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Okay, loyal readers. The holiday is over, the last semester is all tied up, AGU is done, and everything on my list is looking forward to new classes, new publications, new research, and new directions. I cannot guarantee that after running out of things to say on my year-old blog, I will suddenly have a lot to post again, but I will try to remember that this site exists and use it now and then. That is as close to a resolution as you and WordPress are getting.
Other New Year's resolution: take more awesome baths, and with alcoholic beverages in hand. I will endeavor to remember to update you on my progress.
Filed under: Bloggy business | Tagged: blog, new year | Comments Off on Waking up

subset: commoncrawl


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Arran – the castles
With a couple of friends we rented an apartment in Arran over the May Day Bank Holiday. It was a long time since we'd been and it was their first visit – it was definitely a success, but, as with our earlier weekend in Galloway, the weather was a bit iffy. Still, we got out and about and there was plenty to see.
It was a disappointment to find that Brodick Castle is closed this year, presumably for maintenance. However, the gardens were open and we spent a whole morning wandering about.
Later that day, we went to Lochranza Castle, a 13th century ruin which can be visited free of charge. What a beautiful setting!
The following day, we had lunch at the Kildonan Hotel and took a short walk afterwards to see Kildonan Castle. This is also 13th century, though there's much less of it left and it's not accessible – it's actually in someone's garden! The modern standing stones at the hotel were interesting too.
Next time: the walks.


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Korean Air today celebrated the delivery of the airline's first 787-9 Dreamliner. The Seoul-based carrier will be the first Korean carrier to operate the 787-9 Dreamliner in the country. The airline is scheduled to launch domestic flights to Jeju from Seoul (Gimpo) for a month as part of the required certification period, before launching long-haul international routes to Los Angeles, Madrid, and Zurich later this year.
"The 787 Dreamliner will be a key member of Korean Air's fleet as we continue to introduce next-generation airplanes to our customers" said Walter Cho, president of Korean Air. "The aircraft is fuel efficient, quiet, has lower operating costs and is spacious and very elegant. The cabin features are impressive and will ensure maximum comfort for Korean Air's passengers."
Korean Air is scheduled to introduce five 787-9 Dreamliners to its fleet this year with another five joining the fleet by 2019.
"This milestone delivery adds yet another chapter in our long and successful relationship with Korean Air," said Rick Anderson, vice president of Northeast Asia Sales, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. "Korean Air continues to demonstrate its leadership in the global commercial airline industry and we are confident that the market-leading efficiency and comfort of the 787-9 Dreamliner will build onto their long-term success for many years to come."


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National Blog - page 319
Robo-Death Made in the USA
The media report that the United States government is working to develop pilotless military drones that are fully automatic, identifying and destroying human targets on the ground without any intervention from an operator or pilot back in [...]
Senator Paul on Cavuto
Senator Paul was on Fox with Neil Cavuto discussing FEMA funding, Solyndra, and President Obama's trip to Kentucky today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdyTI7xWqmw
Economic vs. Civil: It's All Liberty
The newsest video from the Institute for Humane Studies' "LearnLiberty" series touches on the inherent correlation between economic liberties and civil liberties.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWAyEzyp2xQ
The Definition of Irony
This morning, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wrote a letter to Senators urging them to pass the "PROTECT IP Act" (you know what they say about legislation, the better sounding the name, the worse it is).This bill would [...]
H.E.L.P. Subcommittee Hearing
Senator Paul spoke at a Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee Hearing today on health care and poverty. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA7uYBrh5I8
Bombing for Jobs
The military-industrial complex is desperate: "defense" outlays might actually get cut. The Horror! Imagine if, after real, inflation-adjusted military expenditures doubled over the last decade, they dropped a [...]
Rand Paul on The Jerry Doyle Show at LPAC 2011
Senator Rand Paul joins Jerry Doyle for a live broadcast of his radio show from LPAC 2011:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrLyQ67MuXs&feature=youtu.be
President Obama's Fuzzy Math
When the President first discussed his new tax proposals he said, "This is not class warfare -- this is math."Well, as this video from Senator DeMint shows, it doesn't matter if the top income tax rate is 30% or 90%, federal [...]
Instant Classic
Watch this if you haven't yet...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BHLguFEN3M
Sen. Paul on Obama's Jobs Plan
Latest press release from the office of Senator Rand Paul:WASHINGTON, D.C. - In light of President Obama's presentation of his so-called jobs plan to Congress this evening, Sen. Rand Paul offered the following statement:"The [...]


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The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) has developed a standard for handling 2D barcodes that it hopes will direct mobile phone users to websites more easily. By standardizing the specification for encoding, decoding and resolution of 2D barcodes, OMA wants to stimulate the usage of the codes, it said.
Camera phone users can snap a picture of a two-dimensional barcode to access additional information on the Web about products promoted by retailers and advertisers. Using the 2D code saves the user opening a browser and typing in a URL or search terms to know more about a product. However, not all such barcodes store information in the same way, nor can they all be read using the same software today.
Consumer usage of two dimensional bar codes in Japan grew exponentially once the three primary mobile operators there agreed on a common specification to read 2D barcodes, according to OMA. The QR-code was developed by the Japanese Denso Wave software company, and most Japanese phones now come with a built-in QR-reader. While the use of 2D bar codes is quite popular in Japan, adoption of the technology has been relatively slow in the U.S., said OMA.
In June 2009, a survey of 800 Japanese people aged 10 to 49 conducted by NetAsia Research found that 76 percent of them had used a QR-code at least once, and the QR code users scanned an average of about five a month.
But two years later, a study by comScore found that only 6.2 percent of U.S. mobile phone users had scanned a 2D barcode in June 2011. In the U.K., France, Italy, Spain and Germany, 4.6 percent of all mobile phone users and 9.8 percent of smartphone owners had scanned a QR or barcode during the month, comScore found.
With its new standard, OMA wants to enable interoperability across the 2D barcode market, which is fragmented by non-standard formats. The current model is not scalable for the wide variety of retailers, advertisers, handset makers and mobile operators that want to deploy mobile codes to promote their products and services, it said, adding that standardization can increase usage of 2D barcodes and simplify users' interactions with product information.
The standard comprises two different models. The first model is called a Direct Code, a code that is resolved on the handset using a pre-loaded or downloaded application. The code can invoke functions such as launching a browser, initiating a phone call, sending a text message or storing contact information in the phone's address book, a network connection is not necessary for this format, OMA said.
The second model is called an Indirect Code, a code that needs a network connection to contact a code resolution server that resolves the code. By using this model the code publisher can track and analyze the results of his campaign and can also update content associated with the code without changing the bar code itself, the Open Mobile Alliance said.
The new open standard is backwards compatible with the Direct Code formats in Japan that use Japanese telecom operator NTT Docomo's de facto standards, OMA said. There is mandatory support for ISO/IEC QR Code and Data Matrix symbologies for optimal code reading built into the standard, and there are optional features for Indirect Codes including security and the tracking and reporting of mobile code usage and client analytics, the organization said.
OMA collaborated with telecom operators including T-Mobile, AT&T and Telefó®©£a, handset manufacturers including Samsung and Nokia, and companies including HP Labs and Mobile Tag, it said.
Jay Alabaster in Tokyo contributed to this story.
Loek covers all things tech for the IDG News Service. Follow him on Twitter at @loekessers or email tips and comments to firstname.lastname@example.com


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From Terence Tao's excellent blog, I learned about the upcoming Princeton Companion to Mathematics (PCM), a roughly 1000-page survey of and introduction to mathematics at the undergraduate level. It looks like the PCM editors have lined up a distinguished cast of mathematicians to write comprehensible articles covering all of mathematics. The editor-in-chief is Timothy Gowers, who like Tao is a Fields Medalist, and who has very recently started his own blog.
Gowers gives instructions for finding a large sample of articles that will appear in the book, but they are not completely transparent, so follow these:
- Go here.
- Use Username "Guest" and Password "PCM".
- Click on "Resources" in the sidebar.
- Click on "Sample articles" in the sidebar.
You'll find many interesting and highly readable articles in .pdf format.
Tags: Mathematics, Princeton Companion to Mathematics, Terence Tao, Timothy Gowers


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According to Wikipedia: In literary criticism, purple prose is prose text that is so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw excessive attention to itself. My garden is currently demonstrating its own purple prose happening with an extravagant, ornate, and flowery late summer purple parade of perennial pulchritude. Late summer and autumn is a good time to celebrate the power of purple in the Central Texas garden.
Tidy bouquets of Katie's Dwarf Ruellia are scattered–some by the gardener, some by serendipity–throughout my gardens.
Bees, as well as butterflies and moths, love the deep, pollen-rich blooms which open in the early morning and close by the end of the day.
These lovely cultivars are well-worth having in Texas (and maybe other) gardens. Amazingly water-wise (they grow and bloom in the cracks of cement walkways), are disease-free, and pretty in bloom and foliage.
Who wouldn't want these lovelies making an elaborate statement in the garden?
A native Texas ruellia, Drummond's wild petunia, Ruellia drummondiana, is also flowery poetry right now.
Seeds were gifted to me a few years back, and I sprinkled them in the garden and now have a lifetime supply–and then some– of these sweet and hardy late summer/autumn wildflowers. Like the Katie's ruellia and all other ruellia plants, the blooms open in the morning and close for the evening–and then seed out prolifically!
Drummond's wild ruellia is also the host plant for the Common buckeye butterfly and I've noticed that in years prior to growing Drummond's ruellia, I rarely sighted buckeyes in my garden, but recently the butterflies have become more regular visitors.
On the metallic side of purple are the bodacious berries of the American beautyberry, Callicarpa americana, in full, fall form.
Birds love to eat them, the gardener loves to look at them and speak and write their praises.
Trending toward the lavender end of purple are a few blooms of the Giant liriope,
…and the native Branched foldwing, Dicliptera brachiata.
I grow a lot of the giant liriope; one or two were given to me years ago and the clumps that I've transplanted from those originals form a staple of my shady, water-wise garden. The blooms are scarce, only occurring this time of year when it rains. Honeybees visit when the diminutive flowers arrive.
The Branched foldwing was a mystery plant until I identified it last year, which you can read about here.
Dainty and restrained, it's not a wowzer kind of plant, but the foliage is attractive and the little blooms charming; they're just the right size for the smaller pollinators.
Orange and purple are a stunningly clashing combo, but that combo often works well and no more so than when my resident Neon skimmer rests on the purple bloom stalk of the Pickerel rush, Pontederia cordata.
A purple blooming Autumn sage, Salvia greggii x mycrophylla, is beginning a nice composition of blooms, though I don't think it's enjoying the constantly wet soil that has been the norm this August.
I hope the wet weather breaks for a dry-out and these shrubs can loudly purple-up my back garden for the coming months.
Skyflower, Duranta erecta has never been so eloquent, nor for so long, in my garden.
It's not covered in dripping purple comeliness like I've jealously witnessed in other Skyflower shrubs, but I'm pleased that the blooms have appeared, on and off, since spring (thanks to the mild winter) and that they've provided nectar and respite for pollinators.
Purple heart plant, Setcreasea pallida is lush and purple in its groundcover drama throughout our long growing season. While I like the blooms, it's the showy purple leaves that turn heads.
Purple prose. Late summer purple speaks with beauty and extravagance in my garden as autumn approaches. Soon, companion colors will add to the garden's story.


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There's an interesting dichotomy in software development – anyone wh has spent any amount of time in the field knows it all too well. There comes a point in every project where you have to make a choice – good code or fast code. Sure, you'll get those "sweet spot" projects that'll let you work on the "good code" side of things for as long as you'll need (maybe a personal project?) but more often than not, you're going to fall on the "fast code" side of the line. It's sad, really it is.
Every good developer knows that the world could only benefit from having more "good code" in the world. Applications would not only do what they're supposed to to but they'd do it well and have better performance while doing it. Things would flow smoothly through the paths the user laid out in the planning stages and everything would be magically delicious. Right? Sadly, even when you have the time to make the "good code", it's still not that good.
First off, throw out those personal projects – the timelines of those don't really apply anyway. You can hack away at a framework you're developing for years and only get most of the way done with it. Unless it gets some kind of larger following, chances are people aren't going to be putting the pressure on you to make updates and add new feature. The whole realm of personal project timelines is an interesting one – maybe something I'll look into later on. For now, though, we're going to focus on software someone else wants you to write. This is where the major part of the problem is – it's someone else's timeline, someone else's thoughts you're trying to put into code.
I can't tell you the number of times that I've been working on a project and have hd nothing but the best of intentions of how it was going to turn out. I'd planned out the pieces, worked up descriptions of the objects involved and laid out how they'd all integrate together. The code was well-structured and was something that could be both easy to maintain and simple to expand – that is until the customer decided to get involved.
If you've worked on any kind of larger project for any length of time, you know the cardinal rule – the customer never knows what they want. Even when they say they do, show them a demo. Their minds will freak out with new possibilities and new features that were never even conceived of in the first versions you've developed. Now, this isn't so much of a problem if you have the customer/client reined in to keep these sort of things under control, but if you don't…let the bad code pour in.
It never fails – at least one of the new features that the customer proposes as a "strongly like and might need" for this version will go against the code that you've already written. I don't think I've ever heard of a project that was able to augment what they were doing mid-stream (yes, even you agile folks) to accomidate every request the customer could make. Some things are easy, but most of these sort of changes are hard.
This is when it gets very hard to keep that "good code" in place. It takes a lot of practice and skill to keep things flexible enough to make the impact of these sort of changes minimal. Writing good code from the beginning is easy – making that good code stick through to the end is hard.
How hard are you willing to work to keep that code good?
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Seems the McIdiots over at the land of the golden arches (golden only for management and CEO's of course) are dispensing advice to their rank and file workers on how to live on the meager wages that McDonald's pays. They evidently have an employee in-house website called McResource that offers "helpful tips" on how to get through the financial strains of the holidays with innovative money advice like "sell stuff you don't need on eBay and Craigslist. Are they kidding? No, the tarnished golden arch big wigs are also telling employees who visit the site to "quit complaining" because complaining causes stress." I myself find complaining a stress relief of sorts. And it's painfully obvious that working for the fast food giant has got to be a giant headache. I mean, just because some people work for minimum wage doesn't give McDonald's the right to treat employees like they have minimum brain power. Maybe the hierarchy over there needs some "tips." Like, how about paying a decent wage and allowing people to work more than 20 hours a week so they can actually receive some benefits? Or, how about paying a decent wage so your workers don't have to work two or three jobs just to have necessities? Or, how about not putting up a moronic and demeaning website that displays your ignorance and offers your employees no-help-what-so-ever?
While the site is supposed to be private for employees only, we all know in this day and age privacy is a joke. According to screen grabs from the site gathered by the activist group Low Pay Is Not OK, the site also offers tips on stress management. With gems such as; "sing away stress to lower blood pressure and pack your bags and take at least two vacations a year to cut heart attack risk by 50 percent." Now, if you work for these McIdiots for roughly $7.25 an hour where do they think you could possibly afford to vacation? Set up camp in a Walmart parking lot for free like the RV travelers do?
When it comes to digging out from debt, the McResource Line suggests employees "consider returning some of your unopened purchases that may not seem appealing as they did." What, like food or maybe Christmas gifts for the kids? The person/persons writing this drivel really should be forced to eat McCrap food for a few months as punishment and then sent to McDonalds Hamburger University in Oakbrook, Il for at least a year of hard time. There is a section on the site relating to making ends meet which gives the enlightening advice to "break food into pieces which will result in eating less and feeling full." Yeah, remember that when you order a cheeseburger at McD's sometime. Break it up into 16 pieces and hopefully you will realize you aren't really full but they sure are full of it…
This isn't the first time the restaurant chain has been taken to task for how it approaches the financial problems of its minimum-wage workers. Earlier this year, critics say, a financial planning site put together by McDonald's and Visa unintentionally showed, in the words of The Atlantic's Jordan Weissmann, "how impossible it is to scrape by on a fast-food paycheck."


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I wasn't going to write anything about the Olympics because a) I don't watch them that much b) there's a saturation of coverage already and c) it's hard to find a way to make it all about me.
But thanks to Michael Phelps, I found a way! So if this post is lame, blame him, as everyone seems to be doing that in some way, shape or form already anyway.
Ugh…what happened?
Unless you've been living under a rock—no judgment, as I can imagine it's nice and quiet under there—you know that he failed to medal in his first race this Olympics, the 400 IM. American Ryan Lochte took gold, and two other people with names I won't attempt to spell took the other two pieces of hardware.
There was a bit of an uproar. "He didn't try hard enough!" "What's his problem…doesn't he want it?"
Let's come up for air a minute, people.
This isn't 2008 when he accomplished complete and utter domination of the sport and came home with eight gold medals to prove it. While everyone said that they didn't expect a repeat gold medal run, the fact that he didn't dominate in his first race has already raised some concerns.
I get it.
We all have idols we put on such pedestals that when they fail to reach the superhuman standards that are placed on them—by fans, coaches, family, themselves—and remind us that they're human, we're disappointed.
He considered retirement in 2009. He was tired. He had accomplished everything he had set out to do. He was scrutinized after he was photographed practicing breathing techniques (ahem) on a bong.
I read comments he recently made that getting out of a warm bed and into cold water every early morning since the age of seven takes it's toll. He told the story of being on vacation and having everyone tell him to go swim in the ocean but wanting to stay on the shore. Getting wet was the last thing he wanted to do.
I can relate, on a very minor scale.
I was a swimmer in high school, and although I wasn't fabulous, I was All-City and had a school record. The training was ridiculous—5 am practices before school, two hour practices after, dry land work, summer camps—and I constantly reeked of chlorine. But while I enjoyed the sport, I didn't swim my senior year.
The reasons were varied, but I was just tired of everything swimming and tired—period. While I had support, others freaked out and I was also told I was insane, that I had talent I was wasting, that it was selfish not to compete, that I was lazy.
Maybe they were right — maybe it was a waste — but I never regretted my choice. My heart wasn't in it anymore — to this day I have no interest in water — and a lesson I learned is:
Just because I can, doesn't mean I should.
The same thing goes for Phelps. I don't think he wanted to compete in London as much as he felt that he should, and I have no doubt that some of the rumors about less-than excellent training are true. From his interviews, body language and other speculative things that hold no weight, he looks like someone going through the motions.
But no athlete wants to lose—ever—and I can guarantee that no one is more disappointed than Phelps about that race. And at the time of this writing, he still has six more to go, six races I'm sure he will give all he has.
If you've never swam fly, you have no clue of pain.
When he was 16, he told an agent that he wasn't worried about winning medals—although today he's three away from becoming the most decorated Olympic athlete ever—but instead, "I want to change the sport of swimming."
And whether you like him or not, he's done that with each race he's won. He's done that by establishing the Michael Phelps Foundation that provides swim programs at Boys & Girls Clubs nationwide. He's done that by making the sport relevant through his accomplishments.
While it's a "what have you done for me lately" culture and he might not be doing as much, what he's done in the past has changed the sport of swimming—for the better— but he's also changed as well.
He is human, but if history is any sort of indication, he'll do his best each race this year to show us that he's not.
He'll remind us he's still Michael Phelps.
Like the blog? Buy the book.
*Back to regularly scheduled ramblings next post. I was feeling rambly. Blame Phelps—or better yet—NBC.


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A cold wind made it feel more like winter than spring this weekend, but the steam pouring out of the sugarhouse means that spring is definitely here. Bright sunshine and upbeat music from the four-piece bluegrass band, the Grassholes — who somehow played for hours with bare hands — helped keep spirits up for the hundreds of people who stood in line to sample this year's syrup at Harvest Hill Farms in Poland.
As I stood in line clutching my red raffle ticket eager for the pancake and bacon breakfast ($7 adults, $5 kids) during Maine Maple Sunday, I enjoyed a gooey blob of maple taffy ($1) twirled around a popsicle stick. Also referred to as "sugar on snow," maple taffy is made by boiling syrup to 234 degrees and then pouring it over packed snow, which causes it to thicken to a taffy consistency. Also available for purchase were goodies like maple butter and maple cream, as well as maple bread and maple whoopie pies.
When I finally made it into the intense warmth of the sugarhouse, Peter Bolduc, the owner of Harvest Hill Farms, described the process of boiling syrup. Next to him, a young man loaded the raging fire with wood and tested the consistency of the syrup. When it reached the desired temperature, the syrup was poured into containers and put out on picnic tables for guests to drown their pancakes, fried bacon, and homemade doughnuts.
I spoke with Bolduc the next day and he estimated 3500 people had come through the sugarhouse and 700 pancake breakfasts had been dished out. While Sunday was a day for the public to enjoy the syrup-making process, the sugaring season has been under way for two weeks now. The sap only runs for an average of 15 days, but Bolduc and his crew have been preparing for sugaring season since early January.
The Poland sugarhouse is his smaller, "country-feeling" operation, but in partnership with his uncle, Bolduc has a large-scale operation with 10,000 taps in Byron, in Oxford County. That commercial operation is much more efficient and uses an advanced vacuum system to get sap out of the trees as well as reverse osmosis, which removes a significant amount of water from the sap before it's boiled, saving time and resources (and they use oil instead of wood). Combined, the two sugarhouses process 100,000 gallons of sap a year, he says.
But let's not forget it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Making syrup involves a lot of work — tapping trees, running and periodically checking sap lines, collecting sap, boiling, and then bottling the syrup. "It's a labor of love," he says — and one of the greatest rewards is when light-amber syrup pours off the tap. "Light amber, as a sugar maker, is the pinnacle of getting everything right. It means the trees gave good quality sap, you have a clean-run operation, and it also tells you that your boiling-off process is sufficient. To get light amber you need all three of those things to happen simultaneously and it's a unit of measurement that you know what you're doing."
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Hannah Poole asks "Should you straighten your afro hair?" in the Guardian's Life and Style section. Before we all sigh about yet another black hair article, let's analyze why we are still having conversations about this issue.
We're still talking about this because:
- No one's hair is every really good enough. The discussions about black hair don't just reflect the reality of black women's struggles, but the internal conversations of women who have hair that deviates from the shiny, full, swingy-straight ideal in some form or fashion. I recently had a conversation with a friend of mixed race heritage who has long dark brown hair that hangs to her shoulders. She confided that she often thought of having a straightening treatment done, but didn't know if it was worth the hassle. I looked at her, aghast. "Dude, your hair is straight!" I blurted out, looking at her locks which hang straight down and can easily be run through with a comb.
"No, this isn't straight," she replied, explaining her hair had a body wave that made it stand out. "It's not wavy enough to look cool, but it's too wavy to be straight unless I use a flat iron." I heard similar sentiments on from a Korean American friend, also debating a straightening treatment. And I've heard laments from my straight-as-a-pin haired friends who have hair that refuses to hold a curl. It seems that no matter what we work toward, it isn't enough. So while many of our discussions revolve around the racial realities facing black women, having hosted many a conversation about black hair over the years, I never fail to be surprised when women of all shades find parts of their stories in this common, frustrating narrative.
- In two-thousand-fucking-eight it was (and) is still totally cool for black women to be denied service at salons, regardless of what they are having done. And this is on top of what I like to call "the black hair tax" - knowing that you're going to have at least twenty extra dollars tacked on to your service charge because you require flat iron service post blow dry. One time, I went to a salon in my area with air dried, a few weeks of new growth hair. I went to a stylist who had styled my hair before. I sat in her chair, but she looked at my hair like it was going to bite her. She then pulled out a fine-toothed comb and watched it get stuck in my hair before excusing herself to find "someone who can do this type of hair."
Again: she had done my hair before, about four weeks prior to this occasion. However, seeing my hair in a semi-curly state forced her to run for back up (which turned out to be an Afro-Carribean stylist who wrung my hair out like a rag and then heat blasted it into submission). The worst part? If she had done what she normally does (wash, blowdry, flat iron) my hair would have turned out fine. But she recoiled from my hair and wouldn't even consider repeating the same process she went through the last time she styled my mane. And I will never forget that.
- We haven't talked about men's hair issues yet, specifically black men. From wave caps to jheri curls, it isn't all good over there either. Chris Rock's new documentary features commentary from Al Sharpton and Rock explains to Allison Samuels:
Come on, you have to have the good reverend in anything that deals with black hair. He's so not ashamed of discussing his hair and how he keeps it up with a scarf and whatever. His thoughts on black life and what it involves can be priceless.
- We still have to deal with the curly haired stigma. As Dodai wrote when she asked "Why Is Straight Hair the Epitome of 'Style'?":
It sucks to have hard-to-manage hair, of course. But the paranoia surrounding curls and frizz is troubling, to say the very least. Why is straight hair considered to be "polished" and curly hair often described as "wild"? In movies like The Princess Diaries, when the character goes from geek to chic, there's always a scene where they take her crazy, frizzy curly strands (which just need a little deep conditioner and some spray gel) and make them straight... and therefore, pretty. Let's say you had a choice between curly hair and straight hair. If you were going on a job interview and you wanted to seem serious and businesslike, which would you choose? Does straight hair seem more professional? What if you were going on a date? Does curly hair seem exotic, sexy, fun? And is there a subtle racism in this type of thinking?
I fully co-sign Dodai here. But it is interesting to note that Pool's Guardian piece reveals how deeply ingrained this type of thinking is. As she describes the feeling after flat ironing her hair:
We were in Sweden for a wedding, and my logic was that if I truly hated it I could wash it and return to London with no one any the wiser. But I didn't hate it; in fact I rather liked it. It felt sleek and modern. My hair was bouncy and shiny, it looked healthy and, best of all, it moved. It even swished from side to side.
If straight hair is modern, does that make curly hair primitive? It seems like a harsh thing to say, but that's the ultimate connotation. And as I mentioned before, these ideas are deeply ingrained. I often fight with myself before important occasions or events if I will or won't have my hair straightened. I generally decide against it, but the urge is always there to make myself "more presentable" by taming it into a straight style.
Pool goes on to discuss how she conflicted she feels, an emotion I know all too well:
There was only one problem: it made me feel guilty. I felt like a traitor. And I became mildly obsessed about what signals I was sending out. If an afro says, "I'm confident enough to wear my hair as it comes," what does wearing my hair straight say?
But after a few days I started to notice some unexpected side-effects of straightening my hair. Other Eritreans and Ethiopians – who generally all straighten their hair – started to nod and smile at me in the street, acknowledging me as one of them. And I love it.
The world does react to you differently when you decide to straighten out. The shift in how you are perceived is something that is instantly noticed, even if it is tough to articulate. And it's one of the factors that makes it difficult to truly choose to wear your hair one way or the next - we are all influenced on some level by our peers and coworkers and their attitudes impact how we feel.
I am typing this post in a cafe in downtown DC. While I was writing these words, a little girl with natural hair, coaxed into plaits with fuzzy puffs escaping wherever it can, stared at me for a minute or two as she walked past. I waved to her and her father encouraged her to say hello to me. She stood there, fixated on my hair. I looked up and realized her mother was waiting at the table. Her hair was long and straightened. I wonder what that little girl was thinking when she saw me. I don't think I'll ever know. But I do know that I don't want her to struggle with the same issues I struggle with now.
There is so much emotion wrapped up in conversations of hair and choices and desirability that delving into these issues can be fraught with heartache. Women on all sides feel judged, feel scrutinized, feel as though whatever choice they have made, they still need to continually justify it.
But, please, not on this thread. Let's look inward, let's treat others with kindness whatever their choices may be. And we're going to hug it out - India Arie style:
Should You Straighten Your Afro Hair [Guardian]
Chris Rock Talks 'Good Hair' [Newsweek]
Earlier: Woman Denied Service At JC Penney Salon For Having Black Hair
Keeping Michelle's Hair In Perspective
Combing Through The Deeply Rooted Politics Of Black Hair Issues
Why Is Straight Hair the Epitome of 'Style'?
Dear Oprah, Mariah & Leona: Don't Forget That Curly Hair Is Beautiful Too
[Image via Hairdressers Journal Interactive]


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Yeasts Instructions
Instructions for the use of Fermentum Mobile's liquid brewing yeast.
Every vial of Fermentum Mobile's liquid brewing yeast contains average amount of 70 billion of pure yeast culture cells. The yeast are packed in sterile conditions, which provides the best quality of our product.
The vial with the yeast should be preserved in refrigerator (2-6°C). Before using, the yeast culture should be brought to the temperature of wort. In case of top-fermenting yeast this temperature is usually a room temperature (20-22°C), whereas for lager yeast from 9 to 15 °C. For lager yeast it is important that the temperature of the yeast is not higher than 5°C than the temperature of the wort (in this way we protect the yeast from the thermal shock, which could significantly slow down the rate of their multiplying)
We can distinguish two methods of adding the Fermentum Mobile's yeast to the wort.
- Direct
- Through preparing a yeast starter.
The direct method (A)- directly adding the yeast from the vial to the fermentor bucket. Before that, the wort should be cooled down to less than 30°C and oxygenated (look at the FAQ on www.fermentum-mobile.pl). It is recommended to spray the outside of the vial with some disinfectant. The content of the vial should be accurately mixed, through turning it or shaking it several times until we produce a homogenous suspension- completely mixing the medium (clear liquid) with the yeast. Prepared in this way yeast suspension is ready to add to wort. We gently open the cap and pour content to fermentation container. Stir the wort using disinfected item.
Attention! It may happen that after warming the vial to room temperature the yeast would restart their metabolism and lead to increased pressure inside the vial. To avoid the uncontrolled outflow of the yeast after opening the vial, we should slowly and gently open it, and if it is necessary to open it and close again a couple of times, to reduce the pressure inside the vial. In case of strains with high flocculation (FM11, FM13, FM26, FM30, FM31) mixing the yeast with the medium to produce a homogenous suspension may be difficult, it is not necessary to mix it so accurately. It is enough to detach the yeast from side of the vial and add it in this form. We should always mix the yeast in the target container (fermentor bucket, flask with the yeast starter). Darker sediments inside the vial are results of sterilization ofthe medium and are a natural phenomenon.
Preparing a yeast starter (B)- this method requires preparing the yeast at least a day before adding it to the wort. Increasing the amount of cells and activity of the yeast are the advantages of this method, and thanks to that the efficiency of the fermentation process is higher. This is a recommended method of using the Fermentum Mobile's yeast.
How to prepare a yeast starter.
In a small pot boil around 1 liter of water. Then, turn off the heating and dissolve in the water 100g of dry malt extract or 120 g liquid malt extract. After that, boil such prepared wort for a few minutes to sterilize it and before end of the boiling cover the lid up, then (after 1 minute) turn off the heating. Cool down the contain of covered pot, the best method is to immerse it in bigger container filled with cold water. After cooling down to temperature lower than 30 °C, pour the content of the pot into sterilized container (flask, bottle or jar), add the Fermentum Mobile's yeast from the vial, mix it and cover it with a piece of aluminium foil. Put the container in a warm place (22-25 °C) and leave it (incubation) for 24-48 h. To provide better multiplying of the yeast it is good to keep constantly mixing medium with the yeast. Thanks to that, the medium is continuously oxygenated, such conditions support better multiplying of the yeast and also provide effectively supplying nutrients to the yeast cells. After incubation, pour the starter to the wort. If you do not want the yeast starter to affect the beer taste, put it to the refrigerator till the yeast sediment on the bottom of the container, then pour off the worn out medium and bring the yeast to the room temperature. Afterwards add it to the wort.
All of these operations performed during preparing and adding the yeast starter should be executed with possibly highest cleanness and in sterile conditions. Every object that we use and which has any contact with yeast, medium, wort etc. should be accurately disinfected. It is also recommended to disinfect our hands or to work in latex gloves. To disinfection we recommend using 70% ethyl alcohol.
Attention! The number of yeast cells In Fermentum Mobile's vial is sufficient to add to 20l wort with gravity up to 14 blg (OG=1,057) in case of top-fermenting, but it is not an optimal value to do that. For lager and stronger beers, with gravity over 14 blg it is strictly recommended to prepare a yeast starter or use more than one vial. It is also possible to make a light beer and the yeast gathered after fermentation add to beer with higher original gravity.


text:
Emotion is strong here.
I don't want to care.
I don't want my tears.
Not yours either.
I don't want the strength of it.
For I see where it leads,
That slow bloom of anger.
Of hate misunderstood.
Your empathy comes with fists.
To go with your black heart.
Crafted by one sided views.
Like most fashions that touch us.
While I mourn that you see it so,
I mourn because I see it too.
My world is changing.
With you, shaping it.
I can do nothing.
So I shed no tear.
Not for you. Not for him.
For helplessness maybe.
Not for me.


text:
- Some contain salted duck eggs but some don't... especially the cheap frozen ones sold in Asian groceries. Typically, salted duck eggs are quite expensive. To keep the cost of manufacturing, salted duck egg yolks are never added into these cheap buns.
- Some contain coconut milk but some don't... especially non the southern-Asia-originated ones.
- Some contains evaporated or condensed milk but some don't...
- Some has flowing molten filling but some are not...
Liu Sha Bao (流沙包) meaning flowing filling buns (Chinese) is actually a variant of Lai Wong Bao (奶黄包) meaning custard steamed buns (Chinese) but has a flowing molten filling instead of having a traditional firm custard filling. After reading this fantastic recipe by The 350 Degree Oven, it seems that making my own delicious flow-y Liu Sha Bao with high Hong Kong Dim Sum / Yum Cha restaurants standard is not difficult at all and absolutely possible. Here, I'm curious to try...
|Mission possible - My homemade Liu Sha Bao!
|Making the "molten" custard filling is easy!
|This is how the fillings keep their shapes before steaming.
|To make the bao dough, you can use either the above type of flour as shown.
|Divide the bao dough into portions...
|I made the buns with two kinds of fillings with no custard powder or with custard powder...
|Beware! Remember NOT to over-steam the buns as over-heated filling will explode!
|I was like... Wooh!!! seeing this... the custard flowed out like crazy immediately after steaming.
|It contains better after cooling down a little bit...
|This is the bao with extra milky custard filling with custard powder.
|I'm loving this bun... every single bit!
Yes that these custard buns are similar to those selling in Hong Kong Dim Sum / Yum Cha restaurants.
Yes that these custard buns are a bit rich but they are extremely yummy!
Both fillings with custard powder or no custard powder are equally good! I reckon that the preference of filling is highly depending on each individual. For those who like more buttery and milky flavours, you will like the filling with no custard powder which is extra creamy and rich. For those who like more custard-y or rich yolk flavours, you will like the filling with custard powder which is smooth and flavoursome. I'm more towards the custard kind of person and so I like the custard one slightly more than the other.
Update on 22 Nov 2016: Besides this fabulous recipe, I have also another excellent Liu Sha Bao recipe at here with many Liu Sha Bao steaming tips to share.
Here's the recipe mostly adapted from The 350 Degree Oven
(converted from cups to grams, making reasonable amount to avoid massive amount of leftover for our small family)
Makes 10 buns with 2 extra custard fillings
Salted Egg Custard Filling with custard powder:
Makes 12 portions of filling
3 salted duck eggs, fully cooked, shelled and use egg yolks only
60g unsalted butter, soften
50g icing sugar
30g custard powder
45g dry milk powder
5g cornflour
30ml coconut milk (I used Ayam regular coconut milk)
Salted Egg Custard Filling with NO custard powder (mostly adapted from Baking Diary):
Makes 9 portions of filling
3 salted duck eggs, fully cooked, shelled and use egg yolks only
60g unsalted butter, soften
30g icing sugar
5g cornflour
30g dry milk powder
25ml coconut milk (I used Ayam regular coconut milk)
Bao Dough:
280g flour, preferably with 7-9% protein content
Note: Sadly, I wasn't able to find any Hong Kong flour when I made these bao and so I used Lighthouse low protein, self-raising bleached flour which is also suitable to make steamed buns.
1/2 tsp baking powder - If you are using flour which is NOT self raising, please add this. Otherwise, please omit this.
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
15g sugar
1 tbsp canola oil
125-140ml water (It was a dry day when I made these and I used 140ml)
Make the filling one day ahead.
Using a fork, mash the salted duck egg yolks into fine crumbs. Using a wooden spoon or an electric mixer, beat butter and icing sugar in medium speed until combined. Lower mixing speed to low and add the remaining ingredients and mix until well-combined.
Refrigerate the custard filling until cold and firm. When firm, use a cookie scoop to scoop out and divide the custard into 12 portions. Place the custard balls on a plate or container (lined with cling wrap for easier removal, optional), freeze it overnight with a cover or cling wrap.
Tip: You can keep any unused filling in the freezer and use them anytime when you make any bao dough.
To make bao dough:
Place the sugar, salt, oil, and water in the bottom of the breadmaker pan. Top with flour (with or without baking powder). Add yeast the last and switch on the machine with "dough" setting.
If breadmaker is not available, combine all bao ingredients and knead to form a smooth dough (at least 20 mins) and then let it rise for 1 hr.
When the dough is ready, divide into 10 portions. Meanwhile, set water to boil in a steamer.
Flatten the dough pieces with your hands, and place a frozen custard filling ball in the center. Pinch up the sides of the dough to completely enclose the filling.
Place each bao on each paper cup liner or a small piece of baking paper with its seam sides down. Rest the bao in warm mist for 10-15 mins. Update on 16 April 2015: You don't have to rest the bao in warm mist if you are making the bao in warm place (like Singapore). Place bao on the heat proof containers or steaming baskets that you are using to steam. Cover the bao with cling wrap and allow the bao to rest for 10-15 mins.
Steam baos with moderate heat for about 8-15 mins until done. The steam timing varies if you have multiple layers of baos to steam. The layer that is closest to the direct steam will take about 8 mins to cook.
Beware! Please DO NOT use too high heat or over-steam!!! Otherwise, the custard filling will explode out of the bao.
Serve immediately but beware that the molten filling is steaming hot!
Happy Steaming!
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This year for my reading challenge, I chose to read the first books of twelve fat fantasy series I'd not read before. It sounded easy enough. Fantasy novels, after all, are not known as difficult reading. It should, in fact, have been a doddle. I've read and enjoyed fat fantasy novels in the past, so I foresaw no difficulty in reading twelve of them in one year. And it'd be interesting to see whether or not each book persuaded me to read the rest of the series. I had a bit of help putting together a list of a dozen – people suggested titles, both here on my blog and on LibraryThing, and I picked twelve which appealed. Then I started reading…
I failed.
I lasted six months and then gave up. This is how it went:
January: Pawn of Prophecy, David Eddings. The first book of the Belgariad. These books are now marketted as YA, and it's easy to see why. The novel also felt like a cynical attempt to jump on the fantasy bandwagon by someone who hadn't quite mastered the spirit of the thing. I'm told the series improves as it progresses. I shall never know. Full review here.
February: Assassin's Apprentice, Robin Hobb. The first book of the Farseer Trilogy. An engaging narrator, readable prose… but what a dull world. And a prince called Verity. Too little happened in this book's 480 pages, the story took far too long to kick into gear. Full review here.
March: The Blade Itself, Joe Abercrombie. The first book of the First Law Trilogy. Everyone raved about this book. It was, apparently, a superb new fantasy novel, different to everything that had gone before. Well, yes. The characters were despicable prats, the narrative circled about the plot without actually engaging with it, and the combat scenes were quite gory. I was not impressed. Full review here.
April: Colours in the Steel, KJ Parker. The first book of the Fencer trilogy. This one was a surprise: I actually enjoyed it and thought it quite good. It's in serious need of editing – whole passages should have been cut as they add nothing to the narrative – but otherwise the writing flows along, the world is well-built, and the characters are engaging. I've since picked up the second book of the trilogy, The Belly of the Bow. Full review here.
May: The One Kingdom, Sean Russell. The first book of the Swan's War trilogy. This had an interesting world, but the story was so incredibly slow that reading the book proved a chore. I'd like to know what happened, but I'm not prepared to read through 1000+ pages of lethargic prose in order to find out. Full review here.
June: King's Dragon, Kate Elliott. The first book of the Crown of Stars series. I couldn't finish this. I got about 100 pages into this 700-page brick and gave up. One narrative thread had a sixteen-year-old girl in slavery and raped nightly by her owner, the other was about a young man who mucks out the stables. I didn't have the patience to work my way through these to find out what happened.
Unfortunately, King's Dragon was not only unfinishable, it also put me off reading the remaining six books of the challenge. For the record, they were:
- Magician, Raymond E Feist (1982)
- The Dragonbone Chair, Tad Williams (1988)
- The Sum of All Men, David Farland (1998)
- The Darkness That Comes Before, R Scott Bakker (2003)
- The Wizard Hunters, Martha Wells (2003)
- Winterbirth, Brian Ruckley (2006)
Yes, maybe I made some bad choices – although all the books were recommended to me by others. And, to be honest, there's still a couple on the list above I'd like to try: the Wells, for example; and the Ruckley. One day, I might indeed read them. But the rest I've no interest in tackling. Still, I suppose in one respect the challenge was not a complete failure as it introduced me to a writer whose books I will continue to read: KJ Parker. It also introduced me to some writers whose books I will now assiduously avoid.
Now I just have to think of a reading challenge for 2011.


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2,800 Homes In 'Immediate Danger' From Waldo Canyon Fire
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP/CBS4) - A wildfire near Colorado Springs erupted and grew out of control to more than 3 square miles over the weekend, prompting the evacuation of a popular vacation town and the closure of nearby highways Sunday.
At least 11,000 residents of the town of Manitou Springs and nearby communities of Cascade, Chipita Park and Green Mountain Falls were ordered to leave Saturday or early Sunday.
The fire quickly grew to more than 2,500 acres with zero containment amid tinder dry conditions, gusty winds and temperatures that reached into the 90s.
Officials said 2,800 homes are in immediate danger with 2,000 more possibly threatened. So far no structures have burned.
Officials didn't immediately have a count on those evacuated from campgrounds, inns, rental cabins and other vacation properties that were emptied, but an evacuation center set up at a high school housed mostly tourists.
They included Mark Stein of Morristown, N.J., whose family arrived after midnight Sunday at their Manitou Springs hotel for a week of whitewater rafting and sightseeing.
"We were sleeping for 15 minutes when they started knocking on the door – a day from hell," Stein said of the day of travel. With his wife and 12-year-old son, Stein spent the first night of his vacation setting up cots for more than 100 evacuees who slept at the school.
"I think it's the best vacation ever. This is what the real world is about. There's a lot of people that need help," Stein said.
The fire also prompted evacuations for the west side of Colorado Springs and in the towns of Cascade and Ute Pass, but no structures have been destroyed and no buildings were under immediate threat.
The Garden of the Gods park, which has dramatic red rock formations, was also closed. Pikes Peak, which inspired the song "America The Beautiful" and is the most-visited high-altitude peak in the nation, was completely obscured by grayish smoke.
Officials closed traffic into Manitou Springs, a vacation town at the base of Pikes Peak, and shut down the Pikes Peak Highway, which goes to the top of the mountain.
Hundreds of other residents were under voluntary evacuation orders and were packing up, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported Saturday.
About 350 firefighters were dispatched to the blaze, with more in the way, said Rob Deyerberg of the Fairmount Fire Protection District. But the fire remained zero percent contained as it burned through the night. A plume of smoke from the foothills near Pikes Peak thickened and turned from light gray to brown.
Crews were contended with similarly hot and gusty weather on Sunday. The National Weather Service said temperatures were close to 100 degrees throughout much of the state.
Mandatory Evacuations
Farish and Carrol Lake areas off Rampart Range Road; Cedar Heights Subdivision and Mountain Shadows south of Chuck Wagon Road. Boundaries are Rampart Range Road to the west and everything west of 30th and Centennial from Gateway Road north to Chuck Wagon. All of Manitou Springs, Cascade, Chipita Park and Green Mountain Falls.
El Paso County has declared disaster area so they can be eligible for federal funds.
Colorado and other parts of the Southwest have become a tinderbox for wildfires as the region faces extremely dry or prolonged drought conditions. At least seven were burning across the state, where officials have been challenged by one of the most severe fire seasons in recent memory.
The weather also helped fuel another blaze that sparked Saturday and destroyed 24 structures near the mountain community of Estes Park. Investigators were determining whether it started in a cabin or as a wildfire before moving toward the homes, according to the Denver Post.
A separate fire continued burning near Fort Collins, scorching more than 118 square miles and destroying at least 191 homes. That blaze has become the largest and most expensive in Colorado history.
Elsewhere in the West, firefighters made progress against wildfires in Utah, New Mexico and California.
- In Utah, about 2,300 residents were allowed to return to their homes Saturday after officials determined a wildfire no longer posed a threat to homes near Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain. Officials believe that fire was started Thursday by target shooters. A second major fire has burned 16,500-acres of high desert near the central Utah town of Delta.
- In California, a wildfire about 60 miles north of Los Angeles triggered evacuations of campgrounds around an off-road recreation area on Saturday. Ventura County fire officials said the fire has blackened at least 400 acres in the Hungry Valley State Vehicular Recreation Area, along the Interstate 5 corridor in Gorman.
- In New Mexico, a lightning-caused wildfire that destroyed 242 homes and businesses is 90 percent contained after heavy rain helped crews Friday. The 69-square-mile fire near Ruidoso began June 4. Meanwhile, the largest wildfire in state history was 87 percent contained. It has burned more than 464 square miles after two blazes merged on May 16.
- By THOMAS PEIPERT, Associated Press
Wildfire Resources
- Visit CBSDenver.com's Wildfire Resources section.
- Read recent Wildfire stories.
Wildfire Photo Galleries
- See images from the most destructive wildfires (High Park Fire and Fourmile Fire) and largest wildfire (Hayman Fire) in Colorado history.
(TM and © Copyright 2012 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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When a television series pilot opens with what seems to be a vision of hell – writhing naked bodies, men fighting bloodily to the death, people being shot, human sacrifices – and then later features a suicide bomber on a train… you know you're not watching your usual anodyne and juvenile science fiction series. But then Caprica is the new series from the makers of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, and Battlestar Galactica could never have been described as "anodyne and juvenile".
Caprica is set fifty-eight years before the events of Battlestar Galactica – in fact, Commander Adama is a child in the Caprica pilot – and sets out the events which led to the creation of the Cylons and their eventual revolt against the humans.
Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz) is the CEO and driving force behind an electronics company on the world of Caprica, one of the Twelve Colonies. He invented the holoband, which provides access to a virtual world or cyberspace called V-Space. At present, he's working on a robot soldier for the Caprican government, but is having little success. Graystone's teenage daughter, Zoe, is a computer genius. She has invented an AI copy of herself, called Zoe-R, in the virtual nightclub she and her friends frequent in V-Space. It's the nightclub which is the aforementioned vision of hell.
Joseph Adams (Esai Morales) is a lawyer on Caprica, although he is originally from Tauron. He has connections with the Ha'la'tha, an organised crime syndicate on that world, but refuses to do their bidding.
As in Battlestar Galactica, the Twelve Colonies practice pantheism – and again, their gods share the names of the Greek pantheon. But Zoe and two school friends have turned their back on the gods and embraced monotheism. They are secretly members of a group called the "Soldiers of the One". Zoe and her friends run away to Gemenom, where they hope to contribute to the monotheistic cause. They don't get very far. One gets cold feet and doesn't even get on the maglev train to the starport. And, while on the train, another reveals that he is carrying bombs strapped around his middle. Which he promptly detonates.
Daniel Graystone and Adams meet at the enquiry into the terrorist attack. Adams' wife and daughter were on the same carriage as Zoe and her suicide bomber school friend.
It's not hard to see where the story will go. Graystone is struggling with his robot, his daughter has created an AI. Put the two together and you have a… Cybernetic Lifeform Node (which is, I must admit, a particularly naff backronym). This, then, is the genesis of the Cylons.
Adams' role in the story is less immediately obvious. Towards the end of the pilot, he admits his family name was originally Adama, and vows to change it back. This certainly explains his connection to Battlestar Galactica, if not to the story of Caprica. Because up until that point, he has only been used by Graystone, chiefly by approaching his Ha'la'tha contacts and asking them to steal a chip created by a competitor which Graystone needs to load Zoe-R into the Cylon. Adama's payment for this will be an AI of his dead daughter.
One of the things that made Battlestar Galactica such compelling viewing was its full-frontal assault on the difficult subjects not normally tackled by sf television series. Perhaps sometimes it tried too hard to be edgy, and so sacrificed rigour for the issue of the week. Opening Caprica with a terrorist bombing shows the series certainly plans to continue Battlestar Galactica's dramatic use of contentious topics. While the programme makers have married this to a religious war – monotheism vs pantheism – they've also demonised the monotheistic worldview by defining it using only a black and white moral framework. There's no reference to a creed, or a body of law, only the repeated insistence that morality is polar and imposed on humanity by their god. It feels overly simplistic, as if the monotheistic cult were invented by Zoe and her teenage friends.
Also appealing in Battlestar Galactica was the care and depth of detail with which its world had been built. Admittedly, it's easy enough to create a futuristic, and not quite recognisable, world when the programme is almost exclusively set inside various spaceships. It's harder to do for a programme set in a city – especially if the city is not entirely CGI. Caprica uses production design to show that it predates Battlestar Galactica, but it doesn't quite work. Hats and old-fashioned suits are not enough. Of course, Caprica of sixty years prior to Battlestar Galactica is not going to map on any comparison between now and a US city of the 1940s. But there are enough differences between the two Earth time periods – not just the clothes; but the cars, the sensibilities, the technology… – to at least suggest that Caprica doesn't really feel as though it takes place sixty-eight years before Battlestar Galactica.
Also somewhat problematical is Graystone's motivation. He's a fat cat captain of industry. He wants his Cylon to succeed because it means a huge contract from the Caprican government. Zoe-R is a means to an end – on first meeting her in the V-space nightclub, he dismisses her as a sophisticated software construct, not a true AI. Yet he offers to create a similar AI of Adama's dead daughter. Not his wife, but his daughter. And Adama comes close to seriously considering the offer, even though he has a son (who grows up to become Commander Adama of Battlestar Galactica).
According to Caprica's makers, the programme will be a soap opera of sorts, focusing on the Graystone and Adama families. A rich industrialist with a low ethics threshold versus a lawyer who denies his crime syndicate background as a matter of personal morality sounds way too much like a loaded scenario, especially given the simplistic moral framework the Cylons are plainly going to inherit from Zoe-R… Nonetheless, I suspect it will be addictive viewing and I plan to buy the Season One DVD boxed set of Caprica when it is released in UK later this year.


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It's a fairly popular idea today to say that Jesus' predictions in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21) pointed to a dual fulfillment. In other words, some say, Jesus foretold events that took place before or during the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in 70 AD, but that this was only a precursor to an ultimate fulfillment of those same predictions in the far distant future. There are plenty of indications within the text of the Olivet Discourse which show that this is not possible, and Michael Fenemore points out a number of these indications in this 2004 article.
J. Stuart Russell, in his 1878 book, "Parousia," offered yet another proof that Jesus didn't promote a dual fulfillment: the complete absence of any such interpretation in the words of Luke, Paul, James, Peter, John, or any inspired author of the New Testament. Russell's book was endorsed by Charles Spurgeon, who said that it "throws so much new light upon obscure portions of the Scriptures, and is accompanied with so much critical research and close reasoning, that it can be injurious to none and may be profitable for all." This is what Russell said concerning the idea of dual fulfillment in the Olivet Discourse, particularly Matthew 24:34/Mark 13:30/Luke 21:32.
"There is not a scintilla of evidence that the apostles and primitive Christians had any suspicion of a twofold reference in the predictions of Jesus concerning the end. No hint is anywhere dropped that a primary and a partial fulfillment of His sayings was to take place in that generation, but that the complete and exhaustive fulfillment was reserved for a future and far distant period. The very contrary is the fact. What can be more comprehensive and conclusive than our Lord's words, 'Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till ALL these things be fulfilled'? What critical torture has been applied to these words to exhort from them some other meaning than their obvious and natural one!
How has γενεά [the Greek word for "generation"] been hunted through all its lineage and genealogy to discover that it may not mean the persons then living on the earth! But all such efforts are wholly futile. While the words remain in the text their plain and obvious sense will prevail over all the glosses and perversions of ingenious criticism. The hypothesis of a twofold fulfillment receives no countenance from the Scriptures. We have only to read the language in which the apostles speak of the approaching consummation, to be convinced that they had one, and only one, great event in view, and they thought and spoke of it as just at hand."
("The Parousia: The New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord's Second Coming," J. Stuart Russell, 1878, page 545)
Indeed, the New Testament is riddled with statements of a fast-approaching consummation of "the end-times." Peter said that the day of Pentecost was a fulfillment of the last days prophesied by Joel (Acts 2:16-17). Hebrews 9:26 says that Jesus put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (i.e. His work on the cross) at the end of the age. James talked about greedy people already storing up earthly treasure "in the last days" (James 5:1-3). Peter said that "the end of all things" was at hand in his own day (I Peter 4:7). John said that it was "the last hour" when he wrote one of his epistles (I John 2:18). Etc. Etc. Etc.
David Green has compiled a thought-provoking list of 101 "time-indicator" passages clearly showing that the authors of the New Testament believed this consummation was just around the corner in their own time, and that they were united in holding to this idea. Where did they get this idea? They got it from the words of Jesus.


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More specifically:
Q: How do you save your marriage when your husband/wife doesn't want to try?
A: You get a divorce.
That's not meant to be funny. And you probably aren't laughing. This is a problem that many people face, and unfortunately, the real answer to the question is: you don't. If the other person doesn't want to try, there's nothing more you can do. You can't just try twice as hard. And why would you want to? God, that's so much trying. And trying is just the worst. If your marriage is in trouble, and the person you're married to doesn't seem to care, you should get out. Get out now. And save all that "trying" energy for something worthwhile. Like, learning Chinese. Or glassblowing. Or starting a band. Or doing Sudoku. (Do people still do that? Is that a thing you have to try at? We don't really know.) The point is, your energy is better spent doing literally ANYTHING ELSE other than working on your marriage. It sucks. But you'll be glad when you know Chinese and you're not spending all your time and energy trying to save your marriage to a dummy.
A List of Other Things That Are NOT Worth Your Energy:
2) Middle school math — You'll only use it in high school.
3) Sometimes 5th grade math — You will literally NEVER use an improper fraction.
4) Making a cake "from scratch"— What is this "scratch" anyway? It sounds disgusting. Don't bother mixing together your own sugars and sifting flour when you can buy cake mix for 97 cents that is perfect every time.
5) Trying to be a better person — YOU ARE FINE.
6) Trying to be more patient — Good idea. Have fun wasting your life, waiting around for stuff.
7) Working on forgiveness — Seems like a waste of time when you could channel that energy into despicable acts of revenge.


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ASE-certified mechanics use Mobil products to keep engines running smoothly, rotate tires to ensure even wear and longevity
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Choose Between Two Options
- $ for a conventional oil change with tire rotation ($ value)
- $ for a one year V.I.P. Service Membership Package ($ value)
The V.I.P. package includes:
- Three oil changes, each with a 19-point evaluation
- Three tire rotations
- Free mechanical checks and battery tests
- $30 off any service over $150
- Free tire repair
- Free loaner car, subject to availability
Tire Rotation: Safely Rolling Along
If you haven't recently had your tires rotated, you shouldn't skip this step. Read on to learn exactly why.
In the long run, a near miss can cause as much trouble as a full-on fender bender. Each time you slam on the brakes, your front tires take a hit, and, already bearing the brunt of the car's weight, they wear down a little faster than their rear counterparts. But by rotating tires every 5,000 miles or with every oil change, car owners can maintain an egalitarian workload and ensure that each tire takes a crack at all four wheel positions. This even distribution will pay off in the long run, as it reduces tread wear across all the wheels and keeps drivers from hydroplaning—which they can do even at moderate speed given as little as 10 millimeters of water on the road.
Not all cars and tires are the same, so mechanics exercise caution when performing a rotation. They should always start by checking the owner's manual as well as the tire manufacturer for recommendations and requirements for rotation patterns. For instance, staggered wheels—or those with bigger front tires—cannot be moved from front to back, and unidirectional wheels can't shift from side to side. But, no matter the make or model of the car, tires need to be rotated regularly, if not for the sake of safety, then at least to preserve the validity of tire-mileage warranties.


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Editor's note: Arthur Milnes, an award-winning Canadian journalist, is the Inaugural Fellow in Political History at Queen's University Archives in Kingston, Canada and the editor of "Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: A Canadian Tribute" (2011 McGill-Queen's University Press and the Queen's School of Policy Studies ). He can be reached at email@example.com
Kingston, Ontario, Canada (CNN) -- Though Georgia is a continent and an ocean away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, we can be confident that an 86-year-old man in that state knows full well the fears the Japanese cleanup crews are experiencing.
The Georgian's name? James Earl Carter, the 39th president of the United States. Almost 60 years ago, and then a young U.S. Naval officer working at the dawn of the nuclear age with the U.S. atomic submarine program, Carter was physically lowered into a damaged nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, Canada, and exposed to levels of radiation unthinkable today after an accident.
"We were fairly well instructed then on what nuclear power was, but for about six months after that I had radioactivity in my urine," President Carter, now 86, told me during an interview for my new book in Plains in 2008. "They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now. It was in the early stages and they didn't know."
Despite the fears he had to overcome, Carter admits he was animated at the opportunity to put his top-secret training to use in the cleanup of the reactor, located along the Ottawa River northwest of Ottawa.
"It was a very exciting time for me when the Chalk River plant melted down," he continued in the same interview. "I was one of the few people in the world who had clearance to go into a nuclear power plant," he said.
"There were 23 of us and I was in charge. I took my crew up there on the train."
On December 12, 1952, the NRX research reactor at Chalk River Laboratories suffered a partial meltdown. There was a power surge and as a result some fuel rods melted after rupturing. Millions of liters of radioactive water ended up in the reactor building's basement. The crucial reactor's core was left unusable. It was later rebuilt and worked for decades before its retirement in the early 1990s.
At the time, Carter was based in Schenectady, New York, and working closely with Adm. Hyman Rickover on the nuclear propulsion system for the Sea Wolf submarine. He was quickly ordered to Chalk River, joining other Canadian and American service personnel.
When he was running for president in 1975-76, Carter briefly described this experience in his book, "Why Not the Best?"
"It was the early 1950s ... I had only seconds that I could be in the reactor myself. We all went out on the tennis court, and they had an exact duplicate of the reactor on the tennis court. We would run out there with our wrenches and we'd check off so many bolts and nuts and they'd put them back on. ...
And finally when we went down into the reactor itself, which was extremely radioactive, then we would dash in there as quickly as we could and take off as many bolts as we could, the same bolts we had just been practicing on. Each time our men managed to remove a bolt or fitting from the core, the equivalent piece was removed on the mock-up."
Atomic Energy of Canada, a Crown corporation owned by the federal government in Ottawa, still operates nuclear facilities at Chalk River today but the aging systems have caused political controversy in Canada in recent years.
Carter biographer Peter Bourne, a close friend and adviser to Carter, believes the Chalk River experience had a lasting impact on the president, influencing him when he had to confront nuclear issues while leading the western alliance.
"My sense is that up until that point in his career, (Carter) had approached nuclear energy and nuclear physics in a very scientific and dispassionate way," he told me in a separate interview.
"The Chalk River experience made him realize the awesome and potentially very destructive power he was dealing with. It gave him a true respect for both the benefits but also the devastatingly destructive effect nuclear energy could have. I believe this emotional recognition of the true nature of the power mankind had unleashed informed his decisions as president, not just in terms of having his finger on the nuclear button, but in his decision not to pursue the development of the neutron bomb as a weapon."
In his 1995 foreign policy memoir (co-authored by Ivan Head), "The Canadian Way," the late Canadian prime minister, Pierre Trudeau -- in office from 1968 to 1979 and 1980-1984 -- made it clear that fellow world leaders had great respect for Carter on nuclear and non-proliferation issues due to his pre-White House work in the nuclear field.
In his inaugural address, Carter said he would work towards the goal of ridding the Earth of nuclear weapons, and it is a quest he continues today as a former president.
While in the White House, Carter signed the SALT II nuclear arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union. According to his memoir, "Keeping Faith," he also asked that Vice President Walter Mondale receive full briefings on his possible role in a nuclear exchange and was shocked to learn that no previous second-in-command had been so informed. "It was obvious to me that ... the president might be incapacitated and (the vice president) had to be fully qualified to assume his duties."
As the Japanese workers struggle in their dangerous work, there's no doubt Jimmy Carter's thoughts and prayers have been directed their way. Unlike most of us, he truly understands their fears.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Arthur Milnes.


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Plane Waves
We've derived a "wave equation" from Maxwell's equations, but it's not clear what it means, or even why this is called a wave equation. Let's consider the abstracted form, which both electric and magnetic fields satisfy:
where is the "Laplacian" operator, defined on scalar functions by taking the gradient followed by the divergence, and extended linearly to vector fields. If we have a Cartesian coordinate system — and remember we're working in good, old so it's possible to pick just such coordinates, albeit not canonically — we can write
where is the -component of , and a similar equation holds for the and components as well. We can also write out the Laplacian in terms of coordinate derivatives:
Let's simplify further to just consider functions that depend on and , and which are constant in the and directions:
We can take this big operator and "factor" it:
Any function which either "factor" sends to zero will be a solution of the whole equation. We find solutions like
where and are pretty much any function that's at least mildly well-behaved.
We call solutions of the first form "right-moving", for if we view as time and watch as it increases, the "shape" of stays the same; it just moves in the increasing direction. That is, at time we see the same thing at that we saw at — units to the left — at time . Similarly, we call solutions of the second form "left-moving". In each family, solutions propagate at a rate of , which was the constant from our original equation. Any solution of this simplified, one-dimensional wave equation will be the sum of a right-moving and a left-moving term.
More generally, for the three-dimensional version we have "plane-wave" solutions propagating in any given direction we want. We could do a big, messy calculation, but note that if is any unit vector, we can pick a Cartesian coordinate system where is the unit vector in the direction, in which case we're back to the right-moving solutions from above. And of course there's no reason we can't let be a vector-valued function. Such a solution looks like
The bigger is, the further in the direction the position vector must extend to compensate; the shape stays the same, but moves in the direction of with a velocity of .
It will be helpful to work out some of the basic derivatives of such solutions. Time is easy:
Spatial derivatives are a little trickier. We pick a Cartesian coordinate system to write:
We don't really want to depend on coordinates, so luckily it's easy enough to figure out:
which will make our lives much easier to have worked out in advance.
Smooth Dependence on Initial Conditions
Now that we've got the existence and uniqueness of our solutions down, we have one more of our promised results: the smooth dependence of solutions on initial conditions. That is, if we use our existence and uniqueness theorems to construct a unique "flow" function satisfying
by setting — where is the unique solution with initial condition — then is continuously differentiable.
Now, we already know that is continuously differentiable in the time direction by definition. What we need to show is that the directional derivatives involving directions in exist and are continuous. To that end, let be a base point and be a small enough displacement that as well. Similarly, let be a fixed point in time and let be a small change in time
But now our result from last time tells us that these solutions can diverge no faster than exponentially. Thus we conclude that
and so as this term must go to zero as well. Meanwhile, the second term also goes to zero by the differentiability of . We can now see that the directional derivative at in the direction of exists.
But are these directional derivatives continuous. This turns out to be a lot more messy, but essentially doable by similar methods and a generalization of Gronwall's inequality. For the sake of getting back to differential equations I'm going to just assert that not only do all directional derivatives exist, but they're continuous, and thus the flow is .
Control on the Divergence of Solutions
Now we can establish some control on how nearby solutions to the differential equation
diverge. That is, as time goes by, how can the solutions move apart from each other?
Let and be two solutions satisfying initial conditions and , respectively. The existence and uniqueness theorems we've just proven show that and are uniquely determined by this choice in some interval, and we'll pick a so they're both defined on the closed interval . Now for every in this interval we have
Where is a Lipschitz constant for in the region we're concerned with. That is, the separation between the solutions and can increase no faster than exponentially.
So, let's define to be this distance. Converting to integral equations, it's clear that
and thus
Now Gronwall's inequality tells us that , which is exactly the inequality we asserted above.
Gronwall's Inequality
We're going to need another analytic lemma, this one called "Gronwall's inequality". If is a continuous, nonnegative function, and if and are nonnegative constants such that
for all then for all in this interval we have
That is, we can conclude that grows no faster than an exponential function. Exponential growth may seem fast, but at least it doesn't blow up to an infinite singularity in finite time, no matter what Kurzweil seems to think.
Anyway, first let's deal with strictly positive . If we define
then by assumption we have . Differentiating, we find , and thus
Integrating, we find
Finally we can exponentiate to find
proving Gronwall's inequality.
If , in our hypothesis, the hypothesis is true for any in its place, and so we see that for any positive , which means that must be zero, as required by Gronwall's inequality in this case.
Another Existence Proof
I'd like to go back and give a different proof that the Picard iteration converges — one which is closer to the spirit of Newton's method. In that case, we proved that Newton's method converged by showing that the derivative of the iterating function was less than one at the desired solution, making it an attracting fixed point.
In this case, however, we don't have a derivative because our iteration runs over functions rather than numbers. We will replace it with a similar construction called the "functional derivative", which is a fundamental part of the "calculus of variations". I'm not really going to go too deep into this field right now, and I'm not going to prove the analogous result that a small functional derivative means an attracting fixed point, but it's a nice exercise and introduction anyway.
So, we start with the Picard iteration again:
We consider what happens when we add an adjustment to :
We call the small change the "variation" of , and we write . Similarly, we call the difference between and the variation of and write . It turns out that controlling the size of the variation gives us some control over the size of the variation . To wit, if then we find
Now our proof that is locally Lipschitz involved showing that there's a neighborhood of where we can bound by . Again we can pick a small enough so that implies that stays within this neighborhood, and also such that . And then we conclude that , which we can also write as
Now, admittedly this argument is a bit handwavy as it stands. Still, it does go to show the basic idea of the technique, and it's a nice little introduction to the calculus of variations.
Uniqueness of Solutions to Differential Equations
The convergence of the Picard iteration shows the existence part of our existence and uniqueness theorem. Now we prove the uniqueness part.
Let's say that and are both solutions of the differential equation — and — and that they both satisfy the initial condition — — on the same interval from the existence proof above. We will show that for all by measuring the norm of their difference:
Since is a closed interval, this maximum must be attained at a point . We can calculate
but by assumption we know that , which makes this inequality impossible unless . Thus the distance between and is , and the two functions must be equal on this interval, proving uniqueness.
The Picard Iteration Converges
Now that we've defined the Picard iteration, we have a sequence of functions from a closed neighborhood of to a closed neighborhood of . Recall that we defined to be an upper bound of on , to be a Lipschitz constant for on , less than both and , and .
Specifically, we'll show that the sequence converges in the supremum norm on . That is, we'll show that there is some so that the maximum of the difference for decreases to zero as increases. And we'll do this by showing that the individual functions and get closer and closer in the supremum norm. Then they'll form a Cauchy sequence, which we know must converge because the metric space defined by the supremum norm is complete, as are all the spaces.
Anyway, let be exactly the supremum norm of the difference between the first two functions in the sequence. I say that . Indeed, we calculate inductively
Now we can bound the distance between any two functions in the sequence. If are two indices we calculate:
But this is a chunk of a geometric series; since , the series must converge, and so we can make this sum as small as we please by choosing and large enough.
This then tells us that our sequence of functions is -Cauchy, and thus -convergent, which implies uniform pointwise convergence. The uniformity is important because it means that we can exchange integration with the limiting process. That is,
And so we can start with our definition:
and take the limit of both sides
where we have used the continuity of . This shows that the limiting function does indeed satisfy the integral equation, and thus the original initial value problem.
The Picard Iteration
Now we can start actually closing in on a solution to our initial value problem. Recall the setup:
The first thing we'll do is translate this into an integral equation. Integrating both sides of the first equation and using the second equation we find
Conversely, if satisfies this equation then clearly it satisfies the two conditions in our initial value problem.
Now the nice thing about this formulation is that it expresses as the fixed point of a certain operation. To find it, we will use an iterative method. We start with and define the "Picard iteration"
This is sort of like Newton's method, where we express the point we're looking for as the fixed point of a function, and then find the fixed point by iterating that very function.
The one catch is, how are we sure that this is well-defined? What could go wrong? Well, how do we know that is in the domain of ? We have to make some choices to make sure this works out.
First, let be the closed ball of radius centered on . We pick so that satisfies a Lipschitz condition on , which we know we can do because is locally Lipschitz. Since this is a closed ball and is continuous, we can find an upper bound for . Finally, we can find a , and the interval . I assert that is well-defined.
First of all, for all , so that's good. We now assume that is well-defined and prove that is as well. It's clearly well-defined as a function, since by assumption, and is contained within the domain of . The integral makes sense since the integrand is continuous, and then we can add . But is ?
So we calculate
which shows that the difference between and has length smaller than for any . Thus , as asserted, and the Picard iteration is well-defined.
Continuously Differentiable Functions are Locally Lipschitz
It turns out that our existence proof will actually hinge on our function satisfying a Lipschitz condition. So let's show that we will have this property anyway.
More specifically, we are given a function defined on an open region . We want to show that around any point we have some neighborhood where satisfies a Lipschitz condition. That is: for and in the neighborhood , there is a constant and we have the inequality
We don't have to use the same for each neighborhood, but every point should have a neighborhood with some .
Infinitesimally, this is obvious. The differential is a linear transformation. Since it goes between finite-dimensional vector spaces it's bounded, which means we have an inequality
where is the operator norm of . What this lemma says is that if the function is we can make this work out over finite distances, not just for infinitesimal displacements.
So, given our point let be the closed ball of radius around , and choose so small that is contained within . Since the function — which takes points to the space of linear operators — is continuous by our assumption, the function is continuous as well. The extreme value theorem tells us that since is compact this continuous function must attain a maximum, which we call .
The ball is also "convex", meaning that given points and in the ball the whole segment for is contained within the ball. We define a function and use the chain rule to calculate
Then we calculate
And from this we conclude
That is, the separation between the outputs is expressible as an integral, the integrand of which is bounded by our infinitesimal result above. Integrating up we get the bound we seek.
The Existence and Uniqueness Theorem of Ordinary Differential Equations (statement)
I have to take a little detour for now to prove an important result: the existence and uniqueness theorem of ordinary differential equations. This is one of those hard analytic nubs that differential geometry takes as a building block, but it still needs to be proven once before we can get back away from this analysis.
Anyway, we consider a continuously differentiable function defined on an open region , and the initial value problem:
for some fixed initial value . I say that there is a unique solution to this problem, in the sense that there is some interval and a unique function satisfying both conditions.
In fact, more is true: the solution varies continuously with the starting point. That is, there is an interval around , some neighborhood of and a continuously differentiable function called the "flow" of the system defined by the differential equation , which satisfies the two conditions:
Then for any we can get a curve defined by . The two conditions on the flow then tell us that is a solution of the initial value problem with initial value .
This will take us a short while, but then we can put it behind us and get back to differential geometry. Incidentally, the approach I will use generally follows that of Hirsch and Smale.


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Taiwan's Next Media Animation takes a jab at Sony following its event announcing the PlayStation 4, which was a no-show.
Taiwanese animator Next Media Animation is taking yesterday's Sony PlayStation 4 event to task.
Sony announced its next-generation video game console at a press event in New York, but the PS4 itself was a no-show.
Sony says the PS4 features a PC-like body architecture, x86 CPU, enhanced PS GPU, 8GB of unified memory, a local storage hard drive, and an updated DualShock 4 controller.
The animation group created a video mocking the PS4 at yesterday's press event. Sony treated members of the press to experience what using the next-generation console might feel like with live demonstrations, but did not actually show the video game console or hint at a price point.
Watch the video below. Parental discretion is advised due to mild animated nudity and violence.
This story originally appeared on CBSNews.com.


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About a year ago, I wrote a couple of blog posts where I reflected on the mix of languages I used when reading books between English, French and Spanish and about the format of the books I read, whether electronic or paper books. After having shared last week my 2016 reading list, this is just a short post to update the two tables I included in those posts:
Reading language
From 2010 to 2015 I read mostly in English. This is something I changed in the second half of 2015 and in this 2016 I have continued with a more balanced approach, with 42% of the books I read being in English, 33% in Spanish and 24% in French. I believe I will continue with a similar approach in this 2017.
Reading format
In 2016 I have continued with the same ratio of electronic to paper books than in the previous years. As I read more books in 2016 than in any other previous year, I have also read more electronic books, hopefully this will lead to the amortization of the e-reader I have in this year or the next (I estimated here its amortization in about 20 e-books read with it, the first batch of 10 already completed).