominated its two events, sweeping the U.S. in the Friendship Cup on Sunday and defeating Canada Monday in an exhibition tournament.
The feature event on Tuesday saw a well-balanced Canadian team overpower the U.S. team, with the help of a fired-up bench. The best of seven-match tournament was clinched by Canada when Bob Milroy edged Jon Frisch of the U.S. 15-2, 12-15, 15-6 in the Men's No.2 Singles match.
"As you can see, it's a pretty intense rivalry," said Gilliland as his bench rallied Milroy to victory in the decisive third game of his match. "This is a traditional event that was lost for a number of years. When you've got something like the Cup to play for, it builds the tradition."
The Canadian bench completely eliminated the U.S. homecourt advantage, igniting the team at pivotal points in every match with resonant words of encouragement.
Gilliland began playing badminton in his native Scotland and held the No. 1 world ranking in mixed doubles in 1986 and 1987. He sees further expansion of the Devlin Cup in the near future. "I'd like to see one more country join the field down the road. A country like Peru could help, because the U.S. would have more success against them than international powers like Russia. Everyone loves a winner in sports. That's part of selling the game."
Gilliland also acknowledges the potential of the U.S. team in years to come. "The U.S. is still a young and inexperienced team right now," Gilliland said. "I see an organized U.S. team today, who has one of the best coaches (Steve Butler) they could've gotten. But the U.S. is still at a stage where we have to explain the rules to the audience before a match. Badminton is one of the fasting growing sports, and can be the next big racquet sport in this country if it is marketed properly."
The Devlin Cup was named after Frank Devlin, an Irish badminton player who dominated the sport during its formative years in the 1920s and 1930s. Devlin traveled to Canada often during his career to play against North America's most talented players. After moving to Canada late in his career, he spent many years promoting the sport in Canada and the United States. In 1966, the first Devlin Cup between the U.S. and Canada was held in New Briton, Connecticut. Devlin presented the first silver cup to the United States that year, and it remains today the only Devlin Cup the team has won.
Devlin Cup Badminton Tournament:
Canada 6, United States 1
No.1 Men's Singles: Mark Manha (US) def. Marlon Samuel 15-6, 15-6
No. 2 Men's Singles: Bob Milroy (Can) def. Jon Frisch 15-2, 12-15, 15-6
No. 1 Women's Singles: Jody Patrick (Can) def. Kathleen Maloney 11-2, 11-1
No. 2 Women's Singles: Caroline Gibbings (Can) def. Lily Chen 11-0, 11-3
Men's Doubles: Stuart Arthur-Marlon Samuel (Can) def. Howard Bach-Mark Manha 14-17, 15-7, 15-12
Women's Doubles: Cindy Arthur-Caroline Gibbings (Can) def. Donna Beach-Janae Bennett 18-14, 15-7
Mixed Doubles: Stuart Arthur-Cindy Arthur def. Stanley Wo-Donna Beach 15-6, 18-14
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• Sasha Martin
So incredible. It's amazing what lies just beneath the earth's surface!
• Sandra Leigh
Question about those microbes... How will they affect us once they're loose?
• A nice Guy
I don't think this would effect us directly.
• Sandra Leigh
Think about that statement before you dismiss it. Microbes. What kind? What if there's one there that's a virus we have no means of keeping from killing us? They didn't say micro-organisms, tiny plankton-like things. They said 'microbes'.
• Zebulon Pike
The truth is we don't know. But there's already no shortage of microbes, bacteria, viruses and large beasts that can hurt us. The world in an inherently dangerous place. Wash your hands, get your vaccines and stay away from large carnivores and you should be fine. | <urn:uuid:1f8f74f6-fb13-4ae2-ab9d-22f8f916a0f5> | 2 | 1.632813 | 0.151315 | en | 0.931881 | http://community.good.is/link/science-rules-antarctic-glacier-has-five-story-blood-red-waterfall-of-primodial-ooze |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
In Swedish and, I'm led to believe, British supermarkets, parsnips are often sold pre-clipped. Topped and tailed.
If I have a choice, I prefer to buy my veg with a few leaves on so I can see how fresh it is. So I have rather cynically assumed that this is done to hide the age of the product. Whether or not this is the case, I wonder why the same trimming service is not extended to carrots.
Anyone able to shed some light?
Update: Quite often just the tip of the parsnip is trimmed. This appears to be a global phenomenon; here are some parsnips from an Australian market.
The two answers I've so far received are good, but don't explain why the tip might also be trimmed.
share|improve this question
In the US I've often seen topless carrots. – Yamikuronue Apr 20 '12 at 13:27
People are lazy and will happily spend a bit extra to avoid the trouble of peeling and chopping. Simple. – ElendilTheTall Apr 20 '12 at 15:23
@ElendilTheTall: Jumping to conclusions a bit. – Jefromi Apr 20 '12 at 15:41
Valid conclusions, yes :P – ElendilTheTall Apr 20 '12 at 16:58
3 Answers 3
In the US, carrots are normally sold topless too.
I do understand the desire to see those fresh green leaves on it, but in fact, they're not helping. Since they're still alive, they draw nutrients and water out of the root, decreasing what's left for you. This means they may actually be worse than ones that had the tops left on them, especially if they've been stored for a while. They'll have less flavor and won't be as crisp. If you do buy them with the tops still on, it's a good idea to at least trim them before storing.
share|improve this answer
The leaves steal moisture from the root, resulting in a limp vegetable. Removing the leaves increases storage life.
My guess is that supermarkets perform this service for their benefit rather than yours. If they left the tops on, they would have to sell their entire stock daily, and have their suppliers pick fresh ones to replace what was sold. This results in a more delicate, less reliable supply chain.
Either way, when you purchase carrots or parsnips with the tops on, remove the tops right away if you are not going to cook them that day.
share|improve this answer
up vote 6 down vote accepted
The answer to why parsnips are topped is answered satisfactorily by both Steven and Jefromi.
So why are parsnips also trimmed at the tail? This is obvious to anyone who is familiar with the unadulterated specimen.
Behold the untrimmed parsnip!
untrimmed parsnips
The full root is of quite variable length and sometimes long enough to be unwieldy in packaging. If you're not happy about your parsnips being tailed, you can do as I once saw Jamie Oliver do and carve pointed tips back onto your parsnips for presentation purposes.
To summarise: There appears to be no chicanery here. The tops are trimmed to increase shelf life. While sellers, most likely, do this for their own benefit, you might just as well top parsnips yourself if you are not going to use them directly. This goes for both parsnips and carrots.
Parsnips are tailed, I hold, simply to make them a more manageable product. For carrots this is unnecessary; the carrot varieties I have seen either appear to lack this long thin tail entirely, or have a very thin hairlike tail.
share|improve this answer
Also quite possibly -- they're using some sort of mechanized washing, and if the tips were left on, they'd get broken off in a less controlled manner. – Joe Dec 31 '12 at 3:02
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Sunday, April 13, 2008
A portable JPA Boolean Magic Converter
While doing some small POC with JPA, I am surprise to find out that the current Java Persistence API (JPA) standard does not mandate JPA provider to support data type conversion via annotation, not even a with simple boolean field. For reader who unfamiliar with JPa, what I means is, to persist and "JPA" manage a boolean field, JPA expect the database data type to be integer, where value of "1" means true, and value of "0" means false.
You got to be joking, right? Every "real life" programmer knows that, there are many existing database use different combination of char or string on a table boolean field, such as "True/False", "T/F", "Yes/No", "Y/N", "-1/0", and etc. Thus, as a "real life" programmer, I kind expect the JPA should allows me specific a boolean field via Annotation, such as example below:
@booleanField(trueValue="Yes", falseValue="No")
private Boolean enabled;
And to my surprise, the answer is nope!!!..So far only Hibernate JPA provider provide data type conversation. Daniel Pfeifer, have explain the problem in details, he also discuss some solutions to work around this stupid limitation at his blog, title "Type Conversation with JPA", do check it out.
Daniel's "manual mapping" idea, do solve the limitation. However, maybe it's just me, I just don't like the idea to temporary change a Boolean field to map with database data type (either char, string) in order to resolve the limitation, even we make the field private, this is just me. And I am stubborn, and old . :-)
Anywhere, after some research (Also, a good excuse to my manager to research how difficult to come out our own custom Java 5 annotation with custom Java APT process factory), I come out our own compile time annotation, called @BooleanMagic with our own BooleanMagicProcessorFactory, which I hope, shall temporary resolve the problem.
@BooleanMagic comprise of three attributes:
• trueValue, specified the table boolean field true value here, such as "True", "T", "Yes"
• falseValue, specified the table boolean field false value here, such as "False", "F","N"
• columnName, tableColumn name;
Also please note that BooleanMagicProcessorFactory mandate any field annotated with @BooleanMagic annotation, must either annotated with @Transient annotation or with modifier transient.
Thus, as an example, assuming we have a boolean field called "enabled", which map to table "ENABLED" field, with boolean value of "True"/"false", we will specified our VO as below:
public class SomeVO {
Integer id;
@BooleanMagic(trueValue="True", falseValue="false", columnName="ENABLED")
private transient Boolean enabled;
public Boolean isEnabled() {
return enabled;
public void setEnabled(Boolean enabled) {
this.enabled = enabled;
Using Java "APT" tool with JPABooleanMagicConverter factory, code above will be converted to:
public class SomeVO {
Integer id;
private transient Boolean enabled;
//--- Lines below are generated by JBPCC BooleanMagicConvertor PROCESSOR
//--- START :
private String magicBooleanEnabled;
public Boolean isEnabled() {
return this.magicBooleanEnabled.equals("True") ? Boolean.TRUE : Boolean.FALSE;
public Boolean getEnabled() {
return this.magicBooleanEnabled.equals("True") ? Boolean.TRUE : Boolean.FALSE;
public void setEnabled(Boolean trueFlag) {
this.magicBooleanEnabled = trueFlag ? "True" : "false";
//--- END
//--- GENERATED BY JBPCC BooleanMagicConvertor PROCESSOR
Now, isn't that cool (haha, sorry, I am bit biased here). Btw, BooleanMagicConvertor is portable across JPA protable, and IMHO, this is a better interim solution till JPA make data conversation standard.
I decided to contribute my BooleanMagicConverter back to open source community, it's currently park under my open source project Java Batch Process Control Center, at, you could either build from the source, or get the "BooleanMagicProcessorFactory.jar" from here.
Here an example of how to use the BooleanMagicConvertor using Ant 1.7 apt tasks, assuming all your entity class is declare at ${src.dir}/org/abc/domain/model directory, and you wants to output all generated call to ${basedir}/target directory
<target name="preProcessJPABoolean" depends="buildJPABoolenProcessorFactory">
<apt srcdir="${src.dir}/org/abc/domain/model"
That's all, do share me your thoughts and comments, cheers!
Daniel said...
Great workaround.
And I agree, "manual mapping" isn't very nice, but for the moment it's either exposing the Persistence Provider's functionality (creating non-portable code), writing the code myself and, obviously, your converter (I am sure someone else will find yet another neat solution :D)
After quickly reviewing it, it however leaves me wondering: Will this work when one is using Maven to build? I guess it should since Maven can execute ANT tasks. Have you tried it?
James said...
Very interesting post. My name is James - Zone Leader at JavaLobby. I'd really like to repost this on JavaLobby - if you're interested send me a mail and we can discuss further.
James Khoo said...
Hi Daniel and James
I haven't try it on Maven, I still prefer good old Ant with Ivy.
And James, please go ahead to post it at JavaLobby.
Jonathan O'Connor said...
Sadly, your solution has a big problem. It does not support the JPA QL. If I want to write a query using the boolean field then it won't work. I gues, the JPA 2 spec (or whatever its called) needs to add this on to their feature list.
Leonid said...
100% agree with above.
This solution is just a knick-knack while it not support JPA QL
Leonid said...
And i am sick and tired of plain JPA .
People - use hibernate + spring! and you will not have a problems.
Quaddy said...
openJPA has an
wytten said...
Are you still using this approach?
And/or does Spring save the day as Leonid said? If so, it is not immediately obvious to me how Spring helps solve mapping Boolean to Y/N.
Leonid said...
So spring doesn't but hibernate do ;)
And spring makes development easy.
Leonid said...
Spring doesn't but hibernate do ;)
And spring - makes development easy.
Thiago Valverde said...
Could you answer how hibernate can help us?
I've been searching this for some time and the only think I founded is hibernate.query.substitutions, but I don't think it's the correct approuch. | <urn:uuid:d128cc9b-47e3-4359-a067-19005019a6ef> | 2 | 1.78125 | 0.019709 | en | 0.815657 | http://coolboykl.blogspot.com/2008/04/portable-jpa-boolean-magic-converter.html |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I've always thought vaguely that the answer to the above question was affirmative along the following lines. Gödel's incompleteness theorem and the undecidability of the halting problem both being negative results about decidability and established by diagonal arguments (and in the 1930's), so they must somehow be two ways to view the same matters. And I thought that Turing used a universal Turing machine to show that the halting problem is unsolvable. (See also this math.SE question.)
But now that (teaching a course in computability) I look closer into these matters, I am rather bewildered by what I find. So I would like some help with straightening out my thoughts. I realise that on one hand Gödel's diagonal argument is very subtle: it needs a lot of work to construct an arithmetic statement that can be interpreted as saying something about it's own derivability. On the other hand the proof of the undecidability of the halting problem I found here is extremely simple, and doesn't even explicitly mention Turing machines, let alone the existence of universal Turing machines.
A practical question about universal Turing machines is whether it is of any importance that the alphabet of a universal Turing machine be the same as that of the Turing machines that it simulates. I thought that would be necessary in order to concoct a proper diagonal argument (having the machine simulate itself), but I haven't found any attention to this question in the bewildering collection of descriptions of universal machines that I found on the net. If not for the halting problem, are universal Turing machines useful in any diagonal argument?
Finally I am confused by this further section of the same WP article, which says that a weaker form of Gödel's incompleteness follows from the halting problem: "a complete, consistent and sound axiomatisation of all statements about natural numbers is unachievable" where "sound" is supposed to be the weakening. I know a theory is consistent if one cannot derive a contradiction, and a complete theory about natural numbers would seem to mean that all true statements about natural numbers can be derived in it; I know Gödel says such a theory does not exist, but I fail to see how such a hypothetical beast could possibly fail to be sound, i.e., also derive statements which are false for the natural numbers: the negation of such a statement would be true, and therefore by completeness also derivable, which would contradict consistency.
I would appreciate any clarification on one of these points.
share|improve this question
You have one conceptual problem: algorithmic decidability (Halting problem) and derivability resp. provability (logics) are two very different concepts; you seem to use "decidability" for both. – Raphael Mar 15 '12 at 18:10
@Raphael: I am very well aware that there is a large conceptual difference between the statements of incompleteness theorem and of the undecidability of the halting problem. However the negative form of incompleteness: a sufficiently powerful formal system cannot be both consistent and complete, does translate into an indecidability statement: since the set of theorems deducible in a formal system is semi-decidable by construction, completeness would make the set of non-theorems semi-decidable as well (as negations of theorems, assuming consistency, or else as the empty set), hence decidable. – Marc van Leeuwen Mar 17 '12 at 18:04
I see, thanks for clarifying. – Raphael Mar 18 '12 at 0:18
yes indeed the two proofs are conceptually extremely similar and in fact one way to look at it is that Godel constructed a sort of turing-complete logic in arithmetic. there are many books that point out this conceptual equivalence. eg Godel Escher Bach by hofstadter or Emperors New Mind by penrose.... – vzn Oct 11 '12 at 16:19
4 Answers 4
up vote 15 down vote accepted
I recommend you to check Scott Aaronson's blog post on a proof of the Incompleteness Theorem via Turing machines and Rosser's Theorem. His proof of the incompleteness theorem is extremely simple and easy to follow.
share|improve this answer
Thank you for this link, I'll accept for now as this comes closest to my concerns. At first I was quite disturbed though: I misunderstood "complete" to mean "every truth is a derivable" (a converse to sound) rather than "if $P$ is not derivable then $\lnot P$ is" (a converse to consistent). Scott Aaronson seems beleive the meaning of "complete" is evident to the audience, although he doesn't seem to assume a logician audience (which I certainly am not); with my misunderstanding what he writes makes no sense. Having found my error, I find the post quite interesting. – Marc van Leeuwen Mar 24 '12 at 15:53
There is another proof in a similar vein in the book The Nature of Computation (amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2DGFHJVZ92HVI/…) in the chapter about computability. There, the authors avoid the use of Rosser's theorem and only assume the existence of universal machines (i.e., Church-Turing Thesis). The exact reference is section 7.2.5 page 238. – Marcos Villagra Mar 25 '12 at 1:36
Neel Krishnaswami's answer to Halting problem, uncomputable sets: common mathematical proof? on CSTheory points to references connecting the above results under the umbrella of category theory.
share|improve this answer
this paper is not mentioned in the cstheory answer (but is in the comments of Andrej Bauer's blog post from the answer), but is probably a good overview as well. – Artem Kaznatcheev Mar 15 '12 at 18:03
This is a connection based on similarity of proofs, rather than implications between the results, isn't it? – Raphael Mar 15 '12 at 18:11
Well, the view in the paper that Artem links to is that these are all manifestations of a single category-theoretic fact. – Suresh Mar 15 '12 at 19:37
(This is supposed to be a comment to Suresh's answer, but it's simply too long to fit there. So I apologize in advance that it doesn't really answer Marc's question.)
I find Neel's answer Halting problem, uncomputable sets: common mathematical proof? on CSTheory and Andrej Bauer's blog post unsatisfactory for two reasons.
First, we don't usually need all the category-theoretic jargon to explain the connection. The existence of an undecidable language is implied by Cantor's Theorem, which has a very elementary diagonal proof. The reason is that the set of programs is equinumerous to $\mathbb{N}$. On the other hand, since each language can be seen as a subset of $\mathbb{N}$, and thus the set of all languages is equinumerous to $\mathcal{P}(\mathbb{N})$. By Cantor's Theorem, there is no surjection from $\mathbb{N}$ onto $\mathcal{P}(\mathbb{N})$, and thus we know there must exist an undecidable language.
Second, the above proof is unsatisfactory since we also want to "see" example of a reasonable undecidable language. The above proof can be seen as a counting argument and thus not really "constructive" in that sense. Turing discovered the halting problem as such an example.
share|improve this answer
+1 This is a more simple approach, but I still doubt about this: "and thus we know there must exist an undecidable language." Could you specify the difference between undecidable language and undecidable problem? – Hernan_eche May 15 '12 at 16:24
@Hernan_e There's no "difference" really. A decision problem in computation theory can be defined as any yes-or-no question on the set of inputs $x\in \Sigma^*$. Thus, we can assign each decision problem $P$ to the set $L\subseteq \Sigma^*$ of inputs for which the answer is yes. The set $L$ is the language defined by the problem $P$. – Dai May 17 '12 at 22:57
Understood, you are very clear, I agree the counting argument is not totally satisfactory, but even without the example, I think perhaps the worst part is that $L\subseteq \Sigma^*$ is infinite, then there is no big surprise in saying there are undecidable languages, would be great to extend (better said to limit) the reasoning for a finite case, ( I am not asking for an example of an undecidable problem), but a similar proof (or disproof) being valid for a finite set of input admited instead of $\mathbb{N}$ – Hernan_eche May 18 '12 at 18:05
Universal Turing machines are useful for some diagonal arguments, e.g in the separation of some classes in the hierarchies of time or space complexity: the universal machine is used to prove there is a decision problem in $\mbox{DTIME}(f(n)^3)$ but not in $\mbox{DTIME}(f(n/2))$. (Better bounds can be found in the WP article)
However, to be perfectly honest, if you look closely, the universal machine is not used in the `negative' part: the proof supposes there is a machine $K$ that would solve a time-limited version of the halting problem and then proceeds to build $¬KK$. (No universal machine here) The universal machine is used to solve the time-limited version of the halting problem in a larger amount of time.
share|improve this answer
For sufficiently nonconstant f(n). – Yonatan N Aug 7 '12 at 22:24
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Building an OpenGL ES Environment
In order to draw graphics with OpenGL ES in your Android application, you must create a view container for them. One of the more straight-forward ways to do this is to implement both a GLSurfaceView and a GLSurfaceView.Renderer. A GLSurfaceView is a view container for graphics drawn with OpenGL and GLSurfaceView.Renderer controls what is drawn within that view. For more information about these classes, see the OpenGL ES developer guide.
GLSurfaceView is just one way to incorporate OpenGL ES graphics into your application. For a full-screen or near-full screen graphics view, it is a reasonable choice. Developers who want to incorporate OpenGL ES graphics in a small portion of their layouts should take a look at TextureView. For real, do-it-yourself developers, it is also possible to build up an OpenGL ES view using SurfaceView, but this requires writing quite a bit of additional code.
This lesson explains how to complete a minimal implementation of GLSurfaceView and GLSurfaceView.Renderer in a simple application activity.
Declare OpenGL ES Use in the Manifest
In order for your application to use the OpenGL ES 2.0 API, you must add the following declaration to your manifest:
If your application uses texture compression, you must also declare which compression formats your app supports, so that it is only installed on compatible devices.
For more information about texture compression formats, see the OpenGL developer guide.
Create an Activity for OpenGL ES Graphics
Android applications that use OpenGL ES have activities just like any other application that has a user interface. The main difference from other applications is what you put in the layout for your activity. While in many applications you might use TextView, Button and ListView, in an app that uses OpenGL ES, you can also add a GLSurfaceView.
The following code example shows a minimal implementation of an activity that uses a GLSurfaceView as its primary view:
public class OpenGLES20Activity extends Activity {
private GLSurfaceView mGLView;
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
// Create a GLSurfaceView instance and set it
// as the ContentView for this Activity.
mGLView = new MyGLSurfaceView(this);
Note: OpenGL ES 2.0 requires Android 2.2 (API Level 8) or higher, so make sure your Android project targets that API or higher.
Build a GLSurfaceView Object
A GLSurfaceView is a specialized view where you can draw OpenGL ES graphics. It does not do much by itself. The actual drawing of objects is controlled in the GLSurfaceView.Renderer that you set on this view. In fact, the code for this object is so thin, you may be tempted to skip extending it and just create an unmodified GLSurfaceView instance, but don’t do that. You need to extend this class in order to capture touch events, which is covered in the Responding to Touch Events lesson.
The essential code for a GLSurfaceView is minimal, so for a quick implementation, it is common to just create an inner class in the activity that uses it:
class MyGLSurfaceView extends GLSurfaceView {
private final MyGLRenderer mRenderer;
public MyGLSurfaceView(Context context){
// Create an OpenGL ES 2.0 context
mRenderer = new MyGLRenderer();
// Set the Renderer for drawing on the GLSurfaceView
One other optional addition to your GLSurfaceView implementation is to set the render mode to only draw the view when there is a change to your drawing data using the GLSurfaceView.RENDERMODE_WHEN_DIRTY setting:
This setting prevents the GLSurfaceView frame from being redrawn until you call requestRender(), which is more efficient for this sample app.
Build a Renderer Class
The implementation of the GLSurfaceView.Renderer class, or renderer, within an application that uses OpenGL ES is where things start to get interesting. This class controls what gets drawn on the GLSurfaceView with which it is associated. There are three methods in a renderer that are called by the Android system in order to figure out what and how to draw on a GLSurfaceView:
• onSurfaceCreated() - Called once to set up the view's OpenGL ES environment.
• onDrawFrame() - Called for each redraw of the view.
• onSurfaceChanged() - Called if the geometry of the view changes, for example when the device's screen orientation changes.
Here is a very basic implementation of an OpenGL ES renderer, that does nothing more than draw a black background in the GLSurfaceView:
public class MyGLRenderer implements GLSurfaceView.Renderer {
public void onSurfaceCreated(GL10 unused, EGLConfig config) {
// Set the background frame color
public void onDrawFrame(GL10 unused) {
// Redraw background color
That’s all there is to it! The code examples above create a simple Android application that displays a black screen using OpenGL. While this code does not do anything very interesting, by creating these classes, you have laid the foundation you need to start drawing graphic elements with OpenGL.
Note: You may wonder why these methods have a GL10 parameter, when you are using the OpengGL ES 2.0 APIs. These method signatures are simply reused for the 2.0 APIs to keep the Android framework code simpler.
If you are familiar with the OpenGL ES APIs, you should now be able to set up a OpenGL ES environment in your app and start drawing graphics. However, if you need a bit more help getting started with OpenGL, head on to the next lessons for a few more hints. | <urn:uuid:50ee5823-4955-4130-9dba-cc013d29e6dc> | 3 | 3.15625 | 0.030445 | en | 0.827426 | http://developer.android.com/training/graphics/opengl/environment.html |
A lot vs. Alot: 9 Grammatical Pitfalls
corpuscular radiation
noun, Physics, Astronomy
radiation consisting of atomic and subatomic particles, as alpha particles, beta particles, and neutrons. Unabridged
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corpuscular radiation in Medicine
corpuscular radiation n.
Radiation consisting of streams of subatomic particles such as protons, electrons, and neutrons.
The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
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Word of the Day
Difficulty index for corpuscular radiation
Few English speakers likely know this word
Word Value for corpuscular
Scrabble Words With Friends | <urn:uuid:bf1fe85f-87a6-49da-82d1-10c1969d47dc> | 3 | 2.6875 | 0.021208 | en | 0.805238 | http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/corpuscular+radiation?qsrc=2446&o=100074 |
rush up meaning, rush up definition | English Cobuild dictionary
( rushes plural & 3rd person present) ( rushing present participle) ( rushed past tense & past participle )
1 verb If you rush somewhere, you go there quickly.
A schoolgirl rushed into a burning flat to save a man's life... V prep/adv
I've got to rush. Got a meeting in a few minutes... V
Shop staff rushed to get help. V to-inf
2 verb If people rushto do something, they do it as soon as they can, because they are very eager to do it.
Russian banks rushed to buy as many dollars as they could... V to-inf
3 n-sing A rush is a situation in which you need to go somewhere or do something very quickly.
The men left in a rush..., It was all rather a rush...
4 n-sing If there is a rushfor something, many people suddenly try to get it or do it.
usu N for n
Record stores are expecting a huge rush for the single.
5 n-sing Therush is a period of time when many people go somewhere or do something.
the N, oft supp N
The shop's opening coincided with the Christmas rush...
6 verb If you rush something, you do it in a hurry, often too quickly and without much care.
You can't rush a search... V n
Instead of rushing at life, I wanted something more meaningful. V at n
rushed adj
The report had all the hallmarks of a rushed job.
7 verb If you rush someone or something to a place, you take them there quickly.
We got an ambulance and rushed her to hospital... V n prep
We'll rush it round today if possible. V n with adv
8 verb If you rushinto something or are rushedinto it, you do it without thinking about it for long enough.
He will not rush into any decisions... V into n
They had rushed in without adequate appreciation of the task... V in
Ministers won't be rushed into a response... be V-ed into n
Don't rush him or he'll become confused. V n
rushed adj usu v-link ADJ
At no time did I feel rushed or under pressure.
9 verb If you rush something or someone, you move quickly and forcefully at them, often in order to attack them.
They rushed the entrance and forced their way in... V n
Tom came rushing at him from another direction. V at n
10 verb If air or liquid rushes somewhere, it flows there suddenly and quickly.
Water rushes out of huge tunnels... V prep/adv
Rush is also a noun., n-count usu sing, with supp
A rush of air on my face woke me.
11 n-count If you experience a rushof a feeling, you suddenly experience it very strongly.
usu sing, with supp
A rush of pure affection swept over him...
12 If you are rushed off your feet, you are extremely busy.
be rushed off your feet phrase usu v-link PHR
We used to be rushed off our feet at lunchtimes. rush out phrasal verb If a document or product is rushed out, it is produced very quickly.
A statement was rushed out... be V-ed P
Studios are rushing out monster movies to take advantage of our new-found enthusiasm for dinosaurs. V P n (not pron), Also V n P rush through phrasal verb If you rush something through, you deal with it quickly so that it is ready in a shorter time than usual.
The government rushed through legislation aimed at Mafia leaders... V P n (not pron)
They rushed the burial through so no evidence would show up. V n P
gold rush ( gold rushes plural ) A gold rush is a situation when a lot of people suddenly go to a place where gold has been discovered. n-count
rush hour ( rush hours plural ) , rush-hour The rush hour is one of the periods of the day when most people are travelling to or from work. n-count also at/during N
During the evening rush hour it was often solid with vehicles..., Try to avoid rush-hour traffic...
Translation English - Cobuild Collins Dictionary
1 accelerate, barrel (along) (informal, chiefly U.S. & Canad.) bolt, burn rubber (informal) career, dart, dash, dispatch, expedite, fly, hasten, hotfoot, hurry, hustle, lose no time, make haste, make short work of, press, push, quicken, race, run, scramble, scurry, shoot, speed, speed up, sprint, stampede, tear
2 charge, dash, dispatch, expedition, haste, hurry, race, scramble, speed, stampede, surge, swiftness, urgency
3 attack, capture, charge, overcome, storm, take by storm
4 assault, charge, onslaught, push, storm, surge
5 brisk, cursory, emergency, expeditious, fast, hasty, hurried, prompt, quick, rapid, swift, urgent
1 dally, dawdle, delay, procrastinate, slow down, tarry, wait
5 careful, detailed, leisurely, not urgent, slow, thorough, unhurried
English Collins Dictionary - English synonyms & Thesaurus
Collaborative Dictionary English Cobuild
roads etc crowded with holidaymakers
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choose significato, choose definizione | dizionario inglese definizione
( chooses 3rd person present) ( choosing present participle) ( chose past tense) ( chosen past participle )
1 verb If you choose someone or something from several people or things that are available, you decide which person or thing you want to have. (=select)
They will be able to choose their own leaders in democratic elections... V n
This week he has chosen Peter Mandelson to replace Mo Mowlam... V n to-inf
There are several patchwork cushions to choose from... V from/between n
Houston was chosen as the site for the convention... be V-ed as n
He did well in his chosen profession. V-ed, Also V n as n, V
2 verb If you chooseto do something, you do it because you want to or because you feel that it is right.
They knew that discrimination was going on, but chose to ignore it... V to-inf
You can just take out the interest each year, if you choose. V
3 If there is little to choose between people or things or nothing to choose between them, it is difficult to decide which is better or more suitable.
(mainly BRIT)
little to choose between/nothing to choose between phrase v-link PHR
There is very little to choose between the world's top tennis players.
4 The chosen few are a small group who are treated better than other people. You sometimes use this expression when you think this is unfair.
the chosen few/a chosen few/someone's chosen phrase (=elite)
Learning should no longer be an elitist pastime for the chosen few.
to pick and choose
traduzione dizionario Collins Inglese - Cobuild
adopt, cherry-pick, cull, designate, desire, elect, espouse, fix on, opt for, pick, predestine, prefer, see fit, select, settle upon, single out, take, wish
decline, dismiss, exclude, forgo, leave, refuse, reject, throw aside
Dizionario inglese Collins - Definizione inglese & Thesaurus
Dizionario Collaborativo Inglese per Studenti
to be on the safe side ; play safe
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Alastair Thompson – General Manger/Co-Founder,
“It changed the news cycle completely. Up till that point, news would be released and then there was a 24-hour cycle essentially driven by newspapers – with radio playing a bit of a role with breaking news but not particularly significantly. In the initial phases, political parties were posting releases directly to the site themselves and very quickly they started communicating with each other. Prior to that, the press secretaries would have to wander around the press gallery and try and find a press release off one of the press gallery reporters from the opposition and sneak off and try and respond to it. Then suddenly it was all happening in real time. I think it revolutionised the way politics was actually conducted in the sense that suddenly it coincided with the introduction of MMP in 1997. The first step was the Winston Peters great coalition negotiations which went on interminably and it fit very nicely within the new paradigm of a political system where people did have to talk to each other a great deal more in order to get things done. Simultaneously, it also enabled the public to know exactly what was really being said by the politicians in real time and for them to participate as well. Suddenly it allowed the communications professionals outside of parliament to directly communicate around the issues of the day at the time they were being discussed.”
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Click here for search results
Access to Finance
This topic also includes work on use of trade credits.
Financial markets and institutions play a crucial role in reallocating financial resources to their most productive usage, mobilizing the funds from firms/individuals with excess funds and channeling them to firms with good growth prospects. Without access to external finance, firms cannot realize their full growth potential, which results in slower economic growth for a country as a whole. If firms find it difficult to raise external finance their growth is limited to the levels that they can finance internally or by relying on often prohibitively expensive informal networks. Inability to obtain sufficient funds, or, in other words, financing constraints, are often cited as one of the main constraints on firms’ operations and growth, especially so in countries with weak financial markets and institutions. We aim to study the broad range of issues related to access to finance in countries on different level of financial development.
This research is focusing on the following topics:
• Does financial development allow for reallocation of resources to their most productive uses?
• How can firms finance themselves in countries with different level of financial development, financial structure and institutional environment?
• How do financing constraints affect firms’ growth and their investment behavior?
• What are the consequences of financial underdevelopment and how do firms endogenously adjust to their environment?
• What type of firms are the most financially constrained and what policies could help to alleviate these constraints?
• How important is trade credit as a source of financing in countries with less developed banking and financial systems?
• What is the interplay between legal systems, politics and financial development?
We have a related project focusing on the access to finance by SME firms.
• Asli Demirguc-Kunt
• Leora Klapper
WPS6020Does a picture paint a thousand words ? evidence from a microcredit marketing experimentGine, Xavier; Mansuri, Ghazala; Picon, Mario2012/04
WPS6036Financing of firms in developing countries : lessons from researchAyyagari, Meghana; Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Maksimovic, Vojislav2012/04
WPS5839Remittances and financial inclusion : evidence from El SalvadorAnzoategui, Diego; Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Martinez Peria, Maria Soledad2011/10
WPS5790Foreign direct investment under weak rule of law : theory and evidence from ChinaWang, Xiaozu; Xu, Lixin Colin; Zhu, Tian2011/09
WPS5806Is small beautiful ? financial structure, size and access to financeBeck, Thorsten; Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Singer, Dorothe2011/09
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Akrit Jaswal
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Akrit Jaswal
Born Akrit Pran Jaswal
Nationality Indian
Known for Performing an operation at the age of seven
Akrit Pran Jaswal (born April 23, 1993, Nurpur[1][citation needed]) is an Indian who performed his first surgery at the age of seven.[2]
Akrit hopes to someday continue his studies at Harvard University.[2] He has an estimated IQ of 146.[3][citation needed]
Akrit went to Britain around the age of 12 to talk about the cure for cancer.
Early life[edit]
At a very young age, Akrit Jaswal began to illustrate his unusually high intelligence level. Jaswal could speak by the time he was ten months old[citation needed], and he could also write and read at the age of two[citation needed]. When Jaswal was only five years old, he already had begun reading plays by William Shakespeare and also had begun to read many books about medicine. After hearing about Jaswal's intelligence, doctors in his hometown of Nurpur, Himachal Pradesh started allowing Jaswal to watch and learn how to perform surgical procedures.
Surgery in 2000[edit]
On November 19, 2000, at the age of seven, Jaswal performed his first surgery. Jaswal performed a surgery on an eight year old girl. The girl had burns on her finger from five years before, and her parents previously had not been able to pay for a surgery because they did not have the financial means. Short videos of the surgery appeared on YouTube in 2007, and Jaswal began to rise in fame around the world.
Recognition and Fame[edit]
Because of his fame and success, Jaswal was accepted into Chandrigarh College when he was twelve years old, making him the youngest person to ever get into a university in India. One year later, at the age of 13, his IQ was recorded to be 146[citation needed]. Organizations around the world began to take interest in Jaswal. In 2012, "Firecracker Films" brought Jaswal to England, to perform tests. The organization found that Jaswal had extremely high skills in some areas, but was not as good at other areas, such as pattern matching. Jaswal also appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
However, some[who?] have theorized that Jaswal's fame as a child may actually have been harmful to him[citation needed]. These people[who?] say that Jaswal had too much pressure on him as a child[citation needed]. For example, Jaswal's father and mother divorced while Jaswal was still a child[citation needed] and some[who?] have theorized that the divorce happened because Jaswal's father was irritated at the fact that Jaswal was not being recognized enough by the Indian government and media[citation needed]. However, Jaswal has completely denied these claims. He once said in a 2005 interview, “I had plenty of friends to play with when I was a child and, yes, I had nursery rhymes too... My parents never put pressure on me. In fact they’re the ones who are always saying you should rest and chill out.”[citation needed]
Quest for the Cure to Cancer[edit]
Jaswal is also known for his attempt to cure cancer. In fact, he has even declared that he knows a cure to cancer, and has known of a cure ever since he was eight years old. Though Jaswal received media attention for this declaration, others have been skeptical of Jaswal's alleged cure. For example, Mustafa Djamgoz has said, "There’s no doubt he is a brilliant boy. He really knows his stuff and has put his heart, soul and mind into finding a cure for cancer. But his solution is not that novel. In theory it could work, but it would be premature to say he has found a cure.”[citation needed] It is unclear how far along Jaswal is in his cancer research to date.
See also[edit]
1. ^ The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - Himachal Pradesh[dead link]
2. ^ a b Senthilingam, Meera. "Pass me the scalpel, Mummy". Imperial College Magazine, London. Archived from the original on 2007-03-17. Retrieved 2007-01-02.
3. ^ "The Seven Year-Old Surgeon". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 2007-01-02. [dead link]
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Jump to: navigation, search
"Balkar" redirects here. For the village in Iran, see Balkar, Iran.
Total population
Regions with significant populations
Russia 112,924
Turkey 18,512 (2010)
USA 3,542 (2010)
Kazakhstan 1,798[citation needed]
Ukraine 206[3]
Karachay-Balkar, Russian
Sunni Islam, Nondenominational Muslims, Muwahhid Muslims
Related ethnic groups
The Balkars (Karachay-Balkar: таулу - taulu "mountaineer", аланла - alanla "alans") are a Turkic ethnic group in the Caucasus region, one of the titular populations of Kabardino-Balkaria. Their Karachay-Balkar language is of the Ponto-Caspian subgroup of the Northwestern (Kipchak) group of Turkic languages.
History and cultural relations[edit]
The origins of the Balkar people have not yet been definitively established: various hypotheses have associated them with the Huns, the Khazars, the Bulgars, the Alans, the Brukhs, the Kipchaks and Cumans the Vengrians, the Chekhs and Turkicized Japhetic groups. Some contemporary scholars attribute their origin to a cultural conglomeration of northern Caucasian tribes with the Alans and with Turkish-speaking tribes, among which the most significant were probably the Black Bulgars and the Western Kipchaks. Elements of Balkar culture indicate a long association with the Near East, the Mediterranean, the rest of the Caucasus. In the pre-Mongol period (before the thirteenth century) the Balkars were part of the Alan union of tribes, but after the Mongol invasion they retreated into the canyons of the central Caucasus.
In 1944, the Soviet government forcibly deported almost the entire Balkar population to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Omsk Oblast in Siberia. Starting on 8 March 1944 and finishing the following day, the NKVD loaded 37,713 Balkars onto 14 train echelons bound for Central Asia and Siberia. The Stalin regime placed the exiled Balkars under special settlement restrictions identical to those that it had imposed upon the deported Russian-Germans, Kalmyks, Karachais, Chechens and Ingush. By October 1946 the Balkar population had been reduced to 32,817 due to deaths from malnutrition and disease. The Balkars remained confined by the special settlement restrictions until 28 April 1956. Only in 1957, however, could they return to their mountain homeland in the Caucasus. During 1957 and 1958, 34,749 Balkars returned home (Bugai, doc. 64, pp. 279–280).[4]
Language and literacy[edit]
In the Cyrillic alphabet as used by the Karachay-Balkars there are eight vowels and twenty-seven consonants. In the past the official written languages were Arabic for religious services and Turkish for business matters. From 1920 on Balkar has been the language of instruction in primary schools; subsequent instruction is carried out in Russian. Until 1928 Arabic letters were used to write the Balkar language and after that (in 1937), Cyrillic. Ninety-six percent of the population is bilingual in Balkar and Russian. Organs of mass culture, secondary school texts, newspapers, and magazines in both Balkar and Russian continue to increase in number.
See also[edit]
1. ^ Russian Census 2002: Population by ethnicity(Russian)
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This article is about the genus Eubacterium. It is not to be confused with Bacteria in general.
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Bacteria
Division: Firmicutes
Class: Clostridia
Order: Clostridiale
Family: Eubacteriaceae
Genus: Eubacterium
Prévot, 1938[1]
Type species
Eubacterium foedans
(Klein 1908) Prévot 1938
Eubacterium nodatum
Eubacterium oxidoreducens
Eubacterium could be either a Gram-positive or Gram-negative bacteria genus in the family Eubacteriaceae. These bacteria are characterised by a rigid cell wall. They may either be motile or non-motile. If motile, they have a flagellum. A typical flagellum consists of a basal body, filament, and hook. The long filament is the organ which helps eubacteria move.
Gram-positive bacteria have a thick proteoglycan layer and uptake violet gram-stain (whereas gram-negative bacteria have a thinner proteoglycan layer which is surrounded by a layer of immune-response-inducing lipopolysaccharide, and do not uptake gram-stain).
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For other uses, see Half-caste (disambiguation).
Last of the Tasmanians Woodcut 12 - Walter George Arthur with his half-caste wife Mary Anne
Half-caste is a term for a category of people of mixed race or ethnicity.[1] It is derived from the term caste, which comes from the Latin castus, meaning pure, and the derivative Portuguese and Spanish casta, meaning race, and is generally considered offensive but not always (such as in New Zealand).
Half-caste—along with terms such as caste, quarter-caste, "mix-breed"and others—were widely used by ethnographers in British colonies in attempts to classify natives. In Latin America, the equivalent term for half-castes was Cholo and Zambo.[2][3]
In Australia, the term half-caste was widely used in the 19th- and early-20th-century British commonwealth laws to refer to the offspring of White colonists and the Aboriginal natives of the continent.[4] For example, the Aborigines Protection Act of 1886 mentioned half-castes habitually associating with or living with an Aboriginal;[5] while the Aborigines Amendments between 1934 to 1937 refers to it in various terms, including as a person with less than quadroon blood.[6] Later literature, such as by Tindale, refers to it in terms of half, quadroon, octoroon and other hybrids.
The term half-caste was not merely a term of legal convenience. It became a term of common cultural discourse and appeared even in religious records. For example, John Harper notes from records of Woolmington Christian mission that half-castes and anyone with any aborigine connection were considered 'degraded as to divine things, almost on a level with a brute, in a state of moral unfitness for heaven'. [7][8]
The term was immortalized in the Half-Caste Act, whereby the Australian government could seize such children and forcibly remove them from their parents in order to, in theory, provide them with better homes than those afforded typical Aborigines where they can grow up to work as domestic servants, and for social engineering.[6][9][10] The removed children are known as Stolen Generations. Other British commonwealth Acts on half-castes and Aborigines enacted between 1909 and 1943, were also in theory called Welfare Acts, in statutes passed deprived these people of basic civil, political and economic rights and made it illegal to enter public places such as pubs and government institutions, marry or meet relatives.[2]
New Zealand[edit]
The term half-caste to classify people based on their birth and ancestry became popular in New Zealand from the early 19th century. Terms such as Anglo-New Zealander suggested by John Polack in 1838, Utu Pihikete and Huipaiana were alternatively but less used.[11]
In Burma, a half-caste (or Kabya[12]) was anyone with mixed ethnicity from Burmese and British, or Burmese and Indian. During the British colonial rule, half-caste people were ostracized and criticized in literary and political media. For example, a local publication in 1938 published the following:
"You Burmese women who fail to safeguard your own race, after you have married an Indian, your daughter whom you have begotten by such a tie takes an Indian as her husband. As for your son, he becomes a half-caste and tries to get a pure Burmese woman. Not only you but your future generation also is those who are responsible for the ruination of the race."
— An editorial in Burmese Press, 27 November 1938[13]
Similarly, Pu Gale in 1939 wrote Kabya Pyatthana (literally: The Half-Caste Problem), censured Burmese women for enabling half-caste phenomenon, with the claim, "a Burmese woman’s degenerative intercourse with an Indian threatened a spiraling destruction of Burmese society." Such criticism was not limited to a few isolated instances, or just against Burmese girls (thet khit thami), Indians and British husbands. Starting in early 1930s through 1950s, there was an explosion of publications, newspaper articles and cartoons with such social censorship. Included in the criticism were Chinese-Burmese half-castes.[14]
Malaysia experienced immigration from many nations during the colonial times. Half-castes in Malaysia were, as in other colonies, mixed descent people. Above, a Malay mother with her half-caste daughters.
Prior to the explosion in censorship of half-castes in early-20th-century Burma, Thant claims inter-cultural couples such as Burmese-Indian marriages were encouraged by the local population. The situation began to change as colonial developments, allocation of land, rice mills and socio-economic privileges were given to European colonial officials and to Indians brought in Burma by the British with economic incentives. In the late 19th century, the British colonial administration viewed intermarriage as a socio-cultural problem. The colonial administration issued circulars prohibiting European officials from conjugal liaisons with indigenous women. In Burma, as in other colonies in Southeast Asia, intimate relations between colonized women and colonizing men, and the half-caste progeny of such unions were considered harmful to white minority rule founded upon carefully maintained racial hierarchies.[15][16][17]
Half-caste in Malaysia referred to Eurasians and other people of mixed descents.[18][19] They were also commonly referred to as hybrids, and in certain sociological literature the term hybridity is common.[10][20]
With Malaysia experiencing a wave of immigrations from China, the Middle East, India, and southeast Asia, and a wave of different colonial powers (Portuguese, Dutch, English), many other terms have been used for half-castes. Some of these include cap-ceng, half-breed, mesticos. These terms are considered pejorative.[21][22]
Half-castes of Malaya and other British colonies in Asia have been part of non-fiction and fictional works. Brigitte Glaser notes that the half-caste characters in literary works of the 18th through 20th century were predominantly structured with prejudice, as degenerate, low, inferior, deviant or barbaric. Ashcroft in his review considers the literary work structure as consistent with morals and values of colonial era where the colonial powers considered people from different ethnic groups as unequal by birth in their abilities, character and potential, where laws were enacted that made sexual relations and marriage between ethnic groups as illegal.[23][24]
Fijian people of mixed descent were called half-caste, kailoma or vasu. This started with British colonialism, and over time developed into a race conscious, segregated system of society. The colonial government viewed this as a “race problem.” It created a privileged underclass of semi-Europeans who lived on the social fringes in the colonial ordering of Fiji. This legacy continues to affect the ethnic and racial discourse in Fiji.[25]
Kailomas or vasus were children born to a Fijian native and European or indentured laborers brought in by the colonial government to work on sugarcane plantations over a century ago. Over the generations, these half-caste people experienced a harsh, shunned and a bizarre social treatment from the colonial obsession with herding citizens into separate, tidy, racial boxes, which led to the separation of Fijian mixed-bloods from their natural families.[26]
South Africa[edit]
In the 19th century, paintings of half-caste people were in demand and eagerly traded in Europe. Above painting shows Mestizo with caption.
Sociological literature on South Africa, in pre-British, British colonial and Apartheid era refers to half-caste as anyone born from admixing of White and people of color. An alternate, less common term, for half-caste was Mestizzo (conceptually similar to Mestizo in Latin American colonies).[27]
Griqua (Afrikaans: Griekwa) is another term for half-caste people from intermixing in South Africa and Namibia.[28]
People of mixed descent, the half-caste, were considered inferior and slaves by birth in the 19th-century hierarchically arranged, closed colonial social stratification system of South Africa. This was the case even if the father or mother of half-caste person was a European.[27][29][30]
British Central Africa[edit]
British Central Africa, now part Malawi and part Zimbabwe, referred to people of mixed descent as half-castes. These unions were considered improper, mixed couples segregated and shunned, and the colonial courts ruled against mixed marriages.[31][32]
United Kingdom[edit]
In today's United Kingdom, the term primarily applies to those of mixed Black and White parentage,[33] but such was not always the case. In just about any area that fell under the crown's dominion, the term was made use of, and anyone of mixed Caucasian and conquered races could be properly described as being half-caste. As such, it did not necessarily carry any stigma with it.[citation needed] For some, the term half-caste is more offensive than mixed-race, even if the latter is suggestive of tainting and dilution of ethnicity.[33][34]
Ruth Landes notes that half-castes born in Britain of colonial fathers felt rootless in the society in which they lived.[35]
While the term half-caste tends to evoke the understanding of it referring to the offspring of two persons of two different pure bloods or near pure bloods, in other languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, the words half-caste and mixed ethnicity or multi-ethnic are the same word, hun-xue (混血).
Half-caste in other languages[edit]
The term half-caste was widely used by colonial administrators in the 19th- and 20th-century British empire. In Spanish colonies, other terms were in use for half-caste people; above painting, for example, shows a Zamba. The caption India in the painting refers to native Indian American woman.
The term half-caste was common in British colonies, however not exclusive. Other colonial governments such as Spain devised terms for the mixed-race children. The Spanish colonies devised a complex system of castas, consisting of Mulattoes, Mestizos, and many others. The French colonies used terms such as Métis, while the Portuguese used the term Mestiço. French colonies in the Caribbean referred to half-caste people as Chabine (female) and Chabin (male). Before the American Civil War, the term mestee was common for certain people of mixed descent.[36][37]
Other terms in use in colonial era for half-castes included - creole, casco, cafuso, caburet, cattalo, citrange, griffe, half blood, half-bred, half-breed, high yellow, hinny, hybrid, ladino, liger, mamaluco, mixblood, mixed-blood, mongrel, mule, mustee, octoroon, plumcot, quadroon, quintroon, sambo, tangelo, xibaro. The difference between these terms of various European colonies usually was the race, ethnicity or caste of the father and the mother.[38]
Ann Laura Stoler has published a series of reviews of half-caste people and ethnic intermixing during the colonial era of human history. She states that colonial control was predicated on identifying who was white and who was native, which children could become citizens of the empire while who remained the subjects of the empire, who had hereditary rights of a progeny and who did not. This was debated by colonial administrators, then triggered regulations by the authorities. At the start of colonial empires, mostly males from Europe and then males of indentured laborers from India, China and southeast Asia went on these distant trips; in these early times, intermixing was accepted, approved and encouraged. Over time, differences were emphasized, and the colonial authorities proceeded to restrict, then disapprove and finally forbid sexual relationships between groups of people to maintain so-called purity of blood and limit inheritable rights.[39][40][41][42]
See also[edit]
General concepts[edit]
Historical applications of the mixed-caste concept[edit]
• Between white/European and black/African:
• Between white/European and Native American / American Indian:
• Métis, a term derived from modern French (as opposed to Middle French in the case of mestee) and frequently used in the French-speaking world to refer to any person described by prevailing racial-identity standards as being of mixed race
• Between white and Indian:
• Other:
• In literature:
1. ^ [1] Memidex/WordNet
2. ^ a b Michael Dodson (1994). "The Wentworth Lecture: The end in the beginning". Australian Aboriginal Studies (3).
3. ^ Julian Pitt-Rivers (Spring 1967). "Race, Color, and Class in Central America and the Andes". Daedalus (The MIT Press) 96 (2): 542–559.
4. ^ A.O. Neville (September 1951). Mankind 4 (7): 274–290. doi:10.1111/j.1835-9310.1951.tb00251.x. Missing or empty |title= (help)
5. ^ "Aborigines Protection Act of 1886". Museum Victoria, Australia.
6. ^ a b "Aboriginal timeline (1900 - 1969)". Creative Spirits NGO.
7. ^ John Harper (1973). "Notes on a mission station at Batemans Bay, Woolmington" (18).
8. ^ Jeremy Beckett (December 1958). "Marginal Men: A Study of Two Half Caste Aborigines". Oceania 29 (2): 91–108.
9. ^ Robert van Krieken (June 1999). "The barbarism of civilization: cultural genocide and the ‘stolen generations'". The British Journal of Sociology 50 (2): 297–315. doi:10.1080/000713199358752.
10. ^ a b John Hutnyk (2005). "Hybridity". Ethnic and Racial Studies 28 (1): 79–102. doi:10.1080/0141987042000280021.
11. ^ Paul Meredith (2001). "A Half-Caste on the Half-Caste in the Cultural Politics of New Zealand".
12. ^ "Burmese Language Dictionary & Translation (search for caste)".
13. ^ "Burmese women who took Indians". Burma Press Abstract (Seq-than Journal). 5 December 1940 (IOR L/R/5/207). Check date values in: |date= (help)
15. ^ Laura Stoler (1983). Carnal knowledge and imperial power: Race and the intimate in colonial rule. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 978-0520231115.
16. ^ Jean Taylor (1983). The social world of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia. University of Wisconsin Press.
17. ^ Penny Edwards (2002). "Half Caste - staging race in British Burma". Postcolonial Studies 5 (3): 279–295. doi:10.1080/1368879022000032793.
18. ^ J Lo (2002). "Miscegenation's 'dusky human consequences'". Postcolonial Studies 5 (3): 297–307. doi:10.1080/1368879022000032801.
19. ^ T Wignesan (March 1984). "Writing in Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei". The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 19 (1): 149–152. doi:10.1177/002198948401900116.
20. ^ Young, Robert J C (1995). Colonial desire: hybridity in theory, culture, and race. Routledge. p. 236. ISBN 0-415-05374-9.
22. ^ A.J. Stockwell (1982). "The White Man's Burden and Brown Humanity: Colonialism and Ethnicity in British Malaya". Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 10 (1): 44–68. doi:10.1163/156853182X00047.
23. ^ Brigitte Glaser. Racism, Slavery, and Literature (Editor: Wolfgang Zach, Ulrich Pallua). Peter Lang GmbH. pp. 209–232. ISBN 978-3631590454.
24. ^ Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin (2007). Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts (2 ed.). ISBN 978-0415428552.
25. ^ Lucy Bruce (2007). "Histories of Diversity: Kailoma Testimonies and ‘Part-European’ Tales from Colonial Fiji". Journal of Intercultural Studies 28 (1): 113–127. doi:10.1080/07256860601082970.
26. ^ Vicky de Bruce (Editors: Vicki Luker, Brij Lal) (2005). Telling Pacific Lives (see: Section 2 of Chapter 7. A Tartan Clan in Fiji: Narrating the Coloniser ‘Within’ the Colonised). Australian National University. pp. 94–105. ISBN 9781921313813.
27. ^ a b Pierre van den Berghe (1967). South Africa: A Study in Conflict. University of California Press. pp. 13–25. ISBN 978-0520012943.
28. ^ Atmore & Marks (1974). "The imperial factor in South Africa in the nineteenth century: Towards a reassessment". The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (Special Issue: The Partition of Africa) 3 (1): 105–139. doi:10.1080/03086537408582423.
29. ^ Robert Percival (1804). An account of the Cape of Good Hope. Baldwin. ISBN 978-0217773904.
30. ^ O.F. Mentzel (1944). "A description of the African Cape of Good Hope - 1787 (See volume II; also see other Mentzel records and books". The Van Riebeeck Society.
31. ^ "The Half Caste". Boston News. February 17, 1904.
32. ^ C. JOON-HAI LEE (2005). "THE ‘NATIVE’ UNDEFINED: COLONIAL CATEGORIES, ANGLO-AFRICAN STATUS AND THE POLITICS OF KINSHIP IN BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA". The Journal of African History 46: 455–478. doi:10.1017/S0021853705000861.
33. ^ a b J. Hill (2010). "Half-Caste, Bi-racial, Mixed-Race or Black?".
34. ^ Paul Rich (1984). "Philanthropic racism in Britain: The Liverpool university settlement, the anti‐slavery society and the issue of ‘half‐caste’ children". Immigrants & Minorities 3 (1). doi:10.1080/02619288.1984.9974570.
35. ^ RUTH LANDES (December 1955). "Biracialism in American Society: A Comparative View". American Anthropologist 57 (6): 1253–1263. doi:10.1525/aa.1955.57.6.02a00150.
36. ^ Wallace Gesner (Jan 1998). "Habitants, Half-Breeds and Homeless Children: Transformations in Metis and Yankee-Yorker Relations in Early Michigan". Michigan Historical Review' 24 (1): 23–47.
37. ^ Jennifer M. Wilks. "Race, Gender, & Comparative Black Modernism". Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-3364-4.
38. ^ Aubrey Wyatt Tilby (1912). The English people overseas. Houghton Mifflin.
39. ^ Ann Stoler (1989). "Rethinking colonial categories: European communities and the boundaries of rule". Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1): 134–61. doi:10.1017/s0010417500015693.
40. ^ Ann Stoler (1989). "Making Empire respectable: The politics of race and morality in 20th century colonial cultures". American Ethnologist 16 (4): 634–660. doi:10.1525/ae.1989.16.4.02a00030.
41. ^ PAUL SHANKMAN (June 2001). "INTERETHNIC UNIONS AND THE REGULATION OF SEX IN COLONIAL SAMOA, 1830-1945". The Journal of the Polynesian Society 110 (2): 119–147.
42. ^ Ann Stoler (1992). "Sexual affronts and racial frontiers: European identities and the cultural politics of exclusion in colonial Southeast Asia". Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 (3): 514–551. doi:10.1017/s001041750001793x. | <urn:uuid:b955b3d8-d94f-419b-b66b-fa70c968d1a6> | 3 | 3.140625 | 0.07371 | en | 0.897032 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-caste |
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Not to be confused with Lloviu virus.
Common name Love Letter
Type Computer worm
Operating system(s) affected Microsoft Windows
Written in VBScript
ILOVEYOU, sometimes referred to as Love Letter, was a computer worm that attacked tens of millions of Windows personal computers on and after 5 May 2000[1] local time in the Philippines when it started spreading as an email message with the subject line "ILOVEYOU" and the attachment "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.txt.vbs". The latter file extension (in this case, 'VBS' - a type of interpreted file) was most often hidden by default on Windows computers of the time, leading unwitting users to think it was a normal text file. Opening the attachment activated the Visual Basic script. The worm did damage on the local machine, overwriting image files, and sent a copy of itself to all addresses[2] in the Windows Address Book used by Microsoft Outlook. In contrast, the Melissa only sent copies to the first 50 contacts.
On the machine system level, ILOVEYOU relied on the scripting engine system setting (which runs scripting language files such as .vbs files) being enabled, and took advantage of a Microsoft algorithm for hiding file extensions. Windows hid file extensions by default; to do this, it parsed file names from right to left, stopping at the first period character. The attachment, which had two periods, could thus display the inner fake "txt" file extension. Text files are considered to be innocuous, as they are normally incapable of running executable code. The worm also used social engineering to entice users to open the attachment (out of actual desire to connect or simple curiosity) to ensure continued propagation. Systemic weaknesses in the design of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Windows were exploited that allowed malicious code capable of complete access to the operating system, secondary storage, and system and user data simply by unwitting users clicking on an icon.
The virus originated in the Pandacan neighborhood of Manila in the Philippines on May 5, 2000, thereafter following daybreak westward across the world, moving first to Hong Kong, then to Europe, and finally the United States, as employees began their workday that Friday morning.[3] [4] The outbreak was later estimated to have caused US $5.5-8.7 billion in damages worldwide,[5][6] and estimated to cost the US $15 billion to remove the worm.[7] Within ten days, over fifty million infections had been reported,[8] and it is estimated that 10% of internet-connected computers in the world had been affected.[6] Damage cited was mostly the time and effort spent getting rid of the infection and recovering files from backups. To protect themselves, The Pentagon, CIA, the British Parliament and most large corporations decided to completely shut down their mail systems.[9] This virus affected over 45 million computers and was one of the world's most dangerous computer related disasters.
The ILOVEYOU script (the attachment) was written in Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting (VBS) which run in Microsoft Outlook and was enabled by default. The script added Windows Registry data for automatic startup on system boot.
The worm then searched connected drives and replaced files with extensions JPG, JPEG, VBS, VBE, JS, JSE, CSS, WSH, SCT, DOC, HTA, MP2, and MP3 with copies of itself, while appending the additional file extension VBS, making the user's computer unbootable. However, the MP3 and sound related files are hidden and not overwritten.
The worm propagated itself by sending out one copy of the payload to each entry in the Microsoft Outlook address book (Windows Address Book). It also downloaded the Barok trojan renamed for the occasion as "WIN-BUGSFIX.EXE".
The fact that the virus was written in VBS provided users a way to modify the virus. A user could easily modify the virus to replace important files in the system, and destroy it. This allowed many variations of ILOVEYOU to spread across the internet, each one doing different kinds of damage.[10]
Some mail messages sent by ILOVEYOU:
• Important! Read Carefully!!
On 5 May 2000, two young Filipino computer programmers named Reonel Ramones and Onel de Guzman became targets of a criminal investigation by agents of the Philippines' National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).[12] Local Internet service provider Sky Internet had reported receiving numerous contacts from European computer users alleging that malware (in the form of the "ILOVEYOU" worm) had been sent via the ISP's servers.
At that point, the NBI were unsure what felony or crime would apply.[12] It was suggested they be charged with violating Republic Act 8484 (the Access Device Regulation Act), a law designed mainly to penalise credit card fraud, since both used pre-paid (if not stolen) Internet cards to purchase access to ISPs. Another idea was that they be charged with malicious mischief, a felony (under the Philippines Revised Penal Code of 1932) involving damage to property. The drawback here was that one of its elements, aside from damage to property, was intent to damage, and de Guzman had claimed during custodial investigations that he may have unwittingly released the worm.[13]
To show intent, the NBI investigated AMA Computer College, where de Guzman had dropped out at the very end of his final year.[12] They found that, for his undergraduate thesis, de Guzman had proposed the implementation of a trojan to steal Internet login passwords.[14] This way, he proposed, users would finally be able to afford an Internet connection. The proposal was rejected by the College of Computer Studies board,[13] prompting de Guzman to cancel his studies the day before graduation.
Legislative aftermath[edit]
Since there were no laws in the Philippines against writing malware at the time, both Ramones and de Guzman were released with all charges dropped by state prosecutors.[15] To address this legislative deficiency,[12] the Philippine Congress enacted Republic Act No. 8792,[16] otherwise known as the E-Commerce Law, in July 2000, just two months after the worm outbreak. In 2002, the ILOVEYOU virus obtained a world record for being the most virulent computer virus at the time.[17]
See also[edit]
1. ^ "VBS.LoveLetter.Var". Symantec. Retrieved 8 February 2013.
2. ^
3. ^
4. ^ "'ILOVEYOU' e-mail worm invades PCs". 4 May 2000. Archived from the original on 2008-12-27.
5. ^ "ILOVEYOU". Retrieved 2008-05-26.
6. ^ a b
7. ^
8. ^ Gary Barker (14 May 2000). "Microsoft May Have Been Target of Lovebug". The Age. [dead link]
9. ^ British parliament shut down their mail systems to prevent damage[dead link]
10. ^ "I LOVE YOU Virus Help". Computer Hope. Retrieved 11 February 2013.
11. ^ "Symantec detects all known new variants of VBS.LoveLetter.A worm". Symantec. Retrieved 8 February 2013.
13. ^ a b Landler, Mark (2000-10-21). "A Filipino Linked to 'Love Bug' Talks About His License to Hack". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-05.
14. ^ "". Retrieved 2010-12-05.
15. ^ Arnold, Wayne (2000-08-22). "Technology; Philippines to Drop Charges on E-Mail Virus". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-05.
16. ^ Joselito Guianan Chan, Managing Partner, Chan Robles & Associates Law Firm (2001-08-01). "". Retrieved 2010-12-05.
17. ^ "Top Ten Most-Destructive Computer Viruses". The Smithsonian. 2012-03-20. Retrieved 2013-10-25.
External links[edit] | <urn:uuid:6daa5ae7-1ec6-4184-b51b-58680e413990> | 2 | 2.328125 | 0.026947 | en | 0.926347 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILOVEYOU |
Orbital hybridisation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Orbital hybridization)
Jump to: navigation, search
Not to be confused with s-p mixing in Molecular Orbital theory. See Molecular orbital diagram.
In chemistry, hybridisation (or hybridization) is the concept of mixing atomic orbitals into new hybrid orbitals (with different energies, shapes, etc., than the component atomic orbitals) suitable for the pairing of electrons to form chemical bonds in valence bond theory. Hybrid orbitals are very useful in the explanation of molecular geometry and atomic bonding properties. Although sometimes taught together with the valence shell electron-pair repulsion (VSEPR) theory, valence bond and hybridisation are in fact not related to the VSEPR model.[1]
Chemist Linus Pauling first developed the hybridisation theory in 1931 in order to explain the structure of simple molecules such as methane (CH4) using atomic orbitals.[2] Pauling pointed out that a carbon atom forms four bonds by using one s and three p orbitals, so that "it might be inferred" that a carbon atom would form three bonds at right angles (using p orbitals) and a fourth weaker bond using the s orbital in some arbitrary direction. In reality however, methane has four bonds of equivalent strength separated by the tetrahedral bond angle of 109.5°. Pauling explained this by supposing that in the presence of four hydrogen atoms, the s and p orbitals form four equivalent combinations or hybrid orbitals, each denoted by sp3 to indicate its composition, which are directed along the four C-H bonds.[3] This concept was developed for such simple chemical systems, but the approach was later applied more widely, and today it is considered an effective heuristic for rationalising the structures of organic compounds.
Atomic orbitals[edit]
Orbitals are a model representation of the behaviour of electrons within molecules. In the case of simple hybridisation, this approximation is based on atomic orbitals, similar to those obtained for the hydrogen atom, the only neutral atom for which the Schrödinger equation can be solved exactly. In heavier atoms, such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, the atomic orbitals used are the 2s and 2p orbitals, similar to excited state orbitals for hydrogen. Hybrid orbitals are assumed to be mixtures of these atomic orbitals, superimposed on each other in various proportions. It provides a quantum mechanical insight to Lewis structures. Hybridisation theory finds its use mainly in organic chemistry.
Hybridisation describes the bonding atoms from one atom's point of view. The terminology describes the weight of the respective components of a hybrid orbital. For example, in methane, the C hybrid orbital which forms each carbonhydrogen bond consists of 25% s character and 75% p character and is thus described as sp3 (read as s-p-three) hybridised. Quantum mechanics describes this hybrid as an sp3 wavefunction of the form N(s + 3pσ), where N is a normalization constant (here 1/2) and pσ is a p orbital directed along the C-H axis to form a sigma bond. The ratio of coefficients (denoted λ in general) is 3 in this example. Since the electron density associated with an orbital is proportional to the square of the wavefunction, the ratio of p-character to s-character is λ2 = 3. The p character or the weight of the p component is N2λ2 = 3/4.
For atoms forming equivalent hybrids with no lone pairs, the number and type of orbitals corresponds. Thus sp3 hybrids in methane are formed from one s and three p orbitals. In other cases, no such correspondence exists. For example, the two bond-forming hybrid orbitals of oxygen in water can be described as sp4, which means that they have 20% s character and 80% p character, but does not imply that they are formed from one s and four p orbitals. The amount of p-character is not restricted to integer values; i.e., hybridisations such as sp2.5 exist.
An analogous notation describes hybrids of s and d orbitals. For example, the permanganate ion (MnO4) has sd3 hybridisation with orbitals that are 25% s and 75% d.
Types of hybridisation[edit]
Four sp3 orbitals.
For a tetrahedrally coordinated carbon (e.g., methane CH4), the carbon should have 4 orbitals with the correct symmetry to bond to the 4 hydrogen atoms.
Carbon's ground state configuration is 1s2 2s2 2px1 2py1 or more easily read:
C ↑↓ ↑↓
1s 2s 2px 2py 2pz
The carbon atom can utilize its two singly occupied p-type orbitals (the designations px py or pz are meaningless in this context, lacking order), to form two covalent bonds with two hydrogen atoms, yielding the "free radical" methylene CH2, the simplest carbene. The carbon atom can also bond to four hydrogen atoms by an excitation of an electron from the doubly occupied 2s orbital to the empty 2p orbital, producing four singly occupied orbitals.
C* ↑↓
1s 2s 2px 2py 2pz
The energy released by formation of two additional bonds more than compensates for the excitation energy required, energetically favouring the formation of four C-H bonds.
Quantum mechanically, the lowest energy is obtained if the four bonds are equivalent, which requires that they be formed from equivalent orbitals on the carbon. A set of four equivalent orbitals can be obtained that are linear combinations of the valence-shell (core orbitals are almost never involved in bonding) s and p wave functions,[4] which are the four sp3 hybrids.
C* ↑↓
1s sp3 sp3 sp3 sp3
In CH4, four sp3 hybrid orbitals are overlapped by hydrogen 1s orbitals, yielding four σ (sigma) bonds (that is, four single covalent bonds) of equal length and strength.
A schematic presentation of hybrid orbitals overlapping hydrogen orbitals translates into Methane's tetrahedral shape
Three sp2 orbitals.
Ethene structure
Other carbon based compounds and other molecules may be explained in a similar way. For example, ethene (C2H4) has a double bond between the carbons.
For this molecule, carbon sp2 hybridises, because one π (pi) bond is required for the double bond between the carbons and only three σ bonds are formed per carbon atom. In sp2 hybridisation the 2s orbital is mixed with only two of the three available 2p orbitals,
C* ↑↓
1s sp2 sp2 sp2 2p
forming a total of three sp2 orbitals with one uninvolved p orbital. In ethylene (ethene) the two carbon atoms form a σ bond by overlapping two sp2 orbitals and each carbon atom forms two covalent bonds with hydrogen by s–sp2 overlap all with 120° angles. The π bond between the carbon atoms perpendicular to the molecular plane is formed by 2p–2p overlap. The hydrogen–carbon bonds are all of equal strength and length, in agreement with experimental data.
Two sp orbitals
C* ↑↓
1s sp sp 2p 2p
In this model, the 2s orbital mixes with only one of the three p orbitals, resulting in two sp orbitals and two remaining unchanged p orbitals. The chemical bonding in acetylene (ethyne) (C2H2) consists of sp–sp overlap between the two carbon atoms forming a σ bond and two additional π bonds formed by p–p overlap. Each carbon also bonds to hydrogen in a σ s–sp overlap at 180° angles.
Hybridisation and molecule shape[edit]
Hybridisation helps to explain molecule shape, since the angles between bonds are (approximately) equal to the angles between hybrid orbitals, as explained above for the tetrahedral geometry of methane. As another example, the three sp2 hybrid orbitals are at angles of 120° to each other, so this hybridisation favours trigonal planar molecular geometry with bond angles of 120°. Other examples are given in the table below.
Classification Main group Transition metal[5]
• Linear (180°)
• sp hybridisation
• E.g., CO2
• Bent (90°)
• sd hybridisation
• E.g., VO2+
• Tetrahedral (109.5°)
• sd3 hybridisation
• E.g., MnO4
AX5 -
AX6 -
Main group compounds with lone pairs[edit]
For main group compounds with lone electron pairs, the s orbital lone pair can hybridise to a certain extent with the bond pairs.[8] This is analogous to s-p mixing in molecular orbital theory, and maximizes energetic stability according to the molecule's Walsh diagram.
• Trigonal pyramidal (AX3E1)
• The s-orbital can hybridise with the three p-orbital bonds to give bond angles greater than 90°.
• Ex. NH3
• Bent (AX2E1-2)
• The s-orbital lone pair can hybridise with the two p-orbital bonds to give bond angles greater than 90°. The out-of-plane p-orbital can either be a lone pair or pi bond. If it is a lone pair, the in-plane and out-of-plane lone pairs are inequivalent, contrary to the common picture depicted by VSEPR theory (see below).
• Exs. SO2, H2O
• Monocoordinate (AX1E1-3)
• The s-orbital lone pair can hybridise with the p-orbital bond. The two out-of-line p-orbitals can either be lone pairs or pi bonds. The p-orbital lone pairs are not equivalent to the s-rich lone pair.
• Exs. CO, SO, HF
Hybridisation of hypervalent molecules[edit]
Traditional description[edit]
Hybridisation is often presented for main group AX5 and above, as well as for transition metal complexes, using the hybridisation scheme first proposed by Pauling.
Classification Main group Transition metal
AX2 -
• Linear (180°)
• sp hybridisation
• E.g., Ag(NH3)2+
AX3 -
AX4 -
• Octahedral (90°)
• d2sp3 hybridisation
• E.g., Mo(CO)6
AX9 -
In this notation, d orbitals of main group atoms are listed after the s and p orbitals since they have the same principal quantum number (n), while d orbitals of transition metals are listed first since the s and p orbitals have a higher n. Thus for AX5 molecules, sp3d hybridisation in the P atom involves 3s, 3p and 3d orbitals, while dsp3 for Fe involves 3d, 4s and 4p orbitals.
However, hybridisation of s, p and d orbitals together is no longer accepted, as more recent calculations based on molecular orbital theory have shown that in main-group molecules the d component is insignificant, while in transition metal complexes the p component is insignificant.
Resonance description[edit]
As shown by computational chemistry, hypervalent molecules can be stable only given strongly polar (and weakened) bonds with electronegative ligands such as fluorine or oxygen to reduce the valence electron occupancy of the central atom to a maximum of 8[9] (or 12 for transition metals).[10] This requires an explanation that invokes sigma resonance in addition to hybridisation, which implies that each resonance structure has its own hybridisation scheme. As a guideline, all resonance structures have to obey the octet (8) rule for main group compounds and the duodectet (12) rule for transition metal complexes.
Classification Main group Transition metal
AX2 - Linear (180°)
Di silv.svg
AX3 - Trigonal planar (120°)
Tri copp.svg
AX4 - Square planar (90°)
Tetra plat.svg
AX5 Trigonal bipyramidal (90°, 120°) Trigonal bipyramidal (90°, 120°)
Penta phos.png
• Fractional hybridisation (s and d orbitals)
• E.g., Fe(CO)5
AX6 Octahedral (90°) Octahedral (90°)
Hexa sulf.png Hexa moly.svg
AX7 Pentagonal bipyramidal (90°, 72°) Pentagonal bipyramidal (90°, 72°)
Hepta iodi.svg
• Fractional hybridisation (s and three d orbitals)
• E.g., V(CN)74−
AX8 Square antiprismatic Square antiprismatic
• Fractional hybridisation (s and three p orbitals)
• E.g., IF8
• Fractional hybridisation (s and four d orbitals)
• E.g., Re(CN)83−
AX9 - Tricapped trigonal prismatic
• Fractional hybridisation (s and five d orbitals)
• E.g., ReH92−
Main group compounds with lone pairs[edit]
For hypervalent main group compounds with lone electron pairs, the bonding scheme can be split into two components: the "resonant bonding" component and the "regular bonding" component. The "regular bonding" component has the same description (see above), while the "resonant bonding" component consists of resonating bonds utilizing p orbitals. The table below shows how each shape is related to the two components and their respective descriptions.
Regular bonding component (marked in red)
Bent Monocoordinate -
Resonant bonding component Linear axis Seesaw (AX4E1) (90°, 180°, >90°) T-shaped (AX3E2) (90°, 180°) Linear (AX2E3) (180°)
Tetra sulf.svg Tri chlo.svg Di xeno.svg
Square planar equator - Square pyramidal (AX5E1) (90°, 90°) Square planar (AX4E2) (90°)
Penta chlo.svg Tetra xeno.svg
Pentagonal planar equator - Pentagonal pyramidal (AX6E1) (90°, 72°) Pentagonal planar (AX5E2) (72°)
Hexa xeno.svg Penta xeno.svg
VSEPR electron domains[edit]
The simplistic picture of hybridisation taught in conjunction with VSEPR theory does not agree with high-level theoretical calculations[8] despite its widespread textbook usage. For example, following the guidelines of VSEPR, the hybridization of the oxygen in water is described with two equivalent lone electron-pairs.[11] However, molecular orbital calculations give orbitals that reflect the molecule's C2v symmetry.[12] One of the two lone pairs is in a pure p-type orbital, with its electron density perpendicular to the H–O–H framework.[13] The other lone pair is in an approximately sp0.8 orbital that is in the same plane as the H–O–H bonding.[13] Photoelectron spectra confirm the presence of two different energies for the nonbonded electrons.[14]
d orbitals in main group compounds[edit]
Main article: Hypervalent molecule
In 1990, Magnusson published a seminal work definitively excluding the role of d-orbital hybridization in bonding in hypervalent compounds of second-row elements, ending a point of contention and confusion. Part of the confusion originates from the fact that d-functions are essential in the basis sets used to describe these compounds (or else unreasonably high energies and distorted geometries result). Also, the contribution of the d-function to the molecular wavefunction is large. These facts were incorrectly interpreted to mean that d-orbitals must be involved in bonding.[15]
p orbitals in transition metal complexes[edit]
Similarly, p orbitals transition metal centers were thought to participate in bonding with ligands, hence the 18-electron description; however, recent molecular orbital calculations have found that such p orbital participation in bonding is insignificant,[16][17] even though the contribution of the p-function to the molecular wavefunction is calculated to be somewhat larger than that of the d-function in main group compounds.
Hybridization theory vs. molecular orbital theory[edit]
Hybridisation theory is an integral part of organic chemistry and in general discussed together with molecular orbital theory. For drawing reaction mechanisms sometimes a classical bonding picture is needed with two atoms sharing two electrons.[18] Predicting bond angles in methane with MO theory is not straightforward. Hybridisation theory explains bonding in alkenes[19] and methane.[20]
Bonding orbitals formed from hybrid atomic orbitals may be considered as localized molecular orbitals, which can be formed from the delocalized orbitals of molecular orbital theory by an appropriate mathematical transformation. For molecules with a closed electron shell in the ground state, this transformation of the orbitals leaves the total many-electron wave function unchanged. The hybrid orbital description of the ground state is therefore equivalent to the delocalized orbital description for ground state total energy and electron density, as well as the molecular geometry that corresponds to the minimum total energy value.
No such equivalence describes ionized or excited states with open electron shells. Hybrid orbitals cannot therefore be used to interpret photoelectron spectra. These measure the energies of ionized states, identified with delocalized orbital energies using Koopmans' theorem. Nor can they be used to interpret UV-visible spectra that correspond to electronic transitions between delocalized orbitals. From a pedagogical perspective, the hybridisation approach tends to over-emphasize localisation of bonding electrons and does not effectively embrace molecular symmetry as does MO theory.
See also[edit]
1. ^ Gillespie, R.J. (2004), "Teaching molecular geometry with the VSEPR model", Journal of Chemical Education 81 (3): 298–304, Bibcode:2004JChEd..81..298G, doi:10.1021/ed081p298
2. ^ Pauling, L. (1931), "The nature of the chemical bond. Application of results obtained from the quantum mechanics and from a theory of paramagnetic susceptibility to the structure of molecules", Journal of the American Chemical Society 53 (4): 1367–1400, doi:10.1021/ja01355a027
3. ^ L. Pauling The Nature of the Chemical Bond (3rd ed., Oxford University Press 1960) p.111-120.
4. ^ McMurray, J. (1995). Chemistry Annotated Instructors Edition (4th ed.). Prentice Hall. p. 272. ISBN 978-0-131-40221-8
5. ^ Weinhold, Frank; Landis, Clark R. (2005). Valency and bonding: A Natural Bond Orbital Donor-Acceptor Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 381–383. ISBN 978-0-521-83128-4.
7. ^ a b King, R. Bruce (2000). "Atomic orbitals, symmetry, and coordination polyhedra". Coordination Chemistry Reviews 197: 141–168.
8. ^ a b Weinhold, Frank. "Rabbit Ears Hybrids, VSEPR Sterics, and Other Orbital Absurdities". University of Wisconsin. Retrieved 2012-11-11.
9. ^ David L. Cooper , Terry P. Cunningham , Joseph Gerratt , Peter B. Karadakov , Mario Raimondi (1994). "Chemical Bonding to Hypercoordinate Second-Row Atoms: d Orbital Participation versus Democracy". Journal of the American Chemical Society 116 (10): 4414–4426. doi:10.1021/ja00089a033.
10. ^ Weinhold, Frank; Landis, Clark R. (2005). Valency and bonding: A Natural Bond Orbital Donor-Acceptor Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 367. ISBN 0-521-83128-8.
11. ^ Petrucci R.H., Harwood W.S. and Herring F.G. "General Chemistry. Principles and Modern Applications" (Prentice-Hall 8th edn 2002) p. 441
12. ^ Levine I.N. “Quantum chemistry” (4th edn, Prentice-Hall) p. 470–2
13. ^ a b Laing, Michael J. Chem. Educ. (1987) 64, 124–128 "No rabbit ears on water. The structure of the water molecule: What should we tell the students?"
14. ^ Levine p. 475
15. ^ E. Magnusson. Hypercoordinate molecules of second-row elements: d functions or d orbitals? J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1990, 112, 7940-7951. doi:10.1021/ja00178a014
16. ^ C. R. Landis, F. Weinhold (2007). "Valence and extra-valence orbitals in main group and transition metal bonding". Journal of Computational Chemistry 28 (1): 198–203. doi:10.1002/jcc.20492.
17. ^ O’Donnell, Mark (2012). "Investigating P-Orbital Character In Transition Metal-to-Ligand Bonding". Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin College. Retrieved 2012-09-16.
18. ^ Clayden, Jonathan; Greeves, Nick; Warren, Stuart; Wothers, Peter (2001). Organic Chemistry (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 105. ISBN 978-0-19-850346-0.
19. ^ Organic Chemistry, Third Edition Marye Anne Fox James K. Whitesell 2003 ISBN 978-0-7637-3586-9
20. ^ Organic Chemistry 3rd Ed. 2001 Paula Yurkanis Bruice ISBN 978-0-130-17858-9
External links[edit] | <urn:uuid:b441bd96-14fb-41d2-84b3-7bcd5b8cbb45> | 3 | 3.4375 | 0.094764 | en | 0.820944 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_hybridization |
The New Student's Reference Work/Rumania
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Ruma′nia or Rouma′nia, an independent kingdom of southeastern Europe, composed of the two former principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. It was a part of Roman Dacia, and its people proudly claim to be Romans. It is bounded on the west and north by Austria, on the east by Russia and the Black Sea and on the south by Bulgaria, from which it is separated by the Danube. Its area is 50,720 square miles, and its population 6,865,739. The capital of Rumania is Bucharest in Wallachia (300,000), and the chief town of Moldavia is Jassy (80,000), not far from Pruth River. A remarkable feature in the agricultural system is the ownership of lands by the peasantry, which was introduced about 1864. The peasants had been robbed of their lands during long ages of feudal oppression, and at this time it was determined to restore a portion by permitting them to purchase small tracts by means of a loan from the government. The result was that in 1880 there were in Rumania nearly 500,000 holdings, averaging 10½ acres each, with the greater part of the debt discharged by the owners. In 1859 the two principalities elected Prince Couza as their ruler but in 1866 he was deposed and was succeeded by Prince Charles of Hohenzollern. In 1881 Prince Charles was invested with the kingly dignity as Carol I (q. v.), with the consent of the European powers, and since that time the Rumanians have practically freed themselves from both Russian and Turkish interference and have taken their place among independent nations. King Carol’s wife is the well-known Carmen Sylva of literature. See Samuelson’s Rumania and Miller’s The Balkans in The Story of the Nations Series. | <urn:uuid:6baefadb-6957-4b31-a781-2fa976ba4173> | 4 | 3.671875 | 0.025319 | en | 0.980469 | http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Student's_Reference_Work/Rumania |
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Is Clean Air and Water a Birthright?
By Joshua Sandstrom
What is a birthright? Is it something that is gifted or bestowed simply by choosing to come to the Earth and take on a physical body? To me things like clean air and water, pure food, and a healthy home environment are birthrights.
In my travels throughout the world I have seen true happiness in the eyes of children, even in the face of harsh conditions. It seems, however, that this happiness fades as the harshness of their lives swallows them and strips them of their God-given birthrights.
There are those that have, and those that do not. Often those that have, have too much and rarely realize what they’ve been given; while those that have not may look on in envy and rage, wondering how and why the circumstances of their lives are so much more difficult.
How do those of us who are fortunate on every level help to deliver what we consider birthrights to those who are not so fortunate? That is the question that must be answered by us as we enter the Aquarian Age. Is it simply about doing sadhana? What if you don’t even have clean water to drink before and after your daily practice? Currently over 70% of the human population are in such dire circumstances that they can’t even think about doing a yoga practice.
How do those of us that have found a personal connection with God, and have been given the chance to shine in the sun of our own destiny, help those that have been given so little? To me, it comes down to our willingness to share.
If we can all find ways to reach out and serve others by doing simple, practical things to make the world a better place, the world will become a better place. Everyday actions like supporting organic agriculture and fairly traded goods, purchasing recycled or tree free paper products, and adopting a vegetarian diet, can have huge impacts on people all around the world.
When we recycle instead of throw away, the result is that less resources are used by those that have too much, and more resources are available to distribute to those who have too little. When we use non-toxic products for cleaning, washing, and new construction, we eliminate that many more toxic chemicals produced, mined, and extracted at the expense of the health and well-being of someone far, far away.
How are we going to ensure that in this coming Golden Era of Peace, the birthrights of clean air and water, pure food, and non-toxic environments will be available to all who walk the planet with us?
What is a birthright? To me it is the right and responsibility to act appropriately from a very simple place of operation. In my everyday action I simply ask myself, what would happen if everyone did this? Would the world be a better or worse place one thousand years from now? It really is that simple.
| <urn:uuid:1d98a857-9bbc-46c0-812d-b12e34f01f2d> | 2 | 1.953125 | 0.168784 | en | 0.966352 | http://es.3ho.org/3ho-lifestyle/seva-service/clean-air-and-water-birthright |
When in necessity for fire sprinklers Miami is the right region to give first priority. Fire sprinklers are a constituent of an even larger fire sprinkler system that works to offer safety against harsh effects of fires on both life and property. They suppress fires and prevent buildings from collapsing as the supporting frame is consumed.
A sprinkler comprises of pipes that supply the central system with chemicals or water. Pipes are connected directly to the a water source on the home. Pipes and tubes are made of PVC and are adequately strong to manage extreme pressure at which water is driven. Water moves to the sprinkler head and is released as jets. Some heads circulate as they spray chemical or water.
The head is a primary part of the gadget. Heads comprise small holes through which chemicals or water is discharged. They stick out from the ceiling board. Normally, a heat or smoke sensor is attached to it on the upper part to allow it to be activated when a given predetermined temperature is surpassed. Many heads of these devices are made of plastic although metal is utilized in a few cases.
Systems work by pre-wetting materials near the fire with water or extinguishing substances like liquid carbon dioxide. Wet materials do not burn easily. They are usually installed up on the ceiling boards so that they get a clear target of the source of fires. Some types work by absorbing heat generated by the flames as materials burn. Equipments that control heat release rate are said to function in a control mode.
Most sprinklers are automated and only get triggered upon occurrence of a given activity. Such activities comprise exceeding of a predetermined temperature or detection of smoke within a space. Installation of a system is reliant on calculations from the method of area and density. In this method, the building and its compositions are first inspected to determine the degree of damage that can happen if fires erupt.
Sprinkler systems may be installed in commercial, residential or industrial buildings. Residential systems are made majorly to help individuals to evacuate burning homes. Safety of buildings and their contents is a second priority. Commercial units are more advanced and are devised to exclusively safeguard the building, content and the employees who could be inside. Area and density approach is first applied on the building before installation to ensure safety.
In Miami, local governments demand that each house be fitted with these gadgets. The authorities give recommendations on suitable rules to follow when acquiring a system and when installing them. Failure fix them may result into legal action being pursued by local governments. Legal action could include a jail sentence or a fine.
When in necessity for fire sprinklers Miami must never be evaded. There are several firms that produce all kinds of these systems and avail them to clients at low prices. Installation may be carried out by the seller or manufacturing firm at a little or no cost.
You can find the high-quality fire sprinklers Miami businesses are using by visiting our official website. For detailed information on our products and installation services, view the links at http://www.afireprofessionals.com today. | <urn:uuid:77f7c03a-7189-4ef4-9585-432d07df5fab> | 3 | 2.78125 | 0.043209 | en | 0.954246 | http://fanvsfan.com/articles/when-one-needs-to-buy-fire-sprinklers-miami-city-must-be-prioritized--2 |
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Friday, September 02, 2011
DALE DRINNON: Tarantulas and Atlantis
Three new postings for the second of the month:
Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4
1 comment:
Dale Drinnon said...
jon, you are not really conveying the import of my blogs when you say "Dale is writing about Atlantis" when Dale is dealing with the Northern Bronze Age Theory of Jurgen Spanuth, which sitates Atlantis at the bottom of the Noth Sea during the Bronze Age and ending because of the impact of a celestial body remembered in mythology as the Wild Ride of Phaethon. There are sebveral things I am trying to determine and demonstrate here, among them are: Yes, Phaethon was a legitimate event and can be connected to records of forest fires and intense heat in Northern Europe at the time: yes, the Peoples of the Sea seem to have been dislodged from Megalithic Europe by the Phaethon Incident and yes they were a multinational alliance out of ALL of Megalthic Europe (so Tartessos and Megalithic Ireland were inhabited by "Atlanteans" at this time and were also part of this same movement, the Irish populations being named also as the Tuatha DeDanaan); And NO, this international brotherhood or "Ten Kingdoms of Atlantis" according to Spanuth and Bischoff WAS NOT the same as the Atlantis of Plato, but was the remnant of their descendants or "Empire of Atlantis" if you will. The matter seems clear enough to me, I just need to lay the groundwork to show how that scenario can come out of the same data.
Colin Wilson had said that Atlantis was "A real possibility as the original home to the Megalithic culture and where they developed their skills"
An earlier blog you also said was "About Atlantis" was entitled as "Megalithic Rememberances of the Flood" and was chiefly concerned with evidence of the "Clovis Comet" and the Carolina bays. The INITIAL piece of evidence in that was a small standing stone which was interpreted at another site as a map of the North Atlantic and an illustration of a comet falling into it. That is a completely different scenario and deals with a completely different set of evidence for a completely different event. It has something to do with Andrew Collins insytead. And, be it known, I also intend to deal with the evidenc that a fall of large meteorites into the Western Indian Ocean is associated with flooding in Mesopotamia at about 2800-3000 BC and the origin of yet another set of Flood myths which will also be quite a diffent thing. I DO also consider that together these three events are the best-represented and most easily defensible instances of cometary collision in the last several thousand years.(None of these events lines up specifically with any of Velikovsky's dates or projected catastrophes, either)
So you see there are a lot of subjects being covered in these posts and all you say is "Dale is writing about Atlantis again" which is about analogous to say of my Fronteirs of Zoology postings "Dale is writing about some kind of fish or another, ho-hum"
Thank you for posting my links, it does do me a lot of good. But it just seems to me that you're not really paying me any attention out here. Best Wishes, Dale D. | <urn:uuid:9a642dea-af42-4ffa-9599-31af9fb48a65> | 2 | 2.109375 | 0.042439 | en | 0.954059 | http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2011/09/dale-drinnon-tarantulas-and-atlantis.html |
The Johnson Space Center in Houston and Tony Starks' Cliffside mansion in Malibu are both hubs of innovation, one real and one fictional. But with NASA's newest creation, the X1 Exoskeleton, reality appears to be following fiction.
The 57 pound, 10 joint exoskeleton resembles a real life Iron Man suit, capable of increasing a humans own physical abilities. It's being developed to keep astronauts muscles active while they're in space, where the weightless environment can cause muscles to lose their strength, but during their research NASA realized the X1 could also help paraplegics walks on earth.
The bodysuit is still in the prototype stages and won't be accompanying Scott Kelly, Gabby Giffords brother in law, who just volunteered to spend an entire year in space studying how the human body reacts to long term exposure to weightlessness.
But the X1 Exoskeleton is being tested on paraplegics here on earth, and the results so far have been promising. To learn more we spoke with NASA engineers Shelley Rea and Chris Beck who are working on the project.
who says space exploration is a waste of time and money? | <urn:uuid:1fd0619e-ad66-4c08-b3c3-2165fe09701b> | 2 | 2.421875 | 0.459652 | en | 0.945165 | http://forums.prosportsdaily.com/showthread.php?783979-NASA-working-on-Iron-Man-like-robotic-exoskeleton&p=24513792&mode=threaded |
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IBS - c??
nfrapid posted:
I was just wondering, I was recently reading some older posts about IBS and Vit. D deficiency - someone mentioned that they have IBS-C, what is that and how do I find out about the different types of IBS?
Thanks for the help.
greengirl50 responded:
Its the ibs where constipation premdominates not diarrhea.
earthtonegirl responded:
Yeah, IBS-C refers to constipation-predominant. IBS-D is diarrhea, and IBS-A is alternating between the two. It doesn't make much difference diagnostically, and you can change from one to the other in the course of your life, but it does affect which remedies help with your symptoms.
(why won't WebMD's filter let me use the word "out-ward"!?)
LilMissMerrySunshine replied to earthtonegirl's response:
Same reason I cannot use it's (xxxx) hitting. The filter isn't developed enough to see that it is two legitimate words that are separated rather than an attempt to curse.
Wait, what is wrong with out(xxx)ward? What difference does no "d" on the end make? I get hit by the earlier one all the time, but yours makes NO sense!
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One thing that fascinates me is performing mental math. Being able to quickly perform additions, subtraction, multiplications etc is a good way to impress your friends. The problem is, I’m not a math genius, and I don’t know much behind simple arithmetic.
If you’re anything like me, but you’d still like to learn some basic math tricks, I hope you’ll find this list useful.
Simple tricks
How to multiply any two digits number by 11
Let’s say that you want to find the product of 36 and 11. One way to find it would be to multiply 36 by 10 and then add 36 on the result. There is, however, a simple trick that’ll do the job for any two digits number. To find out the result, write the first digit followed by the addition of the first and second digit, followed by the second digit.
What happens if the sum of the two numbers is bigger than 9? In this case you add 1 to the first number, followed by the last digit of the addition of the two numbers, and then again you add the second number
Square any two digits number that ends with 5
Calculating the square of a number below 100 is extremely simple. If you want to find the square of 25 for example, you simply have to take the first digit (2), multiply it for the next higher number (3), and then add 25 to the result.
Multiply any two digits numbers with the same first digit and the second digit that sums up to 10
Let’s say that you want to multiply 42 and 48 together. Notice that they both start with 4, and that the sum of their second digit is 10. In this case there’s a simple rule that you can use to find their product. Simply multiply the first digit (4) for the next higher number (5) and then append the product of their second digits.
Note that if the product of the second digits is below ten, you have to add a 0 in front of it.
Multiply by 9
To multiply by 9, simply multiply by 10 and then subtract the number itself.
Quickly find percentages
• To find out the 15% of a number, divide it by 10 and the add half of it.
• To find out the 20% of a number, divide it by 10 and multiply the result by two.
• To find out the 5% of a number, divide it by 10 and the divide it by two.
When we were at school, we have been taught how to sum two or more numbers together by using the right to left approach. With this method, you first sum the decimal part of the number, then you move to the hundreds and so on. This works good on paper, but it’s a pain when you’re doing mental calculations. Fortunately, the solution is very easy.
Left to right approach
Instead of using a right to left approach, we can start from the left and move to the right. Take the following example:
Usually, you would first sum up 4 to 45, and then and 30 to the result. But by using the left to right approach, you first sum up 30 to 45, and then you add 4 to the result. Although this example is very simple, you’ll see the advantages of this method as you start to use it.
If you’re working with three digits numbers, the process is the same.
This example is a bit more complicated than the previous one, yet it’s very easy to solve using the left to right approach. You first start by adding 600 to 459, which results in 1059. Now the problem is simplified to 1049 + 37. You simplify it even further by adding 30 to 1049, and then you finally add 7 to the result.
Like with addition, you can use the left to right approach for subtracting to numbers together. This time, however, it may feel uncomfortable to keep track of borrowings (a borrowing occurs when you subtract a number to a bigger one, like 16 – 9). Let’s see an example of this.
In this case, you first start by subtracting 10 to 64, resulting in 54, and now you only have to subtract 7 to 54. You can, however, subtract 20 to 64 and add 3 to the result. This way you don’t have to worry about borrowings.
Using complements to simplify subtractions even more
There is a way to easily calculate 3 or 4 digits subtractions very quickly in your head. This technique makes use of complements. For example. let’s say that you’re facing the following problem:
Instead of following the standard left to right approach, you could solve this problem by subtracting 400 to 674 and then add 42 back to the result. 42 is the difference from 100 and 58. A good question is: how do you find 42?
Note that there’s a simple pattern for calculating the second number. In particular, the sum of the first digits always sum up to 9, and the sum of the second digits always sum up to 10. The only exception is when the number ends with 0, which is simpler.
You can use this technique to solve any subtraction very easily.
In order to solve simple multiplications, it’s helps a lot being comfortable with the multiplication table for numbers below 10.
As you may have already guessed, we’re going to use the left to right approach to solve simple multiplication very easily. Take the following example:
We can reduce it by first calculating 30 × 7 (which is like 3 × 7 plus a 0) and then add 6 × 7 on the result.
This approach can be used for even larger numbers. Note that you can also round up instead of rounding down:
User contributions
the following are some math tricks contributed by the users.
Multiply by 5
Contributed by Scott.
To multiply 5 simply cut the # in half then multiply by 10.
eg. 17*5
1/2 of 17 = 8.5
8.5 * 10 = 85
Multiply numbers with multiple digits
Contributed by Tom Peterson
Use this trick when multiplying numbers with multiple digits
let {a;b;c;d…} represent digits of a number
ab x cd = (axc), (axd + bxc), (bxd)
the commas represent separation of digits, so “axc” represents the digit in the hundreds place, etc.
eg) 23 × 14 = (2×1), (2×4 + 3×1), (3×4)
8 + 3
= 2,11,12
in the event of double digits in the same digit place, the number in the digit’s place (starting with the unit’s place) carries the ten’s place digit of the digit place to the following digit place [what a mouthful!]
like in this instance
= 2, 11, 12 = 2, 12, 2 = 3, 2, 2
the answer is 322
the theory behind this is the “distribution property” of numbers commonly used with equations like (x + 1)(x + 4)=0 to make x^2 + 5x + 4=0
the same principles can be applied with 3 digit numbers as well
abc x def = (axd),(axe+bxd),(axf+bxe+cxd),(bxf+cxe),(cxf)
for multiplying 2 digit with 3 digit numbers, just use the 3×3 digits method but use a zero in the hundreds place of the 2 digit number
Square a number close to 10^2
Contributed by Prerak
Vedic mathematics provides lots of short cuts like shown here.
If you need to square a number close to 10^n, you can do so easily. Like if you want 92^2, lets take its answer as abcd.
Now, 92 is 8 before 100, so subtract 8 from 92, i.e. you get ab as 84. For finding cd, square 8 i.e. 64.
Hence the square of 92 comes as 8464.
For square of 87, let the answer is abcd again. Here 87 is 13 short of 100, so subtract 13 from 87 You get 74 as ab. For finding cd, square 13 i.e. 169. Since cd is only of two digits, add this extra 1 to ab.
So the answer becomes 7569.
Square two digits ending with 5
Contributed by alwayslovely
To square 2 digit numbers ending with ‘5’ eg 75 × 75
1. The answer will end with ‘25’
2. Take the first digit ‘7’ multiply by the number after ‘7’ => 7 × 8 = 56
75 × 75 = 5625
Test it out with 95 × 95.
Did you get 8125?
Squaring any number
Contributed by joe
take any number and find out how much to add to get it to the nearest tens subract and add that number to the orignal number multiply add the square
(999+1) (999-1) + (1^2)
(998) (1000) + 1
999^2 + 998001
Squaring a number
Contributed by Ryan
A math trick I noticed when I was young. If you are squaring a number it is always equal to the total of the number times 2 subtract one of the previous squared number. This is helpful if you dont want to write it out. For instance most people know that 10×10=100 or 11×11=121 even 12×12=144 so lets say you dont know 13×13. Its equal to (13×2)-1(plus the previous squared number which was 12×12)144=169
Squaring two digit numbers
Contributed by Shyju
Suppose AB is the number,
Then arrange the number as follows,
( if A*A or A*B is one digit add 0 prior to that – eg: 4 should be written as 04, 5 should be 05 etc..)
Take a number : 35
09|30|25 ( 3*3 | double of 3*5 | 5*5 )
From right to left, keep the right most number as it is and add the number coming both side of | symbol.
ie. Keep 5 as it is, add 2+0, add 3+9
Take another example 43
16|24|09 = 1849
Want more tricks?
All these tricks I learned are from the fantastic book secrets of mental math. This is one of the few books (probably the only one) that I would carry with me all the time. It’s extremely cool to be able to perform mental calculations very quickly, and you can get around it without being a nerd.
Here’s a list of what you can expect to learn from the book:
• Additions and subtractions.
• Basic and advanced multiplications.
• Divisions.
• Guessing a number (when it’s good enough).
• Pencil and paper math.
• How to memorize numbers.
• Many other tricks that will impress your friends.
If you know any other math trick, please share them on the comments. | <urn:uuid:dd8a28e9-bae3-4644-81ce-82af9c78b93c> | 3 | 3.15625 | 0.772672 | en | 0.904036 | http://freestylemind.com/mental-math-tricks |
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For Immediate Release
Office of the First Lady
October 25, 2005
Mrs. Bush Discusses Helping America's Youth Conference with American Urban Radio Network
The Map Room
10:32 A.M. EDT
Q First Lady Bush, Mrs. Bush, thank you so much for joining me again today. As always, a pleasure to chat with you. And today, we're talking about something that you and the President have embarked upon in the last year -- at-risk youth. And you've gone across the country, you've listened to what people have had to say about helping America's youth. And now you're bringing it all together at a conference at Howard University. Talk to me about what you are expecting from this conference.
MRS. BUSH: Well, this is going to really be a terrific conference on Thursday, at Howard University -- and people can follow it on the Internet at home if they want to see what goes on there. But we have a number of researchers talking first, specifically about the challenges that America's young people face. And we know that boys are not going to college and graduate school as much as girls. We know that boys drop out of school more than girls do. Of course, we all know that boys are more likely to get in trouble and be arrested.
And so part of the conference will focus on what we can do for boys, how we can change the way we're raising boys, to encourage them to continue in school and to make healthy decisions for themselves so they don't end up in trouble.
But we'll also talk about fatherhood. We'll talk about several fatherhood initiatives that are going on around the United States where fathers have chosen to be involved and responsible for their children, and are either going to parenting classes or being involved in various faith-based groups around the country to encourage parents to be involved in their children's lives.
I actually got the idea for this initiative last September. I was reading an article in the New York Times magazine about a young man who had grown up without a father himself and had felt a huge loss for that. And when his girlfriend had a baby, he made the determination to be involved in his child's life. And I actually met him. I met the young man in Milwaukee when I visited his hometown over the year, and I think he and his little boy will be at the conference this time.
As I've traveled and visited a number of fatherhood initiatives around the country, I've met a number of young men who are making that choice. There are many young men who grew up without a father that don't want that to happen to their own children. And I really do think we're on just sort of a cusp of time where a lot of young men are going to make that decision, to stay involved with their children.
And that's only one part of the conference, because we know that's one way to help boys and girls. Little boys and little girls who have a loving, devoted father have a huge advantage, along with, of course, as we all know -- and I don't want to, in any way, act like a loving and devoted mother isn't most important, because we know, of course, that is.
We'll also talk about Striving Readers. The Striving Readers program, which the President has mentioned before, is a program that encourages middle schools and high schools to make sure everyone learns to read. And if you have middle school students and high school students who have gotten that far and still are poor readers, to do everything you can to teach them to read. And the good news is, if you adopt -- if school districts adopt systematic teaching of reading, based on all the new research about how children learn to read -- middle school and high school students can catch up with their peers really quickly. And we know, of course, that most of the kids who drop out of school drop out because they're frustrated. They get that far in school and they can't read.
So there will be an education component, there will be a fatherhood component, there will be a mentoring component -- the way coaches, teachers, grandparents, community leaders can help parents by mentoring children, as well.
Q Talking with you in September when we were coming back from Mississippi back to Washington on the plane, you said something about gangs, as well. You talked about gangs, and we talked about employment. Could you expound upon that? And also, if we look at a circle, at a pie, I guess, what ratio, what portions would you give family, community, employment, education, fatherhood?
MRS. BUSH: Well, each one of those are very important. And we were talking about the great program in Los Angeles, Homeboy Industries, that Father Gregory Boyle started. And Father Boyle will be one of the presenters at the conference on Thursday.
He said to me, and he said, I know this is simplistic, but, he said, if people have a good job, they're much more likely to live a stable life. And we know that. And so we want our young people to finish high school, to have the opportunity to go on to college, or to have a good choice of good jobs. And all of the ways that -- a lot of different ways that we know children, young people, can have that will be addressed.
Of course we want young people to avoid drugs and alcohol, and we know that people who do avoid drugs and alcohol are more likely to be able to get a job. We want young people to avoid gangs. And we know that if they're not tattooed with gang tattoos, they're more likely to be employable.
So that's certainly one part of it. And on -- it's hard to say what's the most important. I think -- of course we know that parents can have a huge impact on their children's lives, and that the people who are fortunate enough to have two loving and stable parents we know have a huge advantage. So I think parenting is very, very important.
As you grow up, your education becomes more important. As you reach maturity, if you're educated, you're more likely to be able to get a good job.
And then we know as adults, the people who are happiest are the ones who are productive, who live a good life because they work hard. Maybe it's working hard at home, making it's working hard in a business, maybe it's working hard for their church. But we know that humans are happy, happier, if they can be productive in a good and constructive way.
Q It sounds like almost what you're saying -- and it goes back to what the President has been saying -- family, family. Does this all really point back to the family -- the impetus, everything starts back with a good family unit, whether it's one kind of family or another?
MRS. BUSH: Yes, I think family is very important, and we all know that. But we do also know -- and we have many examples around us all the time of children and young people or adults who grew up with not a great family situation but still could succeed because somebody else stepped in, a teacher stepped in, and told them something about themselves they didn't know, and encouraged them in a good way. A coach might mentor them, especially a young man might be mentored by a coach and really be able to change his life because of that. Clergy, church members, have been able to step in in the lives of young people. And of course, we know that grandparents and aunts and uncles many times have been the ones who have stepped in when the parents, for some reason, are not successful in taking care of their children, and it made all the difference in the life of children.
And so that's the encouraging message. Even if your immediate family is not taking care of you, there are certainly other people and -- other people that young people can reach out to. And I want to encourage young people who are in an unhappy family situation to reach out to your aunts or uncles or your grandparents or your teacher or your coaches and turn your life around.
Q I was reading on the Internet last night, and I found a program out of New York -- it was a non-profit organization -- that helps at-risk youth. And it basically said that there's not a problem -- there's not almost any problem that cannot be fixed, as it relates to at-risk youth. Is that what you're finding, that you can turn around most of the situations that you're coming across?
MRS. BUSH: Amazingly enough, yes. I mean, for instance, the Homebody Industries that I was talking about, when I met the young people there who had dealt drugs, who had been in prison, who were tattooed on their foreheads and on their necks, that they are turning their lives around. They're getting the skills that they need. They dropped out of school. They weren't educated. But at Homeboy Industries, they're learning how to be bakers, or learning to work in a restaurant. They're learning silk-screening techniques and graphic techniques from the Homeboy Industries. And then, they work there, they get their tattoos removed, and then they can get a good job.
And one of the young men that I met when I was there now has gone to work since -- I've heard from Father Boyle has gone to work for a graphics company and has a really good job.
Q What other stories are you hearing from the community that has made you pull into yourself, I guess, to find yourself, to see, I guess, where America is in their heart? Because, I mean, it's surprising to me to hear you talk about tattoos ane the removal of tattoos. You wouldn't think that that is such a major issue, but I guess it is, because this is something that you're bringing forth in this conference.
MRS. BUSH: Well, if you're tattooed on your face or your arms, it's probably -- where people can see it -- it's probably -- most employers probably would not hire you. So it gets back to another way to get a good job if you are tattooed.
Certainly people have tattoos that are hired, but I'm just talking about the really extreme --
Q The gang-related tattoos, yes.
MRS. BUSH: The gang-related, very extreme tattoos. But there's so many ways that people can reach out in their communities, and one of the things that's been the most moving to me, that I've really taken into my heart, is to see the adults who grew up without something, that made them sad, and now are trying to answer that need for other children. One of the men who's going to talk, Duncan Campbell, grew up with a very, very unhappy family life. And so he determined, as a child, that he was going to not -- he was going to do whatever he could when he was a grownup to make sure other children didn't grow up unhappy like that.
So he grew up, he happened to be a businessman, he happened to make a lot of money, and he started a wonderful program that mentors children. It's in a number of cities around the United States, and it's actually -- it actually pays mentors, people who might have chosen to teach school, for instance -- they get about the same salary as a school teacher would get. And they mentor more than one child. They mentor about eight children each, and they're committed to mentoring these children for 12 years, for their entire first grade through twelfth grade year.
And his story, that need to make things better for other children because it wasn't for him, is the story that I see over and over. The two coaches at Think Detroit, they're both lawyers. They grew up in Detroit neighborhoods. And when they grew up and they were successful and went to law school and became lawyers, they knew that there were all these kids in the projects and in the community in Detroit that needed the help and the mentoring of a good man. And so they recruited coaches around their city. They started great inter-league playing with these young people. They taught good character traits as they coached. They gave a forum -- for instance, after the games, they would have barbeques so the parents could be together and have a social life and not be isolated in their own communities, but instead, be with their children and meet their children's friends and their parents. They also felt a need when they were young people, and when they grew up they wanted to do something to answer that need for other children. And that's what I see is so special about our country.
Q The federal government, I understand, will be tracking this, with a Community Assessment Tool. All the agencies will be working on this. Could you tell me about that?
MRS. BUSH: Well, that's one of the great and exciting things about the conference. A number of agencies have gone together to develop this Community Assessment Tool. Community members can take this tool from the Internet and assess all of their own needs. They can see how they're already meeting the needs of young people. They can see where they maybe are falling down, what needs aren't being met. They can lay this tool out on an actual map of their community that they can get also from this website, and then law enforcement in the community can put on this map where the shootings are, where the high crime neighborhoods are. It even helps law enforcement see where they should have the most police, the most law enforcement. Then it lets the community see, maybe if we put a Boys and Girls Club on this corner, that would really help; or maybe a public library, if we're going to build a new public library, if we put it in this neighborhood, that would really help.
So it's a great tool for community members to use to make sure needs are being met by the young people in their communities.
Q And lastly, you're talking about these at-risk youth reaching their potential and their promise. And there's someone who just passed away, Rosa Parks, at the age of 92, the mother of the Civil Rights movement, who sat down against injustice on a bus for everyone to be able to reach their potential. Your thoughts, and the President's thoughts about the life of Rosa Parks.
MRS. BUSH: Well, Rosa Parks is such an inspiration to me and to millions of people in our country and around the world. And what she did was a simple act, an act of dignity. That's really what she is, she's a dignified woman who realized she didn't have to go to the back of the bus. And what she did made all the difference for all the people who came after her. And it was just a beautiful, simple act. And all of us can take lessons from that, we really can. We can think about our own individual acts, the smallest ones and how they can make a difference. If we treat people with dignity, if we treat ourselves with respect and dignity, we can make a big difference for our country and world just like Rosa Parks did.
Q And Mrs. Bush, this last question quickly, this conference, I mean, we've been -- our network has really been on this conference, and not just the conference, but on your efforts with at-risk youth. And unfortunately, we're in the midst of this administration -- a lot of things. How will you keep this conference and the idea of at-risk youth going, as a lot of other news is going on right now?
MRS. BUSH: Well, I hope that people will watch it on the Internet on Thursday when it's going on, at the White House website, which is www.whitehouse.gov/firstlady. That's the way they'll be able to see it in their own homes.
But then I'm going to continue to travel to communities, talk about different programs that we'll highlight this Thursday, and new programs that I haven't even visited yet. And then I hope to bring summits to different states, this very same conference, to other cities around the United States so that more people will have the opportunity to hear what these researchers say and hear about the ways we can help young people.
Q So it doesn't end here.
MRS. BUSH: That's right, it doesn't end here.
Q Thank you so much, Mrs. Bush. It's always a pleasure.
MRS. BUSH: Thanks so much, April. Thanks a lot.
END 10:50 A.M. EDT
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Package org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce
Interface Summary
Counter A named counter that tracks the progress of a map/reduce job.
CounterGroup A group of Counters that logically belong together.
JobContext A read-only view of the job that is provided to the tasks while they are running.
MapContext<KEYIN,VALUEIN,KEYOUT,VALUEOUT> The context that is given to the Mapper.
ReduceContext<KEYIN,VALUEIN,KEYOUT,VALUEOUT> The context passed to the Reducer.
TaskAttemptContext The context for task attempts.
TaskInputOutputContext<KEYIN,VALUEIN,KEYOUT,VALUEOUT> A context object that allows input and output from the task.
Class Summary
Cluster Provides a way to access information about the map/reduce cluster.
ClusterMetrics Status information on the current state of the Map-Reduce cluster.
Counters Counters holds per job/task counters, defined either by the Map-Reduce framework or applications.
Job The job submitter's view of the Job.
JobID JobID represents the immutable and unique identifier for the job.
JobStatus Describes the current status of a job.
Mapper<KEYIN,VALUEIN,KEYOUT,VALUEOUT> Maps input key/value pairs to a set of intermediate key/value pairs.
MarkableIterator<VALUE> MarkableIterator is a wrapper iterator class that implements the MarkableIteratorInterface.
Partitioner<KEY,VALUE> Partitions the key space.
QueueAclsInfo Class to encapsulate Queue ACLs for a particular user.
RecordReader<KEYIN,VALUEIN> The record reader breaks the data into key/value pairs for input to the Mapper.
Reducer<KEYIN,VALUEIN,KEYOUT,VALUEOUT> Reduces a set of intermediate values which share a key to a smaller set of values.
TaskTrackerInfo Information about TaskTracker.
Enum Summary
JobPriority Used to describe the priority of the running job.
QueueState Enum representing queue state
TaskType Enum for map, reduce, job-setup, job-cleanup, task-cleanup task types.
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Saxon, also known as Anglo-Saxon or simply Old English, was an early form of the English language spoken in England until the thirteenth century.[1] The diary of Gertie Keddle was written in "badly spelled" Saxon.[2] The word werewolf is taken from the Anglo-Saxon word wer meaning man and the word wolf, manwolf.
Notes and references
1. WP favicon Old English on Wikipedia
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Plants With Burrs
by Mary Beth Magee
Plants with burrs spread by hitchhiking.
Plants with burrs spread by hitchhiking.
Plants ensure their survival and dispersal in a variety of ways. One of the most annoying means, at least from a human perspective, may be the use of burrs to attach seed pods or viable reproductive parts to passing people, animals or equipment to spread the plant to new locations.
The burrs function as hooks to attach the seed pod or plant part to a moving host. As the host continues on its way, the burr hangs on until the host deliberately removes the burr or accidentally brushes against a surface that dislodges it. The burrs turn the seed pod into an undiscerning botanical hitchhiker. Once it lands in a new location, the seed or plant tries to root and begin the process all over again, making these species highly invasive in nature.
Some burrs are so small as to be nearly unnoticeable, while others are large enough to result in a flat tire. Burrs can occur as nearly microscope entities, such as hedge parsley (Torilis arvensis), or as larger, visibly dangerous hooks such as Devil’s claw (Proboscidea louisianica). Some resemble an insect, resulting in nicknames like beggar’s ticks (Bidens pilosa).
Burr-bearing plants occur around the world. The chosen hitchhiking method will depend on available wildlife, from sea birds for island-dwelling plants to hikers and livestock in more populated areas. Any fur- or feather-bearing creature can provide the transportation for a burr, since the burr requires nothing of the host but mobility.
While many burred plants uses fine hooks to attach themselves to the host’s clothing or fur, some use penetration as a tactic. For example, jumping cholla (Opuntia bigelovii) burrs lay smoothly against the shaft until the burr penetrates the skin of a host. The burrs act like the head of an arrow, allowing easy entry through skin but painful, difficult removal. The notorious puncture vine (Tribulus terrestris) pierces the host surface, including bike tires and hiking boots.
Burrs and Velcro®
Amid the hazards of burred plants to humans, a benefit shines: burrs were the inspiration for the invention of Velcro®, the ubiquitous hook-and-loop closure material used in the space program and businesses and households worldwide.
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ILGA » » Obama's Gay Marriage Endorsement Not Popular in Africa
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Obama’s Gay Marriage Endorsement Not Popular in Africa
American President Barack Obama's public support for same-sex marriage has sparked criticism in sub-Saharan Africa, where gay men and women continue to face discrimination, violence and jail time in many countries because of their sexual orientation.
Avatar of Alessia Valenza
15th May 2012 12:09
Alessia Valenza
President Barack Obama’s endorsement for gay marriage has prompted debate in the United States and condemnation in many sub-Saharan African countries.
The president’s immense popularity on the continent is taking a hit, even in his father’s native Kenya, says Nairobi resident Vincent Ondera.
"President Obama, I just can’t imagine that he supports gay marriage. Why do I say so? In fact, I’m very much bitter with him, the president of the USA supporting gay marriage? Lesbian? No, it can’t happen"
Homosexual acts are illegal in many sub-Saharan African countries like Kenya. Openly gay individuals on the continent face imprisonment, discrimination and physical violence.
Role of religion
Many Africans, like Kenyan pastor Nelson Otieno, cite religion as the source of disdain for gay marriage.
"I would say to our beloved president of America to rethink about the statement that he made and know very well that it is against our religion; we as Christians, we cannot support gays at all costs," said Otieno.
In Senegal, which is 95 percent Muslim, angry mobs have dug up the corpses of suspected homosexuals from Muslim cemeteries before dragging them through the streets and depositing them at their families’ doorsteps.
A housekeeper in Dakar, Sokhna Fall, says marriage between two people of the same gender would sully this country and endanger its prosperity. Islam says marriage can only be between a man and a woman, she says. Senegal is a Muslim country that has always known peace and unity and she says they cannot allow homosexuality to destabilize it.
Western import?
Many Senegalese reject homosexuality as being "imported from the West." Indeed, pressure from the United States, the United Nations and other international powers to protect gay rights has only further entrenched homophobia among many in Africa. Threats to withdraw foreign aid have been met with defiance.
Amie Weeks, a mother of four in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, said gay marriage is out of the question.
"Very, very wrong. We are not in favor of it at all. So if they want to withdraw their support, let them. God will make way for us because God would never be in favor of such a thing," she said.
Even in South Africa, the only sub-Saharan African country to have a law legalizing same-sex unions, political analyst Eusebius McKaiser says homophobia and opposition to gay marriage are the norm.
"In South Africa, we had a revolutionary break with the past which is why our legislation in favor of gay rights is so much more progressive, even though it is ahead of social attitudes," he said.
Hope among homosexuals
Still, Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage has sparked joy and hope among homosexual men and women in Africa.
Seydou Djamil Ba is one of a handful of openly gay men in Senegal, where homosexual acts are punishable by five years in jail. Violence and death threats have forced him to flee abroad twice in the past five years.
Ba says he wishes people in Africa, particularly in Senegal, could understand that homosexuality is not the end of the world. He says gays are people with the same rights as everyone else. He says Obama has set an example that he hopes other world leaders will follow.
For now, however, Ba said he would settle for the right to live his life in peace and without fear. | <urn:uuid:228bc580-6bdf-4823-93d6-52077f541183> | 2 | 1.554688 | 0.022373 | en | 0.961324 | http://ilga.org/obama-s-gay-marriage-endorsement-not-popular-in-africa/ |
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Writing Workshop
Welcome to The Incredible Writing Workshop, where we look at actual pieces of writing and see where we can go from there. Look for both critique and publishing advice, specific and readable and downright fun. This week we're looking at "A Manifesto," the previous post on Innovative.
By now I think most of you have read the previous post "A Manifesto." Today we're going to look at (geez, I feel like a talk show host) how to turn a brainstorm, diary-style piece of writing like that into something publishable! Seatbelts and other protective garments prepared, let's go.
You had a horrible day, you let it out on paper and kazaam! You get something like my post previous. But now your ambition takes over and you want to write an essay about this Horrible No-Good Day. How would you structure it?
Categorize examples. Make a list of all the things that went wrong: "rejection from team," "no phone calls," "bad job," "frustration," etc. You can use these as points in your essay.
Connect to an outside theme. Essays or op-ed pieces work best when you connect a personal experience (a bad day) to a universal or outside theme. This could be an international event (the tragedies in China or Myanmar) or a culture trend (depression medication) or a historical person (Sylvia Plath.)
Work on tone. You want the entire essay to feel like those two paragraphs of brainstorm did, without being in that form. As you write the essay, try to recapture the same emotion that prompted you to write in the first place.
You've had a horrible day, wrote something like my post previous, and bazoom! it's a short story, right?
Create the situation. What you have is an emotion, what you need is a setting and a cast of characters. The "easiest" thing is to make it like your own sitch: a teenager with a bad day, staring out the window at a rainy future, etc. The "harder" thing would be to take these emotions and attribute them to a person most unlike yourself: a grandmother fearing Alzheimer's, a quadriplegic watching the Olympics on T.V., an insurance salesman who's just been laid off.
Translate to dialogue. Internal monologue (when the protagonist talks to himself, or to the audience) is not always as readable as dialogue. All those awesome phrases and examples of depression can be turned into a dialogue between two feisty/depressed characters. Your message will still come across, but it will be more interesting.
You had a terrible day and abacadabra! you're writing a Pulitzer poem. But how does it happen?
Take exact phrases. Poetry is the jewelry-making part of writing. Poets are delicate and precise with words, so in this case you would take the exact phrases from the piece and style it into a poem form of your choice. I'd recommend free or blank verse for this kind of thing.
Translate paragraphs into stanzas. The last part of the post previous was in paragraph form. To make it into poetry, take the most important ideas from your diary-style writing and form them into lines.
You eat chocolate
Conquer the world one day
One miserable day
One beautiful day
At a time
With chocolate
[ etc.]
I don't think this is how Maya Angelou wrote it, but take a look at her poem "Still I Rise." You can see how potentially she could have worked from paragraph/diary-style form into a poem with a fantastic rhythm and powerful message.
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It seems like whenever humankind gets just a bit too cocky - whenever we start to think we're the masters of all we survey - the world loves to remind us that we're wrong. Disasters - both natural and man-made - are an inevitable fact of life. While we've undoubtedly gotten better at predicting them, sometimes they'll still strike without warning, leaving potentially hundreds of thousands of victims wounded and stranded.
To make matters worse, often these disaster areas tend to be extremely dangerous, such that any human rescuers risk become victims that need rescuing themselves. Far better to send a robot in to do a human's job in such cases. Not only are they a sight hardier than your average flesh-and-blood first responder, they're also a touch more expendable. If a robotic rescuer ends up being trapped, at worst they can be salvaged later. If a human rescuer ends up trapped, though...
Yeah, you can put two and two together there.
With all this in mind, it's really no surprise that so much of the robotics sector is dedicated to the production of such life-saving machines. The DARPA Robotics Challenge is itself wholly devoted to the development of such a device, and it seems like every other day we're hearing about a new innovation that'll allow robots to work harder, respond better, move faster, or become stronger. Stanford University's hiking robot is the latest innovation in the field - and it's curiously unaffiliated with the DARPA challenge.
Designed by a group of researchers led by Oussama Khatib, the unnamed machine - which admittedly, is still in the conceptual design phase of its life - makes use of a pair of 'smart' hiking poles to stabilize itself and allow it to move more quickly over rocky terrain. Stability, after all, has long been one of the most difficult problems facing humanoid robots.
"Maintaining humanoid robot stability in unstructured environments is nontrivial because robots lack human-like tactile sensing and require complex task-speci?c controllers to integrate information from multiple sensors," explained Khatib. "To deploy humanoid robots in cluttered and unstructured environments such as disaster sites, it is necessary to develop advanced techniques in both locomotion and control."
"[Therefore,] we propose to incorporate a pair of actuated smart staffs with vision and force sensors that transforms biped humanoids into tripeds, quadrupeds, or - more generally - SupraPeds."
The vision and force sensors in the "smart staffs" will work in tandem with a 3D panoramic sensor in the robot's head; together, they'll allow it to obtain a complete picture of its surroundings and formulate how best to proceed through them. The staffs are also capable of changing length as the robot moves, allowing it to more effectively adapt to uneven terrain.
Although this robot has not yet been tested in the field, the researchers have worked with a simulation of the machine and have cited it as a success. They're using this simulation as a sort of proof-of-concept, and from it, they'll be designing a real-world device. You can check out a video of the simulation below.
Now...I've just got one question about the machine. How's it going to provide relief to victims in disaster zones if it needs to use its hands to hold the smart staffs? Are they going to equip the robot with an extra pair of arms, or the ability to stow its staffs once it reaches its destination? Unless they figure out some means of allowing the robot to interact with its environment, this doesn't really seem like much of a solution.
Tech Light
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US spy agency launched this Earth-conquering octopus logo into orbit
It sounds like a joke, but this octopus, which looks like it might just eat the Earth, waving its tentacles over the slogan "Nothing is Beyond Our Reach," is the logo for NROL-39, the latest satellite mission launched by the United States' National Reconnaissance Office.
NROL-39 is represented by the octopus, a versatile, adaptable, and highly intelligent creature. Emblematically, enemies of the United States can be reached no matter where they choose to hide. 'Nothing is beyond our reach' defines this mission and the value it brings to our nation and the warfighters it supports, who serve valiantly all over the globe, protecting our nation.
So, malevolent octopus aside, what is the purpose of the mission? Here is the agenda according to the NRO press release:
NROL-39 will carry the Government Experimental Multi-Satellite (GEMSat) payload into orbit in a specially designed Aft Bulkhead Carrier, part of the Atlas V Centaur upper stage. The GEMSat payload contains 12 CubeSats, or "nanosatellites."
GEMSat's CubeSats will perform a variety of unique scientific experiments and demonstrate high-technology operational concepts. Sponsored by the NRO's Mission Integration Directorate and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Launch Support Program, these CubeSats were developed by a number of laboratories, universities, and government entities across the United States.
Two developed by Aerospace Corporation, called AeroCube-5 (AC-5), will demonstrate new technologies for pointing and tracking between two identical CubeSats. AC-5 will also record launch environment data such as pressure, temperature, and vibration; and will demonstrate a deorbit device.
One developed by the Air Force Institute of Technology, ALICE, will test the performance of an advanced carbon nanotube array, which has great potential for smaller, lighter, and more energy-efficient satellite propulsion.
Four developed by the United States Army — one called SNaP, two SMDC-One, and one TacSat-IV — will demonstrate nanosatellite communication capabilities.
And, while the CubeSats engage in their spy science, that octopus will be up there, watching.
Atlas V launches NROL-39 from Vandenberg [NASA Spaceflight] NROL-39 Scheduled to Launch with GEMSat Auxiliary Payload [NRO via Mother Jones] | <urn:uuid:a309bbf9-579a-4328-8b9d-2b483b27b564> | 2 | 2.25 | 0.030373 | en | 0.914152 | http://io9.com/us-spy-agency-launched-this-earth-conquering-octopus-lo-1479029015 |
Norway: Islamic Council facing loss of funds over homosexuality question
The discussion here is only about how European Muslim should view the death sentence against homosexuals.
The Islamic Council of Norway is a quite radical body, as can be seen from the fact that it had turned to the European Fatwa Council for 'advice'. as long as the Norwegian government treats it as a representative body of all Muslims, it's encouraging Islamic radicalization in Norway.
"It's of course completely unacceptable not to reject the death sentence for homosexuals. To take up this debate now is important, not least of consideration to young homosexual Muslim who struggle with their own identity," says the Children and Equality minister Anniken Huitfeldt to Dagsavisen.
The minister is sending a strong signal to the heads of the Islamic Council of Norway that they must distance themselves from the death sentence for homosexuals.
Huitfeldt's party colleague, parliament member Thomas Breen of the justice committee, demands to stop all state financial support to the Islamic council.
"There have been enough opportunities for the Islamic Council to enter the homosexuality debate. Now it's time that the state stand up for some values and remove all financial support from the organization till they distance themselves," says Breen.
The Islamic Council of Norway says they're waiting for the European Fatwa Council to rule on the question. The council, which met three weeks ago in Paris, didn't deal with the issue.
The Islamic Council is an umbrella organization for Islamic faith societies and organization in Norway, and is led by Senaid Kobilica.
"I have noticed that the head of the Islamic council himself is against the death sentence for homosexuals. This shows they're going in the right direction. I hope that the Islamic Council therefore acts as an instigator for homosexual's standing in Islam and towards the European Fatwa Council," says Huitfeldt.
Thomas Breen stresses that the Islamic Council does an important job for many Muslims in Norway and that he first and foremost wants a debate about the homosexuality issue with the Islamic Council.
"I can understand that the homosexuality issue is difficult, but I don't accept that the Islamic Council can't reject the death sentence which conflicts with basic human rights," says Breen.
The Culture and Church minister Trond Giske decided last year that the Islamic Council will get half a million kroner in state support.
Parliamentary Secretary in the Culture and Church ministry, Wegard Harsvik, says that they understand the impatience with the Islamic Council but they don't tie financial support to what a faith society or an association of faith societies, like the Islamic Council, think. He rejects the possibility of using economic sanctions against the Islamic Council.
Former Children and Equality Minister Karita Bekkemellem was in her time in the cabinet very clear that the government shouldn't support organization who carry on with what she thinks is clear discrimination and breaking the law.
Bekkemellem says that it's a misunderstood tolerance from the state's side, and uses the society's money to support opinions which conflict with Norwegian and European principles of justice. Therefore all state support should be immediately stopped.
She thinks the Islamic Council, but not taking a clear standpoint, are trying to pander to the more extreme powers internally and in the Norwegian Muslim community.
"Why haven't they immediately rejected it?" she asks.
Senaid Kobilica was unavailable for comment.
New named head of the National Association for Lesbian and Homosexual emancipation (LLH), Karen Pinholdt, thinks that the Islamic Council has closed all doors which have been opened for dialog.
Thomas Breen doesn't accept that the Islamic Council can't reject the death sentence.
Source: Dagsavisen (Norwegian)
jdamn13 said...
This is the cost of appeasement. Why is recognizing these genocidal monsters even still on the table, and why on earth are they receiving funding in the first place from the state in a secular nation? And why, if the law of the land is crystal clear on a matter, do they consider consulting the Fatwa Council for advice? Probably because the state appeases them by recognizing them at all after they pull crazy bs like this, when they should simply be shut down for even considering disregarding the law of the land on a matter as trivial as jaywalking, let alone genocide. And it's of course the very civil and human rights laws they seek to violate which they demopathically envoke every time the state does not appease them in every possible way.
FreeSpeech said...
The Fatwa Council has no say in this matter. Human Rights and norwegian laws count. Full stop.
If the muslims ask the Fatwa council then they live on the wrong continent.
Irv said...
Would love to get anyone's opinion of "God to Same-Sexers: Hurry Up" which I found on Google. Irv | <urn:uuid:428bc45f-b10f-45ca-9dfa-d9bb4d9fd7d2> | 2 | 1.632813 | 0.115255 | en | 0.955682 | http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2008/08/norway-islamic-council-facing-loss-of.html |
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The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
Ending the Russia-Japan Impasse: fresh thinking on the Kurils
by Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - With Japan experiencing strained diplomatic relationship with China and South Korea, the opportunity exists to set the tone in balance-of-power politics and economic integration with another neighbor. That is Russia, and the overarching, issue that continues to divide Japan and Russia is sovereignty over the four Russian-held Kuril Islands. Recently, some Japanese experts on Russia have been calling for greater flexibility and compromise by Tokyo, which has always demanded the return of all four islands. There's no sign yet of official acceptance, but pressures are building for Japan to strike a deal and accept a "two islands plus alpha" solution - still to be hammered out. In this perspective, Japan would give up its demands for the return of all four islands and instead accept the two smaller islands and a portion of the two larger ones.
While dispute continues over the islands, called the Northern Territories by the Japanese and the Southern Kurils by the Russians, conciliatory approaches are beginning to crop up among Russia experts in Japan. The majority of specialists remain determined to wage a long, drawn-out contest with Russia and support Japan's official demand for the return of all four islands, but an increasing number have begun to float the possibility of compromise, arguing that better relations with Moscow are essential at a time when Japan's relations with China and South Korea have plummeted.
The Kurils, or Northern Territories, consist of three islands - Kunashiri, Etorofu and Shikotan - and the uninhabited Habomai group of islets, also termed an island. The islands are believed to be rich in natural resources, such as oil and gas, and the area is a major fishing grounds. Unlike other political issues confronting Japan, the issue of the Northern Territories has been unique in commanding political and public solidarity for the return of all four islands. Every major Japanese political party, including the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the Japanese Communist Party, has urged Russia to return the four islands. This is because the majority of Japanese believe Russia occupied the territories without justification after World War II. Against this backdrop of nationalism, no Japanese prime minister has been able to solve the festering territorial.
Foundations for Agreement
Experts seeking to place Russian-Japanese relations on a firm footing, argue that the two nations need to find common ground, a point of compromise on the Kurils. Their approach, the two islands plus alpha solution, is less than a 50-50 split of the total area, more like 37-63, with the smaller part going to Japan. "Two" refers to the two smaller islands that Russia promised to return to Japan in 1956 and that Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested last November Moscow could relinquish - they represent just 7% of the entire disputed area. "Alpha" refers to some portion of the remaining two bigger islands.
Russia has offered to return the two smaller territories - Shikotan Island and the uninhabited Habomai group of islets, while retaining the larger, more valuable islands. Tokyo has rejected the offer and has sought the return of all four territories. Moscow has never accepted the return of more than two islands, while Tokyo has never accepted the return of less than four islands.
Island Name Area (square kilometers)
Etorofu Island 3,184.0
Kunashiri Island 1,498.8
Shikotan Island 253.3
Habomai islets 99.9
Total 5036.0
Source: The Geographical Survey Institute
Japan and Russia have not concluded a peace treaty since the end of World War II, 60 years ago, due to this unsolved territorial dispute. Currently, the two sides are engaged in a covert but fierce war of diplomatic nerves over President Putin's hoped-for visit to Tokyo. Putin told Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro last November during the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum summit in Santiago, Chile, that he would visit Japan in early 2005, but the trip has yet to be scheduled, due apparently to differences between Moscow and Tokyo over the territorial dispute.
Experts in Tokyo are watching to see whether Koizumi will visit Russia during the celebration of the 60th anniversary of victory in World War II, to be held in Moscow on May 9 - a possible indicator of Japanese flexibility. Since Koizumi is currently facing severe criticism in the Diet over his top priority, reform of the postal system, whether he can spare time to visit Moscow remains to be seen. If he does go, this would suggest serious intention to resolve the territorial issue and improve bilateral ties.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will be in Japan on May 30-31 to lay the ground for Putin's promised trip later this year, according to news reports. Koizumi indicated that he is considering visiting Russia around May 9 if parliamentary circumstances allow him to do so. Conservative Japanese media, such as The Sankei Shimbun, staunchly oppose such a visit, which they say might be viewed by both the Japanese and Russian public as Tokyo's weak-kneed diplomacy in the territorial dispute with Moscow.
"Nothing but political accommodation by the two top leaders can solve this long-standing territorial dispute," Hakamada Shigeki, a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo and an expert on Russian affairs, told the author. "Both sides need to make some concessions."
Shimotomai Nobuo, professor of law at Hosei University and an expert on Russian politics and history, noted that calls for the two islands plus alpha formula are growing steadily among Russia experts in Tokyo. "President Putin has played a diplomatic card suggesting the return of two of the four islands, and this year will be a decisive time for the Japan-Russia talks on the Northern Territories and future ties," Shimotomai commented.
Iwashita Akihiro, a professor at Hokkaido University's Slavic Research Center, echoed their views, noting that "Koizumi and Putin have the leadership ability to make a breakthrough on this territorial dispute." Iwashita cited Koizumi's two surprise visits to North Korea, and Putin's visit to Beijing last October. The latter solved Russia's long-standing border disputes with China when Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao reached a 50-50 agreement on borders. The precedent increases pressure on Tokyo to reach a settlement.
A bitter war legacy
For Japan, the dispute over the islands is a bitter legacy of World War II. On August 9, 1945, three days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and the day on which Nagasaki suffered from the bombing, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, in violation of the Neutrality Pact that Tokyo signed in 1941. Four days after Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration announcing Japan's surrender to the Allied Powers, Soviet troops moved into the Kuril Islands, bringing them under complete control by September 5.
Although Russia has held the islands since 1945, the territorial dispute has also been a source of diplomatic frustration. Princeton University Professor Gilbert Rozman points out in his article in The International Relations of Northeast Asia, that for Russia "Japan's demand for four islands meant overturning the Yalta Agreement and yielding to nationalist pressure". At the February 1945 Yalta Conference involving Stalin, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the US and Britain are said to have acceded to the Soviet plan to invade and occupy these Japanese lands as a reward for Soviet participation in the war.
In 1960, Moscow unilaterally abrogated the 1956 Japan-Soviet communiqué providing for the return to Japan of the smaller Shikotan Island and the uninhabited Habomai group of islets - two of the four territories. Not until the early 1990s, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, did Moscow officially admit the existence of any territorial dispute with Tokyo, attributing it to the Cold War. In 1993 the two countries finally issued the Tokyo Declaration that committed them to tackle the issue of sovereignty over all four islands, including the two bigger islands Kunashiri and Etorofu. This is why most Japanese intellectuals still adhere to Japan's longstanding demand for the return of all four islands. Although since last November Putin has offered Koizumi hard choices for ending the territorial dispute by proposing the return of the two smaller islands.
Expert opinion in Japan remains divided. Those who focus on the Soviet Union's violation of the Neutrality Pact with Japan in August 1945 tend to support Tokyo's case for recovery of the islands. Those who stress the 1956 Japan-Soviet communiqué, such as Gregory Clark, vice president of Akita International University, accept Russia's case for sovereignty over the islands.
Japan's 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty with the Allied Powers excluding the Soviet Union, stipulated in Article 2(c) that Japan would renounce all rights, title and claim to the Chishima Retto, literally meaning the Kuril islands chain. But the Japanese government has never recognized the inclusion of those four islands among those renounced as the Chishima Retto, claiming that they have always been Japanese territory. Hence Japanese refusal to call those four islands the Southern Kurils and insistence on calling them the Northern Territories.
Last September, Koizumi stepped up pressure on Putin over this territorial dispute by touring the Northern Territories in an offshore patrol vessel. Many foreign observers said that Koizumi intentionally strained relations between the two nations. But Japanese experts such as Prof. Hakamada of Aoyama Gakuin University hold that the tour was only intended to correct any perception by the Russians that Tokyo would focus on promoting economic cooperation by shelving the territorial issue. This is because, prior to the tour, the Japan-Russian Action Plan, adopted by Koizumi and Putin in January 2003 when Koizumi visited Russia, had emphasized economic cooperation.
Return of three islands the best solution
For Japan, a politically feasible remedy for settling this long- festering dispute could be the return to Japan of the three smaller islands - Kunashiri, Shikotan and Habomai. This could be an alternative to Putin's offer to return the two smallest islands - Habomai and Shikotan - and might help bring Japan and Russia closer to a resolution.
At a meeting in Tokyo of Japanese and Russian experts on February 2, a Japanese participant suggested a 50-50 split of the entire area of the Northern Territories. The two islands that Russia has proposed to return constitute just 7% of the total area of the four islands. A 50-50 split of all four islands would give Japan Kunashiri, Shikotan and Habomai islands and a portion of the remaining Etorofu. The three islands only constitute 37% of the total, but Japan could give up Etorofu as a bitter legacy of World War II and a reminder of earlier leaders' serious political misjudgment - a lesson for future Japanese politicians and the public.
This 37-63 split of the entire area of the disputed islands could be a win-win international resolution as well as a lose-lose result in the two countries' domestic politics, since giving up perceived sovereignty always goes against national sentiment. But Tokyo should allow Russia to run the administration of Kunashiri in the near- and mid-term, permitting Russian residents to live on the island and waiting for some of them to move to Etorofu in the long term. The Japanese government repeatedly has said Tokyo would flexibly respond to the timing and manner of the return of the administration over the Northern Territories, if the islands were to return to Japan.
Another reason to support such a solution is that since the three smaller islands - Habomai, Shikotan and Kunashiri - and the largest island - Etorofu - are administered by different local government organizations, it would be easier to redraw a national boundary between Kunashiri and Etorofu. Specifically, Habomai, Shikotan and Kunashiri have been administrated by the "Southern Kuril" local government of the Sakhalin provincial government, while Etorofu has been under the administration of the "Kuril" local government of Russia's Sakhalin Island.
In addition, while Etorofu is known for its self-sustaining economy, supported by one major monopolistic fish processing firm called Gidrostroy, Kunashiri and Shikotan, both closer to Hokkaido, have been suffering from economic woes and are more dependent on the Japanese economy, especially Hokkaido Nemuro's local fishery industries.
The Resolution of Asian Border Disputes
With the resolution of the long Chinese-Russian border dispute in 2004, and of the Chinese-Indian border dispute in 2005, the time may be ripe for Russia and Japan to find a solution. Other strategic and geopolitical factors point to the advantages for both sides in resolving the territorial issue. One is the rapid rise of China as a major political and economic power. A second is Japan's bid in competition with China to gain access to Russian energy resources. Certainly Japan is eager to make deals giving it access to Russia's massive oil and gas reserves in Siberia, and Russia would welcome Japanese investment. Tokyo and Moscow have a clear interest in solving the territorial row, which has been the principal obstacle to putting bilateral relations on a firm footing.
For Japan, solving this dispute would give enormous momentum to settling the country's other border issues with China, South Korea and Taiwan. To the south, Japan is engaged in a sovereignty dispute over the Senkaku Islands (known in China as the Diaoyu Islands) and competing development of offshore gas fields in the East China Sea. In the west, it faces the thorny issue of the South Korean-held Takeshima, known in South Korea as Tokdo.
For Russia and Japan, the year 2005 is a symbolic year representing an opportunity that may not arise again. Not only does it mark the 150th anniversary of the treaty of commerce and friendship between Moscow and Tokyo, but it also marks the 100th anniversary of the peace treaty of Portsmouth, signed in 1905, at the conclusion of the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. Further, it commemorates the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. History will look kindly on Koizumi and Putin, if they can resolve this long-standing and festering territorial dispute once and for all. The two leaders need to hammer out a proper road map for settlement of the territorial issue if they wish to secure their places in history. The four islands are not worth a long destabilizing battle in a potentially volatile region.
Kosuke Takahashi, a former staff writer at the Asahi Shimbun, is a freelance correspondent based in Tokyo. He visited the Northern Territories, the disputed lands between Russia and Japan, in June 1998 as representative of the Asahi Shimbun and reported on the situations there. He graduated from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and the School of International and Public Affairs as a dual master's degree student. He can be contacted at His website is
Posted at Japan Focus on April 27, 2005.
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Monday, January 06, 2014
More sensitivity?
1 comment:
Paul S said...
Interesting if the thing about Fasullo and Trenberth is true. A few years ago it was all the rage to talk about a correlation between sensitivity and aerosol forcing in the CMIP3 ensemble. When I looked into the details it became apparent that there was considerable technological stratification in the ensemble: that some models were far more advanced/developed than others. And it turned out, for some reason, that the more advanced ones tended to have higher sensitivities.
The key technology factor for aerosol forcing was whether or not the model included explicit aerosol-cloud interaction. Those that did understandably tended to produce stronger aerosol forcing. And those were almost unanimously at the high-end of sensitivity.
There were also key differences in explicit inclusion of natural aerosol species, like some organic aerosols, dust, sea salt. Since aerosols affect the whole cloud-precipitation system, and therefore relative humidity, presumably a more realistic aerosol implementation would have some effect on the climate process focus of Fasullo and Trenberth.
I have to say I'm way out of my depth on that last suggestion, but, on a general point, from what I know of the CMIP3 ensemble it's entirely plausible to me that their sensitivity correlation was mostly due to this stratification of model complexity in some respect. The CMIP5 ensemble seems mostly to have more equality, complexity-wise. | <urn:uuid:a65ea0ca-eeca-47f1-a774-a8cee7756496> | 2 | 2.09375 | 0.070133 | en | 0.965336 | http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2014/01/more-sensitivity.html |
Six dogs found starved to death in Dillingham animal shelter
Posted: Monday, January 04, 2010
"I've never seen animals desecrated quite to this extent," said Jim Hagee, a Chugiak veterinarian who frequently practices in Dillingham. "The cannibalism is really what got to me."
Hagee estimates the dogs were left to fend for themselves for four to six weeks. All the deaths could have been prevented, he said.
The six dogs were the entire dog population of the shelter. They were found dead Dec. 8 after police received a tip and a city employee noticed no dog tracks leading to and from the animal shelter.
The city suspended without pay community service officer Travis Barnett, the animal control officer charged with caring for the animals. Police also began a criminal investigation.
Richard Thompson was the city police chief at the time and accompanied the public works director to the abandoned pound, a windowless, old warehouse at the city dockyard. Thompson said in a report that the heat was off. Garbage, tools and feces covered the floor. Decomposed dog carcasses were in cages or curled on the plywood floor.
A black husky found inside a plastic bag was likely one of the first to go, Hagee told police. A 14-week-old Rottweiler puppy wearing a pink camouflage collar was one of the last.
Barnett, reached by telephone Saturday, declined to comment, saying he can't talk about the case until it's over.
"I don't know if I'm being charged yet. I don't know if they're in the process of doing charges," he said.
Police wrote that Barnett admitted to "abandoning his duty to care for or humanely euthanize two dogs in his care," according to a Dillingham police report provided to Hagee.
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Sudan security forces targeting rights workers: AI
[JURIST] The National Security Services in Sudan (NISS) are brutally suppressing internal dissent and targeting rights workers in the process, according to an Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] report [text, PDF; press release] issued Monday. AI documented cases of arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances and death at the hands of the NISS. The suppression of dissent also includes heavy censorship of the press, with NISS agents making daily visits press and printing offices in order to intimidate and influence the content printed in publications. AI contends that under the 2010 National Security Act the NISS retains extensive powers of arrest and detention, and maintains a "culture of impunity" for human rights violations. AI maintains that the current state of the act shows that it, "remains faithful to the government's vision of the national security force as a body whose function is to maintain it in power, including by repressing the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression." The report calls for an immediate reform of the 2010 National Security Act and urges the Sudanese government to reduce the role of the NISS to information gathering and analysis. AI has also recommended that the country end impunity for those committing human rights violations and provide redress to the victims and their families.
AI's report was released one week after Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir [case materials; JURIST news archive] was charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] with three counts of genocide [warrant, PDF; JURIST report] in relation to the Darfur conflict [BBC backgrounder]. The charges included "genocide by killing, genocide by causing serious bodily or mental harm and genocide by deliberately inflicting on each target group conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction." They were issued after the Appeals Chamber reversed a prior decision [JURIST report] by the lower chamber denying the prosecutor's request for genocide charges. ICC prosecutors appealed the decision [JURIST report] not to charge al-Bashir with genocide in July 2009. Bashir has eluded arrest since the issuance of the first warrant. The warrant has been controversial, with Egypt, Sudan, the African Union and others calling for the proceedings against Bashir to be delayed, and African Union leaders agreeing [JURIST reports] not to cooperate with the warrant.
About Paper Chase
| <urn:uuid:5db7c0f8-74d5-4022-b146-c7b767a0de2e> | 2 | 1.6875 | 0.020727 | en | 0.935282 | http://jurist.org/paperchase/2010/07/sudan-security-forces-brutally-silencing-politcal-opposition-amensty-report.php |
Imperial Soldiers
28,406pages on
this wiki
Release years:
1989, 1991
Main theme:
Concurrent faction(s):
Pirates (faction)
The Soldiers were a faction of the Pirates theme first released in 1989 along with the Pirates faction. In the LEGO Battles, the Imperials were the "good guy" faction to the Pirates, and were the protectors of the Carribean. They were led by Governor Broadside and Lt. de Martinet, and their only goal was to capture or kill Captain Redbeard and his crew. The Soldiers can be said to be based off of the French Navy and Marines of the colonial era with their blue uniforms and fleur-de-lis; the Soldiers' flag is, in fact, based on the flag of Quebec.
The Soldiers faction was gradually supplanted by the very similar Imperial Guards in 1992-93, which had red flags and uniforms instead of the Soldiers' blue. The Guards' largest sets replaced their Soldiers' equivalents in 1992, but the older Soldiers' sets that continued in production for 1992 and 1993 were then considered part of the Guards faction in the catalog until their discontinuation at the end of 1993. It can be suggested that the Guards and Soldiers were not actually different factions, rather the Guards was just an update to the anti-pirates side.
The Soldiers often found themselves outgunned and outsized on the open waters; their largest ship, the 6274 Caribbean Clipper, was only half the size of the 6285 Black Seas Barracuda. But their fortress, 6276 Eldorado Fortress, was an impregnable fort that could withstand any bombardment.
They caught Bo'Sun Will during the "Golden Medallion" comic book, but the pirate managed to escape. The Soldiers fought for years with the Pirates, but no real winner was ever determined.
Their flag was a blue flag with a large white cross that divided it into four small blue fields at each of the corners with black fleurs-de-lis on them and with a crown and crossed cannons in the center. The small version was a blue flag with a white cross that has a black fleur-de-lis at its center.
All of the soldiers uniforms were blue jackets with crossed white belts on their chest. They also wore white pants. Most were armed with muskets, but higher ranking officers and troopers often carried swords and pistols.
• Governor Broadside: Governor of all of the Imperial Soldiers. He was most seen in El Dorado, and had a daughter, Camille. He wore a black hat called a bicorne with white trim, gold epaulettes, and a regal jacket.
• Lt. de Martinet: The second in command of the Imperial Soldiers. He was distinguished from the other soldiers by his brown beard. He also wore the gold epaulettes of high rank, and carried a sword and pistol.
• Camille: Niece of Broadside, has a crush on Will.(Comic)
• Soldiers: Also known as troopers, these are the main infantry force of the Soldiers faction. Their uniform consists of a high hat called a shako, red epaulettes, and a backpack. They were the guards of El Dorado and other land forts.
2a04 2
• Imperial Soldier - Sailor: This elite branch of Imperial Soldiers were found on board naval vessels and wore the traditional uniform, red epaulettes, and wore a tricorne hat. Unlike regular troopers, marines did not carry a backpack. These were released in the first Soldiers set, 6274 Caribbean Clipper. Imperial Soldier - Sailor can also be built from regular troopers by removing the backpack and switching the shako with the Lieutenant's tricorne.
Image # Set Pieces Figures Price Released
Hsentry 6245 Harbor Sentry 25 Lt. de Martinet $4.25 / €7.99 1989
Brig 6259 Broadside's Brig 64 3 $8.75 1991
Sabre 6265 Sabre Island 92 Lt. de Martinet, Imperial Soldier (2) 1989
Lockup 6267 Lagoon Lock-Up 187 5 $29.99 1991
Cclipper 6274 Caribbean Clipper 393 Governor Broadside, Imperial Soldier - Sailor (3) 1989
6276-1 6276 Eldorado Fortress 517 8 $59.95 1989
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Monte Carlo simulation of mictomagnets
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Monte Carlo simulations of a binary alloy with impurity concentrations between 20 and 45 at.% have been carried out. The proportion of large clusters relative to that of small clusters increases with the number of MC diffusion steps as well as impurity concentration. Magnetic susceptibility peaks become more prominent and occur at higher temperatures with increasing impurity concentration. The different peaks in the susceptibility and specific heat curves seem to correspond to different sized clusters. A freezing model would explain the observed behaviour with the large clusters freezing first and the small clusters contributing to susceptibility (specific heat) peaks at lower temperatures.
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The pros, cons of 'elimination diets'
Published On: Aug 06 2014 09:32:27 AM EDT Updated On: Jun 30 2014 11:00:00 PM EDT
"I ate a lot of processed food. I ate a lot of fast food, and I had just gotten so tired. I wasn't feeling very well," she explained.
So after doing some online research, she decided to go on an elimination diet. She cut out wheat, along with eggs, nuts and most processed foods.
"Eliminating certain things in the diet had helped other individuals so I figured what the heck let's give it a chance," she said.
While medically supervised elimination diets have been around for a long time, they've recently become a hot trend, said Registered Dietician Marjorie Nolan-Cohn, spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
"Elimination diets are definitely gaining popularity," Nolan-Cohn said. "We have wheat-free, gluten-free, nut- or seed-free, as well as dairy-free."
She said the idea is that cutting out certain foods can cut down on certain symptoms, ranging from digestion issues to skin irritations, all while improving immune system health and increasing energy levels.
"For someone who has a medical condition that warrants eliminating certain foods or food groups, the quality of life just improves dramatically," Nolan-Cohn said.
But gastroentologist Linda Lee, with the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, believes many people mistakenly go on an elimination diet who don't actually need to do so.
"The problem is that people think that often it's an allergic reaction that's triggering these symptoms when actually there's no allergy at all," Lee said. "Sometimes diet is not a cause of symptoms. You might end up eliminating a lot of foods and not feeling any better. If you eliminate too fiercely, then you can run into nutritional problems."
"Someone who goes gluten-free could actually increase their risk of diarrhea on a regular basis," she warned. "People who go on a carb-free diet are actually increasing their risk for constipation. And a dairy-free diet is also going to contribute to potentially setting yourself up to have low bone density or osteoporosis later in life."
Lee suggested instead of elimination, many people should consider moderation.
In the meantime, Anderson said her elimination diet gave her a new lease on life and she's committed to staying on it for the long haul.
"I do miss pizza," she said. "I miss other types of things. But nothing tastes as good as just feeling awesome."
Nolan-Cohn said it's important to remember that elimination diets are a treatment, not a cure to what ails you. And if you do find one that eases your symptoms, you'll have to eliminate that food group forever to keep reaping the benefits.
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Belts made with the material recover their shape more quickly than those of conventional rubber compounds. The belt moves more efficiently over idlers, reducing the amount of energy required to run the system. Lab tests show normal deformation from compression on a belt's idler cover side varies with material loads, but could reach 0.045 in. Pulley indentation can be responsible for as much as 60% of the power consumed on a long horizontal conveyor system. Easyrider technology is intended primarily for long overland conveyor belt systems. With its quicker shape recovery, more energy powers actual belt movement, instead of generating heat and noise at the idler indentation points.
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Wildlife Management Area Plans
Management plans are developed for each of the WMAs on a five year rotational basis. These plans are comprehensive in that they provide detailed descriptions of the areas, provide a history of the property, outline existing habitat and provide a plan for implementing future habitat management activities.
The WMA Plans are important because they provide the framework in which implementation of habitat management to provide for optimum wetland or upland habitats can take place as well as to provide opportunities for the public to use the WMAs. The WMA plans are developed by the Regional Wildlife and Fisheries Biologists with input from the Research Assessment Section, Lands Management Program, and the Engineering Division within the Department.
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
The Maximum principle for parabolic eq. is based on the fact that the boundary conditions are given on u. How can this Maximum principle be used, when having boundary conditions including derivatives.
i.e.: the heat equation , x in [0,1], t>0. and boundary conditions given: u(0,t)=0; du/dx (1,t) = 0; u(x,0)=f(x);
share|improve this question
Used what for? Perhaps the question should be is where an analogue to maximum principle fot this problem? – Andrew Jun 29 '11 at 11:26
The maximum principle is still the same. It just might be harder to apply if one does not know the boundary values exactly... – Yakov Shlapentokh-Rothman Jun 29 '11 at 13:54
In the particular case where you prescribe Neumann type conditions, you can also appeal to the parabolic Hopf lemma. – Willie Wong Jun 29 '11 at 14:40
The problem with applying Hopf lemma, is that in the current case the boundary conditions are given in a corner (i.e. at x=1),while the Hopf lemma requires a circle tangent to the boundary. Is there an analogical Lemma in this case? A different direction that I am considering, is to define w=du/dx. w satisfies the heat eq. with boundary conditions given on w (and not its derivatives). and I will be able to apply the maximum principle. Is this direction is a valid one? (my concern is that we are given u(0,t) = 0. and I can not take x derivative from this) – Shira Jul 4 '11 at 9:42
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Let $x$ be a formal (or small, since the function is analytic) variable, and consider the power series $$ A(x) = \frac{x}{1 - e^{-x}} = \sum_{m=0}^\infty \left( -\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{(-x)^n}{(n+1)!} \right)^m = 1 + \frac12 x + \frac1{12}x^2 + 0x^3 - \frac1{720}x^4 + \dots $$ where I might have made an arithmetic error in expanding it out.
1. Are all the coefficients egyptian, in the sense that they are given by $A^{(n)}(0)/n! = 1/N$ for $N$ an integer? The answer is no, unless I made an error, e.g. the third coefficient. But maybe every non-zero coefficient is egyptian?
2. If all the coefficients were positive eqyptian, then the sequence of denominators might count something — one hopes that the $n$th element of any sequence of nonnegative integers counts the number of ways of putting some type of structure on an $n$-element set.
Of course, generating functions really come in two types: ordinary and exponential. The difference is whether you think of the coefficients as $\sum a_n x^n$ or as $\sum A^{(n)} x^n/n!$. If it makes more sense as an exponential generating function, that's cool too.
So my question really is: is there a way of computing the $n$th coefficient of $A(x)$, or equivalently of computing $A^{(n)}(0)/n!$, without expanding products of power series the long way?
Where you might have seen this series
Let $\xi,\psi$ be non-commuting variables over a field of characteristic $0$, and let $B(\xi,\psi) = \log(\exp \xi \exp \psi)$ be the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff series. Fixing $\xi$ and thinking of this as a power series in $\psi$, it is given by $$B(\xi,\psi) = \xi + A(\text{ad }\xi)(\psi) + O(\psi^2)$$ where $A$ is the series above, and $\text{ad }\xi$ is the linear operator given by the commutator: $(\text{ad }\xi)(\psi) = [\xi,\psi] = \xi\psi - \psi\xi$.
More generally, $B$ can be written entirely in terms of the commutator, and so makes sense as a $\mathfrak g$-valued power series on $\mathfrak g$ for any Lie algebra $\mathfrak g$. It converges in a neighborhood of $0$ when $\mathfrak g$ is finite-dimensional over $\mathbb R$, in which case $\mathfrak g$ is a (generally noncommutative) "partial group".
(More generally, you can consider the "formal group" of $\mathfrak g$. Namely, take the commutative ring $\mathcal P(\mathfrak g)$ of formal power series on $\mathfrak g$; then $B$ defines a non-cocommutative comultiplication, making $\mathcal P = \mathcal P(\mathfrak g)$ into a Hopf algebra. Or rather, $B(\mathcal P)$ does not land in the algebraic tensor product $\mathcal P \otimes \mathcal P$. Instead, $\mathcal P$ is cofiltered, in the sense that it is a limit $\dots \to \mathcal P_2 \to \mathcal P_1 \to \mathcal P_0 = 0$, where (over characteristic 0, anyway) $\mathcal P_n = \text{Poly}(\mathfrak g)/(\mathfrak g \text{Poly}(\mathfrak g))^n$, where $\text{Poly}(\mathfrak g)$ is the ring of polynomial functions on $\mathfrak g$, and $\mathfrak g \text{Poly}(\mathfrak g)$ is the ideal of functions vanishing at $0$. Then $B$ lands in the cofiltered tensor product, which is just what it sounds like. (In arbitrary characteristic, $\mathcal P$ is the cofiltered dual of the filtered Hopf algebra $\mathcal S \mathfrak g$, the symmetric algebra of $\mathfrak g$, filtered by degree.))
Why I care
When $\mathfrak g$ is finite-dimensional over $\mathbb R$, and $U$ is the open neighborhood of $0$ in which $B$ converges, then $\mathfrak g$ acts as left-invariant derivations on $U$, where by left-invariant I mean under the multiplication $B$. Hence there is a canonical identification of the universal enveloping algebra $\mathcal U\mathfrak g$ with the algebra of left-invariant differential operators on $U$. Since $\mathfrak g$ is in particular a vector space, the "symbol" map gives a canonical identification between the algebra of differential operators on $U$ and the algebra of functions on the cotangent bundle $T^\*U$ that are polynomial (of uniformly bounded degree) in the cotangent directions. Left-invariance then means that the operators are uniquely determined by their restrictions to the fiber $T^\*_0\mathfrak g = \mathfrak g^\*$, and the space of polynomials on $\mathfrak g^\*$ is canonically the symmetric algebra $\mathcal S \mathfrak g$. This gives a canonical PBW map $\mathcal U \mathfrak g \to \mathcal S \mathfrak g$, a fact I learned from J. Baez and J. Dolan.
(In the formal group language, the noncocommutative cofiltered Hopf algebra $\mathcal P(\mathfrak g)$ is precisely the cofiltered dual to the filtered algebra $\mathcal U\mathfrak g$, whereas with its cocommutative Hopf structure $\mathcal P(\mathfrak g)$ is dual to $\mathcal S \mathfrak g$. But as algebras these are the same, and unpacking the dualizations gives the PBW map $\mathcal U\mathfrak g \cong \mathcal S \mathfrak g$, and explains why it is actually an isomorphism of coalgebras.)
Anyway, in one direction, the isomorphism $\mathcal U\mathfrak g \cong \mathcal S \mathfrak g$ is easy. Namely, the map $\mathcal S \mathfrak g \to \mathcal U \mathfrak g$ is given on monomials by the "symmetrization map" $\xi_1\cdots \xi_n \mapsto \frac1{n!} \sum_{\sigma \in S_n} \prod_{k=1}^n \xi_{\sigma(k)}$, where $S_n$ is the symmetric group on $n$ letters, and the product is ordered. (In this direction, the isomorphism of coalgebras is obvious. In fact, the corresponding symmetrization map into the full tensor algebra is a coalgebra homomorphism.)
In the reverse direction, I can explain the map $\mathcal U \mathfrak g \to \mathcal S \mathfrak g$ as follows. On a monomial $\xi_1\cdots \xi_n$, it acts as follows. Draw $n$ dots on a line, and label them $\xi_1,\dots,\xi_n$. Draw arrows between the dots so that each arrow goes to the right (from a lower index to a higher index), and each dot has either 0 or 1 arrow out of it. At each dot, totally order the incoming arrows. Then for each such diagram, evaluate it as follows. What you want to do is collapse each arrow $\psi\to \phi$ into a dot labeled by $[\psi,\phi]$ at the spot that was $\phi$, but never collapse $\psi\to \phi$ unless $\psi$ has no incoming arrows, and if $\phi$ has multiple incoming arrows, collapse them following your chosen total ordering. So at the end of the day, you'll have some dots with no arrows left, each labeled by an element of $\mathfrak g$; multiply these elements together in $\mathcal S\mathfrak g$. Also, multiply each such element by a numerical coefficient as follows: for each dot in your original diagram, let $m$ be the number of incoming arrows, and multiply the final product by the $m$th coefficient of the power series $A(x)$. Sum over all diagrams.
Anyway, the previous paragraph is all well and cool, but it would be better if the numerical coefficient could be read more directly off the diagram somehow, without having to really think about the function $A(x)$.
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I am sort of astonished that you gave so much background without mentioning the name of this sequence: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_number – Qiaochu Yuan Dec 18 '09 at 1:57
@Qiaochu: See, I'm neither a combinatorialist nor a number theorist, and although I guess I've seen the Bernoulli numbers before, I never really encoded them in memory. Anyway, I've accepted Pete's answer below, but I'm secretly hoping that someone will connect it with the diagrams I described. – Theo Johnson-Freyd Dec 18 '09 at 2:55
@Theo: I didn't actually remember these were the Bernoulli numbers until I did the expansion (by computer, of course) and saw the mysterious numerator 691. – Michael Lugo Dec 18 '09 at 3:27
Given your background you might be interested to know that this power series is used to define the Todd class: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_class – Steve Huntsman Dec 18 '09 at 6:22
Another place to see this series, though shifted by two: the Planck black-body distribution. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_law – Allen Knutson Feb 26 '10 at 4:51
11 Answers 11
up vote 18 down vote accepted
Two people have pointed it out already, but somehow I can't resist: your formal power series is precisely the defining power series of the Bernoulli numbers:
Accordingly, they are far from Egyptian: as came up recently in response to the question
When does the zeta function take on integer values?
the odd-numbered terms (except the first) are all zero, whereas the even-numbered terms alternate in sign and grow rapidly in absolute value, so only finitely many are reciprocals of integers.
I find it curious that you are looking at this sequence from such a sophisticated perspective and didn't know its classical roots. I feel like there should be a lesson here, but I don't know exactly what it is. Here's a possibility: every young mathematician should learn some elementary number theory regardless of their primary interests. Comments?
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You win. I know a lot about Lie algebras, and I've never studied any number theory. I think I've seen the Bernoulli numbers once or twice, but never really encoded them. – Theo Johnson-Freyd Dec 18 '09 at 2:50
Bernoulli numbers are fairly ubiquitous. They come up, for example, in very basic real analysis; namely in Euler-Maclaurin summation formula. So I am not sure if these numbers should be thought of as pertaining to number theory. – Idoneal Jan 3 '10 at 4:19
Well, certainly not only to number theory, anyway. – Pete L. Clark Jan 3 '10 at 4:29
I'd certainly agree with your last suggestion (and in particular wish I knew more about number theory than I do). Next, take a roomful of mathematicians, get all their suggestions for fields that should be added to "elementary number theory" here. What would you guess is the probability that any one of the mathematicians in the room has any real knowledge of all the fields that have been named? – Mark Meckes Jun 3 '10 at 17:02
I would add that it's nearly impossible to learn the BCH formula (with the proof, of course) and $\mathit{not}$ to see Bernoulli numbers mentioned. There is another lesson here, possibly that one needs to read textbooks systematically rather than just pick up bits and pieces. – Victor Protsak Jul 15 '10 at 18:11
Here's another way to get at the answer. You think you have a sequence of rationals that may be familiar:
1, 1/2,1/12,0,-1/720,...
The denominators seem more interesting than the numerator, so maybe the "right" sequence is:
You go to Sloane's Encyclopedia and enter the sequence, to no avail. You could now try superseeker, which looks at many transformations of the sequence, but for this few terms that will return too many hits. Let's try the one transformation you mentioned, and look at the exponential generating function, whose coefficients have denominators:
1, 2, 6, 1, 30, ...
Sloane's immediately identifies that sequence as the denominators of Bernoulli numbers, giving not only the generating function you started with but many other interesting factoids and references.
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I think Sloane's should always be consulted when faced with an unknown sequence of integers or of numbers from which integers may be reasonably extracted. – Omar Antolín-Camarena Mar 9 '10 at 12:40
My favourite introduction to the Bernoulli numbers is section 3 of Pierre Cartier's paper Mathemagics. I quote:
I claim that they are defined by the equation $(B + 1)^n = B^n$ for $n \geq 2$, together with the initial condition $B^0 = 1$. The meaning is the following: expand $(B + 1)^n$ by the binomial theorem, then replace the power $B^k$ by $B_k$.
There's a whole lot of great stuff in this paper, besides Bernoulli numbers.
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Ah, yes, I have seen that definition. What I've never done is calculated out more than the first two or so terms, and 1, 1/2, 1/12 is meaningless, and when today I got 1, 1/2, 1/12, 0, -1/720, I still didn't have anything with which to recognize it. – Theo Johnson-Freyd Dec 18 '09 at 5:48
You might already know this, but that 1/12 is part of the "reason" for the appearances of 12 and 24 in mathematics, as described by John Baez here: math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week126.html – Qiaochu Yuan Dec 18 '09 at 8:43
John Baez and I had a discussion about giving a species interpretation of X/(1 - e^X) here groups.google.com/group/sci.math.research/browse_thread/thread/… – David Corfield Dec 18 '09 at 8:59
I am adding the following remark because it may be of some interest to the number theorists who recognized the Bernoulli numbers to know that the relationship with Lie theory explained in the question has number-theoretic substance: namely, in his article on the thrice-punctured sphere, Deligne uses the Lie algebra point of view on Bernoulli numbers described in the question (together with other ingredients, of course, and applied to a specific Lie algebra) to derive Euler's formula for the values of $\zeta(2n)$.
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The Bernoulli numbers are closely related to alternating permutations. That is to say, permutations like $1524376$ where the numbers alternately go up and down. Specifically, if $A_n$ is the number of such permutations of an $n$ element set, then $$B_{2n} = (-1)^{n-1} \frac{2n}{4^{2n}-2^{2n}} A_{2n-1}.$$ It's possible you could somehow relate your sums over diagrams to alternating permutations.
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To have a geometric interpretation of this generating function in Lie theory you do not need to work over reals, in fact any commutative ground ring containing rationals suffices. For a version of such interpretation utilizing functors representing a version of "formal schemes" see chapters 7-10 (and introduction) to our paper
N. Durov, S. Meljanac, A. Samsarov, Z. Škoda, A universal formula for representing Lie algebra generators as formal power series with coefficients in the Weyl algebra, Journal of Algebra 309, Issue 1, pp.318-359 (2007), math.RT/0604096
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This isn't an answer, but I saw that you said a couple of times that you were doing the expansion by hand. I'll just point out that you can get a free sage notebook account, and then do
f(x) = x/(1 - e^(-x))
in a new worksheet to get the expansion to the $x^{10}$ term. Wolfram Alpha probably has something similar. Of course, one sometimes learns something by doing things manually, but it is often useful to have an easy way to check your answer.
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If you expand this out a bit further, you get
$ 1 + {1 \over 2} x + {1 \over 12} x^2 - {1 \over 720} x^4 + {1 \over 30240} x^6 - {1 \over 1209600} x^8 + {1 \over 47900160} x^{10} - {691 \over 1307674368000} x^{12} + \cdots $
Notice that the nonzero coefficients are alternating in sign.
In fact it turns out that the sequence you call $A^{(n)}$ are exactly the Bernoulli numbers.
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Nice. I was surprised when the first 0 showed up, since I've been expanding by hand. – Theo Johnson-Freyd Dec 18 '09 at 2:52
You will find what you describe in the first reference. This describes how the Bernouilli numbers arise when studying the universal enveloping algebra. I have seen unpublished notes on this from a talk by Kostant in the '70s. This is a strong form of the PBW theorem and is closer to Poincare's result. This is discussed in the second reference. This is an early version of universal quantisation.
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You can generate the Bernoullis through the combinatorics of permutahedra and graphical interpretations of surjections presented in OEIS-A133314 (cf. A049019, A019538, A008292) weighted by the reciprocal integers. (See also MOQ-61252.)
This is equivalent to determining the reciprocal of the exponential generating function
$$\frac{e^t-1}{t}=1+\frac{1}{2}t+ \frac{1}{3}\frac{t^2}{2!}+ \frac{1}{4}\frac{t^3}{3!}+\cdots\;\;.$$
Naturally, it's an involution, so you can go in the reverse direction from the Bernoullis to the reciprocal integers by the same weighted surjections.
But, with the o.g.f., using the normalized Bernoulli numbers, compositional inversion, rather than reciprocation enters the picture and, therefore, weighted noncrossing partitions and Dyck lattice paths (and myriad other related combinatoric structures). See the last paragraphs of my answer to the MOQ referenced above.
These number arrays can be related to volumes of structures, as well as the Bernoullis (see Noam Elkies).
For relations to binary trees, see A000182.
Also see these papers relating the Bernoullis to quantum algebras:
Hodges and Sukumar, Sukumar and Hodges, Hetyei.
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Here you can find all sorts of information, different representations and connections concerning the Bernoulli numbers:
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Yokohamacity and port, capital of Kanagawa ken (prefecture), east-central Honshu, Japan, and part . The second most populous city in the country, it is a major component of the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area, which is the largest urban agglomeration in Japan.
Situated Yokohama is situated on the western coast of Tokyo Bay, about 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Tokyo; the major industrial city of Kawasaki lies between the two larger metropolises. Yokohama stands on a coastal plain shut in by hills, one of which terminates toward the southeast in a promontory called Cape Hommoku. The climate is mild in winter and hot and humid in summer. Early summer and early autumn are rainy seasons; typhoons often strike in September. Area 167 square miles (433 square km). Pop. (2008 est.) 3,651,428.
Yokohama was only a small fishing village when in
1859 the
1854 Matthew C. Perry arrived with his fleet of U.S. naval warships at the harbour of the neighbouring town of Kanagawa. Five years later Kanagawa was designated Japan’s first port under the Harris Treaty (1858) where foreigners could reside and trade. However, Kanagawa was an important post station on the Tōkaidō, Japan’s main east-west road at the time, and the Japanese government did not want foreigners to have access to it. Instead, it established the port at Yokohama, which was isolated from the highway and had a deepwater harbour superior to that at Kanagawa.
The city became the second largest in Japan as well as a major port and industrial centre. It was destroyed by the Great Kantō
Basic municipal services (water, electricity, and gas) were installed beginning in the late 1880s. The city grew rapidly, becoming one of the country’s major ports and trading centres.
Yokohama was destroyed by the great Tokyo-Yokohama earthquake and subsequent fire in September 1923, which killed some 20,000 people. The city was rebuilt quickly, and the northwestern area was developed into a major industrial zone. The ward system of government was introduced in 1927.
Yokohama was severely damaged by
Allied air raids in 1945, during World War II, but
was rebuilt both times.
Yokohama and Kawasaki (between Yokohama and Tokyo)
this time reconstruction was somewhat hampered by the U.S. occupation of Japan (1945–52). The pace of rebuilding quickened in the 1950s. The population, which at the end of the war was some three-fifths of what it had been in 1943, grew steadily in the early postwar years. Population growth began increasing at a faster rate after 1960, and by 1980 the city had surpassed Ōsaka to become the second largest in Japan.
The contemporary city
Yokohama and Kawasaki form the centre of the Keihin Industrial Zone. Much of the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area’s heavy manufacturing is concentrated there, including shipbuilding and the production of chemicals, machinery, primary metals, petroleum products, automobiles, and fabricated metal goods. The port of Yokohama, one of the largest in Japan, handles imports of raw materials for the surrounding industrial zone and a wide range of exports.
Yokohama’s business district, containing many important banks and other businesses, is concentrated around the port. It extends southward along Yokohama Bay from the main Yokohama railway station, through the newer Minato Mirai 21 district (containing Landmark Tower), to the historic Yokohama city centre just south and east of the bay. Another business area, north of and farther inland than the original one, has emerged in the vicinity of Shin-Yokohama railway station (of the Shinkansen) and has attracted information technology and related businesses. The main Yokohama station area is the central shopping district as well as the city’s transportation hub, with several rail and subway lines passing through it. Minato Mirai 21 and the historic city centre—including Isezaki district, inland from Sakuragi-chō railway station—are also home to many businesses and shops. The industrial area is farther north along the coast, toward Kawasaki.
To the south of the business district is Yamate, a hilly residential area. Yamashita Park, which was laid out in 1925 over rubble from the 1923 quake that had been pushed into the harbour, offers a splendid view of the harbour area. A pedestrian promenade connects the park to Sakuragi-chō station. Farther south and a short way from the shore, Sankei Garden contains a collection of historic buildings (notably an ancient pagoda) that were brought from other parts of the country. Positioned on a hill above Yamashita Park is Nogeyama Park, which, with its beautiful gardens, open-air theatre, concert hall, and zoo, is one of the largest parks in the city.
Yokohama’s active cultural life is enhanced by its many public and private universities. The Kanazawa Library, founded in 1275, is renowned for its collection of historical books and documents. Yokohama’s numerous museums include those dedicated to art, literature, history, and Japanese newspapers and broadcast media. There are also museums specializing in fields closely associated with the city’s development, including ones for silk and shipping. Yokohama’s numerous theatres present everything from traditional Noh and Kabuki plays to modern drama.
Local public transportation is provided by buses and subway lines. Yokohama is connected by highways and railways with Tokyo and with other major cities of Japan. The city is served by Tokyo’s Haneda airport and the international airport at Narita, across the bay in Chiba prefecture
. Area 167 square miles (433 square km). Pop. (2005) 3,579,628
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Fake it ‘til you make it… as a radio producer
In a feature that first appeared in Encore, Southern Cross Austereo national executive producer Sam Cavanagh tells us how to make it as a radio producer.
What does a radio producer do?
The role of a radio show producer varies depending on show, market and format, but essentially their responsibilities fall into two main categories; ‘the show’ and ‘the team’.
In terms of the show – the producer needs to source and refine content. This might mean chasing interviews, finding audio, researching story ideas, editing packages, writing promos, monitoring and posting to Facebook and Twitter, recording vox pops.
In terms of the team – a producer is responsible for how the team operates. From on-air talent, to the off-air team, they need to be a motivator and a facilitator. The producer is the funnel through which all internal and external people interact with the show.
They need to build exceptional relationships with the sales team, engineering team, marketing team and all relevant publicists, and talent managers to help secure important interviews.
What skills do you need to be good at the job?
You need to have lots of creative ideas, be really organized, work well under pressure, be an expert in digital and social media, but above all else, you need to have excellent communication skills in a variety of situations.
Who are the people you work closest with?
On-air talent, content director, and other off-air team members (audio producer, assistant producer).
Too much to go into here.
What does a typical day on the job entail?
That depends on what time your show is on air, but basically 50 per cent of the day is spent chasing content and dealing with all the administration around the show. The other 50 per cent is planning the day’s show and putting it to air.
What’s the best part of the job?
The instant gratification of having an idea and being able to put it live to air minutes later.
What’s the biggest challenge?
The sheer volume of content you need to create. If you are producing a breakfast show, you need to create 15 hours of live content each week.
How do you become a radio producer?
There are a few great university and TAFE courses around the country, but I would say the best way to learn how to be a producer is just to find something to produce. Produce as much content as you can. It doesn’t really matter what the medium is. A short film, blog, website, community radio show, comic book, podcast, comedy show. A good producer is just someone who can manage creative people and get stuff done.
Encore issue 5
1. NS
6 Mar 13
3:56 pm
2. thanks this was the best fake it till you make it column yet
3. Cam Savanagh
6 Mar 13
5:44 pm
4. This guy is brilliant and really handsome too.
5. josh schmidt
6 Mar 13
5:49 pm
6. Brillant.
7. John
6 Mar 13
5:53 pm
8. I agree with NS.
9. Bebekah
6 Mar 13
6:54 pm
10. What an insightful young man. Totes big spunk too.
11. Srigi
6 Mar 13
8:30 pm
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Purim, Parody, and Pilpul
How this festival became a time for merriment and satire
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To German Jewry we also owe the adoption of the Hamantasch, an adaptation of the German mahn-tash ("poppy-pocket") pastry, given a new meaning for the occasion.
Our custom of sounding noisemakers at the mention of Haman's name is also a version of an old practice, which took on different forms through the generations. The earliest sources (from the writings of the Babylonian Ge'onim) speak of burning effigies of Haman on a bonfire. In medieval Europe children would write Haman's name on stones or wood blocks, and bang them until the name was erased.
In our observance of Purim we are thus drawing from a long line of historical precedents and developments.
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Eliezer Segal
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Tied To The Land
Both Jacob and Joseph understood the importance of imbuing their descendants with a commitment to the Land of Israel.
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Parashat Vayehi, which concludes the Book of Genesis, deals with Jacob's last days, his testament to his sons, and the death and burial of both Jacob and Joseph. Thus, this is a parashah of endings, of the closing of narrative cycles and patriarchal histories. The death of Jacob, the last of the patriarchs, signals the end of the stories of the forefathers and foremothers, before the time when the Jews became a people.
Ensuring Continuity
The parashah's second verse begins: "And the day drew near that Israel must die…" (Genesis 47:29). Suddenly, it's not the death of "Jacob" that concerns us, but that of "Israel." But knowing how the Torah's narrative unfolds, we realize that we're not dealing with endings, but rather with beginnings. The focus in Parashat Vayehi and at the beginning of the next portion, Sh'mot, is the people's religious and social continuity as they make a transition to a new state.
With the death of Jacob, and subsequent death of Joseph, there's the danger that this will be the end of the people of Israel. Fortunately, before he dies, Jacob concerns himself intimately with the future of his children and grandchildren. As he senses his impending end, Jacob requests that the two sons of Joseph, Menasseh and Ephraim, be brought to him so that he can bless them.
It's noteworthy that Jacob doesn't bless his son, but rather his grandsons. This emphasizes that the blessing's importance doesn't flow from the natural desire of a father to bless a son (as Isaac blessed Jacob), but that its purpose is related to the continuation of the patriarchal dynasty, and of Joseph's tribe in particular, as well as the firm establishment of the entire people.
Guidance Through Blessings and Burial
Like his father Isaac, Jacob grants the preferred blessing, which should go to the older son (the bechor), to the younger one. But unlike Isaac, he does this knowingly! He acts out of a concern for the future of the people, not because he favors one child over another.
The essence of Jacob's concern for the well-being of the people is found in another request he makes of Joseph: "Do not bury me in Egypt" (Genesis 47:29). Jacob fears that the people Israel won't be able to develop spiritually and culturally in exile. He feels that if they don't take significant steps that look beyond Egypt, then their ability to fulfill the divine promise to Jacob will end.
Jacob's request to Joseph, "Do not bury me in Egypt" came amidst material abundance, as the seven years of famine had ended. He understood that, despite their wealth and comfort, their life in Egypt would be one of spiritual lethargy among the fleshpots in which he and his sons were stuck, a life that would mean spiritual death for his descendants.
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Rabbi David Ariel-Joel
Rabbi David Ariel-Joel is an associate rabbi at The Temple in Louisville, KY. He was was associate director of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, and directed its Beit Midrash (house of study) program in Jerusalem. A graduate of the Israel rabbinical program of the Hebrew Union College, he also holds an MA in Jewish philosophy from the Hebrew University. | <urn:uuid:65493366-3fa0-4ab3-b582-d298fc3f19ee> | 3 | 3.203125 | 0.044857 | en | 0.969616 | http://myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/vayechi_ujafedny5761.shtml |
Let's Get Fizzical
Team D
Stan Bahner
Larry O'Connell
Linda Root
-To demonstrate that water molecules are strongly attracted to
one another
-To demonstrate that this strong attraction creates surface
-To show that soap reduces the water's surface tension
-To demonstrate that a bubble is an inflated drop of water
Apparatus needed:
Petri dish Proctor & Gamble's Joy
Needle Glycerine
1/2 gallon paper milk container Water
Eyedropper Bubble Thing (See
Clean pail reference)
Funnel Overhead projector
Flat dish (Dessert plate)
Recommended strategies:
1. Fill the half gallon container with water. Poke a series of small
holes near the bottom. The holes should be 0.5 cm apart. A dinner
fork that has had its prongs sharpened with a file works well to
poke these holes. The water should squirt from these holes as
separate streams. Rub your finger over the holes and the streams
will join together showing that water molecules attract each other.
2. Fill the petri dish with water almost to the top and place it on the
overhead. Carefully float the needle on the surface. Using the
eyedropper, place a drop of Joy on the surface of the water near the
edge of the petri dish. Observe that the needle quickly moves to
the opposite side of the dish and sinks. Discuss the fact that soap
reduces the surface tension of water.
3. Make a pail of bubble solution. (See reference) Fill the shallow
plate with a small amount of the solution, and dip the broad end of
the funnel in the plate. Blow on the narrow end of of the funnel to
inflate a bubble. Place your finger over the narrow end and observe
the bubble as it deflates and the water molecules are attracted to
one another.
4. Take the pail of bubble solution outdoors with your "Bubble Thing"
to demonstrate surface tension in action. (See reference) You will
create some of the biggest bubbles you've ever seen. Enjoy! (If done
indoors, the soap may become messy as the bubbles burst.)
Cassidy, John, The Unbelievable Bubble Book, Klutz Press, 1987.
Return to Chemistry Index | <urn:uuid:a74fc5af-3a26-4301-8a8e-a4f541abb816> | 4 | 3.515625 | 0.191482 | en | 0.907795 | http://mypages.iit.edu/~smile/ch8828.html |
Thermoelectric materials convert heat directly into electricity and are thus good candidates for reducing global energy consumption. As well as possibly finding their way into cars, they could also be used to recover useful energy from waste heat produced in nuclear reactors and even improve the effectiveness of solar cells. They could also be used to cool computer chips and other electronic devices.
To be used in real-world applications, however, a thermoelectric must be good at conducting electricity but poor at conducting heat. It must also have a large thermopower (or "Seebeck coefficient"), which is the ratio of the voltage to temperature difference across a material to its temperature difference.
Increasing the power output
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) could make good thermoelectric materials, but until now, they lacked the required thermopower characteristics. A team led by David Carroll has now shown that p- and n-doping the nanotubes can increase the power output to nearly 15 nW per a thermocouple at a maximum temperature difference of 50 K. This value is 44 times higher than the power output previously reported per a thermocouple for these carbon materials and corresponds to a single thermocouple Seebeck coefficient of 96±4 µVK−1 (which is more than six times higher than that previously reported).
Carroll and colleagues made p- and n-type carbon nanotube-based composites from a non-active host polymer (PVDF) and nanophase CNTs. The differently doped tubes combine to form a thermocouple in the finished device.
"Our p-type nanotubes are doped with oxygen (they have been exposed to air) and the n-type ones are tubes coated with polyethylenimine," Carroll told "As it happens, the n-type material is the key here because it is rather difficult to synthesize an n-type nanotube with a large negative thermopower that does not have a decreased conductivity. (You need both a large negative Seebeck coefficient and a high conductivity for good power output.)"
Ultimately, these thermoelectric power output improvements mean that CNT-based composites could be used to make lightweight, flexible and durable thermoelectric fabrics for use in low-power electronics applications that harness waste heat, he added. "We are already working on making such textiles and the idea would be to engineer a fabric-like covering to replace those already used in day-to-day life. One example is a covering for car seats, for instance."
Power-generating covering
"If such a covering could be made at a similar cost to ones already available, then why wouldn’t you use it? The argument is a simple economic one – you get the same covering you would have normally used but it would be able to generate power."
The researchers say that they are continuing to increase the power density of their carbon nanotube-based composites. "We are also busy trying to make large area coverings," explained Carroll. "Indeed, we already have several pieces that measure 5 x 5 cm."
The team adds that it is trying to integrate both thermal and kinetic energy scavengers into a single platform too – and that platform looks like a fabric covering, said Carroll.
"Incidentally, I did forget one of our samples in a trouser pocket, and it went through a wash and dry cycle in the machine with no measurable deterioration in power output," he added. "So, it looks like these composites are quite robust, which is good news as well."
The research is detailed in J. Appl. Phys. 115 184502. | <urn:uuid:e9a8404b-38f3-40fe-88ce-328d502d41af> | 4 | 3.921875 | 0.148792 | en | 0.962044 | http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/57300 |
Smithsonian National Zoological Park l Friends of the National Zoo
Squirrelly Behavior
3. Outside Explorations
In this activity, you will conduct a behavior watch on squirrels in the wild—on your school’s grounds or in a local park. Through this study, you will discover something about how squirrels spend their time. You will also learn how to collect, analyze and evaluate animal behavior data.
Your teacher will give you a Student Handout on “Common Squirrel Behaviors” and a copy of the student worksheet, “Behavior Watch Checksheet”, which includes a filled-in sample checksheet and an empty checksheet for you to complete.
You will need the following supplies:
• Clipboard
• Pencils
• Stopwatch or wristwatch that displays both minutes and seconds
This Behavior Watch checksheet offers an efficient and consistent way of recording data on behaviors. A checksheet helps you focus on the animal’s behavior and not on writing long notes. It lists behaviors you can observe in squirrels, and the time intervals at which you will record your observations. Afterwards, you’ll convert the checkmarks into numbers that are easily analyzed.
Across the top of the table are the behaviors you might observe and the actions that define them. It is very important for each observer in a behavior watch to understand and agree on the definition of each behavior.
Running vertically down the left side of the table are the trial times. For this study, you will observe for 5 minutes, recording data at 30-second intervals, for a total of 10 observations.
Every 30-second interval is known as a “trial,” and only one single observation is made per trial. In other words, every 30 seconds you will take a mental snapshot of what your animal is doing at that exact moment and check that behavior on your checksheet. You will make only one checkmark per trial.
It helps to work in pairs. One person uses the stop watch and calls the time every 30 seconds. The second person makes the observation at that moment, checking the appropriate box.
After finishing your behavior watch, continue to the next page of this lesson to analyze your data. | <urn:uuid:873d2101-a9a0-4ba3-b3a4-fb7c84b84db9> | 4 | 3.953125 | 0.042527 | en | 0.91109 | http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Education/ClassroomScience/Behavior/outside.cfm |
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BBC News
watch One-Minute World News
Last Updated: Wednesday, 6 April, 2005, 16:56 GMT 17:56 UK
Indian PM re-enacts Gandhi march
The prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, has led thousands of people on the final day of the re-enactment of a historic freedom march in 1930.
The 26-day walk took place from the western city of Ahmedabad to Dandi on the Arabian Sea coast.
It traced the route of Mahatma Gandhi's march to collect salt in defiance of a tax imposed by the British rulers making it illegal to harvest salt.
Mr Singh urged the 200,000-strong crowd to follow Gandhi's message of equality.
VAT tax
He also said the government would provide funds for the development of the heritage route and build memorials along it.
The leader of the Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, said no country could progress unless it followed the Gandhian ideals of truth, brotherhood and peace.
Correspondents say the march has coincided with a 4% VAT tax on processed salt by most state governments - the first tax on salt since Indian independence.
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BBC Home
Explore the BBC
Last Updated: Friday February 25 2005 10:43 GMT
School drug tests 'do not work'
Different drugs
Random drug tests in school should not be encouraged in schools unless there's hard proof it stops kids taking drugs, a report by a charity says.
Their research says the tests could destroy trust between teachers and pupils, making any problems students might have harder to spot.
The report, published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, has called for more research into the testing.
The scheme was recently introduced at Abbey School in Faversham, Kent.
Every week 20 pupils there are randomly chosen by a computer to be tested for drugs including cannabis and ecstasy.
Early this month the head teacher Peter Walker said no pupils had yet tested positive for drugs.
He reckoned the tests were working because pupils had decided not to dabble in drugs because of the threat they could be tested.
Government backs tests
The government has given schools in England permission to test students, and the Conservatives have promised to put more money into school drug tests if they are elected into government.
Do you think drug tests in schools are a good idea? Or would it stop you trusting your teachers?
I think that they should stop the drug tests.
Ian, 14, Newcastle
What exactly is the point if you can say no? I'm sure lots of parents don't agree with their children taking the tests anyway. But then again I think it would raise some suspicions if you refused to take the test.
Hannan, 13, Birmingham
I think they're a great idea - if you're not on drugs then you've got nothing to worry about have you?
Kim, 15, Essex
I don't like it, it makes you feel like you've been put under a large barrier. I think if children are going to do drugs they will do it and that we should have the right to learn from our mistakes. It's our responsibility to say 'no!' and we will never learn to do that if we have adults butting in all the time.
Belinda, 14, Blackpool
School drugs tests do not work - say no then they let you off. Why can't they do a special test on them, instead of asking questions?
Imogen, 12, West Midlands
I think it's really stupid. The teachers obviously don't trust kids. I know a lot of people who do drugs, but what kids do in their own time is nothing to do with teachers or schools.
Kirsty, 14, Exeter
I don't know if they are a good idea because I know a lot of people who do them at weekends but nut during the week.
Sara, 14, Essex
I think that there are a variety of other ways to stop the student drug situation, this one being not good enough proof it stops kids taking drugs. At my school we have a blood hound to sniff out any drugs in student's lockers. If my teachers took part in these drug tests, I certainly wouldn't trust them anymore.
Katherine, 14, USA
If you are on drugs and you can say no to having the drugs test then you could just say no - so what's the point?
Leah, 14, Lochcarron
BBC Homepage >> | CBBC Homepage >>
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Ordained Servant Online
Bonhoeffer: Whose Hero?
Gregory E. Reynolds
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Mataxas. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010, xvi + 591 pages, $29.99.
Considered from the perspective of pure reading enjoyment this book is a gem. From Christianity Today to Publishers Weekly and the Wall Street Journal the book gets the highest accolades. Written with page-turning agility, it should reign for some time as the definitive biography of this twentieth-century hero. But with liberals, like Alan Wolfe in The New Republic (review January 13, 2011), and evangelicals, like Collin Hansen, wanting to claim Bonhoeffer as their own, we should be cautious of how we assess such a hero.
Raised in a seriously sophisticated home and culture, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45) had extraordinary advantages of both intellect and piety. His father, Karl, was the son of Stanislaus Kalkreuth, an accomplished painter. Karl was a brilliant, notable physician, becoming the chair of psychiatry and neurology in Berlin in 1912 (13). His mother, Paula, was born of nobility. Her mother, Countess Clara von Hase, took piano lessons from Franz Liszt and Clara Schumann (6). Both parents were highly disciplined, requiring intelligent conversation at the family table. But this strictness was well seasoned with lots of informal sports and regular trips to family cottages in the mountains. Karl had a great sense of humor and tempered his intolerance of narrow-mindedness, dishonesty, and clichés with fairness and kindness (15).
Dietrich and his twin sister, Sabine, were blessed with two governesses, Käthe and Maria van Horn, both schooled in the pietist theologian Count Zinzendorf’s community at Herrnhut (11–12). Bonhoeffer’s mother oversaw the religious training of her children, but they were not church goers, preferring home piety to the formalism of the state Lutheran church of Germany (12, 19). His father was not a Christian but never interfered with his wife’s instruction of their children (14). Mataxas describes German Christianity in the early twentieth century:
The worlds of folklore and religion were so mingled in early twentieth century German culture that even families that didn’t go to church were often deeply Christian.... German culture was inescapably Christian. This was the result of the legacy of Martin Luther, the Catholic monk who invented Protestantism. (19)
Mataxas never reflects on the possibility that the nominalism fostered by a state-sponsored church, albeit confessional, combined with home grown pietism, was not a formidable enough opponent to withstand the intense nationalism of the Nazi juggernaut that forced it to compromise its confessional heritage and embrace National Socialism.
Mataxas does a splendid job of weaving Bonhoeffer’s story into world, and especially European and American, history. The Bonhoeffers were reserved in their enthusiasm for World War I. Dietrich’s two older brothers, Karl-Friederich and Walter, were called up as the war progressed in 1917 (25). Walter was killed in early 1918 (26). Years later after the loss of two more sons to Nazism, Karl remarked, “We are sad, but also proud” (26). Such a heroic attitude was a family trait. Dietrich was never far from personal loss and national tragedy. The Treaty of Versailles would help cultivate the soil of an intense German nationalism that would bring out the worst in some and best in others. The intellectual and artistic genius of a nation would be in ruins before the eyes of one of Germany’s noblest sons. Mataxas begins chronicling the rise of Adolf Hitler as early as 1923 (44).
Rare indeed was the theologian, in Bonhoeffer’s milieu, that would affirm Christian orthodoxy. Liberalism had been a staple of German academic theology since well back into the nineteenth century. At the age of fourteen in 1920 he announced to his family that he intended to be a theologian (37). At age fifteen he attended his first evangelistic meetings in Berlin, conducted by General Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army. In 1923 Bonhoeffer studied at Tübingen and then the following year at Berlin University (42).
At this point he began to ponder a lifelong question, What is the church? (53–57). During his first trip to Rome he found himself deeply impressed with Catholicism. He had been raised to eschew parochialism, and so the catholicity of the church would lead him to become part of the ecumenical movement. While some of his ecumenical ties would not impress us, the basic thrust of Bonhoeffer’s catholic—with a small “c”— sensibilities helped him see the church as a divine institution that was never to be defined by any national identity (53). Bonhoeffer was also impressed by the classical antiquity of the Roman church (54). Historic continuity was vital to maintaining the church’s witness in the midst of various cultures. Sadly, the Lutheran church of his day was so compromised that he could not find that continuity there and even wondered if the Reformation had been necessary (55). But Bonhoeffer had no intention of converting. The illegal seminaries that Bonhoeffer created “incorporated the best of both Protestant and Catholic traditions” (61).
As a student in Berlin, Bonhoeffer had much contact with Adolf von Harnack, who was a neighbor and family friend. But, while he esteemed him as a scholar, he did not agree at all with his theological liberalism (59). Among the theological heavy-weights of Berlin University at the time were Karl Holl, Reinhold Seeberg, and Adolf Deissman (60). But no one was to have such an influence on Bonhoeffer as the Swiss theologian, Karl Barth of Göttingen.
For refusing to swear allegiance to Hitler, Barth would be kicked out of Germany in 1934, and would become the principal author of the Barmen Declaration, in which the Confessing Church trumpeted its rejection of the Nazi’s attempt to bring their philosophy into the German church. (61)
Bonhoeffer’s professor John Baillie reckoned Bonhoeffer “the most convinced disciple of Dr. Barth that had appeared among us up to that time, and withal as stout an opponent of liberalism as had ever come my way.” (106)
In 1931 Bonhoeffer first met Barth and visited him frequently thereafter (119–21).
During the 1930s, the Nazi party not only took political power, but began subtly to co-opt the Lutheran state church for its own severely nationalistic purposes. This is an intricate and cautionary tale at many levels. But it was Bonhoeffer’s conception of the uniqueness of the church and its gospel message that enabled him to navigate the treacherous waters of Hitler’s Germany. It was here that Barth’s emphasis on the transcendence of God as “eternally other” helped Bonhoeffer (155), even though the dangers of Barth’s theology are well-known—or ought to be—among us.[1]
At the end of 1927 Bonhoeffer successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in Berlin University. Shortly after this, in 1928, he took his first pastorate in the German congregation in Barcelona, Spain. He threw himself into the work, believing that communicating his theology in the congregation was “as important as the theology itself” (85). A year later in 1929 he returned to Berlin for post-doctoral studies (87).
At this point Mataxas briefly explores the question of Luther and the Jews (91–4). He shows how the Nazis used the worst of Luther’s thoughts about the Jews, which occurred later in his life, to deceive the German people. Early in his ministry Luther had been quite charitable toward the Jews. Mataxas seems to lay much of Luther’s later bitterness toward the Jews at the feet of his various illnesses.
In the summer of 1929 Bonhoeffer passed his second theological exam, qualifying him to be a university lecturer. Shortly after this, in 1930, he sailed for America to study at Union Theological Seminary in New York City (96). He found the cosmopolitan culture to be vibrant in contrast with the fatigued German Weimar culture (99). The seminary, on the other hand, proved less than satisfying. He complained:
There is no theology here.... They talk a blue steak without the slightest substantive foundation and with no evidence of any criteria. The students—on the average twenty-five to thirty years old—are completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about. They are unfamiliar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, laugh at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level. (101)
In line with the family tradition, instilled by his father, Bonhoeffer had no patience with the cant of the liberal elite he encountered at Union and Riverside Church. His correspondence reveals a certain heartache over the theological shallowness of the students he studied with. In the churches he lamented the absence of the proclamation of the gospel and biblical preaching. “The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events” (106).
By contrast Bonhoeffer found the worship in the black churches of Harlem to be encouraging. Dr. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church became a favorite. Mataxas notes, “Powell combined the fire of a revivalist preacher with great intellect and social vision” (108). It is curious, though, that despite the strength of Bonhoeffer’s critique of American liberalism, he does not critique the intellectually powerful liberal theologians under which he was trained with the same kind of trenchant interaction offered by J. Gresham Machen in books like Christianity and Liberalism. It would seem that the liberalism of the German theological schools accounts for much of the weakness of the Lutheran church of Bonhoeffer’s day. Perhaps he was too intellectually proud at this point in his life to see this.
It is curious that, while mentioning the fundamentalist controversy that Bonhoeffer encountered during his stay at Union[2] Mataxas never mentions professor J. Gresham Machen, who was not only prominent in the controversy, but followed a tack oddly similar, at least in broad outline, to Bonhoeffer’s own course. Like Machen, Bonhoeffer took a brave stand against the corruption of the Lutheran church; he started his own seminaries (Zingst and Finkenvalde); and was instrumental in seeking to start a faithful church (The Confessing Church).
The year 1931 found Bonhoeffer back in Berlin. Shortly after his return he experienced a profound deepening of his seriousness as a Christian. “I had seen a great deal of the Church, and talked and preached about it—but I had not yet become a Christian” (123). He had prayed little, but now the Sermon on the Mount convinced him that a true servant of Jesus Christ must belong to the church. He “became a regular churchgoer for the first time in his life and took Communion as often as possible.”
After describing the dramatic change of attitude in Bonhoeffer during the early 1930s, Mataxas queries, “Had he been ‘born again’?” (124). But, why do we American evangelicals wish to co-opt Bonhoeffer for our cause? Professor Carl Trueman raised this question in a recent blog, “Bonhoeffer and Anonymous Evangelicals.”[3] As in the case of Wilberforce, many evangelicals are enthralled by Christian involvement in the cultural moment, as if such overt, especially public, political, acts are the most dependable signs of authenticity. Early on Mataxas states a theme that lies at the heart of his motivation to write a biography of Bonhoeffer. “Bonhoeffer was no mere academic. For him ideas and beliefs were nothing if they did not relate to the world of reality outside one’s mind” (53). Significant people make a difference in the world. Fair enough, there is great value in what Mataxas presents. Mataxas insists, “Bonhoeffer’s words reveal that he was never what we might today term a culture warrior, nor could he easily be labeled conservative or liberal” (95). But one still senses something of the cultural transformationist in Mataxas’s interest in Bonhoeffer.
As Hitler came to power and began to infiltrate German culture with his diabolical, utopian agenda, Bonhoeffer began more and more to articulate the contrast between the Nazi claim that Hitler could save Germany and the Bible’s claim that “salvation comes only from Jesus Christ” (128). The Third Reich began when Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. The Führer Principle posited independent and absolute authority in the “leader” of the German people. Bonhoeffer contrasted this with the old biblical idea of leadership in which the leader sought to serve others and knew the limits of his authority under God (138–45).
From this point on, Bonhoeffer’s struggles with the Nazi’s and the church are epic. His London pastorate and his brief return to Union in New York could not tempt him to abandon his country in its hour of need. Hitler proved a very sly adversary as he sought to win Christians to his vision for the nation. His propaganda was powerful in its determination to convince the churches of the compatibility of Christianity with the aims of the Third Reich (165–75). Secretly, in the beginning, Hitler and the Nazis despised Christianity as a religion of the weak, inhibiting the will to power of the Nietzschean superman (168). Many church leaders, known as the German Christians, were convinced and even willing to adopt the Aryan Paragraph, which would exclude all but the “pure race” from the church. Many more in the middle were afraid to oppose what they knew to be wrong. A minority had the foresight and courage to openly condemn the vicious anti-Semitic racism and tyranny of the Nazis. This would give rise to Bonhoeffer’s leadership in the formation of the Confessing Church in May 1934 (222). The famous Barmen Confession, mainly composed by Karl Barth, distinguished historical Lutheran theology from the corrupt theology of the Nazi-favoring German Christians (222–26).
The various intrigues and heroic deeds that followed, as Hitler eventually lead Germany into World War II, resulted in Bonhoeffer’s untimely execution, just two weeks before the war’s end. I will not recount this part of the story in the interest of space and my unwillingness to ruin the story for the reader. But several important lessons stand out.
Reared in the most rigorous academic milieu of family, culture, and university, and a man of stellar brilliance, Bonhoeffer nonetheless believed that preaching the Word was the most important activity of his life as a minister (he was ordained November 15, 1931 in Berlin). Teaching his students at the illegal seminary in Finkenvalde, he declared:
We must be able to speak about our faith so that hands will be stretched out toward us faster than we can fill them.... Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic.... Do not defend God’s Word, but testify to it.... Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity. (272)
During a brief visit to New York in 1939 he went to Riverside Church to hear liberal Harry Emerson Fosdick. In his diary he wrote, “Quite unbearable.”
Bonhoeffer would go on to be delighted by the fundamentalist preacher Dr. McComb, pastor of Broadway Presbyterian Church (334).
Equal to his enthusiasm for preaching, which had begun in the early 1930s, was an emphasis on prayer. His last book published in his lifetime was The Prayerbook of the Bible (1940), a scholarly exposition of the Psalms as prayers. He believed that we can pray only in Christ and we pray with him when we pray the Psalms (386). This took great courage as well, since the book was quite unpopular with the Nazis. No wonder. At every point the Psalms challenge all attempts to perfect humanity without the Lord and Christ the true king, “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.’ ” (Ps. 2:1–3).
Bonhoeffer was willing to lay down his life for his Jewish neighbors, even though they were not Christians. One does not need to be a transformationist to act in love on behalf of one’s neighbor. His kindness won some of the most hardened prison guards to admire and even love him. Mataxas paints a rich portrait of Bonhoeffer as a man, covering his noble character, wide cultural interests, his strict self-discipline, and even his romantic life. His embrace of creation was based on his belief that Christ’s incarnation was a renewal the created order (468–69), “God’s humanism, redeemed in Christ.” His engagement to Maria von Wedemeyer was never consummated due to his execution.
Wherever one comes out on the question of the justice of Bonhoeffer’s involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler, one must admire his principled reasoning. He was, after all, involved with what many Reformers referred to as “lesser magistrates,” albeit the majority were in high positions of the military. But Bonhoeffer did not come to decide on his involvement without great wrestling in thought and prayer. In the end he felt that the Bible did not speak directly to this issue, leaving him to exercise wisdom in dependence on the Lord.
Finally, Bonhoeffer’s courage in the face of death was not natural but came rather from his regular spiritual discipline while he was in prison, especially, he said, in the reading of Psalms and Revelation, and in singing the hymns of Paul Gerhardt (463). As he faced certain death in the prison at Flossenbürg, he reflected:
Death is not wild and terrible if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word.... Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death. (531)
The camp doctor described the last minutes of Bonhoeffer’s life:
I am convinced that Bonhoeffer’s sacrifice was motivated by his grasp of the message of the New Testament. His intelligence and bravery make him a true hero, but this does not mean we should try to make him something he wasn’t—an evangelical. This is not to say he was not a Christian—just not an American evangelical. There is much we can learn from Bonhoeffer’s writings and life. But this should not mean that we are uncritical about his Barthianism or other unique aspects of his theology. This said, I highly recommend this book as a classic piece of edifying entertainment. The scope and intrigue proffered by the subtitle “Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy,” is delivered in full. It is like a great international spy thriller, only having a profound impact on the reader.
[1] Cf. Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1946); Christianity and Barthianism (Phillipsburg, NJ: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1962).
[2] Mataxas makes a minor historical mistake when he identifies Fosdick as the pastor of New York’s First Presbyterian Church (102). He was in fact a Baptist who was stated supply for that church in 1922.
[3] Carl Trueman, “Bonhoeffer and Anonymous Evangelicals,” Reformation 21 (January 18, 2011), http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2011/01/bonhoeffer-and-anonymous-evang.php.
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Monday, January 28, 2008
Javascript and Smalltalk
Joe Gregorio writes...
Alan Kay had a vision for the web... Ten years later we have the Lively Kernel...
JavaScript, it's the new Smalltalk.
I can go along with the Javascript part. There are aspects of Javascript I like more than Smalltalk, and the other parts are not so bad either. Javascript does have some cruft that makes it more complicated than Smalltalk, oh well.
I can go along with the HTML and SVG parts too. But the Lively Kernel part has a way to go. Too bad it's built on the browser, which is a much worse medium than the Smalltalk image. Hopefully that will improve, but browser progress as an application development medium is depressing.
The web makes a helluva "image file". Morphic is a great UI approach, but the browser is not ready to fully realize it.
The current browser is not even up to the level of Smalltalk-72 running on a DG Nova, pushing that analogy a little over the top. It's kind of sad to see Dan Ingalls mucking around with LivelyKernel when he could be working on such a better medium. It's kind of like when Ward Cunningham was at Microsoft and they just couldn't figure out what a creative mind they had available to tap.
Patrick Mueller said...
The browser usage is pure paint, and absolutely the right thing to do. Have the browser save state with Google Gears, locally, to be later sync'd to your 'scm' server. Why not save stuff as JSON? I'm actually not sold on the SVG parts; the graphics are fun, but 'text-based' widgets with a reasonable JS library like ExtJS would be oh so much more useful.
IOW, I don't think this is anywhere close to MS's waste of Ward.
Patrick Logan said...
"I'm actually not sold on the SVG..."
SVG as a language, well, stinks, and it's not the way I'd prefer to hand-write things, that's for sure. It seems to have stalled in its evolution as well. Many years ago I thought it would be evolving to form a decent cross-platform foundation for text, graphics, and interaction.
"I don't think this is anywhere close to MS's waste of Ward."
You could be right and still not diminish the tragedy that is the browser.
stelt said...
Though developments haven't always gone as fast as people wanted and didn't always turn into what they themselves had dreamed up (it's committe style after all).
More and more people actually like SVG, see http://svg.startpagina.nl
Blog Archive
About Me
Portland, Oregon, United States | <urn:uuid:f463c951-c8df-416d-ae08-5bc5893865a4> | 2 | 1.898438 | 0.089743 | en | 0.961973 | http://patricklogan.blogspot.com/2008/01/javascript-and-smalltalk.html |
Philomel Records
[What's on the CD]
Deutsch's Chromatic illusion
The chromatic illusion was discovered and first published by Deutsch in Audio Magazine, 1987. A chromatic scale is presented that ranges over two octaves. The scale is presented in both ascending and descending form, with the individual tone switching from ear to ear as in the original scale illusion. When the pattern is played in stereo, many people hear a higher line that moves down an octave and up again, together with a lower line that moves up an octave and down again, with the two meeting in the middle. Yet when each channel is played separately, it is heard correctly as a series of tones that jump around in pitch. The figure below shows the pattern producing the chromatic illusion and how it is perceived. When played through stereo headphones, righthanders again show a tendency to hear the higher tones on the right and the lower tones on the left, but lefthanders as a group are much more variable in terms of what they hear. For other variants of the scale illusion, see Butler, 1979.
sound example Play Deutsch's Chromatic Illusion
Deutsch, D. Illusions for stereo headphones. Audio Magazine, March, 1987, 36-48. [PDF Document]
Butler, D. A further study of melodic channeling. Perception and Psychophysics, 1979, 25, 264-268.
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am a little confused about a few papers I read on the Einstein-Klein-Gordon (EKG) equations.
From what I understood one takes the energy-stress-tensor of the scalar field:
$$T_{\mu\nu } = −\partial_\mu \varphi ∂_\nu \varphi − \frac12 g_{\mu\nu}∂_\alpha\varphi∂_\alpha\varphi − V(φ )$$
$$V(φ) = −\frac12 (mφ)^2 + \fracκ4φ^4$$
Where $κ$ is the usual self-interaction coupling constant .
Then this stress-tensor is plugged into Einstein's equation and solved usually with the Schwarzschild or other convenient metrics.
Now from what I know about QFT, isn't $φ$ an operator that maps the Hilbert space $H$ of particle states to $H$ itself? Doesn't that make the components of the energy-stress-tensor observables and thus operators as well? If so, then how can one equate the components of the Einstein tensor (which are purely geometric tensor fields) to operators?
I once read that people (as of today) usually plug in < $T_{μν} $ > in Einstein's equation, but in the papers I read they directly used the operator itself and not it's expectation value.
I also wondered how people plug the Maxwell stress tensor into Einstein's equations in a similar way? I get that the EM and scalar field are real valued fields, but shouldn't we use the expectation values in Einstein's equation?
What am I missing? Here is a link to one such paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.3211
share|improve this question
This seems to be a semantic issue. People sometimes use the phrase Klein-Gordon equation to refer to the classical wave equation with a mass term. There is nothing quantum about it. So $\phi$ is not an operator, its just a normal classical field. – BebopButUnsteady Aug 21 '13 at 17:56
1 Answer 1
up vote 4 down vote accepted
This is not how I would usually go about formulating this problem. When i think of the Einstein Klein-gordon equation, I start from an action principle:
$$S = \int d^{4}x\sqrt{|g|}\left(\frac{1}{16\pi G}R -\left[\nabla_{a}\phi\nabla^{a}\phi + V(\phi)\right]\right)$$
Which will then yield EOM:
$$R_{ab} - \frac{1}{2}Rg_{ab} = 8\pi G\left(\nabla_{a}\phi\nabla_{b}\phi -\frac{1}{2}g_{ab}\left[\nabla_{c}\phi\nabla^{c}\phi + V(\phi)\right]\right)$$
$$\nabla^{c}\nabla_{c}\phi - V'(\phi) = 0$$
From here, the question is what are you doing with these equations?
Are you looking at general relativity in the context of a classical Klein-Gordon source? If so, you just solve these equations.
Are you trying to do semi-classical gravity? Well, then, you set your metric to a fixed background metric, and just analyze the Klein-Gordon EOM using the appropriate $\nabla$ for this background metric, quantizing the field using a scheme like you'll find in Wald's book.
Are you looking to work through the back-reaction of semi-classical effects on the background metric? Well, then you need to write down $g_{ab} = g^{0}_{ab} + g^{1}_{ab}$ where $g^{1}_{ab} \ll g^{0}_{ab}$, assume that $\phi$ is first-order, and substitute the expectation value of your solved $\phi$ in on the right hand side, and solve for $g^{1}_{ab}$ in this limit.
Or are you trying to do something else? If you want to treat this as a fully quantum problem, you're going to need to first quantize gravity.
share|improve this answer
The equations you wrote reduce to the above in any case, since the covariant derivative is equal to the partial derivative in this case. Without quantizing gravity as you said, shouldn't the writers of the paper have used the expectation value instead? Do you agree that their approach seems a little confused? – dj_mummy Aug 22 '13 at 3:41
@dj_mummy: I do agree that the approach seems a little confused. I tell them to use the expectation value if they're looking to solve the semi-classical problem. And it's a little pedantic, but $\phi_{a}\phi_{a}$, as notation, seems to imply the use of a Minkowski background, and starting with an action was an attempt on my part to say "no, there really is an enveloping 4-geometry, and this affects the KG EOM, and needs to be thought about throughout the problem." And, if you just treat the whole thing classically, of course, you can just think of the KG equation as a classical equation. – Jerry Schirmer Aug 22 '13 at 13:17
Yeah, :) I realized while writing the question that I needed an upper index, but I don't really know how to add that. I am really bad with formatting. – dj_mummy Aug 22 '13 at 14:53
Your Answer
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Meta Battle Subway PokeBase - Pokemon Q&A
What would happen if you lowered a stat by so that it would be 1?
1 vote
Example: Lvl. 1 Shuckle, Contrary, Brave nature, No IVs or EVs in Speed used Rock-polish. Would Rock-polish Fail if it got to the point where it would lower the speed to less than 1? If not would it effect Gyro-ball?
asked Dec 3, 2011 by Speed freak
3 Answers
4 votes
Best answer
No. If given just a decimal for a stat value, a stat automatically rounds up to 1, even if it's something like .0001. Same thing happens when your attack is so weak, it wouldn't do anything. (Imagine a level 1 magby using ember on a level 100 Omastar. The damage would do next to nothing, but it rounds up to 1.)
answered Dec 4, 2011 by DarkTyphlosion
0 votes
My guess is that it would stay at one. No stat can go below 0 unless you're hacking.
answered Dec 3, 2011 by XtremeKiller
0 votes
it would stay at 1 but u would still be able to use it 3 times for the +6 or in this case -6 :)
but tbh idk why u would even consider a brave set??
answered Dec 3, 2011 by gio1991
It was a Hypothetical question. I would never use this set in competitive. | <urn:uuid:8e97d6dd-558d-43e8-ae6f-15af78bb96a7> | 2 | 1.703125 | 0.914409 | en | 0.962575 | http://pokemondb.net/pokebase/50777/what-would-happen-if-you-lowered-a-stat-by-so-that-it-would-be-1?show=50793 |
Independence Hall Home Search Contents Indexes Help
Article 4, Section 3, Clause 1
Document 3
Thomas Jefferson, Revised Report, Plan for Government of the Western Territory
22 Mar. 1784Papers 6:607--9
The Committee to whom was recommitted the report of a plan for a temporary government of the Western territory have agreed to the following resolutions.
Resolved that so much of the territory ceded or to be ceded by individual states to the United states, as is already purchased or shall be purchased of the Indian iinhabitants and offered for sale by Congress, shall be divided into distinct states, in the following manner, as nearly as such cessions will admit; that is to say, by parallels of latitude, so that each state shall comprehend from South to North two degrees of latitude beginning to count from the completion of thirty one degrees North of the equator; and by meridians of longitude, one of which shall pass thro' the lowest point of the rapids of Ohio, and the other thro' the Western cape of the mouth of the Great Kanhaway. But the territory Eastward of this last meridian, between the Ohio, lake Erie, and Pennsylvania shall be one state whatsoever may be it's comprehension of latitude. That which may lie beyond the completion of the 45th. degree between the said meridians shall make part of the state adjoining it on the South, and that part of the Ohio which is between the same meridians coinciding nearly with the parallel of 39°. shall be substituted so far in lieu of that parallel as a boundary line.
That the settlers on any territory so purchased and offered for sale shall, either on their own petition, or on the order of Congress, receive authority from them with appointments of time and place, for their free males of full age, within the limits of their state to meet together for the purpose of establishing a temporary government, to adopt the constitution and laws of any one of the original states, so that such laws nevertheless shall be subject to alteration by their ordinary legislature; and to erect, subject to a like alteration, counties or townships for the election of members for their legislature.
That such temporary government shall only continue in force in any state until it shall have acquired 20,000 free inhabitants; when giving due proof thereof to Congress, they shall receive from them authority, with appointments of time and place to call a convention of representatives to establish a permanent constitution and government for themselves.
Provided that both the temporary and permanent governments be established on these principles as their basis. 1. That they shall for ever remain a part of this confederacy of the United states of America. 2. That in their persons, property and territory they shall be subject to the government of the United states in Congress assembled, and to the articles of Confederation in all those cases in which the original states shall be so subject. 3. That they shall be subject to pay a part of the federal debts contracted or to be contracted, to be apportioned on them by Congress, according to the same common rule and measure, by which apportionments thereof shall be made on the other states. 4. That their respective governments shall be in republican forms, and shall admit no person to be a citizen who holds any hereditary title. 5. That after the year 1800. of the Christian aera, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been convicted to have been personally guilty.
That whensoever any of the said states shall have, of free inhabitants, as many as shall then be in any one the least numerous of the thirteen original states, such state shall be admitted by it's delegates into the Congress of the United states, on an equal footing with the said original states: provided nine states agree to such admission according to the reservation of the 11th of the articles of Confederation. And in order to adapt the said articles of confederation to the state of Congress when it's numbers shall be thus increased, it shall be proposed to the legislatures of the states originally parties thereto, to require the assent of two thirds of the United states in Congress assembled in all those cases wherein by the said articles the assent of nine states is now required; which being agreed to by them shall be binding on the new states. Until such admission by their delegates into Congress, any of the said states, after the establishment of their temporary government, shall have authority to keep a sitting member in Congress, with a right of debating, but not of voting.
That the preceding articles shall be formed into a charter of compact, shall be duly executed by the president of the United states in Congress assembled, under his hand, and the seal of the United states, shall be promulgated, and shall stand as fundamental constitutions between the thirteen original states and each of the several states now newly described, unalterable but by the joint consent of the United states in Congress assembled, and of the particular state within which such alteration is proposed to be made.
The Founders' Constitution
Volume 4, Article 4, Section 3, Clause 1, Document 3
The University of Chicago Press
Easy to print version.
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When Ted Shawn happened upon Jacob's Pillow in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts in 1930, he didn't have a grand scheme in mind. He simply pined for a retreat or, as Norton Owen, the Pillow's director of preservation, put it, a place ''to get away from it all.''
His dream of solitude didn't last long. After Shawn bought the property in 1931, he converted a barn into a dance studio, and two years later his private sanctuary became the base of Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers. Since then Jacob's Pillow, now directed by Ella Baff, has come a long way: This summer the festival, on a former station along the Underground Railroad in Becket, Mass., celebrates its 75th anniversary.
After a rocky period in the 1990s when the Pillow was near foreclosure, it has had a resurgence. Under Ms. Baff in the last 10 years, the institution has experienced a 38 percent increase in ticket sales, with a 77 percent increase in attendance at all events offered, including discussions, free performances, exhibitions and talks. Even more indicative of the organization's financial health is its first endowment campaign. The goal for its first phase, which ended in June, was $6 million; $6.1 million was raised.
But while the Pillow is thriving, its programming tends to lean toward the safe. Top billing is generally reserved for established names in dance. This season, along with choreographers like Paul Taylor and Mark Morris, the festival includes a season by the ballet star Rasta Thomas in a program called ''Bad Boys of Dance,'' which would seem to refer to Shawn's lifelong crusade: making dance a legitimate career for American men.
That ambition, inadvertently perhaps, transformed Jacob's Pillow into a destination for dance. For 75 cents Shawn offered lecture-demonstrations to the public, which also included tea, a practice that continued into the 1950s.
''Once you get past the 'O.K., I want to be here on the hilltop where nobody will bother me,' what he was doing when he started to give performances was to begin to draw back the veil a little bit,'' Mr. Owen explained recently in a telephone interview. ''He was really trying to educate people, to expose people and to engage people in appreciating dance in the way that he did.''
This week Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie from Canada presents ''The Dome,'' Shawn's suite of dances set to Bach that was last seen in its final form in 1940. The company's artistic directors, Bill Coleman and Laurence Lemieux, intrigued by a photograph of the work that they saw during their residency at the Pillow this spring, decided to restage it using children of company members who are dance students.
The directors ''found it charming and revelatory in a lot of ways,'' Mr. Owen said. ''It can be seen as a simplistic reading of the music in visual terms, but there was also a kind of simplicity about it that made them think of children.''
The anniversary season, which stretches boundaries more than most at the Pillow, offers more than 100 shows, 40 of them free as part of the Inside/Out series, programmed by Ms. Baff, Ginger Gascon Menard and Barbara Bryan. Included are United States debuts by Mimulus of Brazil, Ballet du Grand Th?re de Gen? and the Henri Oguike Dance Company from England.
''I try to present the whole of dance, in a way, and I'm not saying that I include everything all the time, but I don't really subscribe to a certain kind of work,'' Ms. Baff said in a phone interview. ''Most presenting organizations or festivals are fairly specifically defined, so it may be about contemporary work or only traditional work, but there are very few places where it's about the art form of dance. That's just a different way of seeing it. I think that being broader is a very good thing.''
Ms. Bryan, who is also the executive director of Movement Research, a New York organization dedicated to experimental work and artistic process, has stuck with the Pillow even though much of the work presented there lies outside her primary aesthetic interests. ''That challenges me,'' she said. ''But I think more than anything the Pillow serves as a way to engage audiences in dance. That's the primary mission.''
And in that sense little has changed since Shawn's day, when programs were an eclectic mixture of ethnic dance, ballet and modern works, enriched by curtain speeches full of context. Today exhibitions and lectures, as well as daily talks by scholars in residence like Suzanne Carbonneau, provide rich historical background.
''We have people who have been seeing dance all their lives, but you will always find somebody who might be at the Pillow for the first time,'' Mr. Owen said. ''It may even be their very first dance performance. That's a stunning opportunity: to have the chance to show people something that's not going to make them say: 'O.K., I've seen dance now, and it confirms everything I ever believed. I don't like it.' ''
Mr. Owen said he sees a connection between Shawn's method of ''getting people on his side'' and then challenging them, and the way the Pillow operates today. ''We don't poke the eyes of the viewer,'' he said. ''And equally important to what's on the stage is the enclosure that it's in. Something about the experience of watching dance is richer on a beautiful summer evening. It's very different than getting on a subway and running into a theater at the last minute.''
The Ted Shawn Theater at Jacob's Pillow, the dance festival in Becket, Mass., intended as a retreat but now a destination for dance. (Photograph by Julia Zhou); Photo (Photograph by John Lindquist/Harvard Theater Collection, via Jacob's Pillow); Above, Nino Gogua, left, and Lasha Khozashvili of the State Ballet of Georgia performing this year; Ted Shawn's Men Dancers about 1940. (Photograph by Nancy Palmieri for The New York Times) | <urn:uuid:bc1975d8-0e14-40dc-af1f-2f8beeb27fe2> | 2 | 1.609375 | 0.019359 | en | 0.975413 | http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9506E7DA163EF93BA15755C0A9619C8B63 |
Obesity: Aetiology & Treatment (5)
29 terms by stevenypark
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Body mass index =
weight (kg) / height (m)^2
Overweight BMI
25.0 - 29.9
Obesity BMI
at least 30
Rank the following in order of increasing obesity prevalence: whites, blacks, hispanics
What survey takes data on the prevalence of obesity in children and adolescents?
National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys
Relationship between overweight and underweight
- resources for morbidity associated with obesity diverts resources away from the malnourished.
What is the relationship of obesity prevalence and socioeconomic status?
trends are still upwards in lower socioeconomic groups
trends are downwards in higher socioeconomic groups
- overall plateau
Review obesity key points 1.
List 3 parts of the social environment that foster an obesogenic environment.
List 3 parts of the built environment that foster an obesogenic environment.
What foods have witnessed the greatest rise/drop in relative cost?
rise: fresh fruit and vegetables
drop: soft drinks
Are metabolic rates higher or lower in obese people?
Describe the PAL values of obese people in comparison to normal weight people.
- for a large person, low levels of activity expend more energy than in normal people.
Review energy balance of the body.
Review Australian female nutrition students study.
- this patient population is simply eating more.
Obesity genotypes
Review obesity/polymorphism study.
Review physical activity/polymorphism study.
Review obesity key points 2.
Review physical activity statistics.
Review human behavior and exercise.
According to studies, does exercise increase hunger and food intake?
- excuse not to exercise
- exercise does not induce an automatic drive in hunger and food intake.
What 2 forms of compliance must be observed in order for exercise to be useful for weight control?
exercise regime --> must actually exercise
control over eating (no reward)
What 2 precautions must be taken with carbohydrate exclusion diets?
fruits and vegetable intakes are maintained
fat quality is appropriate (low in saturates), i.e. rape (canola) oil, olive oil, fish oil
Orlistat mechanism
inhibitor of gastrointestinal lipases: reduces fat absorption from the gut
Orlistat side effects (2)
fatty stools
anal leakage
Sibutramine mechanism
serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor: acts centrally to reduce appetite and may have some thermogenic activity
Sibutramine side effect
slightly raised blood pressure
- UK suspension due to CVD risks in January 2010
- withdrawn from US market by Abbot Pharma
Review obesity key points 3.
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This Algorithm Can Change the Season and Weather In Your Photos
One time I drove five hours out of my way on a road trip to Monument Valley, only to be devastated when I arrived. Instead of the bright red buttes I'd envisioned against a clear blue sky, a gray haze had settled into the valley, rendering the landscape flat and lifeless. My photographs could have been saved by a new app that can add sun and light to images with simple text commands.
A new algorithm developed by researchers at Brown University allows you to alter the weather, time of day, or season in outdoor photos. The program has a database of 40 different attributes which are all assigned to basic phrases. So take a sunny photo and type "more rain" to add dismal stormclouds on the horizon. Type "more winter" to suck the chlorophyll out of the trees.
Now how is this different from, say, the Valencia filter on your Instagram app? Well for one, this allows you to control many different variables, not just stick with one predetermined look. But the real beauty here is that instead of having to learn a complicated Photoshop-level editing suite, most photos could be transformed with a series of simple word commands. Does it look realistic? I'd need to see more examples, but I like that this hands over some basic editing tools to a wider audience so they can play around with it. [Brown] | <urn:uuid:420a26bc-3c93-448a-8403-90d0c8a360e4> | 2 | 1.976563 | 0.040299 | en | 0.946631 | http://reframe.gizmodo.com/this-algorithm-can-change-the-season-and-weather-in-you-1618244566 |
Internet of Things data will boost storage
This article can also be found in the Premium Editorial Download: Storage magazine: Hypervisor vendors up the ante with new storage features:
ningIT departments can benefit from storage vendors eavesdropping on their arrays to help them curb the amount of Internet of Things data inundating their storage shops.
Basically, the Internet of Things just means that clever new data sensors (and, in many cases, remote controls) will be added to more and more devices that we interact with every day, turning almost everything we touch into data sources. The prime example is probably your smartphone, which is capable of reporting your location, orientation, usage, movement, and even social and behavioral patterns. If you're engineering-minded, you can order a cheap Raspberry Pi computer and instrument any given object in your house today, from metering active energy devices to tracking passive items for security to monitoring environmental conditions. You can capture your goldfish's swimming activity or count how many times someone opened the refrigerator door before dinner.
Adding to the potential data overload, there's an emerging big data science principle that says the more data history one has the better. Since we don't necessarily know today all the questions we might want to ask of our data in the future, it's best to retain all the detailed history perpetually. That way we always have the flexibility to answer any new questions we might ever think of, and as a bonus gain visibility over an ever-larger data set as time goes by.
IT-IoT's delight
The good news is that there are already some solutions within IT that can tame the Internet of Things. Tools such as Splunk and VMware vCenter Log Insight are great for aggregating log and event data for useful analysis. Splunk has even proven valuable beyond IT when business relevant "crossover" data sources such as Web user logs are folded into the mix (e.g., marketing might like to know about user behavior on those Web servers).
But it's still not clear how an IT organization can make sense of a flood of disparate data from custom sensors, logs and metering sourced across all of its heterogeneous vendor devices. There aren't any notable industry standards yet, and we don't believe there will be given that every stab at creating monitoring standards in the past has essentially failed to enable a consistent interpretation of even the most basic metric like CPU utilization. The truth is that deep, vendor-specific knowledge is required to interpret data sourced from each vendor's devices.
Storage vendors, call home
So what are our storage vendors up to? The most evolved are offering call home support based on analyzing a stream of data generated by your on-site implementation of their storage. Industrial Internet of Things data is sometimes collected directly through wireless or live Internet connectivity, but for IT storage arrays it's often sent as an automated periodic upload of various log, status, configuration and usage reports. By sharing this data, both the vendor and client provide each other with extra value, leading to a more intimate, trusted and valuable relationship.
There are two things a vendor does with call home data. The first is to provide much more effective and even proactive support because they can see directly what's happening on the storage platform, which features are being used, and the exact components that are installed and configured; but the vendor can also compare each customer's situation with the entire pool of other customers with similar implementations. In many call home schemes, the customer can also get their own processed views back to gain insights from the pooled knowledge and vendor analysis.
A vendor can also do a better job at, well, everything. Product management can better prioritize features, support can spot and address trending errors, account teams can ensure the customer is getting the most value out of what they bought, and marketing can plan more effective promotions. And yes, sales folks can make a well-timed sales call when usage is just about to max out the current license. There are non-client focused benefits too. For example, a storage vendor could track how OEM components such as flash cards or disk drives are performing in the field to help negotiate new supplier contracts.
Most vendors have thought about implementing a more rigorous call home program, but many have discovered that building a big data Internet of Things analytical platform at scale just isn't a core competency. Which is when we'd suggest bringing in a call home solution provider like Glassbeam (which counts several well-known storage vendors and a set of broader industrial/medical Internet of Things device makers among its clients) that can help set up a given product line for fully featured call home services in weeks, instead of the months or years it might take to build something internally.
A big brother can be a good thing
As a storage customer, does the thought of having your arrays metered and tattling back to the vendor seem more like a 1984 Big Brother intrusion than a valuable service? While the data "sent home" could be competitively interesting since it concerns your IT architecture and usage, it's not your actual business data and you'd probably have no problem sending it file by file when working through a specific support issue.
At Taneja Group, we recommend IT storage buyers look specifically for vendors that have intelligently instrumented their solutions so that they can offer proactive call home support and provide holistic "views" back into their own site. Fundamentally, we think your IT vendors ought to be trusted advisors. If you can't trust the vendors you have, you should look for ones that you can trust.
About the author:
Mike Matchett is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group.
This was first published in June 2014
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
If I provide a public-facing website for users on my website at their own subdomain (e.g. bob.myapp.com) under their own control, can I allow them to execute arbitrary JavaScript without putting my main app server at risk (e.g. myapp.com)? The users would be able to put their own *.js files in the public root of their subdomains.
I have an extremely limited understanding of the JS Same Origin Policy, but I believe that different subdomains count as different origins. Therefore if my main app (myapp.com) is secured from XSS etc., is there anything specific I need to worry about from the users' subdomains that I wouldn't have to worry about for any other external source?
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are you concerned about users of myapp.com or about someone stealing your scripts and using them on bob.myapp.com? because if you don't include data from subdomains in your main html/javascript/... files, i see no way the data would suddenly include themselves.. – deathApril Oct 25 '12 at 18:36
The cross-domain tag has a nice writeup. Does this help? – pd40 Oct 25 '12 at 20:54
@deathApril I'm not so much worried about them stealing my scripts, as I am about them being able to do something funky with AJAX or my cookies. I.e. is there anything special they can do with AJAX (from a different domain) that they couldn't do through HTTP that I wouldn't be guarding against already? – Brandon Oct 25 '12 at 22:25
@deathApril I guess I'm more just worried about what I don't know... Not sure if I'm asking the right questions. If you were going to give users free reign over a subdomain on your site, what would you be worried about? – Brandon Oct 25 '12 at 22:26
2 Answers 2
From my understanding, the same-origin policy will protect AJAX users from each other, but not necessarily your main site. For example, user1.myapp.com will not be able to post requests to user2.myapp.com, but will be able to post requests to myapp.com. You could solve this by forcing the main site to use the 'www' subdomain (www.myapp.com) and forward any request to myapp.com there.
There's a few things that you could do to help secure your main app's cookies. Make sure that all of your cookies' domains are bound to a specific and aren't being wildcarded(e.g., *.myapp.com), otherwise subdomains will be able to access them. You could enable the HttpOnly flag to prevent users from stealing the cookie through javascript. If users are able to use server side languages, place your main application on a subdomain, otherwise they'll be able to access your cookies. It would be wise to enable the Secure flag as well.
For more info on the same-origin policy (And a lot of other web application security topics), take a look at Michal Zalewski's Browser Security Handbook or his book The Tangled Web.
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Yes, you do have to worry. While the subdomains are mostly isolated from your main domain (thanks to the same-origin policy, there are some exceptions that could pose a risk.
One risk has to do with cookies. Script on bob.myapp.com can set a cookie for myapp.com. This cookie will be sent to myapp.com when the user visits myapp.com. This can be used for session fixation attacks.
For instance, malicious user content can set a session cookie (sessionid=1234) with domain myapp.com. Then when the user visits myapp.com, their browser will send the session cookie set by the attacker. Since the attacker knows the session ID that the user will be using, the attacker can now hijack their session.
One mitigation is to host the user content on alice.myappusercontent.com, bob.myappusercontent.com, etc., while your app is on myapp.com. That should stop these attacks.
The classic reference for information about the same-origin policy and isolation on the web is the Browser Security Handbook. See especially the section on the same-origin policy and on life outside same-origin rules.
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:ecd08ad3-3a6d-4776-933c-5ceceb40d25e> | 2 | 1.820313 | 0.041911 | en | 0.928077 | http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/23220/user-specific-subdomains-javascript-security |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
What are the parameters in play, and what is a rough estimate of the hardness of the task of reading the contents of flash memory off a microcontroller? Of course, it is assumed that there is no conventional way to do it.
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1 Answer 1
It largely depends on the chip and the person that programmed it. Microcontrollers usually have a feature that allows you to pull the existing firmware binary off, but in many cases that can be disabled with a so-called "secure flag", which disables the download process until a new firmware is uploaded containing directives that turn the secure flag off. Of course, this wipes the existing firmware in the process. Check the datasheet for the microcontroller for specifics.
If it's a microprocessor (as opposed to a microcontroller) then there is usually no on-chip firmware, and the program code is stored externally on a memory device. Usually this will be an EEPROM or a mask ROM which you can interface with separately. I've done this with embedded systems that use SPI flash - just desolder it and hook it up to a Bus Pirate. If you can't desolder the device, it may also be possible to sniff the bus and gain information that way.
The universal way to get at the data is decapping. You get some strong acid (nitric acid is a common choice) that will eat away and the package compound, but not the silicon, and leave it in there for a day or two. You then take photographs with a digital microscope and use image processing to turn the patterns into data.
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Can we get more details on the commands or steps one would take using a Bus Pirate? – atdre Feb 17 '14 at 22:36
@atdre It entirely depends on the flash chip. It could have an SPI or I2C interface, or something totally different. Then on top of that there'll be commands and steps that are unique to that device. It's impossible to give a catch-all. You have to read the datasheet and the BusPirate manual. – Polynomial Feb 17 '14 at 22:57
That's a fair answer. What would you do if you had a bigger budget and also pretend that Bus Pirate didn't exist. What would you use instead? Isn't the Bus Pirate just a glorified serial-friendly vesion of the Arduino but made by TI? – atdre Feb 17 '14 at 23:49
The BusPirate is a device which is designed to be a programmable interface with various bus types, with minimal implementation overhead. It is designed for interfacing with individual components without supporting circuitry. It and the Arduino do two completely different things. Also, the BusPirate is made by Dangerous Prototypes, not TI. If I had a big budget I'd probably still use a BusPirate, simply because it's so easy to use. I would probably buy a proper logic analyser to support it, though. – Polynomial Feb 18 '14 at 13:14
The BP comes with a set of female pins that connect to headers, but you can also buy alternative headers that has hook probes and tweezer clips. I use both. You can also clip various things into the standard headers anyway. It's mainly designed for easy integration into through-hole / breadboard stuff, as it primarily targets the hobbyist market. When I'm dealing with SMD stuff I usually use the tweezer clips (pincer style ones) to hook onto the leads. – Polynomial Feb 18 '14 at 16:56
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:39bdbb70-d435-48d0-b604-2ee5cc37c686> | 2 | 2.3125 | 0.599877 | en | 0.939385 | http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49809/how-hard-is-it-to-read-flash-memory-off-a-chip |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I have several web sites, all set up in http-vhosts.conf with their respective ServerName and DocumentRoot, they are working fine and dandy.
But when I visit the server's IP address URL, I get back the files in the first virtual host, rather than Apache serving from where I would expect, the http.conf file's DocumentRoot.
How can I configure Apache so visiting the server by IP address, whether external or loopback, does not return the first VirtualHost?
Here's the first VirtualHost, which I'm currently getting back as the response if I visit the web server by IP:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName "delaneatallent.com"
ServerAlias "www.delaneatallent.com"
DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents/delanea"
Using Apache 2.2.14 on OS X, if that matters.
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3 Answers 3
up vote 6 down vote accepted
In short, you can't - that's how Apache works. If you are listening on that IP (as per Prix's comment) then Apache will use the first virtual host as defined when serving up an IP request.
If this is undesirable, then consider changing the first virtual host to be what you actually want served if it's by IP. If that is not what you want, then consider putting in redirect as the first virtual host to make it go somewhere you do want.
# default
<VirtualHost *:80>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://othersite.com/$1 [L,R]
You can't stop Apache from listening on that IP, but you can make it do something else that does do what you want with a little creativity.
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Thanks Troy! I didn't want to create a fake VirtualHost as a patch if the cause was something else in my config. Works fine now. – richardtallent Aug 29 '10 at 4:56
What I did to remedy this was to do a default page for /var/www and that serves the default site you see when you navigate to my server by IP or unknown url related to a site on my server.
The actual sites that I host are in the sites-enabled folder with the default site configuration, all name based and pointing to a different directory.
Long story short, navigate to my server by its IP, you get the default error page.
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To make your apache listen to specific ip and port you must define it:
Where and are 2 example ips i have assigned to it.
If you already have another Listen configured you may need to change it, for example:
would make your apache listen on all interfaces available.
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Listen is set to "80", server is serving files fine. Problem is that when visiting the site by IP address, the first VirtualHost is returned rather than the expected DocumentRoot. – richardtallent Aug 28 '10 at 18:02
that is how apache works it will always show the documentroot for the 1st virtualhost. if u dont want that you can create a new 1st virtualhost there is nothing you can really do about it. For example if u listen to 2 ips when those 2 ips are typed they will take you to the document root. – Prix Aug 28 '10 at 20:42
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:8ec33993-8081-4c2d-b374-49fa396b110f> | 2 | 1.875 | 0.073579 | en | 0.90119 | http://serverfault.com/questions/175679/how-can-i-get-apache-to-not-respond-to-an-ip-only-request/535524 |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I'm going to be testing some software, MDT 2010 and Configuration Manager. I would like to create a virtual test environment. The Host box will be running Server 2008 R2 and the clients will be Hyper V boxes. The host will be the Domain Controller for the environment and what I'm looking to do is have one nic be the "WAN" and a virtual nic be "LAN". Is this possible, and if so, how can i set this up? Also should a Quad Core 3.0 ghz with 4gb of memory be enough resources for 2 2008 r2 boxes and 2 win 7 boxes. I have another machine a dual core 2.0 ghz with 2gb of memory, if needed.
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1 Answer 1
up vote 1 down vote accepted
Yes, this is doable. In Hyper-V virtual network manager you create a new virtual network, using the the virtual NIC. You'll probably want it to be External, the guests can hit the internet (if that's desired), with the radio checked for "Allow management operating system to share this network adapter."
That CPU should be good, RAM might be a little light, depending on what you're actually going to be testing on the guests - stands to reason, right? If you're going to be testing Photoshop or a render farm, then nope.
You haven't said anything about disk layout (spindle count), IO profile, etc - so that may also be a concern for performance. Again, without knowing what your real needs and expected uses are, how can we hope to tell you if you have "enough"?
/Re-reading, that you're going to be testing MDT and SCCM. I have no idea about the latter, although I'm sure it depends on SQL, which may be a concern? For the former, if you're going to be testing backup throughput, then you're definitely going to have to care about IO a lot. If you're only testing configurations and testing small jobs, you're probably OK.
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This is just going to be for some testing/learning before moving it to the production network. I need to figure out how I can have the physical box connected to the production network to give internet to everyone on the virtual lan, while preventing all network traffic on the virtual lan from touching the production network. – poconnor Jan 31 '12 at 20:14
You want the VM guests to be able to go out to the internet but not anything else on the LAN - you're going to have to play with routing and/or firewall rules, outside of Hyper-V to accomplish this. You can't do that with either Internal or Private, you'll still need to do External, and then further restrict things. – mfinni Jan 31 '12 at 20:26
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:ebe32705-5f74-44ff-a3ef-1783cb8c8b5c> | 2 | 2 | 0.115859 | en | 0.929194 | http://serverfault.com/questions/355527/test-environment-domain-controller?answertab=active |
Front page of Issue 16
Craigslist founder rejects link between site, crimes
The Public Press
— Oct 21 2009 - 9:03pm
"People might use our site, much like they might use the phone, or a car, or the roads, and I can’t find a reason for any of us to feel guilty about it," Newmark said during a wide-ranging interview with the Public Press’ Stephen Robert Morse.
As they sat at the Reverie Café in San Francisco’s Cole Valley, Newmark went on to discuss a wide range of topics, including what his organization does to cooperate with the police in tracking down criminals.
"The deal is that our site is a really good way for the victims to address the situation. We are good at helping the cops find the bad guys. I have helped myself a bunch of times."
Also in his interview with Morse, Newmark rejected the notion that Craigslist was a cause of the collapse of the newspaper industry.
"That's an urban legend. The newspapers have a lot of problems these days," he said. "For example, paper is very expensive to print and very expensive to deliver."
He also sees a role for newspapers going forward, just not in the same format, as they currently exist.
"Newspapers printed on paper may be phasing out, but newspapers as news organizations will actually thrive," Newmark said. "We'll see those networks and networks of fact checkers, reporters, editors, will shift. We'll find new models for paying for it."
Newmark went on to share a cause dear to his heart: help for American war veterans.
"I do know that when it comes to a war veteran, we need to create better support systems for the people who have committed themselves so thoroughly to us. And that means supporting the Veteran’s Administration, that means working with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. I am heavily involved with that group."
For more from the interview, read the excerpts below. For the full interview, contact The Public Press at info[AT]
Question: Seeing you eat chicken schwarma is a great starting-off point. I know that you’re doing some work with organizations that promote peace in the Middle East. Can you talk about that work that you’re doing?
Answer: I’m doing a few things and as in many areas, I’m somewhat out of my depth, but that’s a way of life for me now. I just plunge in and get stuff done. In this case, the primary activities are microfinance in the Middle East, focusing on groups like Kiva and working with CHF International. There’s also, which is working with the Clinton Global Initiative. Aside from microfinance, there’s a peace group of moderates, hundreds of thousands of moderates between Israel and Palestine, called One Voice. I’m also working with the US-Palestinian Partnership, which I expect to be renamed, which is focused on helping small and medium-sized businesses in Palestine get the funding they need and the help they need to make their businesses more successful and hire people. And all of this was with the encouragement of the Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. governments.
Q: What are your thoughts on companies like in the UK (the British equivalent of Craigslist)? Do you view similar sites that create social communities and provide classified ads as competition?
A: I usually don’t know anything about the other sites. Craigslist is a community service as well as a business, with some classifieds, but the deal is that nobody operates in that specific space.
Q: Let’s talk about your role in customer service. On your business card, it says “founder/customer service rep.” What does it mean for you to be actively involved in customer service? Is that just a humble title, because I know you’re a pretty humble guy?
A: I look through my email for problems that people report, I also look into our discussion boards to moderate them, and that’s what I do through the day.
Q: Do you plan on remaining in your current position for as long as Craigslist exists?
A: I plan on doing customer service only as long as I live. After that, it’s over.
Q: There have been a few recent incidents, for example a journalist in Queens, New York, who was killed, where people have been murdered after setting up liaisons with other people using your site. Do you ever feel any level of guilt when your site has led to homicide, sexual assault or any other crimes?
A: First off, any kind of crime or bad stuff on our site is unacceptable. We’re good at working with the cops to help them deal with the bad guys. When it comes to working with victims, we’re pretty sympathetic. We try to help them out however we can. However, our site, I don’t know about the specific case [in Queens], people might use our site, much like they might use the phone, or a car, or the roads, and I can’t find a reason for any of us to feel guilty about it.
Q: Do you want to talk about any specific cases?
A: No the cops do tell us not to do that, we could screw things up.
Q: Within your work at Craigslist, what is your biggest accomplishment? What gives you the most joy?
A: The sense that we are really helping out a lot of people.
Q: Do you have any other aspirations beyond the work that you do right now?
A: I’d like to help other people get the word out about their organizations, getting more effective at it. I am doing this in a bunch of cases. I see my limits to this coming up because I am still doing serious customer service for the site. | <urn:uuid:65d4cfb8-d62c-4158-8a61-877c9400c935> | 2 | 1.523438 | 0.018518 | en | 0.969892 | http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2009-10/craigslist-founder-rejects-link-between-site-crimes |
The Running of the Cyber-Bulls
Categories: Blog, Encryption
Recent documents released by NSA leaker Edward Snowden have revealed the existence of a classified NSA program, codenamed Bullrun, which purports to be be able to defeat the encryption standards, such as SSL, that underlie commerce and confidentiality on the world wide web. The exact methods of the program remain unclear, though there are tantalizing indicators that the root problems may lie with the methods used to generate random numbers for cryptographic keys; specifically an algorithm known as Dual_EC_DRBG which was inserted into the standard at the insistence of the NSA. Bullrun, and the related GCHQ program Edgehill, appear to have operated by ensuring through government pressure that vulnerabilities were inserted into the standards used to develop cryptographic systems.
Somewhat disturbingly, the programs are both named for the first battles in their respective nation’s civil wars. The irony here is that these programs have almost certainly permanently damaged the relationship between government security agencies and government and civilian groups responsible for creating technology standards. And while we are not yet at the point of brother fighting against brother, it is obvious that any future cyber-security recommendations made by the NSA will be regarded as highly suspect.
– Dan Gifford, MCySec Media Manager/ Graduate Research Assistant
A more technical analysis:
Bruce Schneier’s advice on maintaining security in light of these developments:
Comments are closed. | <urn:uuid:9f261930-cd3a-4b36-aa2b-a325db47371e> | 2 | 2.015625 | 0.05283 | en | 0.953067 | http://sites.miis.edu/cysec/2013/09/13/the-running-of-the-cyber-bulls/ |
How Do I Calculate How Much Tax I Pay Every Year?
by Bonnie Conrad, Demand Media
Compare your gross pay amount to your net.
Compare your gross pay amount to your net.
Jupiterimages/ Images
The fact that federal, state and local taxes are withheld directly from our paychecks tends to make those levies somewhat invisible. But no matter how they are collected, taxes reduce the amount of spendable cash you get from your job, complicating the budgeting process. Taking the time to add up all of the taxes you pay in the course of a year, from federal income taxes to state and local taxes to property and personal taxes, can be illuminating.
Using a Pay Stub
Step 1
Get a copy of your most recent pay stub. Circle all of the taxes listed, including federal income tax, Social Security tax, Medicare tax and state and local taxes.
Step 2
Multiply the current amount shown for each tax by the number of pay periods. If you are paid twice a month, use 24 as the multiplier. If you are paid every two weeks, use 26.
Step 3
Add up all the amounts you calculated in Step 2 to get the total taxes withheld from your paycheck. Deduct the amount of your tax refund if you receive one. These are the total taxes related to your job.
Step 4
Gather receipts for any other taxes you pay, including property taxes, school taxes and personal taxes. Add these amounts to the total calculated in Step 3 to get your total tax burden for the year.
New Job
Step 1
Check with the hiring manager or your supervisor to get your exactly hourly rate, or your yearly salary if you are a salaried employee instead of an hourly one. The paperwork you received when you were hired should also contain this information.
Step 2
Multiply your hourly rate by 2,080 to get your annual salary based on a 40-hour work week and 52-week work schedule. Use the actual number of hours and weeks if you are not working full time.
Step 3
Look up the current tax brackets on the IRS website and use those figures to estimate your tax rate. You can estimate the gross amount of taxes by multiplying your tax rate times your annual salary.
Step 4
Use a tax preparation software package to get a more accurate picture of the taxes you can expect to pay based on your annual salary. Plug in the amount of your salary, then enter the number of deductions you expect to have, just as you would if you were actually doing your taxes.
Step 5
Add the amount of federal and state taxes calculated by your tax software. Add in any additional taxes, like property taxes and personal taxes, to get your total anticipated tax burden.
Things Needed
• Pay stub
• Calculator
About the Author
Photo Credits
• Jupiterimages/ Images
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| <urn:uuid:504480fe-b6ea-49f2-8a8b-76fba34d87a9> | 2 | 2.078125 | 0.061973 | en | 0.938573 | http://smallbusiness.chron.com/calculate-much-tax-pay-year-15918.html |
Smith College Admission Academics Student Life About Smith news Offices
Oppositional Behavior in the Presidential Contest
/ Published October 17, 2012
Is there a positive to negative campaign tactics?
The casual observer of American elections could be forgiven for seeing the current presidential contest as a race to see which candidate can paint the most flattering caricature of himself and make his opponent out to be the biggest buffoon, if not monster. The imperative to stay on message and to avoid unguarded moments that can be twisted beyond recognition—and to goad the other side into slipping up—is all about creating contrasts and rubbing out nuance.
Even though the overall picture isn’t pretty, it is in keeping with an electoral process that has kept this country going for more than two centuries, according to four Smith professors who study these things. “Most people aren’t political junkies or even all that interested in politics,” says Professor of Government Howard Gold, yet our system depends on them to referee epic struggles between powerful forces.
Professor of Government Marc Lendler teaches courses on the presidency, elections and the First Amendment. He doesn’t find it surprising, or even worrisome, that campaigns often revolve around casting the other side in the worst possible light. Seizing on perceived verbal gaffes and turning them into barely recognizable facsimiles of the words actually spoken is fair game in a system that relies on contrasts to give voters a clear choice.
Marc Lendler
The “you didn’t build that” quote Governor Mitt Romney’s camp ripped from the much longer and more complex remarks President Barack Obama made about the importance of infrastructure in facilitating commerce would not have won either side points in a debating society. But in the context of a campaign, they represent a sort of meta-truth. “They took a quote and twisted it in a way that didn’t exactly reflect his [Obama’s] meaning, but the underlying argument was right,” says Lendler, adding, “but it doesn’t seem to have made a bit of difference....The Republicans based their whole convention on that and their convention was a disaster.”
Romney’s underlying argument was that to Obama’s thinking “government plays a positive role in creating the basis for free enterprise,” according to Lendler. “The Republicans were right that the message he [Obama] was communicating was different from their message.”
Similarly, the relentless Democratic onslaught over the summer to equate Bain Capital, and Romney by extension, with greed and even economic treachery was in keeping with the idea that creating contrasts between candidates may inform voters’ decisions. “It’s absolutely fair game and it’s not unprecedented in American history,” says Lendler. “Candidates have to make their own coverage, their own breaks and their own luck.”
Donald Robinson, the Charles N. Clark Professor Emeritus of Government, observes that electioneering can be a “pretty darn brutal thing” in a democracy. “It’s like a jujitsu match in which you are trying to get under the other guy’s sash and throw him down.” Before mass media, supporters of one candidate or another ginned up rumor mills to undermine their opponent’s character.
Donald Robinson
Thomas Jefferson, a principal author of the Declaration of Independence, had several issues thrown at him: his atheism, and the accusation that he had a black mistress and fathered children from his relationship with an enslaved woman. “It was a very explosive charge. We now know that the charge was true, but in those days it was regarded as a scurrilous lie by Jefferson's fellow-plantation owners,” says Robinson. Many of our most revered historical figures were the target of attacks with little bearing on the policies they stood for, he adds, ticking off names like Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy.
In addition to studying and teaching American politics for decades, Robinson himself joined the fray in 1991 when Republican Congressman Silvio Conte died of cancer one month into his 17th term representing Massachusetts’ First District. Robinson ran for that seat in a crowded Democratic primary, which he looks back at as “a wild ride” and “a very instructive experience” that taught him the importance of having foot soldiers to mobilize voters. “I came up against the realities of financing and organizing a campaign,” he says, learning the hard way that showing up for debates and putting up some television ads isn’t enough, even if you think you are making winning arguments.
Like Lendler, Robinson doesn’t worry much about the negative tone of campaigns this year or the distortion of positions in which both sides engage. Subtlety is not a virtue when you are trying to get people to vote your way. Broad strokes and dramatic flourishes attract attention. “You’ve got to put the oats down where the goats can get ’em,” says Robinson, quoting a neighbor in Ashfield, the hill town north of Northampton where Robinson has lived and served in local government for many years.
According to standard political science theory, the Republican should be the favorite to capture the White House this year, says Lendler, who this fall is teaching the course Elections and the Political Order. Gold, his colleague in the government department, teaches a course with the same name. Between the two of them, they have 120 students using the current election as a textbook, as it were, for studying American politics.
The struggling economy would have predicted strong support for the candidate of the out party this year, says Lendler. He isn’t ready to call the race between Romney and Obama just yet, but since the Democrat is leading in many polls he believes something is going on besides what political scientists call “retrospective voting”—whereby the public rewards the incumbent party for a robust economy and punishes it when the economy is anemic.
Gold thinks the dogged obstructionism Republicans in Congress have practiced since Obama came to power has hurt what he calls the Republican brand. “That’s different from other elections,” he says; their hard line against compromise has weakened Republicans’ standing with many voters. He also points to a combination of Romney’s weakness as a candidate and the Democrats’ success in damaging his image over the summer. If a candidate’s strategy is to turn out his base rather than appeal to the middle, then energizing one’s natural supporters is especially important. “If the campaign is going badly, if media portrayals are consistently negative, that takes a toll on even the most enthusiastic or rabid supporters,” says Gold.
Donna Robinson Divine
Donna Robinson Divine, the Morningstar Professor of Government and director of Middle East studies at Smith, is observing how foreign policy might be influencing the election. In that area, Divine doesn’t see a lot of successes Obama can point to. “He entered office with three grand ideas,” she says. The first was that easing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians was central to improving American relations in the region. The second was that by signaling more support for the Palestinians he could “reset relations with the Middle Eastern world.” Finally, he thought that “engaging Iran and providing incentives to reenter the global economy and global society would dampen its interest in gaining the capacity to become a nuclear power.” As far as Divine can discern, Obama has fallen short on all three prongs.
“Whether that matters in an election, I don’t know,” she says, but it is notable that Obama is leading in the face of a weak economy at home and a lack of significant achievements abroad. She attributes Obama’s success as a candidate in large part to his opponent’s timidity. “My sense of Romney is he’s trying to run as if he was applying for CEO, giving people enough to know what his big goals are but not too much detail.” | <urn:uuid:8308293d-5a85-4b19-b33b-a06a75fc0f74> | 2 | 2.171875 | 0.028592 | en | 0.972706 | http://smith.edu/insight/stories/election.php |
A Spy In the White House
Written by Ron Roy
Illustrated by Timothy Bush
Reviewed by Elise R. (age 9)
There is a spy in the White House. Who is it and what do they want? KC's mom is getting married to the President and someone is trying to figure out all their secret plans. KC and Marshall are on the case. They have many suspects, and they need to find out which ones could be giving away their secret. Do they have to cancel the wedding or will the detectives save the day and solve the mystery?
I found KC interesting because she liked to solve mysteries, and I do too. KC was also interesting because she was solving a different kind of mystery. Most mysteries involve a thief who stole something, but this is about a spy who is listening to secrets. My favorite part of the book was when they solved the mystery because everybody was happy and the President and KC's mom were too. KC and Marshall remind me of when my friend and I solve mysteries.
A Spy in the White House is a good book for grades 2 through 4. If you like spies, this is the book for you. It is also funny and entertaining.
Elise R. is a student in Mrs. Mangini's 3rd Grade Class | <urn:uuid:112e0f0e-90ce-4399-8fd2-cff26be9379e> | 2 | 1.859375 | 0.0895 | en | 0.988609 | http://spaghettibookclub.org/review.php?review_id=10112 |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
The words I learned when beginning Spanish for east and west are este and oeste, which are basically cognates of their English equivalents.
But I've been told that there are other words to denote east and west: oriente and poniente. How did these words get those connotations? Are there times when you would use these words and not este and oeste?
Also the main words for north and south are norte and sur, which again are basically cognates. Are there non-cognate words in Spanish that connote north and south?
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1 Answer 1
up vote 8 down vote accepted
Oriente and Poniente are words that come from Latin/Italian.
The former comes from oriĕns, from the verb orīri, "to be born"; this refers to the sun coming out in the morning from east. Another word for it is "Levante". The latter comes from the verb ponĕre in Latin, more exactly from ponens; it refers to the sun going down. Also "Occidente" is used for this, like pleasedontbelong pointed out. "Occidente" comes from occidĕre, "to fall, to set (refering to the sun)".
The opposites work like this:
• Occidente - Oriente
• Poniente - Levante
I'm not sure there really is a strict rule for when you should use one of the other one, but I suppose it depends on your choice.
The other words for "north" and "south" are "septentrional" or "norteño" for the former, and "meridional" for the latter.
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you could also say "occidente" instead of "poniente"... it's more common – pleasedontbelong Nov 19 '11 at 18:35
Yeah "occidente" is the opposite of "oriente", you're right! :) – Alenanno Nov 19 '11 at 18:36
There's a little typo in the opposites list, you missed an "i" in Poninete. – Gonzalo Medina Nov 20 '11 at 0:52
Ops! Thanks, I didn't notice it. – Alenanno Nov 20 '11 at 1:23
De nada. A propósito, "Saliente" y "Naciente" se usan también para "Este" y "ocaso" se usa para "Oeste". – Gonzalo Medina Nov 21 '11 at 2:03
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:115dae63-598e-44ee-8069-1126031a9f2b> | 3 | 3.09375 | 0.942361 | en | 0.891726 | http://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/396/words-for-east-and-west-in-spanish?answertab=votes |
Views, Materialized Views and Synonyms
Using views encourages the use of Shared SQL with the benefit of reduced memory usage.
Read-Only vs Updatable Views
and USER_UPDATABLE_COLUMNS indicate which view columns are updatable.
An updatable view lets you insert, update, and delete rows in the view and propagate the changes to the target master table.
In order to be updatable, a view cannot contain any of the following constructs:
SET or DISTINCT operators, an aggregate or analytic function, a GROUP BY, ORDER BY, CONNECT BY, or START WITH clause, a subquery (or collection expression) in a SELECT list
or finally (with some exceptions) a JOIN . See the Oracle Database Administrator's Guide for full details.
Views that are not updatable can be modified using an INSTEAD OF trigger.
Materialized Views
A public synonym is owned by the user group PUBLIC and every user in a database can access it.
Synonyms are used to:
- Mask the real name and owner of a schema object
- Provide global (public) access to a schema object
- Provide location transparency for tables, views, or program units of a remote database.
- Simplify SQL statements for database users
e.g. to query the table PATIENT_REFERRALS with SQL:
After the public synonym is created, you can query with a simple SQL statement:
SELECT * FROM referrals;
Heterogeneous Services
A database server component that allows access to a non-Oracle database using Oracle SQL.
"We always did feel the same, We just saw it from a different point of view… - Bob Dylan, "Tangled Up In Blue"
Full list of Datatypes
© Copyright 1999-2015
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
The native C socket API returns on accept() a new socket descriptor, which is bound to a certain remote socket. That's good because I can create a thread, pass the socket and establish a point-to-point, or better a thread-to-thread connection over the internet. And that's exactly what I want: one thread from the client should be connected to a destined thread on the server. Hence I dont need a workerpool or loadbalancing not even async operation. The server threads save history. ZeroMQ seems great but as far as I understood it does not split up sockets on accept.
Is there a way to establish such an synchronous thread-to-thread connection with ZerMQ?
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2 Answers 2
up vote 4 down vote accepted
You're asking how to replicate a particular solution (handing off a socket to a thread) to a broader problem (how to write scalable servers).
The 'one thread per socket' design only works in one pattern which is request-reply, e.g. HTTP. Whereas the really high volume use cases are for data distribution (publish-subscribe), or task distribution (pipeline). Neither fit a 1-to-1 model.
It is a common error when you learn a new tool to ask, "how does this tool do what my old tools do" but you won't get good results like that. Instead, take the time to actually learn how the tool works, and then use that knowledge to re-think your problems and the best solutions for them.
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I thought Zmq handle this multi connection for you; I prefer to create a thread-to-thread communication by handling connection within thread callback function, This mean my main zmq connection created in separate thread; which can make separate connection control within threads.
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:76dbe2bd-4c65-467c-99d6-2cf3b3c6115a> | 2 | 1.96875 | 0.194149 | en | 0.909023 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13531693/does-zeromq-allow-several-server-sockets |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am writing some web app that runs inside android WebView. The WebView is inside some simple Activity class that I open from the app's main menu. The html file and js files are local files. I'm testing on Asus Transformer TF300, OS 4.1.1.
The WebView loads the html file and a second later calls loadUrl('javascript:start()'); which performs:
setTimeout("console.log('world');", 1000);
When I run it, only "hello" shows up in logcat. When I close the activity (it has a close button), I suddenly can see "world" in logcat. It is as if the js suspended itself until I caused the WebView to close...
Any idea why this happens and how to get the code to run?
Note I tried all kinds of stuff like changing the js code to:
var func = function() { console.log("world"); };
setTimeout(myfunc, 1000);
setTimeout(function() { console.log("world"); }, 1000);
But it didn't help..
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Your Answer
Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question. | <urn:uuid:3882cbe2-cd1c-42e9-a45c-ad5f308365de> | 2 | 1.789063 | 0.140151 | en | 0.805639 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14318680/javascript-suspends-until-webview-closes |
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what's the meaning of %r in the following statement?
print '%r' % (1)
I think I've heard of %s, %d, and %f but never heard of this.
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5 Answers 5
up vote 24 down vote accepted
In Python, there are two builtin functions for turning an object into a string: str vs. repr. str is supposed to be a friendly, human readable string. repr is supposed to include detailed information about an object's contents (sometimes, they'll return the same thing, such as for integers). By convention, if there's a Python expression that will eval to another object that's ==, repr will return such an expression e.g.
>>> print repr('hi')
'hi' # notice the quotes here as opposed to...
>>> print str('hi')
If returning an expression doesn't make sense for an object, repr should return a string that's surrounded by < and > symbols e.g. <blah>.
To answer your original question:
%s <-> str
%r <-> repr
In addition:
You can control the way an instance of your own classes convert to strings by implementing __str__ and __repr__ methods.
class Foo:
def __init__(self, foo):
self.foo = foo
def __eq__(self, other):
"""Implements ==."""
return self.foo == other.foo
def __repr__(self):
# if you eval the return value of this function,
# you'll get another Foo instance that's == to self
return "Foo(%r)" % self.foo
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I've found %r to be useful for printing a string of unknown encoding, when otherwise an error can get thrown with %s – danf Aug 13 '14 at 23:06
It calls repr() on the object and inserts the resulting string.
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It prints the replacement as a string with repr().
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See String Formatting Operations in the docs. Notice that %s and %d etc, might work differently to how you expect if you are used to the way they work in another language such as C.
In particular, %s also works well for ints and floats unless you have special formatting requirements where %d or %f will give you more control.
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%r calls the repr() function which is kinda like the Python equivalent of the toString() function in Java:
• it returns a string that contains information about the object.
• in some cases, such as with an integer value, it returns the value as a parseable string.
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Why the down votes? – W.K.S Oct 30 '14 at 6:19
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:0b683a21-9ef0-41aa-baf7-be7c28a4ba81> | 4 | 4.3125 | 0.981794 | en | 0.865465 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2354329/whats-the-meaning-of-r-in-python |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I have hex data in a string. I need to be able parse the string byte by byte, but through reading the docs, the only way to get data bytewise is through the f.read(1) function.
How do I parse a string of hex characters, either into a list, or into an array, or some structure where I can access byte by byte.
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4 Answers 4
up vote 0 down vote accepted
mystring = "a1234f"
data = list(mystring)
Data will be a list where each element is a character from the string.
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It sounds like what you might really want is:
from binascii import unhexlify
mystring = "a1234f"
print map(ord,unhexlify(mystring))
[161, 35, 79]
This converts each pair of hex characters into its integer representation.
share|improve this answer
+1 for reading between the lines. – Karl Knechtel Dec 1 '10 at 3:10
a = 'somestring'
print a[0] # first byte
print ord(a[1]) # value of second byte
(x for x in a) # is a iterable generator
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You can iterate through a string just as you can any other sequence.
for c in 'Hello':
print c
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:bb035749-100e-4ceb-ab03-c8139e4882f1> | 2 | 2.421875 | 0.983368 | en | 0.821018 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4288788/reading-bytes-from-python-string |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I have a facebook "like" button on my website, I'd like to make it fluid as the container it is in is fluid and when the container is smaller than the button there is an overflow. I'd like to keep the text and buttons the same size, id just like to have the overflowing text break off to the next line... there is plenty of results in a google search for customizing this, but I havent found anything that will do line breaks according to a fluid width. Thanks!
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1 Answer 1
up vote 2 down vote accepted
Perhaps I'm not understanding what you're after, but text wrapping should happen automatically with something like this:
<style type='text/css'>
#wrapper { width: 250px }
#like { border: none; width: 100%; background-color: transparent }
<div id='wrapper'>
<iframe id='like' src='http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=xxx' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' allowtransparency='true'></iframe>
You can change the width of the wrapper div and the Like text will wrap as needed.
The XFBML doesn't work the same way, but you can cut off the text by fixing a width:
<style type='text/css'>
#like { width: 104px; overflow: hidden }
if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
<fb:like id='like' href="xxx" send="true" show_faces="false" layout="standard"></fb:like>
share|improve this answer
that didn't really work, is there a way to just turn off the text that says "so and so and x amount of people like this", all i really want is the like and send button there to begin with, and that will slim it down to the necessary size. – Nathan Sep 15 '11 at 0:41
I didn't realize you needed an XFBML version. The text wrap won't work, but I edited my answer for a way to cut the text off completely. – Floyd Wilburn Sep 15 '11 at 1:41
to be honest i have no idea what the difference is between xfbml and what ever other options there are :/ the fix worked, it also helped me realize that I need to get some fresh code from fb cause there are all sorts of blank areas, such as href and so on. Thanks! – Nathan Sep 15 '11 at 1:58
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:b794eb34-358a-4fb5-8803-d435c50d8a52> | 2 | 1.679688 | 0.955124 | en | 0.829981 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7341282/fluid-facebook-like-button |
Basic Facts about Puerto Rico
• Area Code
The area code is 787 and you have to dial it even for local calls. A calling card is recommended
• Banks/Currency
Currency is the US dollar. Normally hours are Monday through Friday. They also have ATM machines (ATH in Puerto Rico). Major credit cards are accepted in most establishments.
• Climate
Warm and sunny! Puerto Rico enjoys a tropical climate. Temperatures average 82 degrees year round, and normally there is a nice ocean breeze. For the Current Weather in Rincon, Puerto Rico
• Customs/Inspections
Puerto Rico is part of the US, so no passport is required for US citizens. There are no custom duties for items taken in or out. Check with the department of Agriculture (787-253-4505), some fruits and live plants are prohibited by law from entering the US main land.
• Crime/Safety
For the most part, common sense is all you need. This is true especially for San Juan, like any major city, you may want to use a little more caution of where you go, particularly at night. The other parts of the island can be very different - more tranquil and friendly. Rincon, enjoys very few violent crimes. Most crimes that do occur, are crimes of opportunity: like leaving expensive items in an unlocked car for a extended period of time.
• Dress
It's the tropics! Dress is very causal. In some nicer restaurants, or if you go to larger cities shopping, you may want to wear a nice casual sporty attire, but in Rincon, dress to be comfortable!
• Driving
Be Careful! Puerto Rico tends to have aggressive (sometimes crazy) drivers. A US driver's license is valid and there are many car rental agencies to choose from. Driving is on the right and most US road rules apply
• Drinking Water
The water is safe, but many prefer bottled water.
• Electricity
Is the same as US mainland (110 volt, 60 cycles ac).
• Gambling
Many major hotels have gambling. You have to be 21 or older to be admitted. The closest is in Mayaguez.
• Languages
Puerto Rico's official languages are BOTH Spanish and English. While Spanish tends to be the island's primary language, English is widely spoken and you should not have any problems, particularly in major areas.
• Liquor laws
Legal drinking age is 18
• Location
Puerto Rico is located 1000 miles southeast of Miami. Rincon, is on the west coast at the western most point, where the Atlantic and Caribbean meet. Map of Where We Are Located
• Medical
Medical facilities are are among the best in the Caribbean. There are hospitals in all the major towns and cities.
• Mail
Is delivered by the US post office and the rates are the same as the US main land.
• Pets
A rabies vaccination certificate, not more than 30 days old and a health certificate not more than 10 days old are required to bring dogs or cats to the island.
• Population
3.9 million people, of which, over 1/2 live in the San Juan area.
• Religion
Most denominations have English services in the larger towns. For a listings of churches refer to the yellow pages under Iglesias in Spanish, or Churches in English
• Roads
The roads are generally good. The main roads are like typical American freeways - that at certain times of the day, in major cities, you get traffic jams. The roads into the center, more rural area tend to be narrow and twisty. All major roads are paved. The road signs are in Spanish and the distances are given in kilometers, but the speed in MPH. Fuel is sold by the liter. Confused yet?
• Size
Puerto Rico is about 100 by 35 miles. It will take you about 2 hours to get from San Juan to Rincon.
• Taxes
Puerto Rico just started charging sales tax. The amount depends on what city/town you are in. The hotels charge a 9% government room tax, 11% if they have a casino.
• Time Zone
Puerto Rico is on Atlantic Standard time, which is 1 hour ahead of Eastern time and the same as eastern daylight time. | <urn:uuid:1817f773-685f-4081-ba7e-adabd0869239> | 2 | 1.953125 | 0.021839 | en | 0.939572 | http://sunsetparadise.com/BasicFactsPuerto%20Rico.htm |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I don't get it. Why is it so complicated to create a bootable usb from a disc image?
Disc images have boot sectors, so why can't you just write the raw LBA values from an image directly to a USB and be done?
I haven't see any tool for Windows that lets me do this.
share|improve this question
6 Answers 6
Ok I see the problem. The LBA sizes are different on USB and CD-ROM drives. 512 vs 2048.
So a boot sector designed for a CD won't run on a USB drive.
share|improve this answer
It's not the block size, it's that the boot format is completely different. (El Torito) You can absolutely write a byte-for-byte copy of an ISO-9660 filesystem to a USB disk, but no normal BIOS will recognize it as such. There's no fundamental reason why one couldn't, especially if it implemented an emulation layer to make the USB disk look like a CD. – Captain Segfault Oct 17 '09 at 1:12
Try Unetbootin, it works for Linux distros. Also surf on over to the hak5 website, they had a couple of episodes dealing with what they call the USB mutlipass for putting multiple isos on a usb drive.
share|improve this answer
This one installs a linux boot sector...the ISO already contains one! I just want the exact contents of a bootable ISO... – Pyrolistical Oct 16 '09 at 0:31
@Pyrolistical: Then you clearly don't understand the boot process, nor what the Unetbootin tool does - way oversimplified, it essentially creates a boot record on the flash drive and dumps the contents of the ISO onto the flash drive. There are also other potential issues beyond just the sector size, the BIOS can interpret (then emulate) a flash drive as many different types of media. Even CDs back in the day had a number of methods. It is WAAAAAAAAY more complex (and far beyond the scope of this site) than simply extracting the boot records and raw files. – Goyuix Oct 16 '09 at 19:23
This worked for me to burn a bootable .img image. Just select the .img file, but make sure you choose ISO, not Floppy on the drop down. – Derrick Aug 31 '12 at 19:17
It is possible but not straightforward: http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=6436
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FlashBoot, although not free, is a great tool to make USB drives bootable. It supports converting a CD image to the USB drive.
alt text
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This does not appear to allow burning of image files – Derrick Aug 31 '12 at 17:11
Ah, I would definitely recommend UltraISO Its asks you to pay, but is free to try for as long as you like with no features missing, and no annoy ware (ie. pop-ups every few minutes), It is really easy to use and will write bootable iso's to thumb drives and cd/dvd's (Ive used it for win7 and ubuntu), it will also give you full control over the iso to selectively copy items over.
* As of 5/1/2012 unregistered software is crippled with 300mb limit
share|improve this answer
Pyrolistical, your own answer is correct - bootsectors for different types of drives (CD, HD, floppy, etc.) are different. That's not to say that you can't do a similar thing to ISO images with other types of drives. WinImage should be able to do it, though I haven't actually tried with a USB drive. (Google reports it as an "attack site" for some reason - I'm not sure why.)
share|improve this answer
It's listed as an attack site because it installs various Trojans. Assuming it was originally a real site, Russian hackers (from the domains involved) would seem to have taken it over. – CarlF Oct 16 '09 at 5:12
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:2e499dee-a444-4635-a4d6-7a7acca17c79> | 2 | 2.1875 | 0.692027 | en | 0.922401 | http://superuser.com/questions/55989/how-to-burn-iso-img-cuebin-to-usb-drive |
TPM News
Missouri Governor Vetoes 72-Hour Abortion Wait
AP Photo / Julie Smith
Republican legislators quickly vowed to override the Democratic governor's veto when they convene in September, and they may have the numbers to do so. The GOP-led Legislature approved the plan by large margins earlier this year.
The stricken measure would have made Missouri just the third state nationally to require a three-day waiting period for abortions, along with South Dakota and Utah. Utah's law includes an exception for victims of rape and incest, and people younger than 14.
"This extreme and disrespectful measure would unnecessarily prolong the suffering of rape and incest victims and jeopardize the health and wellbeing of women," the Democratic governor said in a written statement.
Missouri law currently requires a 24-hour wait between when a woman consults a physician and receives an abortion, with no exception for rape or incest. During debate on the bill to triple the waiting period, Republican senators defeated a Democratic amendment that would have added a rape and incest exception.
Sen. David Sater, one of the sponsors of the measure, had argued against the rape and incest exception. He said Wednesday that he was disappointed by Nixon's veto.
Abortion "is an irreversible and permanent decision, and taking the time to think about the consequences is not unreasonable or a burden," Sater, R-Cassville, said in a written statement.
Follow David A. Lieb at:
| <urn:uuid:b42a8720-b5ab-4d74-8852-ba3c962a230c> | 2 | 1.625 | 0.048662 | en | 0.963117 | http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/missouri-gov-vetoes-72-hour-abortion-wait |
To the Stars By Hard Ways
Other than the usual Sputnik mock-up, an Apollo-Soyuz model, and a picture of Laika, most of the museums we’d visited concentrated on the American space program — both because we were in the United States of America and because many of the details of the Soviet space program were only just beginning to come out from under the lock and key of the Cold War. The installation at the Cosmosphere was unique in the level of detail it put into things, covering the era of Soviet space exploration in a way more thorough than I’d ever seen before. As much as we loved all the aerospace museums we’d been to up until that point, the Cosmosphere remains one of the most memorable solely for the fact that it gave us something we’d never seen despite the fact that the Soviet space program was every bit as important to the overall exploration of space as was the US program. Given my peculiarities when it comes to politics and human relations, it’s probably not very surprising that I don’t really care to think of space exploration in terms of national accomplishments and much prefer to think of everything done by every nation who’s given it a go as contributing to the sum total of the human experience in space. I really don’t care where the point of origin was if the destination was outer space. So getting a look at Soviet space stuff was fantastic and finally let me see the space race from the other side — every bit as nationalistic as ours but also very different.
Some time later, as part of poking around in the back catalog of material that American International Pictures used to cobble together a stack of films, I saw my first Soviet science fiction film that wasn’t SolarisSolaris being for years the seeming only work of Soviet scifi ever made, if you believed American video stores, libraries, and film classes. AIP, however, released a bunch of science fiction films in the 60s that were comprised largely of scenes cribbed from foreign science fiction films — Soviet science fiction films, to be precise. I became obsessed with finding the original versions of the movies that would become the basis for drive-in cheapies like Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, First Spaceship on Venus, and Battle Beyond the Sun. For years, I had no luck. Then a few years ago, someone decided to release a trio of scifi films from East German movie studio DEFA. One of them, The Silent Star, was the film that served as the basis for First Spaceship on Venus, and while we are talking East Germany rather than the Soviet Union proper, it’s pretty safe to assume that what East Germany had to say wold be very similar to what one would get from the Soviets. So The Silent Star became my first exposure to pure Iron Curtain science fiction cinema.
Around the same time, Russian DVD companies began exploring their Soviet cinema past. Quite a few of the science fiction movies for which I’d been searching starting appearing at film festivals and, a short time thereafter, on DVD — though not in the United States. Luckily, I live in a heavily Russian part of Brooklyn, and popping down to a Russian DVD store in Brighton Beach is a quick trip for me. After one such trip, I came away with a fairly substantial pile of treasure including Planet of Storms, A Dream Come True, and To the Stars By Hard Ways. All three of these films had been mined by American companies to create other movies. Planet of Storms (Planeta Bur) became Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, the latter spicing up the original Soviet footage by splicing in shots of Mamie Van Doren as a space mermaid. A Dream Come True (Mechte navstrechu) was used to make Battle Beyond the Sun and Queen of Blood. And years later, 1982’s To the Stars By Hard Ways (Cherez ternii k zvyozdam) fell into the hands of notorious hack ‘n’ dub producer Sandy Frank and became Humanoid Woman.
They were exactly the movies for which I’d been searching. Much as stumbling upon the Cosmosphere in Kansas let me get my first substantial glimpse at space science through Soviet eyes, I finally got a chance to have a substantial look at science fiction from the other side of the Iron Curtain. To the Stars By Hard Ways is probably not the best place to start our exploration. It’s not the first Soviet scifi film, of course, and it’s not the best known or most influential. But it’s where we’re starting never the less, mostly because of my fondness for the film’s central character.
A group of cosmonauts on a routine mission happen across a derelict spaceship filled with what appear to be a group of genetically engineered humanoids — all dead except for one. The one is a young, androgynous woman named Niya (Yelena Metyolkina) who is regarded alternately as a tragic case and as a potential threat to international security. No one is exactly sure what she is — including Niya herself, as she suffers from memory gaps — but when she exhibits powers such as super speed and teleportation, it’s clear that she was created for some purpose of a potentially military nature. Eventually, sympathetic scientist Sergei Lebedev (Uldis Lieldidz) wins out over the more suspicious Professor Nadezhda Ivanova (Nadezhda Semyontsova), and he is allowed to bring Niya to his idyllic country home in the hopes that being around a loving but high scientific family will help her acclimate to her surroundings while also helping them understand her.
Things don’t progress smoothly, but they do progress. Niya quickly picks up human speech, though human behavior and emotion sometimes puzzles her — such as when she encounters the jealous would-be girlfriend of the family’s dashing young space cadet son Stepan (Vadim Ledogorov) on a beach and cannot grasp the woman’s sarcasm or jealousy. Niya is also deathly afraid of water, and a brief rain shower causes flashbacks that start to enable her to piece together the increasingly distressing fragments of her past. Still, all things considered, she’s getting along OK with her adoptive family, save for the occasional invasive mental experiments conducted by Professor Nadezhda — one of which reveals that Niya has a trigger buried deep within her brain that renders her compliant to the will of an external controller. Nadezhda fears what this could be used for, given Niya’s superhuman abilities, and who it might be used by. Niya herself is depressed to learn that someone else could simply issue a command and override her free will.
When Niya catches a news report about diplomats from a doomed planet named Dessa, a huge portion of her memory finally falls into place. It turns out she was designed by a Dessan dissident faction as part of some scheme to save the planet from its impending ecological decimation. When the humans agree to accompany the Dessans and donate equipment that will scrub their atmosphere and save the planet, Niya sneaks on board, not realizing that Nadezhda is part of the expedition, as is young Stepan. And then the movie grinds to a halt for a little bit, with the journey to Dessa dominated by an out-of-place comedic subplot involving a jerky octopus-like alien who hates cats and harasses Stepan to no end. At no point is this actually funny, and it keeps occupying my screen while steadfastly refusing to have anything to do with the actual plot of the rest of the film.
Luckily, the film gets back on track once the cosmonauts and Niya arrive on Dessa. Technologically, the job of repairing the atmosphere proves fairly easy for the earth people, but the power of their technology is less adept at overcoming the machinations of Dessa’s political landscape. It turns out the dying planet is lorded over by a vicious businessman who happens to have a monopoly on manufacturing breathable air. He’d rather see the planet destroyed than give up his lucrative cash cow. And it is when she finds herself caught in the middle of this struggle for the future of the planet that the final pieces of Niya’s purpose fall into place.
To the Stars By Hard Ways was based on Kirill Bulychev’s short story, A Difficult Child. In that story, a young humanoid (male, in this case) is found in space, part of a group of similar aliens who have been sent to Earth in hopes that they might survive the demise of their home planet and continue the propagation of their race, even if on a small scale. However, integration into human families and society proves more difficult than either group anticipated. To the Stars By Hard Ways takes the seed of Bulychev’s story and expands it substantially. In both the book and the movie based on it, it’s easy to read portions as autobiography. As a young man, Bulychev lived through the horror of Stalin’s purges and the hardship of World War II. His mother was a chemical engineer who was assigned to a munitions factory and later an experimental medicine laboratory, where she met and married her second husband, himself a chemist. His parents serve as the model for the perfect Soviet family in the story — a mother who is a doctor, a marine biologist father with a majestic beard and confident stride even when he’s wearing sandals and inadvisably short shorts (at least in the film version). Granted, the story also strips out background details, like how Bulychev’s mother went to the munitions factory after all her professors were executed, or how his father was a lawyer forced to perform a dance of false due process during the purges.
Bulychev’s mother cultivated the boy’s interest in science fiction as well as science, giving him comic books that eventually inspired him to go into writing and translation. While working on a project in Burma, Bulychev came into a stash of science fiction novels left by British soldiers. Shortly thereafter, he began his own career as a science fiction writer, frequently risking censorship or worse for his refusal even under extreme pressure to tow the line — he never joined the state union of writers and he never joined the Communist party, keenly remembering as he did that “They killed almost everyone I might ever have been related to.” Despite his iconoclastic nature, he still achieved a tremendous amount of fame and success, leading eventually to his collaboration with film director Richard Viktorov on To the Stars By Hard Ways.
When the Soviet Union began to dissolve in the late 1980s, Bulychev was initially elated at the removal of the oppressive yoke and expressed profound optimism for the future and the potential for a more united humanity to achieve great things. Sadly, it soon became apparent that such a vision wasn’t going to be the case, and Bulychev soon turned a critical voice to the state of post-Soviet Russia, decrying the disorganization, stagnation of science, rise of the Mafia, and the return of religious and mystical superstitions. “I cannot for the life of me stand conversations about flying saucers, ESP,” he once said, “mages, wizards, and seers, new chronologies, and the goodness and humanity of comrade Lenin. Or the predictions of Nostradamus.” His combination of humanism, rationalism, and skepticism rings through in To the Stars By Hard Ways, a movie that balances hope and despair, the potential and limits of technology, and the success and failure of the Soviet model.
The most overt piece of pro-Soviet propaganda comes in the form of Turanchoks (Vladimir Fyodorov, Ruslan and Ludmila and Savage Hunt of King Stakh), the ruthless capitalist who has the planet of Dessa by the throat. Oh, and he also happens to be a cackling, overcompensating midget who wields the market like a bludgeon to empower and enrich himself to the detriment of the planet and all the people on it — even going so far as to tolerate his own pollution-caused stature if it means bringing in a few more dollars. And for some reason, he also suffers from a near crippling ticklishness. On the flip side, however, the movie subverts the propaganda by pinning blame for environmental destruction not just on the greedy capitalist, but also on the hypocritically condescending Soviet Union. Despite the rhetoric surrounding Turanchoks, the film ends by announcing that the scenes of environmental devastation and blight are not sets; they are actual shots from locations within the Soviet Union. The title card announcing this was, not surprisingly, chopped from many prints of the film.
Also, it’s not like greedy businessmen with a stranglehold on the air market is a purely Communist idea. Total Recall‘s plot revolved around pretty much the same thing. In fact, the murderous scumbag businessman was a pretty standard go-to villain in 80s science fiction and action films. And the environmentalism of To the Stars is less about Soviet propaganda and more akin to the environmental apocalypse films of the 1970s. The onset of the oil crisis and the discovery of a massive hole in the ozone layer, not to mention increasingly intense smog problems in the major cities of the world (among other issues) served as a (sadly temporary) wake-up call for people about how we were using the planet. And so science fiction entered an era when environmental destruction, more than war (but usually some combination of the two), was the culprit behind the collapse of society.
Despite the flashing lights and attempts at post Star Wars special effects, To the Stars By Hard Ways fits in much more comfortably with the more contemplative science fiction of the 1970s than it does the 1980s, and in particular the overall mood reminds me of nothing so much as it does the winsome melancholy of the Japanese anime series Galaxy Express 999. Both feature sweeping space opera and a sense of mystery about them, but beneath that both are very human, very sad stories about loss — of youth, innocence, identity and place. The viewer’s engagement in the two main characters in Galaxy Express makes you forget the overall absurdity of a show about a steam locomotive flying through space, in much the same way that I think the empathy one feels for Niya in To the Stars By Hard Ways overshadows any dodginess on the part of the special effects or the curious facial hair affectations of the people of planet Dessa, who have decided that growing half a Klingon mustache out of the corner of their lower lip is the way to go.
If I might steal from one of the more talented and considered writers on the subject of cult films — and one who has spent a fair amount of time plying the waters of Eastern Bloc science fiction cinema — Todd Stadtman from Die Danger Die Die Kill, in writing about Indian films, suggested (and I agree) that much of the time filmmakers were well aware of the short-comings of their special effects and executed them with the hope that the audience would understand that these were best-effort representations and thus agree to play along. With a film like To the Stars By Hard Ways, working in a genre where there was very little in the way of support morally, politically, or financially, directors like Richard Viktorov and his effects personnel had to make due with what they could. There was no ILM, no 20th Century Fox willing to dump millions into the process. So they ask us to play along, and I’m more than willing since, like I said, I really don’t find most of the special effects to be bad. The home service robot is a bit goofy, but I feel like if you get hung up on goofy looking robots, then you won’t get very far as a fan of science fiction. And for that matter — since Star Wars set the standard for special effects at the time, let’s question the appearance of its robots. Why the hell would you build one humanoid robot with arms that don’t work and another that has to roll around and thus can be foiled by stairs, ladders, or small ledges?
I don’t find the special effects in To the Stars By Hard Ways to be all that laughable anyway. There are some cheap ones, some that aren’t executed well, but overall I think a lot of what the movie does works, and where it doesn’t To the Stars compensates by trading in one of the things much science fiction cinema has abandoned: ideas. Science fiction in the Soviet Union, despite the country’s commitment to the Space Race, was generally not well regarded. Why are you messing around with space aliens and other galaxies when you could be making proper films about the Revolution? When a script for a science fiction film did manage to work its way through the bureaucracy and get approved, it was usually then granted only the most meager of budgets. Between the lack of funding and the fact that wanting to make one could potentially put you on a dangerous watch list, those who chose never the less to turn their imaginations toward outer space must have been motivated by a tremendous passion for the genre — an artistic sacrifice that I think deserves a lot more consideration that just a room full of people pointing and laughing.
To the Stars By Hard Ways may have been something of a special effects blow-out for the time by Soviet standards (in much the same way Starcrash was for Italy, and with similar budgetary and technical woes), but the special effects are not really the focus of the film. Instead, it relies on its characters and story to be the core of the film. I’ve said many times before that I am no opponent to big, effects-laden scifi films that are actually just action films with some future stuff taped to the guns. But even more than that, I’m a huge fan of science fiction that makes an effort to be about something — even (especially) when the message is delivered in a somewhat ham-handed fashion(which is the case more times than not). As long as the message has an air of authenticity, of honesty — of earnestness — about it, then it’s probably going to click with me. And To the Stars By Hard Ways suffers no shortage of ham-handed earnestness to lend it a haunting beauty and sense of melancholy beneath all the wild costumes and candy colored blinking lights.
If this film has a kindred spirit, it’s another of my favorite earnest scifi message movies from the other side of the Berlin Wall, 1989’s Hard to Be a God/em>. It shares the general air of melancholy as well as the theme of powerlessness despite great power. Soviet science fiction generally made an effort to accentuate the positive, to show that through equality and the application of fantastically idealized notions of Communist can-do. But there was often also something else buried beneath the propaganda. Perhaps it’s just a trick of my own perception, but every now and then there’s the feeling that the universe is big enough that humans are going to run into a lot of things they are powerless to affect, no matter how stolid a supporter of jaunty Communist principles they may be. Hard to Be a God came out amid the full-on collapse of the Eastern Bloc, and it features characters who despite advanced technology and morality (or what is perceived as advanced morality), cannot save a population from itself. Although we can assume that ultimately the cosmonauts in To the Stars will succeed in saving Dessa, it is not without substantial sacrifice, and in the end regardless of success or failure Niya is unmoored and without a home.
In both films, science and reason go head-to-head with oppressive regimes — religion and superstition in Hard to Be a God, greed and paranoia in To the Stars By Hard Ways. And both films seem to champion the cause of free thought and science while also admonishing those who think the road will be easy simply because they are in the right. The characters in Hard to Be a God spend years studying and covertly integrating into an alien society, but they never succeed at figuring out how to successfully nudge it out of barbarism, resulting in chaos and collapse when plans come to a head. The scientists of To the Stars are confident that they have the technology to save Dessa, but they are unprepared to deal with the political machinations on the planet and unable to grasp the notion that some would actually like to prolong the suffering of the planet in order to enrich themselves.
Science fiction, when it’s at its best, deals with large questions about society and the future, and in doing so can often come to conflicting conclusions (if indeed there are any conclusions to be made). This can be doubly true of Soviet science fiction, which had to walk a razor’s edge between paying lip service to the Communist party, embracing the portions of Communism the creators thought were genuinely worthwhile, and criticizing the things the creators felt were propelling humanity down the incorrect path. It can make movies like To the Stars and Hard to be a God sometimes frustrating affairs, but in the end I find them both to be well worth the effort it takes to decipher them and contemplate the questions they ask.
The mood of To the Stars rests squarely on the slight shoulders of its star, and as Niya I think Yelena Metyolkina does a fantastic job at pulling the viewer into a character that is terrified, powerful, confused, dangerous, vulnerable but above all lost and lonely. Metyolkina’s large eyes and expressive face are used to great effect, and she moves her lanky frame in a way that makes it apparent she is like a human without being a human. She’s weird and quirky at times but never anything less than sympathetic — especially for anyone who ever felt they were weird or an outcast. She is every bit alien in her presence but also touchingly human in her quest to simply figure out where she belongs in the scheme of things. As she discovers bits and pieces about herself and her supposed purpose, it’s hard not to feel the heartbreak along with her as every revelation pushes her further and further away from belonging anywhere.
To the Stars also relies on not-so-subtle make-up effects to assist Yelena Metyolkina in communicating the effect of the plot on its central character. When first we meet her, she is pale white and vacant, but the more time she spends with the Lebedevs, the more flush and colored and human looking she becomes. As she inches closer and closer to her final revelation about her past and her future, she becomes increasingly waxen and cadaverous in appearance, with skin going yellowish and huge dark circles forming under her eyes. The film never comments on her having any sort of empathic relationship to what happens around her, but neither is the make-up so low-key that it isn’t obvious. It’s not high tech, it’s not flashy, but it is effective and just one more way a film like this shows that you can rise above budgetary or technical limitations and, in fact, often benefit from such limitations.
The rest of the case provides a solid if unspectacular supporting characters. Vadim Ledogorov is a good looking young man, but I think he plays Stepan a little too… not exactly whiny but, well, kind of childish, especially when he’s surrounded by so many upstanding and proper adults. I suppose there’s a comparison to be made between Stepan, who acts like a child, and Niya, who initially has the naivety of a child but is very different from the much flightier Stepan. Maybe the filmmakers recognized Stepan was a bit of a weak character, which is why they also saddled him with that dumb octopus alien subplot. The film’s other, more interesting substantial character is Nadezhda Semyontsova’s Professor Ivanova. Initially, it looks as though the film may be setting her up to be the foil for the more sympathetic Sergei, especially when she seems so determined to probing Niya’s brain and is accused by Sergei’s mother of being unfeeling because she has no children of her own and has no husband.
The “woman who is angry because she can’t have babies” trope is a tired and insulting archetype, and it seemed like it would be out of place in a film that otherwise strove to be much more forward thinking and egalitarian. Luckily, that criticism of her is soundly dismissed as petty and old-fashioned. A woman does not need to draw her sense of self-worth from her ability to marry and breed. Still, she seems rather a villainous character in some ways, but ultimately her objective commitment to experimentation is infused with an increasing compassion. All science, no art or all art, no science — neither one works out well in the end.
Ivanova’s journey to revelation begins when she discovers the trigger in Niya’s mind that renders her a slave to the commands of a third party. Initially fascinated by the trigger, she begins to revile it the more she realizes what it can be used for and, more importantly, what it does to the alien woman when Niya herself discovers that her will can be flipped on and off by anyone who knows the proper code. It’s on the trip to Dessa, however, that Ivanova comes full circle from Niya’s primary antagonist to her closest friend (though always at a distance, as neither woman is 100% comfortable with such displays). Stepan remains too goofy. Niya’s own people are too suspicious. But Niya and Ivanova are eventually able to understand one another. At no point does it really become a mother-daughter relationship or undercut Ivanova’s assertion that women are more than their ability to have babies and raise children. Like the space journey itself, the friendship is hard one by traveling down a thorny path.
It’s nice to see a movie where the central and most complex characters are two women, one young and mysterious, the other older and brilliant. It seems initially that the story will revolve around Sergei, but he quickly becomes a background character. It then looks like it could veer into the realm of bad romantic territory, but young Stepan is also quickly relegated to the background, though there is still a stilted stab at romance between he and Niya. That little aside, however, seems properly in line with Niya’s evolution and desperation to find somewhere she belongs, and the romantic subplot occupies very little of the overall run time. The bulk of the film’s action and philosophy then are handled by Niya and Ivanova, and both actresses are superb.
I don’t normally point out when a movie has made an appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000, primarily because my relationship with that show is rather complicated (as it is for many cult film fans). But it also seems like every time I don’t mention it, I get peppered with notes about how such and such film was on MST3K. So consider this the mention. To the Stars By Hard Ways shows up in one of the early, pre-Comedy Channel (as we called Comedy Central back then). It’s not a very funny episodes, even by the standards of MST3K, and most of the time there are no comments being made — which I guess makes it better for watching the movie itself. They watch the truncated Sandy Frank version, known as Humanoid Woman, and the other part of the reason I mention MST3K is because it’s the only place where I’ve been able to see this version.
Sandy Frank made a name — not altogether good — for himself buying foreign movies and cartoons, editing them, and redubbing them for American consumption. He’s probably best known for his involvement with Japanese material, being the man who dubbed and distributed the Gamera films, the Ultra-7 television show, and perhaps biggest of all, Battle of the Planets. Frank’s version of To the Stars By Hard Ways actually isn’t all that awful a presentation, all things considered. Obviously he’s cut a substantial amount of the movie, but the basic plot is still intact, and the dubbing is serviceable. Unlike AIP, he does not chop the movie into parts and edit sequences into other movies with different actors and stories. In fact, his cut of the film isn’t drastically different than what was done to it when it was restored and remastered for a new edition. It muddles things a bit, but most of the film’s intentions remain intact, if somewhat over-simplified.
One of my biggest issues with MST3K, besides the fact that I think I’ve pretty well outgrown what taste I might have had for “ridicule comedy,” is that so many people seem to thoughtlessly accept that if something appears on MST3K, then it is obviously terrible and must be marched through the village commons and subjected to the derisive sneering of its betters — sometimes without any regard for the actual merits of the film or any effort to think beyond the surface. Yes, I know it’s unfair to blame the show for the actions of fans, just like I know I shouldn’t harbor a grudge against operation Ivy for inspiring a generation of terrible ska-punk bands. And I’ve laughed at plenty of MST3K jokes, and I like when they are being clever instead of just being insulting. But it’s hard to stomach the sad side-effect of the format: knee jerk stupidity and endless commentary from the peanut gallery. I can’t really set foot in a screening of any cult film at a retrospective cinema in New York, so thunderous are the sounds of forced snorting, ironic laughter, and bad jokes from people who aren’t nearly as witty as they think they are. Give it a rest, folks. Sorry, tangential rant, but it really bugs me. It’s one thing to criticize — that implies you’ve thought about and considered something, and have in turn assembled a series of thoughts regarding it. It’s another thing to just point and laugh and spit. From what MST3K wrought in theaters to the website People of Wal-Mart, the comedy of belittling and ridiculing the lives and works of others gets under my skin.
Ehh, sorry about that. Well, not really, but I’d hate for this to devolve into some sort of debate about Mystery Science Theater, especially when my point was really just, “don’t email me to tell me this movie was on MST3K; I know.” So let’s move on and talk about…oh, let’s say the music by Aleksei Rybnikov. Rybnikov is sort of the Russian Hans Zimmer, combining typically bombastic symphonic scoring with occasional experimental excursions and flourishes. He’s worked as a composer on everything from historical epics such as Vasili Buslayev to batshit loopy fantasy films like the Russian/Indian co-production Ajooba to modern Lord of the Rings inspired films like Wolfhound. His work on To the Stars is a bizarre and engaging blend of traditional cinematic orchestration, synth-powered electronica and disco, and old fashioned organs and harpsichord. At times the soundtrack seems to be at war with the images — anachronistic harpsichord, for example, accompanying scenes of advanced technology and space travel. But it works remarkably well and helps lend the film it’s quirky, alien feel as much as does star Yelena Metyolkina.
There’s a temptation, even for me, to couch my praise for a film like this in an “I know it’s a corny film, but…” qualifier, and that’s not fair. There is no qualifier or caveat. I love science fiction movies of this type, and To the Stars By Hard Ways was thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking. The original version of the film was lost for a while in the dust of collapse and rebuilding, but modern Russian audiences eventually rediscovered it and turned it into a cult phenomenon. The director’s son eventually obtained the original negatives and recut the film into a two-hour feature, removing some of the clumsier Soviet era propaganda and the film’s brief flashes of nudity. Both the original and restored versions are now available if you know where to look, and the looking is well worth it. To the Stars ended up being not just a fun space opera but also a surprisingly haunting meditation on the nature of humanity and the desire to understand one’s palce in the world (or the universe). If you appreciate science fiction films that place ideas and philosophy at the forefront — but also don’t forget all the flashing lights and spaceships — then To the Stars is well worth watching.
Release Year: 1982 | Country: Soviet Union | Starring: Yelena Metyolkina, Vadim Ledogorov, Uldis Lieldidz, Yelena Fadeyeva, Vatslav Dvorzhetsky, Nadezhda Semyontsova, Aleksandr Lazarev, Aleksandr Mikhajlov, Boris Shcherbakov, Igor Ledogorov, Igor Yasulovich, Gleb Strizhenov, Vladimir Fyodorov | Screenplay: Kir Bulychyov, Richard Viktorov | Director: Richard Viktorov, Nikolai Viktorov | Cinematography: Aleksandr Rybin | Music: Aleksei Rybnikov | Original Title: Cherez ternii k zvyozdam
9 thoughts on “To the Stars By Hard Ways”
1. Right on about all the snark MST3K birthed into the world. The worst example was when I was watching PUMPING IRON with a bunch of people and one of the comments was “Hey, where’s the follow focus? Ha-ha!”, followed by a stream of put downs about its technical polish. I mean seriously– it’s a 30-plus year old low budget documentary and I’m betting they basically had a crew of four at the most. If you can’t meet a movie half way, just stick to whatever shows up at the multiplex because god knows what’ll happen if you run into something that wasn’t pimped out by Entertainment Weekly or has subtitles.
2. The only copy of this film that I’ve ever seen had no subtitles and appeared to be one of those ‘camera pointed at a theatrical screening’ affairs. So it made no damn sense at all and looked terrible, but I still dug it.
Spot-on assessment of MST3K’s questionable legacy. I watched and enjoyed the show when it was on (like you, I enjoyed it more when it was clever than when it was condescending) but really can’t stand the fans who think they can do it too and think This Island Earth and Danger: Diabolik are bad movies just because they were on MST3K.
3. Fascinating stuff. the BFI did a season of Soviet sci-fi and I had tickets for loads of them, but it ended up being during the Great Job Meltdown of 2011 so I only ended up seeing Planet of Storms and The Silent Star. The latter I found slightly hard work, though the former has a totally boss robot.
I know what you mean about MST3K. I love it, but a perfectly solid little Brit chiller like Devil Doll now gets routinely panned just because they covered it.
4. I have not seen this film, but I’ve now been convinced that some day, I will. And Keith, I think one of the most powerful aspects of Teleport City is the unwavering appreciation of world (weird?) cinema without caveats. Or, at least, without preconceived caveats. I could suggest that it is a lot like the anthropological approach of “methodological relativism,” because it is, but I’d probably annoy everyone except myself in so doing.
As for MST3K… I think most of us enjoy the show in its better moments, but exactly unlike Teleport City, it engenders a subculture that fixates on ridicule rather than appreciating the weirdness of its subject matter. Maybe TC needs to make some puppets and create a new version of the show that is both less abrasive and more celebratory of absurdity rather than prone to ridicule. As a grad student, I don’t even have two bits to throw to such a cause, but I’ll nonetheless gladly scrounge ‘em and throw down to see such a thing happen.
5. First off, thanks for the shout out, Keith. I don’t remember thinking the effects in this were all that bad. I liked the flying saucer, and the matte work, while not necessarily fooling the eye, was often stunning looking, which is all I ask for. And, yeah, the robot was dumb looking, but, like you said, not any dumber than C-3po — or Twiki, for that matter.
One thing I really liked about To The Stars was the fact that, while being a science fiction film, it was also, at its core, a mystery. That’s something it shares with a lot of other Eastern Bloc sci-fi films, and which contrasts with a lot of Western sci-fi films, which typically busy themselves with the business of overcoming a peril that is clearly established at the outset. In films like this and The Silent Star the heroes spend the lion’s share of the time just trying to figure out what the hell is going on, let alone what exactly the nature of the peril is. It feels like an engaging way of evoking humankind’s powerlessness in the face of the whole endeavor of space exploration, as well as an indication of a level of humility you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a cinema so freighted with nationalist expectations.
And, BTW, I love MST3K, but hate that I can no longer attend screenings of classic film noirs in San Francisco without hearing a host of idiots tittering away at every perceived anachronism. I’m not going to let those idiots ruin MST3K for me, though.
6. Many Soviet sci-fi films are now on YouTube thanks to Mosfilm and Lenfilm’s official accounts. Sadly, most of them lack subtitles.
7. Nice review. I haven’t seen too much of Russian cinema. “Night Watch” and “Day Watch” (which I thought were overrated, even though I appreciated them on some levels) are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, but it’s refreshing to be reminded that there is quality film in other parts of the world that I’ve yet to explore.
8. Coincidentally, I watched that MST episode for the first time just a few weeks ago, and found the movie very unusual.
As crazy as I am about MST, I agree with PART of what’s been said about its “questionable legacy.” But the thing is, I’ve almost NEVER, EVER watched the show for the insult jokes themselves (which kind of puts me on the outside even AMONG MST fans, though not all of them), since there are countless other kinds of joke. In fact, I DIDN’T notice a whole lot of genuine insults in that particular episode. If anything, they seemed kind of taken with the movie themselves.
9. We did a podcast on this a year or so ago, and we enjoyed it.
One of our thoughts was that while the Political Content was obviously present in the form of the evil capitalist dwarf, that wasn’t really something new for an American audience. As you point out, we’re used to the idea of evil businesspeople. What struck me on the PC front was the bit where, after they first use their atmosphere cleaner on Dessa, one guy yells something like “this wasn’t a miracle! This wasn’t an accident! This wasn’t gods! This was humans doing things for themselves!” I thought that was an example of then-current Soviet philosophy in opposition to the stereotype of God-obsessed Western thought.
Yes, don’t forget the part in the middle of the film where they get a distress call from another planet, race to the rescue, and arrive just in time to watch the planet blow up. (The effects kind of let the movie down, here–they could obviously only afford a couple of angles, with only one or two takes for each angle, and no exterior shots of any kind–and as a result it’s a bit hard to tell what’s going on.)
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These are the lessons the French have learnt from the Mali Air War, so far
Feb 14 2013 - 3 Comments
Although the military campaign in Mali is still in progress, we can already draw some of the lessons the French Armed Force may have learned from this low intensity air war.
1) The need for more ISR platforms: The French Air Force operates three Harfang drones, two of those are deployed in Niger. Usually, five drones are required to keep two CAP orbits active on a 24-hour basis.
So far, the Harfang drones have been used to support French special missions, providing surveillance in the vicinity of the airfields and cities about to be taken by the paratroopers (as videos published on The Aviationist show). You need many more UAVs to look for rebels, track suspicious activity and support convoys/special ops across large territories as Central and North Mali.
Furthermore, French drones are not armed and manned bombers are required to strike ground targets identified by the Harfangs. For all the above mentioned reasons, the help of U.S. drones (some of those are weaponized MQ-1s) is paramount.
Last but not least, French planners are in desperate need to track rebel movements. For this reason a British Sentinel R.1 is supporting the operation from Senegal and the U.S. has allegedly offered an E-8 JSTARS.
2) There’s a problem with tankers. Even if only a few combat planes are involved in the air strikes, the French Air Force is not equipped with a tanker force capable to sustain a limited amount of attack sorties. That’s why the U.S. has dispatched some of its KC-135s from RAF Mildenhall and other nations have offered aerial refuelers.
Furthermore, Operation Serval (a relatively small campaign) had to rely on the help of foreign countries that dispatched their airlifters to help the French moving equipment and personnel to Mali. Front line combat planes have to be supported with cargo planes sorties.
3) The current order of battle of the French Air Force in Mali includes six Mirage 2000Ds, six Rafale jets, two Mirage F1CRs, four tankers, two drones, and C-160, C-130 and CN235 operating from Bamako, Ndjamena, Niamey, Dakar or Abidjan.
As happened in Libya, the Mali air war will probably reaffirm the need for low-cost/cheaper combat planes: the Rafale is a multirole aircraft that can carry a wide variety of weapons and pods, including a reconnaissance pod. But it is also quite expensive in terms of cost per flight hour as the majority of the most modern fighters.
The fact that the French Air Force is flying the Mirage F1CR in theater helps containing the cost of prolonged operations abroad.
4) Even if Mirage 2000 and Rafale have flown with PGMs (Precision Guided Munitions); still, not only heavy (and costly) weapons are needed in Mali, given the amount of soft above ground targets.
That’s why Mirage F1CR have been operating with four Mk-82s, 500-lb unguided, low-drag general-purpose bombs, equipped with a DSU-33 airburst fuze: the fuze is used to initiate detonation at a preprogrammed heigh-of-burst (HOB) enhancing the performance of the rather basic (and cheap) bomb.
Image credit: French MoD
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• Corentin Brustlein
Sounds essentially correct, but you seem to imply that UAS are the only ISR platform. One interesting feature of the Mali air campaign you do not mention has been the use of several (up to 4 or 5) MPA ATL-2, both as an ISR platform and as a strike platform, firing GBU-12s. They’re obviously not in the French AF OOB, but still contribute to the air war.
Thanks for your coverage!
• قبطان كريم
As a Libyan I’m very curious, are there any lessons the Libyan airforce can learn from this as it will have to operate in the same type of environment and against similar sorts of targets. Your expert view would be very interesting as Libya is at a crucial juncture now, rebuilding it’s airforce from scratch.
So far our skilled mechanics have refurbished and repaired some of our old cold war era aircraft (you can see more on the Libyan Airforce Facebook page – but discussions are ongoing about upgrades and new purchases. Most notable is a potential deal to purchase used Mirage 2000-9s from UAE.
Be great to hear you views.
• Pilotín
“Still not only heavy (and costly) weapons are needed in
That’s why Mirage F1CR have been operating with four Mk-82s.”
Why the Rafale’s or the Mirage’s 2000D don’t use Mk-82 too? They are able to use them (as far as I know), so it’s because they need mostly PGM. As it was the case in Libya. They are the professionals, so they know what’s better to use, don’t they? | <urn:uuid:18e02a8b-b038-4017-bc33-c354388b5bbc> | 2 | 1.601563 | 0.025418 | en | 0.948538 | http://theaviationist.com/2013/02/14/lessons-learned-mali/ |
03/30/2012 - 08:59
2012 Nuclear Security Summit: What it was and wasn’t
Duyeon Kim
Duyeon Kim
That's too bad. The 2012 Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul could have been a watershed moment for nuclear security. After all, the Obama administration's first global Nuclear Security Summit in Washington two years ago that conceptualized nuclear security led to some unprecedented outcomes: Participating nations fulfilled over 90 percent of their voluntary summit commitments -- resulting in the reduction of vast amounts of highly enriched uranium, numerous reactor conversions, and a series of anti-smuggling initiatives. The Seoul conclave was primed to build on these successes by reenergizing the international community on security issues, collecting more commitments to reduce nuclear materials, implementing nuclear security procedures and innovating global governance. Instead, it seemed everyone was buzzing over just about everything other than nuclear security. And what few accomplishments were achieved ended up more toothless than most analysts had hoped.
Undoubtedly, world leaders will take advantage of a major international assembly to discuss other key issues on the sidelines. But it was all too clear in Seoul that many were downright preoccupied -- 2012 is simply too crowded with domestic issues and election races for most leaders or media to concentrate on the task at hand. This was perhaps best epitomized by President Obama's open-mic gaffe, when he was overheard telling President Medvedev, "This is my last election. … After my election, I have more flexibility." And of course, it doesn't help that nuclear security is a tough sell to a global public more focused on the economy and other kitchen-table issues than on the global stockpile of nuclear materials; that is, nuclear security is a wonky concept that doesn't ring a bell for most people. Timing, naturally, is everything.
But, for some, it was difficult to focus entirely on the summit. From the start, North Korea was the talk of the town among everyone from journalists, diplomats, heads of state, and passersby. Though the summit was a useful and necessary opportunity to send Pyongyang a strong message, the fact is North Korea and the Nuclear Security Summit are two completely distinct topics. The Nuclear Security Summit targets terrorists and vulnerable nuclear materials while North Korea is a state that may provide nuclear parts to non-state actors but is a diplomatic and political chasm that goes far beyond the activities in Yongbyon.
Russia's Foreign Ministry also disrupted the rhythm of the summit when, before the summit, a statement on its website suggested that President Medvedev had no intention of announcing any new commitments toward minimizing its highly enriched uranium use -- news that surely had a dispiriting effect on those with good-faith and earnest intentions for the reduction and security of fissile materials. Meanwhile, the US' failure prior to the summit to ratify two key nuclear security conventions (the amended Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism) or to sign an agreement with South Africa to remove about 130 kilograms of nuclear material also diminished enthusiasm for the summit.
The format of the Seoul communiqué, intended to compile all things nuclear to ensure summit-level attention, fell short of its objective and was also a problem: Rather than communicating goal-oriented commitments, it tackled only the consensus agreements, which amounted to nothing more than baseline goals. Because of its consensus nature, weaker language was used compared to the 2010 communiqué -- for example, the "we will" in 2010 became "we encourage" in 2012. It was a broad consensus statement that largely reaffirmed commitments made in Washington two years ago, but did not set a concrete future course of action.
Still, behind the geopolitical shadows, a few noteworthy steps were taken this year.
Nuclear safety and security. The biggest eye-catcher of the summit's accomplishments is the nuclear safety-security interface, which was tackled head-on for the first time in the summit process. By recognizing the commonalities of nuclear safety and security measures -- two distinct measures -- world leaders advanced the idea that the interface should be considered in all stages, from design to emergency response in a synergistic manner so that strengthening one area does not compromise the other. Summit participants also aimed to seek the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) assistance in further strengthening the interface by, as a first step, organizing meetings on this matter. It's an extremely significant first step, but the key is implementing and sustaining measures that strengthen both nuclear safety and security beyond 2014. In other words, implementing common security measures across the planet is an objective that must be observed whether the summit process goes forward or not; it must remain a goal as long as countries continue use nuclear power.
Nuclear materials. There's enough nuclear material in the world to make 100,000 additional nuclear bombs. The summit set a target date -- the end of 2013 -- to announce the specific voluntary actions that countries will implement in order to minimize the use of highly enriched uranium in their civilian sectors. That's a worthy goal; however, it is merely an encouragement rather than a unanimous commitment. Not to mention, some states may find it difficult to meet this deadline due to technical difficulties such as the time it takes to convert existing or newly-ordered reactors to use low-enriched uranium instead of highly-enriched uranium. It is also the first official acknowledgement that completely securing all vulnerable nuclear materials by December 2013, Obama's four-year goalpost, is not within reach.
Radioactive sources. Thousands of sites worldwide house radioactive materials. So it's significant that world leaders have not only raised the importance of radiological security since the first summit in 2010, but they've set forth a more detailed vision for the safety and security of radioactive materials. Among others, they've realized the need to establish national registers of high-activity radioactive sources and committed to work closely with the IAEA to cooperate on advanced technologies, and share best practices and management of radioactive sources. It's not just nuclear materials that are game-changers: Radioactive materials can be used for terrorist means to make dirty bombs. And, because radioactive materials are widely used for benign purposes -- industrial, medical, research, agricultural -- their security is just as important to prevent and recover lost, stolen or orphaned sources.
Gift baskets. A new contribution this year is the presentation of "gift baskets," or joint pledges, from likeminded countries to strengthen nuclear security. For example, Belgium, France, South Korea, and the United States announced a joint project to develop high-density low-enriched uranium fuel to replace highly enriched uranium fuels in high-performance research reactors. If the technology is effective, it could have a profound impact on minimizing highly enriched uranium usage globally.
The challenge for the Nuclear Security Summit process going forward is to sustain nuclear security initiatives while keeping states accountable to their summit commitments. After the distractions and at times listless energy of the Seoul summit, it is crucial that world leaders reestablish the sense of urgency, existentiality, and awareness of the terrorism threat that the planet faces. Summit fatigue among heads of state could threaten global nuclear security; there are already questions as to whether the summit process needs to continue regularly or be absorbed by existing frameworks, like the IAEA. Global nuclear security also needs to move beyond the voluntary, patchwork nature of the current framework toward the creation of a coherent global architecture and governance, starting with a minimum universal guideline for the security of nuclear materials and facilities. Without structure, the summit and nuclear security initiatives could be rendered impotent, and leaders will have even less incentive to pay attention to the goal.
International negotiations and diplomacy is indeed challenging when over 50 different national interests are involved. There was -- and will always be -- push back from states on more ambitious commitments. But the Nuclear Security Summit needs to chart a deeper and wider course of action. The Seoul Summit showed several countries with smaller amounts of nuclear material agreeing to eliminate their stockpiles. But the bulk of the work exists in places with large quantities, with the exception of Ukraine, which voluntarily cleaned out its highly enriched uranium by removing its last 128 kilograms -- this should be the model for all nations, rather than just an example.
Moving forward, the 2014 summit in the Netherlands must be drastically different and must not be a meeting that spends more time reviewing past accomplishments; it should not only address new or evolving security concerns that may arise over the next two years, but also set future goals. The three chairs -- Washington, Seoul, and Amsterdam -- need to ensure this and hold states accountable. The Nuclear Security Summit may have begun as President Obama's project, but Seoul 2012 has proven that nuclear security is a global responsibility.
Nuclear terrorism is indeed a low-probability scenario, but its consequences are unimaginably devastating. Far more work needs to be done to prevent terrorists and non-state actors from acquiring nuclear materials and weapons or from sabotaging nuclear facilities. In the meantime, the clock is ticking. | <urn:uuid:43912067-efe3-453e-a521-7bbaf859f7ef> | 2 | 1.585938 | 0.068391 | en | 0.947139 | http://thebulletin.org/2012-nuclear-security-summit-what-it-was-and-wasn%E2%80%99t?qt-most_read_staff_picks=1 |
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Meditations on old vices.
Absinthe is making a comeback, due in no small part to the power of the Internet.
For those of my readers who are somewhat less-worldly, absinthe is a drink containing a kick-in-the-pants alcohol level, along with an impressive amount and variety of herbal additives. One of those herbs being wormwood.
A significant percentage of the wormwood is a complex chemical substance called thujone. Thujone is poisonous. Matter-of-fact, it's a neurotoxin. How-some-ever, ingested in amounts under the lethal dose, thujone has some ... interesting ... effects. Some people see things. Others understand the universe. Stuff like that.
Now, wormwood is a wee bit problematical. Too little and you don't get the effect. Too much...well, it is a poison. A properly brewed absinthe will have the wormwood balanced against the alcohol, so that you will pass out (or wind up with alcohol poisoning) before you get a dangerous dose of thujone.
Absinthe is also usually green -- not just any green, mind you, but luminescent emerald green. It also tastes strongly of bitter licorice. The colour and the bitterness have led to a ritual involved in the preparation of the drink using sugar and water, which leads to an interesting effect.
There are two methods for putting your sugar and water into your absinthe. The first is the classic French method, in which a sugar cube is placed in a slotted spoon balanced across the top of your glass. You then pour cold water on the cube, dissolving it and mixing it into the absinthe.
The second method probably doesn't seem have any basis in historical fact, but since it involves fire, some of the younger, more macho types prefer it.
You place the sugar in the spoon across the top of your glass, and dribble a bit of absinthe onto the sugar. You then set the sugar on fire, and when it is caramelized to your liking, you pour the water over the flaming sugar, dousing the fire, dissolving the sugar, and watering the drink.
Unfortunately, absinthe generally runs about 60-80% alcohol by volume. One little 'whoopsie' with your fire, and you just became the evenings pyrotechnic entertainment. So, the French method tends to be the most popular.
Either way, the interesting effect mentioned above happens when the water hits the absinthe. Oils and esthers present in the drink then precipitate out, forming a colliodal suspension and turning the absinthe from a clear green resembling liquid peridot, to a cloudy, opaque green, strongly reminiscent of milky jade.
Kind of neat to see.
Absinthe has long been associated with madness -- the 'seeing devils' kind of madness -- so it has long been unlawful in various countries. However, since absinthe never really caught on in the United States the first time around, the good old U.S. of A. didn't get around to passing a whole lot of laws against it, and it never got the stigma of madness here that it gained in Europe.
You should, of course, check the laws in your locality, rather than depend on me, if you decide that absinthe is the stuff for you.
Recently the Europeans passed laws regulating the amount of thujone present, and passed strict licensing requirements upon makers of absinthe, leading to a fairly decent absinthe revival in parts of Europe.
Given the Internet, and FedEx/UPS/DHL, absinthe has been cropping up here and there, including recently in rural Texas.
Caveat Emptor, folks, if you're buying your absinthe off the Internet, be aware that some unscrupulous types will take a barrel of mouthwash, soak a panty-hose full of various candies and kitchen spices in it for a while, then bottle it and sell it to you as Genuine Absinthe at Genuine Absinthe prices -- they get about 1000% profit, and you get a bottle of licorice-flavoured mouthwash.
garys said...
Funny story AND you used Whinge. Thanks.
Phoenix Ravenflame said...
I got a bottle of absinthe for my birthday a couple of years ago, but it wasn't "real" absinthe, seeing as how I'd heard what it can do to you and I'm about as brave as a nuerotic mouse. It was called Absinte, and it has synthetic wormwood in it. But it was bright lime green, and it did taste like licorice. Black licorice, I thought, which is my favorite. And I did end up very intoxicated. Two glasses had more of an effect on me than entire nights of drinking other things. I probably had a good time... I don't really remember.
Cybrludite said...
My understanding of the law is that the banination was done as a foodstuff and not as a pharmaceutical. This means that it can't be sold in the US, but is legal to own. Just watch out for the homebrew stuff made with essential oils, which are poisonous even without the thujone.
Main advantage to the real thing is not that the thujone makes you see things, but that it counteracts the more... annoying effects of the alcohol. It loosens the inhibitions without turning you in to a stumbling, slurring idiot. Um, or so I've heard...
kateykakes said...
I've never even heard of it.
Geez, I sort of feel left out - even though I have no desire to try it.
Thanks for the lesson. Learn something new everyday...
EgregiousCharles said...
"they get about 1000% profit, and you get a bottle of licorice-flavoured mouthwash."
It could be worse; you could get real absinthe.
Seems to me that a major reason it's not banned like the various "War on Drugs" drugs is that it simply fell out of popularity, the harmful effects being so obvious compared to most recreational drugs. Kind of like how methanol is legal.
Dad29 said...
IIRC, absinthe was the cause of death of Ernest Hemingway.
Mattexian said...
And was a fav drink of Vincent Van Gogh.
308Mike said...
From Wikipedia, Hemingway shot himself:
"some three weeks short of his 62nd birthday, he took his own life on the morning of July 2, 1961, with a shotgun blast to the head. The gun was purchased at Abercrombie and Fitch."
Dad29 said...
Ah, well.
Then it was the absinthe that drove him crazy enough to off himself.
See--we can get it in there!
buzz_knox said...
My understanding is that the recent relaxation of the absinthe bans in Europe was due to research showing that the effects of absinthe aren't actually any worse than other alocholic beverages. There, apparently, was a lot of mythology developed around it during the temperance movement, a demonization of an item that they wanted to bring public pressure against. Absinthe may have been the "assault weapon" of its age.
mediageek said...
"IIRC, absinthe was the cause of death of Ernest Hemingway."
No, a chunk of lead moving at high velocity was the death of Ernest Hemingway.
The always entertaining Modern Drunkard Magazine did a writeup of absinthe that can be found here:
Drinking with Van Gogh
A warning: some content NSFW.
markm said...
With varying doses and a variety of "interesting effects", that's a pretty good description of (nearly) all recreational drugs, including alcohol and nicotine. Of course, the dosage does matter. A drop or two of wormwood will kill you faster than a quart of high-proof alcohol, making accidents a lot more likely. Especially if, like I do, you consider chuggalugging a quart of whiskey to be experimental validation of Darwin's theory rather than an accident...
Anonymous said...
I've heard (strictly a rumor) that it is now possible to make absinthe while removing the little beastie that causes they madness part.
Kristopher said...
Absinth is on the US controlled drugs list, but their is no penalty for possession. If customs discovers a bottle in transit, they will simply confiscate it as contraband ... a police officer can do the same under current drug laws ... no penalty, except the cost of the bottle when he takes it from you.
Selling it in the US is another matter entirely.
Here are some reputable off-shore absintheurs:
I buy mine from .
I would suggest not doing the Czech flaming cube thingy, unless you want to amuse your friends by immolating yourself.
Ol' Lurker said...
Ahem. LD, you certainly seem to know a very great deal about this stuff. Just saying......
LawDog said...
Never claimed to be a saint, Lurker.
Anonymous said...
"Absinth is on the US controlled drugs list"
No it's not. It's controlled by the FDA due to rules having to do with the level of thujone. Check out for more info.
Pasha Blackcoat said...
I know this is ancient, but I'm working your way through your archives while bored at work.
In response to your 'It's a poison', I'd like to share a rule that I call Pasha's First Rule of Recreational Drug Use: "Three Fifth's of the LD50 of ANYTHING will get you high as a kite."
Rob said...
Oh well, Hell, as long as ancient is OK:
"Absinthe makes the mind go wander." | <urn:uuid:a65ff474-5f7f-466c-9c85-e24b44927110> | 2 | 1.726563 | 0.507402 | en | 0.960927 | http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2006/07/meditations-on-old-vices.html |
Thursday, April 22, 2010
End of the Earth II - Blaze of Glory
First, the power we would need. Most estimates of the death star's power seem to rely on simply overcoming the gravitational binding energy of the earth. We're going to assume the earth is a uniform density. We can easily calculate the gravitational binding energy to be
\[U=2.3\cdot 10^{32} J\]
However, looking at the video of the death star blast, it looks like the earth was more than just gravitationally unbound. It looks like we've actually managed to atomize some of the constituent molecules. Let us assume that about half of the earth gets atomized. We're also going to assume that the earth is made entirely of iron (not *too* bad an assumption). In a lattice, iron will have ~6 bonds, and the energy of each bond will be on the order of ~2 eV. We can calculate the number of iron atoms, N, needed to give the mass of the earth by:
\[N=3\cdot 10^{50} atoms\]
We assume half of these have all of their bonds broken, this gives an energy required to break the bonds of
\[E \approx 3N(2eV)=2.88\cdot 10^{32} J\]
This gives us a total destruction energy of
\[E_{tot}=5.2\cdot 10^{32} J\]
Analyzing the video of the firing of the first death star tells us that the laser fired for about 4s, so this is a power of 1.3*10^32 W! As an aside, that much energy is about the total energy output of the sun over a day.
That means the impulse this laser delivered (momentum per second, or force) to the death star must be the power over c, the speed of light (see my earlier post for a discussion of laser gun recoil). This is a force of 4.3*10^23 N. We now need to estimate the death star mass. According to confidential sources the death star had a diameter of 150 km. The death star is made of metal, but it also has a lot of empty space inside of it. We'll go ahead and assume it has the density of water. This gives is a mass of
\[M_{ds}=\tfrac{4}{3}\pi r^3\rho=2.4\cdot 10^{13} kg\]
A quick glance at our numbers reveals that we're going to need special relativity here! Otherwise we'd be accelerating this thing well past the speed of light.
We have a total momentum change of 1.7*10^{24}kg*m/s. This is a relativistic momentum, which we can solve for v. The algebra is a tiny bit ugly, but it turns out that velocity in terms of relativistic momentum is
\[v=\sqrt{\frac{p^2}{m^2+p^2/c^2}} \approx c \]
It turns out that the death star would be moving so close to speed of light as to not matter. That's fast! I think we can safely say that this laser recoil would be noticed!
1. Impressive. Most impressive. But you are not a physicist yet.
2. This is adorable. I may have a strange definition of adorable, however. | <urn:uuid:09e3e62d-d90a-487d-b8a9-9cc43ade3677> | 3 | 3.171875 | 0.419881 | en | 0.910082 | http://thevirtuosi.blogspot.com/2010/04/end-of-earth-ii-blaze-of-glory.html |
Osama bin Laden — doting grandpa, paranoid terrorist
Osama bin Laden -- doting grandpa, paranoid terrorist
Osama bin Laden — doting grandpa, paranoid terrorist
Islamabad, Pakistan: Osama bin Laden typically wore a cowboy hat while tending his garden.Its broad brim obscured his features from the view of pesky eyes or satellite cameras that might blow his cover while he was hiding out in Pakistan, according to a report first published widely in Pakistani media.
The 337-page leaked report details the domestic life of one of the world’s most wanted men in his final days of life.It also bashes Pakistani authorities for failing to keep the al Qaeda leader out of the country, and for failing to prevent the U.S. raid by Navy SEALs that killed him in May 2011.The report bears the names of a former top diplomat, a supreme court justice and former officers of the military and police.A senior government official who was closely associated with the commission that produced the report confirmed its authenticity to CNN. Citing a news piece by Al Jazeera, the first to report the story, the official said the documents being discussed in the news are part of a report that was submitted to the prime minister’s office.
Bin Laden’s death: How the story unfolded.Veggie growing contest.The famous terrorist’s life was speckled with quirky measures designed to keep him under the radar, the report said.Al Qaeda’s No. 1 spent lots of time doting on his some dozen children and grandchildren in the six years he spent in his walled compound in the city of Abbottabad, said terror expert Peter Bergen, commenting on the report.They could not pass time watching TV or surfing online, because bin Laden had no Internet connection and no satellite television hook-up. He also didn’t have a phone line, all measures to avoid detection.
For the same reason, the children were not allowed to play with other kids in the neighborhood. They spent the bulk of their lives within the compound’s walls.When bin Laden was not personally giving them religious instruction, he took them out into the yard.He would award them prizes if they grew particularly good vegetables in the garden.
Bin Laden fled to Pakistan a month after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, moving from the south to the north and then hopping from town to town before landing in Abbottabad in 2005.While he was on the run, one of his wives gave birth four times and had to be taken to local hospitals, but it was obvious that she was not from the region. She spoke Arabic instead of Urdu, Pakistan’s official language.Bin Laden’s family feared this might raise suspicions. So, they told doctors she was deaf and mute.
While on the run in the restive tribal region of the Swat Valley, bin Laden shaved off his recognizable beard, according to the report. Men helping him told others not to ask any questions about the tall stranger, who spoke Arabic.While in Swat, police once pulled bin Laden’s driver over, but he quickly settled the matter before the officer had a chance to get a closer look at the clean-shaven man riding with him.
After arriving in Abbottabad, a woman living in the same building with bin Laden recognized him from his image shown on cable TV. Her husband, who was helping bin Laden, went into a panic, the report said.He told her to mind her own business and forbade her and all other women in the house from watching TV anymore.Opinion: Who really killed bin Laden?The assassination raid.The measures kept bin Laden from being recognized for years in a city also home to one of Pakistan’s largest military complexes.
The CIA eventually suspected he was there and recruited a Pakistani doctor to run a vaccination program in Abbottabad in an attempt to find bin Laden by locating his children through their DNA.Eventually the United States did find the al Qaeda leader and assassinated him during a special forces raid on his compound. He was later buried at sea, the U.S. military said.Although the SEALs were within Pakistan’s borders for three hours, its military did not detect them.”The radar systems were not looking for that kind of intrusion from the Afghan side of the border,” terror expert Peter Bergen said. He feels sure that will change now.
The report also dedicated 22 pages to fighting terrorism and keeping people like bin Laden from taking refuge in the country again.The report’s authors blast Pakistani authorities at every level of government, intelligence and the military for not stopping the U.S. mission, calling it “a story of complacency, ignorance, negligence, incompetence, irresponsibility, and possibly worse at various levels inside and outside the government.”Pakistan’s government considers the assassination operation a violation of its sovereignty, basically an act of war. – CNN | <urn:uuid:1f9bc279-2e64-471c-ba4e-a6067b41e6ce> | 2 | 1.507813 | 0.03401 | en | 0.976669 | http://timesofpakistan.pk/international-news/2013-07-10/osama-bin-laden-doting-grandpa-paranoid-terrorist/78021/ |
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Literature Great Expectations Discussion
Collapse/Expand Topics
12:33:30 AM Aug 8th 2012
How is Pip's sister a jerk with a heart of gold? She barely tolerates Pip and is physically and emotionally abusive to both Pip and Joe. Joe is too soft-hearted from his own trauma growing up to rein her in so she runs roughshod over the both of them. I don't know where this heart of gold thing is coming from. She even makes Pip feel guilty about his own existence and there doesn't seem to show a bit of warmth to her brother. I feel is just a jerk rather than a jerk with a heart of gold.
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[Twisted-Python] Remote PB calls in ApplicationService.stopService
Brian Warner warner at lothar.com
Sat Aug 2 04:09:50 EDT 2003
Alex Levy <mesozoic at polynode.com> writes:
> def stopService(self):
> somePBRemoteCall(i_am_dying_event)
> app.ApplicationService.stopService(self)
> On the sending side, this results in 'Connection failed'. On the receiving
> side, the following traceback appears. Could somebody more familiar with the
> internals of Perspective Broker explain what's going wrong, or how I might
> change my approach?
There are a couple of problems interacting here. One is that you're sending
out data as the application is shutting down, which means that many of the
usual assumptions (about the request eventually being sent over the wire,
about a response eventually coming back) are not guaranteed to remain true.
A second is that, currently, all PB calls require acknowledgement, even if
you expect the answer to be a simple 'None' (like the None that's returned
implicitly when you fall off the end of a Python function). There are hooks
in place to allow a call to tell the receiver that no answer is expected (or
will be accepted), allowing that end to skip the response phase, but those
hooks are disabled because there is no way to the caller to know whether
you're going to add a callback to the Deferred or not (especially because
that callback could be added *after* the request has been sent). So for now,
the far end always acknowleges every single PB call.
Or at least it tries to. I suspect you're seeing the following sequence of
'shutdown' system event trigger is fired, callbacks are run
app._beforeShutDown is run as a 'before' trigger on the 'shutdown' event
stopService() is run on all Services
remote_aaaaaarrgh is serialized and queued, maybe sent, maybe not
app._afterShutDown is run as the 'after' trigger, does app.save()
reactor exits
program exits
all sockets are closed
The serialized remote call may or may not get sent: if the transport's
.write method tries to write some data immediately, then it will probably
get out. But the connection will be dropped soon afterwards, probably before
the far end has completed sending an answer.
Given that PB is about acknowleged method invocations, it will probably be
cleaner to try to delay shutdown briefly while you get your "I am dying"
messages through. Fortunately, both .stopService and the before-shutdown
event trigger that drives it have a useful property: you can return a
Deferred from them and the rest of the shutdown process will be stalled
until that Deferred is fired.
So just do this:
def stopService(self):
d = somePBRemoteCall(i_am_dying_event)
return d
(or do the superclass call first, it doesn't matter)
This will send out your shutdown messages but then return to the main
reactor loop, waiting for the messages to be acknowleged before proceeding
with the rest of shutdown (app.save() and exiting the reactor).
BTW: I think the exception you're seeing is a bug, and results from the
connectionLost messages being invoked twice on the same Broker. I think this
is an edge case that can only happen when a sender does something weird.
hope that helps,
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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Can Dual Boot Slow my Computer?
July 22nd, 2009, 09:56 AM
If I install Ubuntu With Dual Boot, will it slow my Windows and Ubuntu?
I am downloading Ubuntu Using Wubi.:)
July 22nd, 2009, 11:10 AM
What are your computer's specs (processor, memory)? In general, Ubuntu will run faster than Windows, whether you're dual booting or not. I've never used Wubi, so I can't speak to that specifically.
Bucky Ball
July 22nd, 2009, 11:15 AM
Wubi, probably to definitely. Hard drive install, no. They are not working at the same time. Ubuntu usually faster than MS on separate partition but not always. :)
July 22nd, 2009, 11:16 AM
No. Why should it?
Well, there are two small exceptions. The first is the bootloader - it will prompt you every time you boot and wait a few seconds before booting the default OS. So that will delay the time it takes to start booting by however many seconds you have it set to. The second is that Ubuntu takes up disk space.
That in of itself won't slow Windows down at all unless you only leave Windows a very small amount of free space (like less than a Gig). If you leave it normal amount of free space, you won't notice any difference.
July 22nd, 2009, 11:36 AM
I have installed Wubi and notice no difference except as noted by az in the boot time.
July 22nd, 2009, 11:38 AM
If I remember correctly a Wubi installation uses a virtual hard drive image on the Windows partition. So Ubuntu will run a little slower than a "real" installation but when you're in Windows you wont notice a difference in performance at all. | <urn:uuid:64b45d9a-dab5-45a6-8f52-30c7f2659c78> | 2 | 1.617188 | 0.236676 | en | 0.922036 | http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1219773.html |
Equal Pay Claims
It happened to me: A Real Life Story
How do I prove that I am being paid less because I am a woman?
Under Ohio's Minimum Fair Wage Standard Act, to prove you are not receiving equal pay, you must prove your employer paid you, the female employee, less than the other employee(s) of the opposite sex for work of "like or comparable character."
There are two steps to show you have a "like or comparable" position. First, you must perform "equal work" or the actual duties of the job/position must have important common characteristics. Second, you must show that the positions required equal "skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions." If your answer is "yes" to both of these steps, you can prove you have a "like or comparable" position.
What does it mean to do "equal work"?
Equal work does not mean every single aspect of the two jobs have to be identical. However, the job being compared to your own must be "substantially equal" in skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.
Do I have to compare my salary to someone of the opposite sex?
No. If you have highly credible evidence that your employer intentionally gave you a lesser salary only because you were woman, you are not required to present additional evidence of the salary of the opposite sex.
What would be considered highly credible evidence?
An example of highly credible evidence is when a woman confronts her employer about her salary concerns and the employer responds by saying he did not have to hire women. In addition, he may say he relied on men for the bulk of the work and did not know how to make the salaries fair. In such a case, the court may determine that these statements prove that the employer engaged in some form of sexual bias when determining the salaries for its employees.
No. An employer violates the law if members of one sex receive lower pay than members of the other sex, for like or comparable work, regardless of whether the employer knew about it or meant to do it.
I have enough to make a sufficient claim. Now what?
Your employer must now give an explanation for the differences in salary between you and the comparable male employee. Your employer is justified in paying different wages if it is based on: (1) a seniority system; (2) a merit system; (3) a system which measures earnings by the quantity or quality of production; or (4) a wage rate differential determined by any factor other than race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, or ancestry.
How do I respond to my employer's evidence?
If your employer offers a reason for wage differences, then you must show that the reason given by your employer was mere pretext. Pretext is a false, non-discriminatory reason given to cover the real, discriminatory reason for the discrimination. You can show pretext by showing that the reason given by your employer is not supported by the evidence because the information he or she provided is insufficient to explain the wage gap between you and your male counterparts.
Are there any other laws that protect me from receiving unequal pay for equal work?
Yes. To protect females against unequal pay Ohio has two laws: R.C. 4112.02 and the R.C. 4111.17, also known as the Minimum Fair Wage Standard Act (MFWSA).
How do these laws differ?
R.C. 4112.02 applies only to employers with over four employees while the Minimum Fair Wage Standard Act (MFWSA) applies to all employers. Under R.C. 4112.02, no employer can discriminate in compensation or terms, conditions, or privileges of employment based on sex. Under the MFWSA, no employer can discriminate in any way in the payment of wages between the sexes for work of like or comparable character or work of like or comparable operations.
Do I have to prove that the discrimination occurred because of my sex under R.C. 4112.02?
Yes. You have to show that you were discriminated against in terms of your salary because you were a woman.
When should I bring my claim?
You must file your R.C. 4111.17 claim within one year after the date of the violation. However, if you have been at your place of employment for a number of years, the discrimination may be considered continual. In this case, you may not be restricted by the one-year limitation because the discrimination occurs with every pay check.
If you plan to file under R.C. 4112.02, see How to File A Claim.
What would be considered the date of violation?
The date of violation is the last date on which the wage discrimination occurred. This means that you can bring a claim within one year of your last discriminatory paycheck.
Who is responsible for implementing and enforcing my wage discrimination claim?
The Ohio Department of Commerce's Wage and Hour Bureau is responsible for enforcing your wage discrimination claim under R.C. 4111.17. The Department of Commerce can be reached at (614) 644-2239 and at the Ohio State Department of Commerce website.
If you plan to file under R.C. 4112.02, see the How to File Claim.
Legal Glossary
Return to Ohio Law Page
Return to Types of Discrimination
Return to States | <urn:uuid:3871ca15-e968-4dcc-b412-cfaa8b7518c4> | 2 | 2.328125 | 0.324458 | en | 0.951026 | http://wageproject.org/files/oh_pay.php |
Saliency in Human-Computer Interaction
Polly K. Pook
This paper considers ways in which a person can cue and constrain an artificial agent’s attention to salient features. In one experiment, a person uses gestures to direct an otherwise autonomous robot hand through a known task. Each gesture instantiates the key spatial and intentional features for the task at that moment in time. In a second experiment, which iswork in progress, a person will use speech and gesture to assist an "intelligent room" in learning to recognize the objects in its environment. In this case, the robot (the room) will take both direction and correction signals from the person and use them to tune its feature saliency map and limit its search space.
| <urn:uuid:7708b73c-3c11-4a05-87fd-7e75563a0ecb> | 2 | 2.390625 | 0.964904 | en | 0.923917 | http://www.aaai.org/Library/Symposia/Fall/1996/fs96-05-014.php |
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Sugar molecule lights up bacteria
Bacteria dividing
Early detection is key to effective treatment of bacterial infections(Source: Henrik Jonsson/iStockphoto)
Infection detection Doctors may one day be able to detect harmful bacteria in our bodies before an infection takes hold.
This could potentially prevent the overuse of antibiotics and the development of drug-resistance, as well as save lives.
In a study published online this week in Nature Materials, scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology report on a new highly-sensitive bacterial detection method in rats.
Lead author Associate Professor Niren Murthy says that, currently, there is no way to specifically and accurately image small numbers of bacteria in vivo.
"The common way would be by CT imaging, where you are just viewing tissue destruction. The problem there is ... it's very hard to distinguish between bacterial infections and many other types of diseases that cause tissue necrosis [damage]," he says.
Bacterial infections that aren't detected until they are well-established can be extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, to treat. They are the leading cause of limb amputations.
The most dangerous types of infections are those where the bacterial pathogen is living in a community called a biofilm. Biofilms are thousands of times more resistant to antibiotics than free-living bacteria.
Light, camera, action
Murthy says while there are several contrast agents for imaging bacteria that have been used in animals, they either target inflammation caused by bacteria, or the surface of the bacteria.
The Georgia Tech team opted for an agent that could get inside the pathogen.
"We think the big advantage of the maltodextrin transporter, which is what we are targeting, is that the maltodextrin-based imaging probes (MDPs) are internalised by bacteria at a very rapid rate, so you can deliver very high concentrations," he says.
Maltodextrin is a sugar-like molecule that is actively transported into bacterial, but not mammalian cells, giving the bacteria energy. By attaching a fluorescent probe to maltodextrin, the researchers can specifically detect bacteria who have 'gobbled it up.'
The high concentration of probe inside the bacteria ensures that they are clearly visible even when they are present in low numbers.
The scientists demonstrated that a variety of different bacterial species could be detected, including those living in biofilms. They also showed that the MDPs were not taken up by gut bacteria or inactive or dead bacteria.
"This means that it [MDPs] will also be useful in assessing the efficacy of antibiotics ... and whether the bacterial infection has been completely eradicated," says Murthy.
Enormous potential
For the in vivo tests, Murthy and team injected bacteria into the thigh muscle of rats. They then injected the MDPs into the rat's jugular vein so that they could spread throughout the body.
Sixteen hours later, they used a fluorescence imaging system to take photos of the infection site. The bacteria and extent of infection was clearly distinguishable.
Moreover, the MDPs could detect bacterial concentrations 100-fold lower than other imaging agents.
But there is a limitation. Fluorescence, and therefore detection of infection, is only visible up to one centimetre below the skin's surface.
"What we are doing right now is to make MDPs that image bacteria by positron emission tomography (PET imaging) - that will eventually overcome this problem," explains Mirthy.
Professor Ross Barnard, of the University of Queenland says this is a "really neat system with enormous potential". But he says while it is specific to bacteria, it doesn't tell you which type of bacteria is present.
"This is the limitation at the moment ... but it is just an early step along the path. There's room for more development down the track," he says.
"Where there might be an additional application is in attaching therapeutic drugs. You could potentially use it as a delivery vehicle."
According to Murthy, this is already under investigation.
"We have already put an antibiotic on there and think this will be a very good strategy for a new type of antibiotic development, because if we can target the antibiotics directly to the bacteria we won't have to worry about side effects. That gives us more flexibility in terms of what kind of antibiotics we can develop," says Murthy.
Murthy expects it will be at least five years before his team begins human clinical trials.
| <urn:uuid:c4cd420e-b475-4155-875b-d07d12a3a65f> | 4 | 3.640625 | 0.067848 | en | 0.954098 | http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/07/18/3270552.htm |
• Yearsley_friend
Musicologist and ACLS Fellow David Yearsley and friend.
• fellows_AM2014
ACLS fellows presented their research at the 2014 ACLS Annual Meeting.
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Browse recent titles by ACLS fellows on Pinterest.
John F. Lopez F'12
John F. Lopez
Provost’s Career Enhancement Postdoctoral Scholarship
Art History
University of Chicago
last updated: 12/22/14
Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships 2012
Doctoral Candidate
Department: Architectural History
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This dissertation explores how Aztec and Spanish hydraulic practices affected Mexico City’s form. The measures taken by each group to avoid flooding were transformative. In 1521, it was an island-city; by 1700, a reclaimed mainland. Like the Aztec, the Spanish sought to control the lakes surrounding the city to prevent inundations; yet while the Aztec relied on containment, the Spanish undertook drainage. Despite the scholarship on pre-Columbian and colonial hydraulics and Mexico City’s form, no research in Spanish or English relates the city’s form to its lacustrine environment. What flood control methods did the Aztec and Spanish use? How did these methods shape two different cities? How did the two groups differ epistemologically in conceiving of Mexico City’s aquatic condition? | <urn:uuid:a07283e3-485a-42ad-ace1-3123c0932abb> | 2 | 1.898438 | 0.024546 | en | 0.908433 | http://www.acls.org/research/fellow.aspx?cid=b45a2d46-8290-e111-bd9e-000c293a51f7 |
Tuesday March 3, 2015
The Real Meaning of Society
by Christopher Chantrill
February 17, 2015
If Art does not enlarge men’s sympathies, it does nothing morally.1
Humans are social animals; we live in groups. Living in groups, humans idealize group living. We envision the happy family, the peaceful village, the bustling city. We create myths about the Garden of Eden, the Isle of the Blessed. In the misery of suffering we conjure up a means of salvation, a liberation from injustice. We love cooperation; we hate conflict. We construct a faith in a providential God, and then worry about why this God allows little children to die of starvation.
Charles Darwin wrote frankly about humans as social animals. For him, it is the capability “of reflecting on his past actions and their motives” that really differentiates humans from the “lower animals.”2 This development of moral qualities extends social instincts such as “pleasure in one another’s company,” warning of danger, defense and aiding of those in the same community. Language becomes a guide to aid of one’s fellows, and the motive to give aid “is much influenced by the praise or blame” of others.” But man is also guided by conscience, where “habitual convictions, controlled by reason” develops into “the supreme judge and monitor.”3 As instinct or morality, social behavior is “highly beneficial to the species” and is probably “acquired through natural selection.”4
Social living isn’t all cooperation, of course. Social living is a blend of cooperation and conflict. Consider the chimpanzee, our closest genetic relative, exhaustively researched in Africa by celebrity researchers like Jane Goodall for the past half century. There is no secret to our interest in the great apes: we want to know what we humans are like underneath the cultural veneer.
Jane Goodall started out thinking that “the chimpanzees at Gombe lived in one happy group.” But she discovered that she was wrong: they did not. As Nicholas Wade describes it in Before the Dawn,
Chimps are divided into communities of up to 120 members, which occupy and aggressively defend specific territories.5
Chimps are like human hunter-gatherers. They are patrilocal, “meaning the males stay in their home territory and females move to find mates in neighboring territories.” In human society, women “marry out.” There is another way in which chimps are like humans. They conduct “murderous raids on neighbors.”6
Chimps are territorial and aggressive for a simple reason. Chimps feed on fruit from trees, and these fruit bearing trees are typically scattered throughout a territory. The bigger the territory the more fruit bearing trees and the shorter the interval between births for the female chimps. Chimp survival depends on defending a territory big enough to have trees coming into fruit throughout the year. Territory is a matter of life and death.
We modern humans have developed a myth about human conflict. We believe that the modern era has experienced wars of unprecedented savagery, while primitive peoples live in comparative tranquility. In fact the opposite is true. About 30 percent of chimp males in the Gombe reserve die from aggression, about the same as males in the Yanomamo tribe in South America.7 A typical hunter-gatherer tribe loses about 0.5 percent of its population to combat each year. That’s equivalent to about two billion combat deaths for the human population in the 20th century.8 In fact, we learned from Steven Pinker, we need to accept that human violence has declined over the centuries. In hunter-gatherer band the entire male population is enrolled in the armed forces and conflict over territory is constant. In late agricultural society, the entire aristocracy is enrolled in the officer corps, and conflict over territory is more periodic. In the industrial age, wars are the professional responsibility of a small corps of experts, and the rest of the population works to produce for each other and to serve each other.
There is a practical reason for the decline in conflict from the hunter-gatherer days. Big agricultural empires are much less vulnerable to loss of territory than small groups of hunter-gatherers. Even if border wars are constant, they will affect only the people in the border areas of larger agricultural fiefdoms, whereas all the people in a hunter-gatherer band are immediately affected by a dawn raid from the neighboring tribe.
As similar rule applies to the decline of conflict in the industrial era. In the transition to an industrial society that began five hundred years ago and is now perhaps past its peak the whole question of territory has lost its urgency. Wealth and power are no longer measured in land and good rich acres. They are measured in capital, the ability to produce goods and services. In industrial society, therefore, the real wealth is not in land, or even in factories and farms. In the high-income countries in 2000 the World Bank estimated total wealth at about $439,000 per capita. Of this $10,000 was “natural capital,” $76,000 was “produced capital,” and fully $353,000 — over 80 percent — was “intangible capital.” Intangible capital is the capital inside peoples’ minds.9
The emergence of intangible wealth has left an indelible mark on the modern world. When hunter-gatherers won a border war, they killed all the defeated males. In the agricultural age the Romans salted the fields of the defeated Carthaginians, so that truly, Cato’s demand of Carthago delenda est was fulfilled, and when feudal lords won a dynastic war they plundered their enemy and brought home the spoils of battle in valuables and slaves. But at the end of World War II the victorious Allies competed to obtain the services of the best German scientists. Then they sent food aid to their vanquished foes and lent them money to rebuild democratic capitalist prosperity out of the ruins of defeat. Nazis may have been evil, but Germans were and are industrious workers that benefit the world with their manufacturing Mittelstand. The Japanese army may have brutalized China, but Japanese are cooperative workers that have defined modern product quality in their work for the Japanese keiretsu.
As humans evolved culturally from hairless chimpanzees into the nomadic groups that colonized the world and then to agricultural peasants and now to modern knowledge workers, the big problem has been what to do about the aggressive instincts of the males. How do you transform the border warrior that teamed with his brothers and cousins in murderous dawn raids on the neighboring village into today’s construction worker, who cooperates in a work team by day and joins with his buddies in the evening to root vicariously for the warriors on his city’s professional baseball team as they battle their hated rivals on TV? How do you transform the Homeric warrior that hews to his warrior’s honor code into today’s aggressive CEO leading his team to market-share victory?
The answer is that you change the culture. The Greek warrior chieftains battling on the plains of Troy lived in a world of fate and quarreling Olympian gods that helped or hindered humans as the mood took them. The span of cooperation among the Argives was limited; they only trusted their kin. The reality of their life was conflict, and to the victor the spoils. The modern CEO lives in a world of nature’s providence, of wealth waiting to be created for humans with knowledge and initiative. The span of cooperation is vast; trust is worldwide, a weave of informal relations and formal agreement. Conflict is the exception, an unwelcome interruption to normal cooperative relations.
Moderns are pretty well agreed that the wide modern horizon of cooperation is a good thing, and the marginalization of conflict is a good thing too. But moderns do not agree upon the moral/cultural, economic and political arrangements needed to support a tranquil world of cooperation, and they perceive that people that oppose their view of the good society represent a risk of future conflict. In fact, moderns believe that conflict is only justified in the promotion of their own particular vision of the good, cooperative society. American exceptionalists believe that conflict is unavoidable between the democratic capitalist west and dictators wielding weapons of mass destruction. Islamists believe that conflict is unavoidable between the House of Peace and the Great Satan. American liberals believe that conflict is inevitable between traditionally marginalized communities and reactionary racists, sexists, and homophobes. But after the necessary conflict is won, then universal cooperation will ensue.
American conservatives are the same as the enthusiasts described above. We believe in a necessary conflict too. Our necessary conflict is, unfortunately, a two-front war. Beyond the borders of the United States, conservatives are determined to fight against forces opposing the extension of democratic capitalism to the wide world. These opponents used to be fascists and Communists; today they might be radical Islamists or thug dictators, or conceivably a rising hegemonic power like China. In the United States, the enemy is the liberal administrative state: big government, the liberal social agenda, administrative regulation, government experts, crony capitalism. The enemy is not liberals as such; the enemy is liberal power: the political regime of liberal corruption, liberal cruelty, liberal waste, liberal injustice, willful liberal ignorance, and liberal delusion. The way to victory is not by fighting liberals as such, but by persuading ordinary Americans to reject the corrupt vanities of liberal power, to show them how and why liberal power hurts them and their families, and to show them how the new conservatism can give them what they want, a society that meets their needs and legitimate desires without trenching on other peoples’ needs and desires.
This new conservative vision must meet the following requirements:
It must honor the founding vision of the First Conservative, Edmund Burke, to blend tradition and reason.
It must minimize the scope of force.
It must honor the space of the transcendental.
It must encourage human flourishing through voluntary social cooperation.
It must protect the vulnerable and the marginalized.
It must understand the range of normal human social diversity, from the ethnic enclave to the enthusiastic Christian to the creative artist to the communitarian to the visionary.
In other words, this new conservatism recognizes the claims of all the peoples to belong to that nation of nations, the United States of America.
Each head of this vision is connected to the others, and each is justified by the others, and each begins with the manifesto of Edmund Burke, the Cassandra that hurled a prophetic curse at the French Revolution. In 1790 he predicted it would end in tyranny, at the hands of “sophisters, economists, and calculators,”10 and he was right: the mechanistic philosophy and practice of the French revolutionaries must have ended in horror and the gallows,11 and it did.
Burke’s insistence upon the relevance of sentiment in a scientific age has been at the core of modern conservatism ever since. Burke is also famous for his fight against arbitrary power. That was the point of his ten year fight to impeach and convict Warren Hastings, Governor of Bengal, in the House of Commons. And Burke, as a Protestant Irishman, but probably a crypto-Catholic, was deeply moved by the sufferings of minority communities. He supported free trade with Ireland and a relaxation of the penal laws on the Catholics, and for his trouble lost his House of Commons seat in Bristol. Burke defined what it meant to be a self-conscious conservative, living in the modern world but conscious of holding in his heart a sacred trust from the ancestors even while preserving that inheritance for generations yet unborn.
We minimize force because the principle and daily practice of limited government is the bulwark against tyranny. We believe that government is force, and that the government that governs least governs best not least because it uses less force. We believe that limited government with its separation of powers, its rights and its laws that restrict the powers of government, is a defense in depth against the powerful. The powerful always get to have an advantage over the weak. Just as a small country well supplied with defensive works and obstacles can make life very expensive for a powerful invading army, so the defensive works of law and custom can provide shelter against the hurricane of fire from the shock troops of the great powers in the land.
We honor the transcendental because it is through reflection on the infinite, at the horizon of the known world, that humans try to understand the meaning and purpose of their own lives and the community of humans within which they live and die. There cannot be certain knowledge of the world, its origin, its workings, its purpose, its meaning. Thus all the speculations that men and women have created about the ultimate things amount to declarations of faith. All living things seem to have a purpose. Humans, as self-conscious living things are anxious to know their seeming purpose so that they might consciously seek it. They must be allowed the space to do so, each in his or her own way.
We encourage human flourishing because to live is to grow and flower, to fruit and seed, and then to fade away. All the paraphernalia of human life, whatever else they might mean, come down to life and its recurrent rhythms. We conservatives believe that the best way to encourage flourishing is by voluntary social cooperation. We believe this partly from language, from the understanding that the root of “social” and “society” is the Latin “socius,” meaning “companion.” We believe this partly from experience, from the record of the voluntary social cooperation in the economy of the last two hundred years. We believe this partly from faith. We believe that friendliness is a good thing, capable of infinite extension, and force is a bad thing, for use only in emergency.
We help the weak and the helpless because it’s the right thing to do. Everybody, except perhaps Conan the Barbarian, agrees on that. The great question is how to help? What is the best way to help the helpless, and what are we trying to do when we help them? Conservatives believe that the experience of the last century is unequivocal. Government welfare is a very bad way to help the poor, for anyone supplied with a pension, whether from his father or from the government, will respond with reduced work effort. Today’s government welfare is, after all, merely a continuation of the “outdoor relief” of the old Poor Law. Where once the poor were bossed around, face to face, by the parish beadle, today they are bossed around by the state bureaucracy. What the poor learn from parish beadles and government bureaucrats is a contempt for government. Unfortunately, the poor also learn the cunning needed to scam the system, and that is anti-social. What is needed is to accept the poor as members of the community and interact with them as members of the community, to insist that the poor be integrated and socialized into society, full members of society expected to contribute to the community with that most precious resource, time, and not be set apart in an inner-city ghetto and stigmatized as beings that are less than full citizens.
We work to understand people different from ourselves because that is the beginning of wisdom. Humans have always regarded the “other” as idiotic or worse. Back in the classical age Greeks used the word “barbarian” as onomatopoeia from the way the Greeks mimicked the speech of non-Greeks: “bar bar bar.” In the modern era we look down on other people more politely, using developmental psychology to explain the differences between people, after Hegel and his Phenomenology of Spirit (or Mind). For conservatives, the approach of Eric Voegelin is more comfortable. He views the development of human consciousness as the move from compactness to differentiation. Anyone can throw a ball. But some people, called major league baseball pitchers, have developed the skill to throw a ball with extraordinary accuracy and speed.
That’s the agenda for the new conservative, an American manifesto to conjure up a vision of life after liberalism. The question is what to do about it. As conservatives, we do not believe in root and branch change to the United States, the “fundamental transformation” sought by President Obama. We believe in practical, sensible change. And that means change first of all in the moral/cultural realm of American life, a kind of Great Awakening, just as the movement against plantation slavery erupted as a moral movement in the late 18th century. From the movement in the moral/cultural sector change will come to the other sectors as a harvest comes from a sowing, complementary changes in the politics and the economy of this nation, so that people will again say to each other in America, as Ronald Reagan once said, that “you and I have a rendezvous with destiny” in “this, the last best hope of man on earth.”12 And they will go to their rest knowing that America will always be a beacon, “a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.”13
1George Eliot, Letter to Charles Bray, July 5, 1859.
2Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, American Home Library, p. 786.
3Ibid., p. 788.
4Ibid., p. 785.
5Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn, p. 142.
6Ibid., p. 143.
7Ibid., p. 150.
8Ibid., p. 152.
9World Bank, Where is the Wealth of Nations? p. 26.
10Edmund Burke, Edmund Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” p. 212-213.
11Ibid., p. 214.
12Ronald Reagan, “A Time for Choosing.” October 27, 1964. http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/reference/timechoosing.html
13Ronald Reagan, “Farewell Speech,” January 11, 1989. http://reagan2020.us/speeches/Farewell.asp
Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.americanmanifesto.org. | <urn:uuid:511fac48-968d-44ed-b34a-33853d054dff> | 3 | 2.53125 | 0.084294 | en | 0.957363 | http://www.americanmanifesto.org/aam_print.php?id=13 |
Canadian census records
Visitors to Canada often point out that the country shares many cultural traits with its neighbour to the south, the United States, while also upholding traditions of its mother country, Great Britain. It’s not surprising then, that after the US and UK began serious census taking in the early 19th century, Canada soon followed suit. These records are extremely useful to UK family historians as so many English, Irish, Welsh and particularly Scottish people went to Canada’s provinces to find their fortunes.
The first Canadian census was taken in 1851, 16 years before Canada actually gained independent home rule in 1867. It covered Canada East (Quebec), Canada West (Ontario), Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The 1851 pages are much trickier to get to grips with than British or US census returns – for a start you have to read two documents to get the full picture for each individual. When you view a record the first document lists people (referred to as ‘inmates’ on the Canada East and West returns) by name, numbering each individual from one to 50. Occupation, birthplace, religion, age at next birthday and sex are given.
Make a note of the number the individual was given in the first document before moving to the next document. Here you’ll see their marital status, race (columns for ‘Negro’ and ‘Indian’ people), whether they were members of the household or visitors, if anyone was absent from the house, new births, whether anyone was attending school, and who was deaf, dumb, blind or a lunatic. Other information is provided, for example what the home was made from – such as wood or stone – and the county and sub-district are given at the top. It’s a comprehensive and useful swathe of data, but printing out the pages makes looking at them much easier.
There’s far less detail for each resident of New Brunswick in 1851 – just name, sex, age, nationality (if they were born in Canada it just says “Native”) and occupation. Nova Scotia is similar to US censuses before 1850, and merely gives the name of the head of household and a headcount for the rest at the residence.
The 1861 Census saw the tiny province of Prince Edward Island added to the enumeration of Canada, but sadly its records for this year were of the same poor quality as Nova Scotia’s. New Brunswick and Canada East and West generally kept the same amount of information as they did in 1851, although the returns are on one sheet and much easier to read.
The following decade, Prince Edward Island disappeared from the census because it wasn’t part of the Dominion of Canada that formed in 1867. British Columbia joined Canada in 1871 but too late for its census to be included that year. However, in 1871 Nova Scotia improved its record keeping, bringing it in line with the other provinces on its census returns. For each household you can discover each person’s name, age, sex, country or province of birth, religion, origin (ethnicity, for instance English, Scottish etc), profession, marital status and any infirmities.
The 1800s and beyond
By 1881, Canada was becoming much more like the country it is today: Manitoba, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island and the Northwest Territory were all enumerated at census time, while Ontario and Quebec became the new titles for Canada West and East respectively. Thankfully, the forms filled in by the enumerators were standardised across the country, so they now give researchers all the key information for each person, although the materials used to build the home were no longer recorded!
Similar to US census pages, and sensitive to immigration patterns, from 1891 Canadians began recording the birthplaces of each person’s parents. In 1901 they also began recording the actual date of birth, making the pursuit of birth certificates, whether Canadian, British or American, so much easier. By 1911, there were nine provinces – Alberta and Saskatchewan were new – as well as the Northwest and Yukon territories. Actual birth dates disappeared from the census documents but some enumerators recorded them anyway, and far more information was taken about each person’s profession, level of education and languages spoken.
If your ancestors lived in the Prairie provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba in 1906 or 1916, don’t forget to check their additional censuses in those years, which are also available to our Worldwide members.
Useful Links
Canadian Census Collection | <urn:uuid:b87c22b2-82ac-4886-94ce-7a4a7b8b0569> | 3 | 3.375 | 0.024467 | en | 0.967346 | http://www.ancestry.co.uk/cs/Satellite?childpagename=USLearningCenter%2FLearning_C%2FPageDefault&pagename=LearningWrapper&cid=1265124605133 |
A Stroll Through Antrim
A Stroll Through Antrim’s Changing Landscape-South Village was presented by Anne Kenney, Pam Donoghue, and Barbara Black’s Great Brook Fifth Graders in June 2000. The students and teachers worked much of the year to research the history of Antrim’s South Village and to then develop this walking tour. The tour is available as a tool for visitors to Antrim to learn more about the South Village. Below you’ll find the introduction to the tour, followed by samples of the information provided at some of the tour stops.
Antrim, New Hampshire looks like a typical New England town. We’re quiet and we have a white church in the center. In fact, we have two white churches and a brown one.
Antrim is a town of 32 square miles with a population of 2,360. It is a part of the Contoocook River Valley. There are three important waterways: the Contoocook, the North Branch, and Great Brook.
Although we may appear to be typical, we have a unique history. The settlers who came to the Contoocook Valley were not all English as they were in the earlier settlements of New Hampshire. They were Scotch-Irish. As you’re walking along on our tour, you will find it interesting to keep in mind the early history of Antrim
Around 1600, some English investors had extra money so they bought land in Ireland. Scottish Presbyterians moved to Ireland and leased the English-owned lands. Land rents went up so the Scottish people had to move. In 1718, many migrated to Boston, Massachusetts. A large group went up the Merrimack River to Londonderry, which at that time was called Nutfield. Nutfield became heavily populated so people left to settle new areas. James Aiken was the second settler in Antrim in 1766. The Scotch-Irish, who came mainly for more farmland, populated most of Antrim and the other towns nearby. There are still some Scotch-Irish descendants living here in Antrim.
There were four villages spread over town: Clinton in the southwest, North Branch, Antrim Center, and South Village.
Antrim Center, the first town center, included a Meeting House and a cemetery on Meeting House Hill. The Meeting House is gone, but you may still visit the cemetery.
The settlers built mills along the rivers. Some of the early mills were saw mills, which cut trees into boards, and grist mills, which ground grain to make flour. Later, there were also a silk mill, woolen factories, a shovel shop, and the Goodell Company (a cutlery shop) in South Village. The Goodell Company was the largest employer and was one of the major causes that led to the development of South Village.
Industry first arrived about 1830 in the villages of Clinton and North Branch.
More than 20 mills lined Great Brook from Gregg Lake to the Contoocook River taking advantage of the water power created by the large drop in elevation. These mills built beside the little stream helped Antrim become the town that it was and is.
The Livery
The railroad was another reason why South Village is the town center. The station was actually in Bennington, but South Village was close to the depot. The track was built between 1848 and 1853. Irish laborers, who came because of the potato famine, built it.
A major effect of the arrival of manufacturing in Antrim was a population shift to South Village along Great Brook. People needed to be close to the mills where they worked. By the late 1800s, townspeople had established little shops in South Antrim. Among these were a general store, a barber shop, a men’s clothing store, and repair shops. Most were on Main Street.
The Presbyterian congregation built a new church in South Village since most of the population had moved there. The Town Hall was built to accommodate town affairs.
Today most farms and factories are gone. Some of the mill buildings still stand, but they are no longer used for manufacturing. The schools and Frameworks are the largest employers. Most townspeople work in bigger surrounding towns like Peterborough and Hillsboro.
Please enjoy our friendly town with its interesting history as we do.
In the past, people in town could get everything they needed in one place, Roger’s Store Complex. It was also known as Butterfield’s Store, Union Hall, Goodell Block, and Barrett Block.
Now we’d like to tell you the story about the town clock. The contractor built the tower for the clock, but when they tried to put the clock up, the tower wasn’t tall enough to let the weights run the clock for a full week. So, they put the clock in the First Presbyterian Church’s tower which was taller.
When we interviewed Mr. Olson, he told us different stories about running the store. He showed us an old soda fountain. You used to have to get syrup and bubble water, and then you would have to mix them. You could get about all the flavors we can get now. Today you can just go to the store and buy a six-pack of soda. | <urn:uuid:9a986b82-bf3e-4473-94c8-2e3ac1973b85> | 3 | 3.109375 | 0.033816 | en | 0.981121 | http://www.antiochne.edu/stroll_through_antrim/ |
Subsets and Splits