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You can read the abstracts here:
This posting is more about the first one. The second one is interesting enough for it's own posting, but that will have to wait until another blog.
Here is a supplemental FAQ on the trial from Dr. Faustman's lab:
Here is the original clinical trial paperwork (for comparison) from the FDA:
Some news coverage (there is a lot more):
(note the WSJ reporter describes 6 treated patients, when the abstract is clear that there were only 3)
Scott King's blog on this research. (He is more optimistic than I am):
Everyone wants a one sentence summary of results. Unfortunately, this research as described in the abstracts, doesn't have a good one sentence summary. But I've provided three to choose from:
- An optimistic summary: A low dose of BCG shows some effect on people with long established type-1 diabetes, and that is so unusual that it is a good result, worthy of follow up.
- A neutral summary: A tiny study was done, but the information in the abstract is so limited that it can not be evaluated, so we must wait for the paper and the additional information it contains.
- A pessimistic summary: The data that was supposed to be the primary results of the trial were not included in the abstract. The results that were reported are so small and so vague that nothing good can be concluded from them. More worrisome, the study reported in many ways is a step backwards from the study that was discussed at it's start.
Dr. Faustman's research theory is that raised TNF levels would cure or help to cure type-1 diabetes. No data presented in the abstract supports that idea, because no TNF data was presented. Dr. Faustman's clinical theory is that giving people BCG would cure or help to cure type-1 diabetes (by raising TNF levels). The very tiny amount of data presented here is unclear because the effect was seen in 2 of 3 treated patients, but also in 1 of 3 untreated patients (who came down with "mono"), and at the tiny numbers of patients involved, it's hard to interpret those results. No data on the size or duration of the effect was presented in the abstract. The study reported now is much smaller than the study described at it's start (in FDA paperwork). An interesting reaction was seen in one patient who came down with Epstein-Barr virus infectious mononucleosis (commonly known as "mono" or EBV). That data is the focus of a separate abstract.Please read below for lots of details and specifics. Marks like this: [d0] refer to extra discussion at the end of the posting.
Before Discussing the Study
Before even discussing the results of this study is is necessary to discuss two very important points. In light of these two points, I think the best thing to do, might be to just wait for the paper. (On the other hand, the rest of this post is my attempt to analyze the abstract, so I'm not really following my own advice. :-)
First, I only have access to the abstract, a few short conversions with various people, a few short emails with Dr. Faustman, and a "FAQ" document that she sent me. Abstracts are required to be very short (often only a few hundred words), so can not contain all the important details. Also, Dr. Faustman doesn't have time to reply to every question that comes up (especially since a short abstract leaves many questions unanswered). Even if she did have time to answer every question; all those answers together would basically be the paper, and the paper is not yet published. So the bottom line, is that there are several critical unanswered questions, and we will all just need to wait for the paper. I expect a major update to this posting when the related paper is published.
Second, because this study only involved giving 3 patients BCG, even with the extra information from a paper, the results are likely to be almost meaningless, because of the tiny size of the study. In my opinion, only in extremely rare cases where the results are extraordinarily obvious will 3 treated patients yield a useful result. (Obviously, Dr. Faustman has a different opinion, and that is discussed very briefly below.)
The Study and What Was Reported
Patients were randomly assigned into two groups: 3 people were dosed with BCG, and 3 people were given a placebo. These were all people who had type-1 diabetes for a long time (average 15 years). The treated group were given two small doses of BCG, one month apart. They were followed for a total of 20 weeks. In addition, there were also 6 "clinical controls" (who did not have type-1 diabetes), and two other patient "reference" groups: 58 people who had type-1 diabetes and 17 who did not [d1]. These two reference groups were not given anything, but were monitored. The patients were monitored for this data: autoreactive T-cells, regulatory T-cells, GAD autoantibodies, and C-peptide.
There were two results reported:
1. Transient increases in the number of circulating dead autoreactive T cells against insulin. (The abstract did not say if these increases were statistically significant, or which group of patients they were compared to. For this discussion I will assume the most positive possible interpretation: that the increase was statistically significant and that it was in comparison to the placebo group.)
2. C-peptide levels rose transiently above baseline levels. (In this case the abstract says specifically that the rise was statistically significant and in email Dr. Faustman said the comparison was in the same patient: before vs. after treatment and that it was true of two patients in the BCG group and also the patient who came down with EBV in the placebo group.)
Some terminology:
"Autoreactive" refers to T-cells which attack the body's own beta cells. In other posts, I refer to these as "bad killer T-cells", because they attack the wrong cells causing type-1 diabetes.
"C-peptide" is a chemical that your body makes only when it also makes insulin. So measuring that is really measuring your body's ability to make it's own insulin. Also, C-peptide is an FDA approved marker for progress towards a cure of type-1 diabetes.
"Statistically significant" means the change was unlikely to be due to chance or luck. In general, only statistically significant findings are taken seriously by the scientific community.
"Clinically significant" means different enough so that the patient would notice or gain some benefit from the difference. Phase-I trials are often not clinically significant; that often comes later.
There are several large areas of discussion on this study:
First, Why was the study size so small?
Except in a few very rare situations (such as complete cures in all cases), a study that only treats three people is very unlikely to provide unambiguous results. When you are looking for slight improvements, or even medium improvements, three people just isn't enough to rule out random chance. All the people who work with statistics, who gave me opinions on this research, commented on this point. The abstract acknowledges the tiny size of the study, by calling it a "proof-in-principle" study. But no matter what it is called: it is the smallest phase-I clinical trial that I have ever seen. For comparison, phase-I trials of already approved drugs (similar to BCG) include: Anakinra dosed 15, Etanercept dosed 18, AAT dosed 15, etc. So a 3 person study really stands out as being much smaller than the others.
Why were there so few people in the study? Remember: the published plan for the study at it's start was for dosing about 12 people, not 3. There are three common reasons a study is small: 1. money, 2. recruiting, and 3. safety. But this study was well financed with about 10 million US dollars (and using an inexpensive, unpatented drug, too), had many volunteers lining up, and there were never any safety issues. So why not enroll 25 people, like they planned to? What happened?
Obviously, Dr. Faustman does believe that 3 people is enough to lead to significant results, and felt that the small number of people was offset by the large number of blood tests given to each person. The FAQ document and Dr. Faustman herself suggest that by doing a lot of tests on a very small number of people, they can attain significant results. The FAQ document makes several mentions of the number of blood tests done as part of this study (1012), as evidence that the study was large enough. However, standard practice is to measure studies by number of patients involved, not number of blood tests. Especially in this trial, where it looks like 3 patients were given BCG, but approximately 84 (58+17+3+6) were not, that suggests that over 96% of the blood tests were run on people who didn't get the drug being tested. So the large number of blood tests does not accurately reflect the size of the study.
Second, why was a new "reference group" added to the study? And more generally, why was the study design so complex with so many different groups of patients?
The abstract refers to reference patients. These were patients that either had type-1 or did not, but they were not treated. This group was not mentioned in the original description of the trial. The second reported result (the C-peptide change) compared the treated group to this reference group. The original design compared the treated group to a placebo group, and this is a common comparison to make. So there are obvious questions about why it was added, and why not just compare the treated patients to the placebo patients.
More generally, the study included 5 different groups (treated, placebo, comparison, reference with type-1 diabetes and reference without type-1 diabetes). That's a lot of different groups, and it is not clear to me why they were all needed. It is also unusual. The common thing is to compare the treated group to the placebo group, and that was the original design of this study.
Finally, there are the issues with the size of the various groups. If you start out with a 3 person group treated with BCG, then it makes perfect sense to have 3 or maybe even 6 people in the placebo group, (they had 3) but it's not clear from the abstract what the data from those patients was used for. On the other hand, a 58 patient "reference" group seems unusually large. There was a 17 person group that didn't have type-1 diabetes, in addition to a separate 6 person "comparison" group that also didn't have type-1? I am looking forward to reading the paper to learn why all this was done, rather than do the simple thing.
Third, what were the size of the effects seen?
This abstract did not contain either the size of any effect, nor their durations, so I can not comment on how big the results were or how long they lasted. We will all need to wait for the paper for that. The size of the effects seen (especially the TNF, C-peptide, and autoreactive T-cell levels) are critical to understanding these results. [d2]
Fourth, why were TNF levels not reported in the abstract?
The essence of Dr. Faustman theory is this:
Fifth, what was the result of the primary outcome measure? Why were dead T-cells reported on, but not live ones?
The first goal of a trial is to report it's primary outcome measure. For this study, the researchers clearly specified "concentration of autoreactive t-cells" as the primary outcome in their FDA paperwork. The published abstract says that this data was gathered, but does not report it. Obviously, I hope that this data will be published in the paper or poster (and is statistically significant). But right now: nothing is nothing.
If this was a commercial company, the failure to report on the primary outcome would be a clear signal that the trial had failed. End of story; end of discussion.
Levels of dead autoreactive T-cells are listed as being statistically significant, and this is an interesting finding, but it is not a replacement for data on live autoreactive T-cells. It is the live ones that matter; they cause type-1 diabetes. The implication from the dead T-cell data is that the bad cells are being killed off. If true, this is great news. But dead T-cells are an indirect measurement, while reporting a drop in live T-cells would be a direct measurement, and it was what the original design described.
Sixth, discussions of dosing.
This study apparently used the low (vaccine dose) of BCG, and Dr. Faustman is talking about using larger doses to get better results in the future. And I agree that if small doses lead to small results, then it makes sense to try larger doses. So we'll all need to wait for the paper what the current results are. Remember: the abstract had no results numbers.
Seventh, the difference between a Phased Clinical Trial and a Case Report.
Dr. Faustman has two abstracts in ADA (links above), and it is important to remember the differences between them, and not mix them up or combine them. The first is a report on a Clinical Trial. Clinical trials are structured programs where people are given treatments and the results are measured. The second abstract is a Case Report, which is a report from a doctor on an unusual occurrence in a patient. In this case, it is an unusual occurrence in someone enrolled in a clinical trial. Phased trials are part of a path to find out if a treatment works and get it approved. Case reports are basic research which can start a line of research. Phased trials are at the end of a research program, case reports usually at the start. The difference is often 5 or 10 years of work.
Eight, why is this study so much different (and in many ways worse) than the study first registered and started 3 years ago?
The study (as completed and reported) is very different than the study (as registered on the FDA's clinical trials site). In particular:
- The reported study was much smaller (6 vs. 25 people).
- The reported study included two groups of patients which were not included in the original description at all, and these new groups were roughly 12 times bigger than the placebo/treated groups described in the original filing (75 vs. 6).
- TNF was one of the secondary outcomes of the planned trial, but was not reported in the abstract.
Ninth, what about the money?
I don't want to talk too much about money. After all, a cure (or even much improved treatment) would be worth every penny no matter what the cost. The funding goal for this phase-I study was US$ 10 million. That would make this the most expensive phase-I clinical trial aimed at curing type-1 diabetes that I have ever encountered. At the same time, with 3 dosed patients, it is also the absolute smallest phase-I trial that I have ever encountered. Even if you divide it by the 1012 blood tests, that's almost $10,000 per test.
The following information are rumors which I picked up from people who were at ADA in San Diego or associated with Dr. Faustman's lab. None of them are in the published abstracts, so I don't know if they are accurate or not:
- The effects described as "temporary" in the abstracts actually lasted two weeks.
- The effects that were described as statistically significant, were not clinically significant.
- A paper is in process to be published in a well known and respected scientific journal. (I have not gotten an OK to include the journal's name, so I'm not).
- TNF data was collected as part of the trial, even though it is not included in the abstract (and I asked specifically about the EBV patient).
- There was a poster for the second abstract (the case study of EBV), but not for the first abstract (the more general BCG trial). Or maybe this poster covered both abstracts, because there was plenty of BCG data on it? (And I've tried to get a PDF of that poster. No luck yet. If you were there, and got the thumb drive with all the posters on it, and this poster is there, please email it to me. Thanks!)
- Autoreactive T-cell data was on the poster.
When I realized that this entire abstract was based on giving 3 people BCG, I was dumbfounded. In the final analysis, we -- the people who funded Dr. Faustman -- paid about 10 million US dollars, waited 3 years, and now we get results based on three people? Three people! It's completely shocking. Even more so when you realize that part of the reason BCG was chosen was because it was known to be both safe and inexpensive!
For me, one of the most worrisome things about this clinical trial, is how much it has changed since it started years ago, and all for the worse. It started out being a straight forward clinical trial, much like any other test of an already approved drug: about 12 people would get the drug, about 12 would not, results could be compared. Somewhere along the way the study included 5 different groups. And the size of the treatment group and the placebo group actually shrank! (And not just a little bit: to one forth their original size). The resulting trial has some size oddities that I've never seen before. Two simple examples (which I've already touched on):
- First, they followed and ran tests on a total of 84 patients, and ran a lot of tests on each one. Yet only 3 people actually got BCG. That's a huge imbalance. Normally clinical trials are either 50/50 or 2/3s 1/3. Meaning either half the people get the treatment and half don't, or 2/3s get the treatment and 1/3 don't. Occasionally, you get designs with multiple dosing levels, and even there, the placebo group is the same size as each dose. This study is wildly different.
- Second, the study involved a total of 23 people who did not have type-1 diabetes at all. That group is about 4 times larger than the total number of type-1 diabetics in the combined treated / placebo groups. Again, that's very unusual. [d3]
The abstract did answer one question, which is why did we never hear of anyone who was part of the study? Participants of other studies are often quoted in newspapers or they post on internet forums, but I never saw anyone who was actually part of the study in any public space. And now it is clear why: with only 3 people getting BCG (and 3 people in the placebo group) this was a truly tiny study.
Previous Work
My previous blogging on Dr. Faustman's research is here:
- http://cureresearch4type1diabetes.blogspot.com/2008/10/faustmans-research-part-1-history.html
- http://cureresearch4type1diabetes.blogspot.com/search/label/Faustman
- http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/ab stract/22/10/1703
Published in 1999, this study treated honeymoon diabetics with BCG and saw no improvement, compared with an untreated group. From the abstract: "Vaccination with BCG at the time of onset of type 1 diabetes does not increase the remission rate or preserve beta-cell".
- http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/21/10/1691
This study was published in 1998: "BCG vaccination in children who have been recently diagnosed with IDDM does not affect the progressive decline in C-peptide levels or alter the clinical course of the disease."
- http://18.104.22.168/Diabetes/koreamad/JournalSearch_index.asp?year=2000&page=340&vol=24&iss=3
ftp://188.8.131.52/kiss8/27203283.pdf (in Korean)
Published in 2000. Here is the key sentence from their results section: "During follow-up, there was no significant difference in fasting and postprandial 2 hour C-peptides." They then go on to list various good things they did see, in particular there were slight differences in C-peptide and insulin usages, and temporary remission in two patients, but these were not statistically significant. (And remember: this study was of honeymoon diabetics.) Their paper is in Korean, which I cannot read, however the tables are presented in English, and each table says very clearly "The differences between the two groups were not significant."
- http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=11111587
In English the article is entitled "THE CUMULATIVE INCIDENCE OF CHILDHOOD DIABETES MELLITUS IN SWEDEN UNAFFECTED BY BCG-VACCINATION". Published in 1995.
- http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/20/5/767?ijkey=de477936685fbc95cfd98bc52cb120be655acd09&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
Retrospective study on people who had been vaccinated with BCG. Published in 1997. "However, as a whole, results from these analyses fail to support a protective role of BCG vaccination against juvenile-onset IDDM."
- http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/content/full/28/5/1204
Published in 2005. Neonatal vaccination with BCG has no good effect on type-1 diabetes rates: "The cumulative risks for developing islet autoantibodies by age 2 or 5 years were unaffected by BCG vaccination in the first 3 months of life" and "Progression to type 1 diabetes in BCG-vaccinated autoantibody-positive children was significantly faster than in nonvaccinated children" and "No evidence was found that BCG vaccination could prevent against ß-cell–damaging processes leading to type 1 diabetes in genetically at-risk children. The findings do not suggest that BCG vaccination will affect the overall incidence of type 1 diabetes"
The first thing to do is to wait for the paper to be published.
After that, one way to move forward is to change the dose. And Dr. Faustman is already talking about doing that. In a sense, this is the easiest change to make. However, right now, there is no published evidence that it would help. In order to see if this is worthwhile, we will need to see the data comparing TNF to C-peptide data (for all three groups: BCG, EBV, and placebo). If higher TNF leads to higher C-peptide, then it is worthwhile to try higher BCG doses (and other methods, as suggested by EBV) to try to achieve higher TNF results. Hopefully all this will be in the paper.
Another way is to focus on the single EBV patient. This was a very interesting occurrence. One of the patients in the placebo group came down with mono during the trial. That patient apparently had high levels of dead bad killer T-cells and also elevated C-peptide counts. (Although keep in mind the caveats above, especially the lack of actual numbers.) If that one patient had high TNF levels, and high levels of dead bad killer T-cells, and high levels of C-peptide (and that is three very large "ifs"!), and it is not just random luck with one patient (a fourth huge "if"!), and then it could mean that Dr. Faustman is right about TNF helping to cure or treat type-1 diabetes, and suggests that there are things besides BCG that can get us there. So there might be some interesting research to be done there. Of course, with one person, it might just be just some random weirdness.
Some Personal Notes
I have put more hours into this posting than any previous blog entry. One thing that I learned, is that I should not write blog postings based on abstracts alone, when those abstracts don't contain any results data.
I know this will not be a popular posting. However, in the final analysis: if a commercial company, indeed, if any other researcher, had published results that did not include their own primary outcome measurement, everyone would immediately agree that the clinical trial was a failure. And if any other researcher had added (after design) a "reference" group with more than 12 times as many patients as the treated/placebo groups, then again, everyone would immediately clamor for an explanation. And finally, if any other researcher had designed such a tiny experiment, they would be called out for an explanation. Dr. Faustman did all of these things and so I treat her the same way that I would treat any other researcher.
Also, I have spent a lot of time comparing the clinical trial as described in the abstract at the end of the trial, to the clinical trial as described in the FDA paperwork which was submitted at the start of the trial. I know many supporters hate that whole attitude. They think that what Dr. Faustman said three or more years ago, is irrelevant to the results she reports today. They don't want past promises compared to current realities. For me, that attitude ("what is said before doesn't matter to what is given now") is not merely wrong, it is dangerous.
For me, this comparison between what is promised and what is delivered is important information. If someone promises a piece of bread, but gives you a crumb, should you thank them for the crumb, or complain about not getting the bread? Does your opinion change if you were charged for the bread in advance? If the person is, even now, asking for even more money for future loaves? Does possession of a crumb now mean that the bread will be available in the future? Does not delivering the slice of bread now, mean that future loaves will not be delivered as well? The future is always uncertain, and research is all about the future.
I'd like to thank everyone who helped with this posting, either by giving me information, reviewing it, or motivating it by asking insightful questions. All mistakes here are my own, just as all opinions are mine.
I grant permission to anyone to republish this article anywhere they wish, as long as it is not edited (except to fix spelling and grammar). If you wish to republish parts of it, rather than the whole thing, please email me.
Extra Discussion
[d1] I don't know exactly how the 6 "simultaneously studied clinical trial controls" (who according to the abstract did not have type-1 diabetes) were different from the 17 "reference patients" (who also did not have type-1 diabetes).
[d2] Dr. King's blog talks about C-peptide changes measured in pmol/l, which is a very small change, indeed.
[d3] On a few rare occasions I've seen studies that involved people who didn't have the disease being studied, but I've never seen a study with 4x as many people who didn't have the disease, as had the disease and were in the combined treated/placebo groups. Or any other studies that mixed people with the disease and people without it as this study does.
Joshua Levy
All the views expressed here are those of Joshua Levy, and nothing here is official JDRF or JDCA news, views, policies or opinions. My blog contains a more complete non-conflict of interest statement.
Blog: http://cureresearch4type1diabetes.blogspot.com
To Get as Email Join here: http://groups.google.com/group/type-1-diabetes-clinical-trials-news


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Cher Lloyd to Tour This Fall With Fifth Harmony, Who Covered Her Song [Video]
Cher Lloyd will return to the U.S. in September on her I Wish Tour. She will be accompanied by all-female vocal group Fifth Harmony, making it a girl power trek and one with 'X Factor' roots.
Lloyd competed on the same season of British 'X Factor' as One Direction – inexplicably, they both LOST but went on to waaaay bigger success than the artist who did win -- while Fifth Harmony were assembled during Season 2 of the American version of the show. Just call it the "Simon Cowell Knows What He Is Doing Tour!"
The tour is 11 dates strong.
Lloyd is prepping her new album, while the ladies of Fifth Harmony recently covered Lloyd's summer 2012 smash 'Want U Back,' which put her on the pop music map. They actually got creative and customized the cover, mashing it up with another Lloyd single in the form of 'With Ur Love.' It was a clever reimagining and the harmonies are sweeter than a cherry pie with Reddi Wip topping. Nice work, gals.
You can watch that below after the tour dates.
Cher Lloyd x Fifth Harmony? We are so there!
Cher Lloyd + Fifth Harmony I Wish Tour 2013
9/ 6 — Washington, D.C. | Fillmore
9/ 7 — New York, N.Y. | Best Buy Theater
9/ 8 — Philadelphia, Pa. | Electric Factory
9/ 11 — Montreal, QC | Corona Theater
9/ 13 — Toronto, ON | Phoenix Concert Theatre
9/ 14 — Cleveland, Ohio | House of Blues
9/ 15 — Chicago, Ill. | Vic Theatre
9/ 16 — Minneapolis, Minn. | First Avenue
9/ 18 — Denver, Colo. | Ogden
9/ 22 — San Francisco, Calif. | Regency
9/ 23 — Los Angeles, Calif. | Club Nokia at L.A. Live
Watch Fifth Harmony Cover Cher Lloyd

subset: commoncrawl


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As I noted in my previous post about my trip to Colombia, I played the National Sport of Colombia, Tejo in Medellin and it was one of the coolest parts of my trip.
Tejo is the national sport of Colombia and predates colonial times. The original name, "zepguagoscua," was changed to Tejo – the shortened "te jodes" or "you fuck yourself." (Pardon my Spanish.) The game is somewhat similar to bocce and shuffleboard in that you play on a court with two stacks of mud on either side.
In this mud there is a metal circle or "mano" as they called it in Medellin, on which you place triangles filled with gunpowder or "mechas." (In Bogota, they play with 4 mechas, and Medellin, 2.) Each player is given a metal disc or "tejo" for which to throw across the lane underhanded to try to hit the mechas and set off the explosion.
This does not happen often, so the points system is as follows –
- If you get closest to the mano out of the other players, you get 1 point.
- If you hit the explosive but the tejo lands outside the mano, it's 3 points.
- If you hit the mecha and it lands inside the mano, but doesn't explode, it's 6 points.
- If you successfully ignite the mecha, it's 9 points.
Now that you know the way to play, here's what happened to Nico and I…
We had planned to meet up with a bunch of people at the tejo court at 4 pm. Well, Nico and I were the only people that showed up. We walked towards the bar to ask if we could play – there was one court open – and everyone on the court stopped and stared. Who were these gringos? We asked the bartender if we could play and at first it seemed like he wasn't going to let us – the first grouchy person we had met in Colombia – and so I prodded and he begrudgingly agreed to let us play. He handed us the smallest tejos they had and prepared the courts.
Then, like that scene in Romancing the Stone when the Colombians realize that she is de Joan Wilder, the author, people welcomed us to tejo with open arms.
A guy named Jaime from the court next to us, immediately came over and explained the rules to us. He placed the mechas in the correct spot and showed us the proper throwing technique.
We decided that we should start close as to not accidentally hurt anyone with a wild throw, and work our way back as we got the hang of it. Now, I must admit that I can be a bit of a jock – I pick up games quickly, drawing on my dance and basketball background. For me, the throw seemed somewhat natural, calling on bowling but stepping left then right to have the same momentum as the throwing arm.
We gave it a few tries, all the while getting pointers from Jaime. One of my tejos got seriously stuck in the mud, so another Jaime showed me how to use the crowbar to unhinge it from the mud. Tejo is a bit of a dirty sport, in that your hands get covered in mud.
Then, after only a few tries, I hit my first mecha and it exploded! I raised my arms in triumph as the entire court cheered for me. I was filled with orgulla. A few tries later, Nico ignited a mecha too! We were a hit! Gringos who could play tejo!
I got a lot of compliments saying that I had a graceful throw and that my technique was better than guys who had been playing for 20 years. It was awesome.
Except that once Nico and I's egos were inflated and we stepped back and back, farther from the goal, we got worse and worse. It might've also been that we were never in a proper groove as people continued to interrupt us, often to not even talk about tejo at all. There was also the amazing offer by the Jaime's to share aguardiente – the anise flavored liquor of Colombia – together. Dream come true.
We were also given pointers by Esteven, a current national tejo player and another man, Ernesto, who was a national champion but is now retired. Ernesto told me that I had to go slower and concentrate on the mechas. I tried to explain to him that I couldn't go slower and hit the target because I wasn't strong enough from that distance, but he wouldn't listen to that excuse.
Nico and I decided to call it quits without hitting another mecha the rest of the night.
Everyone wanted pictures with us before we left and I was even made an honorary member of the red team.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed learning a new sport and hanging out with such friendly and helpful people.


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PLEASE NOTE: This Firmware needs to be performed ONLY if you have locked yourself out of your tablet (forgotten password, etc). Your tablet is pre-installed with OTA Firmware capability (Over The Air). OTA Updating provides an update via our servers that streams the process of updating a Custom ROM. As long as you are connected to a WiFi network and have over 50% battery, you can receive the updates wirelessly. To check if updates are available, on your tablet go to Settings then select Software Update then select Update: check for Updates. If there is an update available, the tablet will walk you through the process. If you update your tablet using the process below, you are overwriting the ROM with the same ROM the unit came with. There is no need to do this unless you have locked yourself out of the tablet (forgotten password, etc).
IMPORTANT! PPlease make sure that you backup your files to a computer before you update your tablet's firmware. All content will be deleted. You can re-download your purchased and/or free apps from the Amazon Appstore (or other appstores) once the firmware update is completed. Be sure to use the USB cord that came packaged with your tablet, it is item specific.
READ ME: This step must be performed on a computer. Trying to download this file on your tablet will result in an unsuccessful firmware download as the file cannot be unzipped on our Uniden tablets. Please read through the instructions before proceeding. We recommend printing these instructions so you can refer to them while performing the firmware upgrade. At this time please close all running programs on your computer which are not related to this upgrade.
- On your computer, please log on to www.southerntelecom.com/unidentabletsupport/firmware
- Select "UTAB71_Android 4.0v1_OTA_download link".
- Then select "Save As"(we recommend saving it to your computer's desktop where you can easily find it when needed). Once the file has finished downloading, you must unzip the file.
Note: you will need to have a zip program such as 7-Zip, WinZip or WinRAR to unzip the files. Download 7-zip Here
- Go to your computer's desktop (or wherever you saved the file to) and extract the file "UTAB71_Firmware_4.0v1_OTA"
- Double-click the folder "UTAB71_Firmware_4.0v1_OTA". There will be three files in the folder as shown below:
- Double-click the folder named "LiveSuite V1.07", the following screen will appear:
- Double-click the application named "LiveSuit.exe". If the following screen appears, go to step 8, if not, go to step 12.
- Click "OK"
- Double-click on the application "LiveSuitPack_version1.07_2011026.exe", the following screen appears:
- Click on "Install this driver software anyway", then wait for the driver to install.
- Double-click the application named "LiveSuit.exe" again , the following screen will appear:
- Click"Yes".
- Click "Format".
- Click "Next".
- Click "Yes". The following screen will appear:
- Use the drop-down window titled "Look in" to find the folder titled "UTAB71_Firmware_4.0v1_OTA" (which you previously downloaded to your desktop).
- Then double-click on the .img file named "UTAB71_Firmware_4.0v1_OTA.img" and the following screen will appear:
- Make sure the tablet is powered OFF. You can double check this by quick-pressing the power button to see if the tablet is still powered on
- Plug the large end of the USB cable to an available USB port on your computer.
- With the tablet powered OFF, press and HOLD the HOME button (do not release HOME until told to do so). While holding the HOME button down, insert the small end of the USB cable into the tablet's USB port, then wait for the following pop-up window to appear on your computer's screen:
When this pop-up window appears, you can release the HOME button, then click "Yes".
- Press and HOLD the HOME button (do not release).
- Insert the USB cord into the tablet (while holding HOME).
- Wait for the LiveSuit pop-up window to appear.
- Release theHOME button.
- Click"Yes" on the pop-up window.
The following pop-up window will appear:
- Click "Yes". The tablet will start upgrading. Be sure you DO NOT unplug the tablet from the computer during this process. You will see the yellow process bar filling. When it reaches 100%, wait for the "OK" message to appear.
- When the yellow process bar reaches 100%, wait for the following screen to appear:
- Click "OK" then disconnect your tablet from the computer.
- Your UTAB71 tablet has now been upgraded to UTAB71_Firmware_4.0v1_OTA.img..


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Have you heard THIS song by Laura Story?
Right now, I think it's our theme song.
And the other day I thought: I've been praying that He would have mercy on us.
What if this is His mercy?
What is this?
the waiting...the quiet...the dreaming...the longing...the hoping...
I have to believe it is.
**the print came from 517 Creations. Click to get the free printable!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Mercies in Disguise
Posted by April at 9:40 AM
Labels: mercy and peace
1 comments:
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of people living in poverty in U.S. suburbs surpassed the number of poor in cities over the past decade, driven by strong growth in overall suburban populations, according to an analysis released on Monday.
The change is posing a challenge to some traditional U.S. approaches to fighting poverty, which were aimed primarily at poverty in urban settings, the Brookings Institution study found.
The number of poor people living in suburbs rose 64 percent between 2000 and 2011, reaching 16.4 million, it showed. The number of poor people living in urban areas increased 29 percent to 13.4 million.
"Despite the fact that 'poverty in America' still conjures images of inner-city slums, the suburbanization of poverty has redrawn the contemporary American landscape," authors Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube wrote in "Confronting Suburban Poverty in America."


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Majestic Software MJC8 Q400 add-on for Prepar3D v4
MJC8 Q400 is a Prepar3D v4 add-on, built after the Bombardier ™
Dash-8 Q400 turboprop aircraft. It has started as a software framework
for the FNPT level flight simulator and later separated into an
independent project, which provides essentially the full cockpit
simulator features under the FSX framework.
In addition, to the advanced simulation of the aircraft systems,
this product also contains an independent Flight Dynamics Engine (FDE),
capable of running at a much higher rate than the default P3D FDE, and
free of the inherent problems pertaining to the default aircraft flight
dynamics. Our Flight Dynamics is capable of providing the realistic
wind simulation, icing effects, enhanced propeller physics including
the propeller discing and auto rotation, effects of the propeller
airstream on the wing lift and the icing effects on the propeller,
wings and the flight surfaces.
The product is packaged into 3 editions, differentiating in the price
and the included features. For more information on the precise
differences between the editions, please visit our Product page. The
MJC8 Q400 add-on for Prepar3D v4 is a highly realistic
rendition, built after the Bombardier (tm) Dash8 Q400 aircraft. There
are 3 available editions, differentiating in the price and the included
"PILOT" is an edition, designed for home flight simmers, who want a
state-of-the-art hardcore add-on but do not require the complex
features, such as the instructor panel system monitoring, circuit
breakers simulation, failures simulation, or the shared cockpit.
"PRO" edition is for advanced users, or airline pilots wishing to
improve their knowledge of the Dash8 Q400 airplane. This edition has
all the features of the PILOT edition, plus the Heads-up Guidance System
simulation, the shared cockpit feature and several more (please see the
comparative table below for the full list).
"TRAINING" edition is dedicated to the airlines, wishing to have a good
quality inexpensive solution for the Dash8 Q400 technical and
procedural training for both technical staff and the flight crews.
System requirements: Any PC capable of running Prepar3D v4.
The table below enumerates all the main features per version.
The latest version of the Majestic Q400 Pilot Edition, i.e. any patches or incremental updates will be available from the
User Area at the Majestic
Software Support site
Majestic - MJC8 Q400 32-bit PRO Edition
@ $71.95
Carenado - CT182T Skylane G1000 HD Series for FSX and P3D
@ $32.95
Majestic - MJC8 Q400 64-bit PRO Edition for P3D v4
Majestic - MJC8 Q400 32-bit PILOT Edition
@ $46.95


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The ability to run both console and graphical programs securely on a remote system using SSH brings you a great deal of freedom. When the communications link to that remote system has high latency, however, running interactive programs such as a text editor on the remote machine can become a real test of your patience. The bcvi project lets you edit files on a remote system using gvim (or another editor) on your local desktop machine to avoid the latency. Even without latency issues, bcvi is a handy tool when you want to use gvim to edit a file on a server that does not have gvim or the X libraries installed.
bcvi works by creating a port-forwarding "back-channel" when you connect to a remote system with SSH. On the remote system, when you execute bcvi, it uses this back-channel to tell your desktop machine to start gvim and fetch the file you want to edit on the remote machine. This all relies on gvim supporting SSH URIs so it can download the file from the remote machine over SSH and put it back again once you are done editing.
There are no packages of bcvi for openSUSE, Fedora, or Ubuntu. The bcvi script is presented inline on its home page, and can also be downloaded. The bcvi script must be installed on both the client and server machines, which you can do with the following commands:
# chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/bcvi
# dos2unix /usr/local/bin/bcvi
# ls -lh /usr/local/bin/bcvi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8.2K 2008-06-23 14:59 /usr/local/bin/bcvi*
The same bcvi script is used in three contexts: a daemon process that invokes gvim on your desktop machine in response to editing requests that you start on remote hosts; to wrap the invocation of SSH, setting up additional port forwarding so bcvi on the remote system can talk to the bcvi daemon process on your desktop machine; and on remote systems to initiate an edit request on your desktop machine.
When you SSH into a remote machine with bcvi the
TERM environment variable has additional information added to it so bcvi on the remote machine can work out how to talk to your desktop machine. On the remote machine you will most likely want to add the following two lines to your shell's ~/.profile file. The first line lets bcvi take its information out of the TERM environment variable, leaving TERM the way it would normally be set. The second line makes typing
vi on the remote machine execute
bcvi, which will open gvim on your local machine. On most Linux systems, bash is the default shell, so the file to edit is ~/.bash_profile.
alias vi=bcvi
You also need to ensure that bcvi is running as a daemon on your desktop machine so that when you execute bcvi on the remote machine it can communicate with the local bcvi daemon to open the file for editing. You can start the daemon automatically by adding the following line to your ~/.bash_profile:
Instead of having to remember to wrap your SSH invocations with bcvi, you can use a shell alias on your desktop machine to wrap all connections, as in the code below. I found that if I added the alias to ~/.bash_profile instead of ~/.bashrc it did not take effect when logging in to a local X window session -- so although adding the code to the .bashrc means it is executed every time you create a shell, you are guaranteed that the alias will be in effect all the time.
With these modifications to the .bash_profile file on your desktop machine and the servers you are connecting to, you can edit files as shown below. Because you have set up vi as a shell alias to bcvi, you don't have to change your command line at all in order to edit a file on the remote system with gvim on your desktop machine. The screenshot includes this interaction, where I have also saved the file and executed cat on the remote machine to verify that the updates were saved.
[ben@virtual_server ~]$ date >bcvi-test-file.txt
[ben@virtual_server ~]$ vi bcvi-test-file.txt
You can use a text editor other than gvim with bcvi as long as the text editor you want to use can load and save files over SSH. For instance, the gedit text editor can load and save over SSH:// URIs. To allow bcvi to edit using gedit, you need to add the following procedure to the bcvi Perl script, perhaps just after the
execute_vi function.
sub execute_gedit {
my($self, $alias, @files) = @_;
s{^}{ssh://$alias/} foreach @files;
system('gedit', '--', @files);
With the above new function in bcvi, you can execute the following command on the remote host to have gedit run on your desktop machine and load the specified file. If you like this, you can add the gedit alias to the ~/.bashrc file on the remote host to allow such editing without having to remember to change the command line.
alias gedit="bcvi --command gedit"
If you use bcvi to connect to a machine but do not include the
bcvi --unpack-term command in the startup files for the remove shell (~/.bash_profile as shown above) then you will get an annoying debug message when you exit your SSH connection, as shown below:
Last login: Mon Jun 23 15:16:13 2008 from virtual_client
[root@virtual_server ~]#
[root@virtual_server ~]# exit
BCVI_CONF=virtual_server:localhost:5009': unknown terminal type.
Connection to virtual_server closed.
bcvi is a handy tool to know about if you maintain a system over a high-latency network link. If the file you are editing is only a few kilobytes large but the round-trip latency makes even moving the cursor painfully slow, bcvi should make for a quicker, frustration-free edit.


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Tyres in Haverhill
Conveniently located in Bury St Edmunds, A14 Tyres Limited is easy to reach from Haverhill. Carrying one of the widest ranges of tyre brands and sizes in Bury St Edmunds you can book online (pay in store), call us or simply drive in. For your convenience we've provided driving instructions from Haverhill to our location in Bury St Edmunds.


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Chow Fun Recipes
Zucchini Chow Fun Noodles (Vegan Recipe)
My husband Lulu is back after more than a week spent in China for work. As a vegetarian, he was pleasantly surprised by the wide array of delicious vegan foods available. He raved about a broccoli chow fun he had there. So I prepared another green version, using Vietnamese, ready-made bánh ướt (you could use previously cooked, wide, brown rice noodles for an even healthier dish), leeks and zucchini.
Since the noodles were pre-cooked. It took less than 10 minutes to stir-fry the vegetables. It was quick and simple, healthy and very tasty. It was my way of hinting to Lulu that he won't have to fly to Shanghai or Beijing for so long!
Full Recipe...
Vegetarian Chow Fun Noodles (Hu Tieu Recipe)
Chow fun is called hủ tiếu xào chay (literally "vegetarian rice noodle stir fry") in Vietnamese and consists of wide, chewy rice vermicelli noodles stir-fried with tofu and vegetables. I made the dish chay ("vegetarian") but you can certainly add meat, such as beef, which will make the dish all the more delicious.
I make these noodles very often at home. I could eat freshly made hủ tiếu by the platter! It's quick and simple, healthy and very tasty. Living in the Bay Area means that I'm lucky enough to have fresh rice noodles readily available. I just need to drive to downtown San Jose. San Jose has a large Vietnamese community so it's very easy to find all sorts of my favorite ethnic ingredients.
Full Recipe...


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A local gym has been accused of discrimination � and the accuser is an Olympic medal winner.
A local gym has been accused of discrimination � and the accuser is an Olympic medal winner.
�Between endorsements and speaking engagements, I�ve done well over the years,� said Matt Splitz, 63. �My wife and I recently moved to the area, so I figured the best way to meet people was to get a part-time job at a local gym.�
Splitz says he responded to a help wanted ad posted by Dumbbell�s Gym of Piles Boulevard in Kinston.
�According to the ad, the gym management was looking for a part-time trainer with a sports background,� Splitz said. �If having won eight gold medals and one bronze in the 1972 Olympics for swimming wasn�t enough, I also worked as a personal assistant/bong loader for Michael Phelps in 2008 and 2012.�
While most Olympians tend to stay in shape after their glory years, Splitz decided he loved pancakes more than squat thrusts.
�I had the most sadistic swim coach on the planet,� Splitz said as he held out a mirror to see if he was wearing pants. �If I even looked at a bowl of ice cream he�d make me swim an extra five laps. I swore that if I ever got out of the swim game I�d eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.�
And eat Matt Splitz has. As of this writing � from a raw tonnage perspective � Splitz is hovering around the 515-pound mark.
�I figure anyone coming into Dumbbell�s looking for a trainer would rather be led by someone who identifies with their struggle,� Splitz said. �Being a tad on the heavy side myself, I�d rather work out with someone who�s put a few railroad cars of cookies away in his day. Those skinny little trainers with their perfect abs, shaved backs and clipped nails don�t know what it�s like to be rolled back into the ocean by a bunch of meddling do-gooders when you�re just trying to soak up some sun.�
�SOME sun? That dude could soak it all up and have room for the moon and a few rings of Saturn too,� said Richard Little, manager of Dumbbell�s Gym. �If Matt Splitz does so much as a jumping jack in here, we�ll have a new fault line within the hour.�
Little said he initially thought he was being set up for a prank when Splitz applied for the job.
�I just knew I was on one of those hidden camera shows,� Little said. �I kept looking to see if Ryan Seacrest was hiding under Splitz�s shirt.�
While researching Kinston, Splitz heard stories of college graduates being turned away from potential employers because having a degree meant they�d want to be paid a living wage. He says he never thought his weight would keep him from getting a job.
�Not only did they not give me the job, they wouldn�t even let me in the building,� Splitz said. �That smarmy manager said he was afraid one of the moons that was orbiting me might damage their building.�
Splitz said American society is constructed to keep people overweight.
�From an early age, we�re told to get an education so we can get a good job,� Splitz said. �Once we get that job, the ones of us who are lucky enough not to be laid off will get slammed with work, thus only giving us a few minutes for meals. What�s the solution? Just look to the hundreds of fast food commercials we�re inundated with on a weekly basis.
�After we�ve ballooned up to the point someone is tying a rope to our ankles outside a Macy�s on Thanksgiving, they shoot a few gym commercials our way.�
When asked who �they� were, Splitz was vague in his response.
�I heard it on a radio talk show,� Splitz said. �The Bilderberg�s and Kanye West are tied up in it somehow.�
Nowhere in the Dumbbell�s employee handbook is an employee�s weight, girth, circumference or ability to clap their hands mentioned. When presented with this information, the Dumbbell�s corporate office deferred comment to their attorneys, who in turn issued the following statement:
�No comment.�
Jon Dawson�s columns appear every Tuesday and Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or email@example.com. Purchase books, music and Jay Leno�s conscience at jondawson.com.


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Tyler wrote:Source of the post Yardworks brand? I think mine was $20 when I got it there a few years ago. Not as nice as a Scott's but it does the job at half the cost.
Yep, Yardworks.
Tyler wrote:Source of the post Good thing you returned the 50lb bag. Haha. I assume you have right around 0.2 acres, including the house?
According to Polk County assessor's site we have 0.215 acres.


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Skip Hire Bucklebury Alley from YourLocalSkipHire.co.uk
For skip hire in Bucklebury Alley, look no further than YourLocalSkipHire.co.uk. Our skip hire experts have worked alongside everyone from builders to homeowners, providing a huge range of skips that suit any project or budget.
Make sure you're hiring the skip that meets your requirements by checking our sizing guide before requesting a quote. As a rule of thumb, a home clearance will need a six yard skip, while larger projects will need a skip with a larger capacity.
Book your YourLocalSkipHire.co.uk skip by typing your postcode into the box above. We'll then get back to you with a no-obligation quote for delivering the skip you want to hire to your Bucklebury Alley address. It couldn't be simpler! You can also give us a call on 0330 1130 700 to discuss your skip hire needs.


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Linda Riley Mitchell, chief financial officer, Chicago Housing Authority
Linda Riley Mitchell has joined the Chicago Housing Authority as chief financial officer. She brings to the job, extensive experience in treasury, bond financing, external assurance and administration. In her most recent role as CFO of the Illinois State Board of Education, Mitchell managed a staff of 160 in areas including finance, technology and school business consulting. This included the implementation of an intricate student customer information system that today tracks the education of two million students statewide. Formerly the vice president of finance services for the Tribune Co., Mitchell also was CFO of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority. She presided over a $1.6 billion capital plan for the expansion of the McCormick Place and the development of Navy Pier. Mitchell, a CPA, completed the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government Executive Leadership Program for Educators and is graduate of Marquette University.
Copyright © 2019, Chicago Tribune


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The last few decades have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of publications on ancient magic. It seems that one can hardly pick up a publisher's catalog without finding advertisements for new monographs and conference volumes devoted to the subject.1 While this represents a vigorous renewed interest in the topic and healthy re-engagement with the age-old debate of whether one should distinguish magic from religion, it also makes it difficult for new works to remain up-to-date or engaged with the continually burgeoning interdisciplinary interest. Fortunately, the book under review here is a welcome exception. A slightly revised version of the author's doctoral dissertation (Universität Münster 2004), this masterful tome will doubtless become an important resource and focus of debate.2 It is comprehensive, well organized, and shows a greater methodological sophistication than many works on magic to date, especially those that focus on the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible.
At the heart of this book, and informing its conclusions, is the long debated relationship between magic and religion. Is magic something that is distinct from religion or is it an undifferentiated aspect of it? Early scholarship on ancient magic asserted a sharp dichotomy between magic and religion. This dichotomy was conceived of in various ways. For some, magic represented an earlier (often called "primitive") evolutionary point in the history of a religion. For others magic was to be distinguished from religion in that its structure and goal was individual and not social. Still others asserted that the difference between them was one of process (magic is mechanistic and requires praxis, whereas worship requires moral rectitude) or intent (magicians coerce and manipulate, whereas worshipers supplicate).
However, as scholars have increasingly become aware, a great deal of evidence from the ancient world flies in the face of these assertions, and so increasingly contemporary scholarship has begun to emphasize important areas of overlap between magic and religion. Various scholars, whose work focuses on Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Hellenistic world, have begun to suggest that we should view both magical and religious practices as part of a continuum that encompasses both individual and communal forms of piety. For some cultures, this overlap is so extensive that scholars have urged that the term "magic" be abandoned altogether. Others, especially those whose research focuses on the religions of late antiquity, have argued that the term "magic" is best understood as the imagined or feared polemical projection of one individual or culture onto another. For them "magic" is a dirty word for other peoples' religious practices, a label that marks "other-ness," a stand-in for unsanctioned, foreign, or illegal forms of religious activity.3 It is into this thorny and culturally specific debate that this book enters.
Chapter One examines the sociology of knowledge concerning the study of magic by placing it within the larger context of comparative and theoretical approaches to religion and ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Studies. Here one finds a thorough but concise survey of the many theories that have influenced the study of ancient magic (e.g., those of the early modern philosophers, structuralists, evolutionists, sociologists, psychologists, phenomenologists, anthropologists, and historians of religion). This provides a useful context for the next section in which Schmitt surveys the study of magic by scholars of the Hebrew Bible (he divides this material into studies that appeared before World War II4 and those that appeared afterwards). This section is then followed by brief descriptions of magic as treated in Egyptology, Assyriology, and the Classics. Schmitt concludes this interdisciplinary survey by considering the methodological and hermeneutic difficulties in reconstructing ancient conceptions of magic based on textual and archaeological, as opposed to living, resources, and by listing a series of subjects that one might reasonably hope to investigate given the limitations of the evidence. These various subjects (i.e., dimensions of the study of magic) become the focus of Schmitt's examination.
Chapter Two investigates the cosmological bases of ancient conceptions of magic and ritual practice as found in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ugarit and Syria (Phoenicia), Hatti, and Israel.5 Here Schmitt establishes and underscores the close relationship between performative practice and communication with the divine world, and how preoccupations with order and chaos inform cosmological, mythical, and ritual conceptions. His geographical and comparative approach allows him to establish a number of common conceptions shared by the peoples of the ancient Near East and leads him to formulate a functional definition of magic.
Magie ist eine ritualsymbolische Handlung, die durchgeführt in einer adäquaten Situation, durch Nutzung bestimmter göttlich enthüllter Medien (Symbol, Wort und Handlung) und kosmischen wissens, ein bestimmtes Ergebnis vermittels symbolischer Antizipation der göttlichen Intervention erzieht (pp. 92–93).
For Schmitt, magic is central to religion and communication with the divine. Its believed effectiveness depends on the practicioner's mythological realization of the ritual, for which the ritual serves as precedent and justification.6 Ritual materials used by the practitioner serve as symbolic media for communication with the divine, and thus as tools for realizing the effectiveness of the act. With this definition in mind Schmitt proceeds to a detailed study of magic in the Hebrew Bible.
He begins in Chapter Three by turning his attention to those Hebrew words most commonly associated with magic. The terms are organized into three units: "Harmful Magic" (i.e., kāšap [passim], 'ōrrê-yôm [Job 3:8], and šōḥar [Isa 47:11]); "Professional Magicians and their Fields of Activity" (i.e., lāḥaš [passim], nāḥaš [passim], ḥōber [Deut 18:11, Ps 58:6], ba'al lāšōn 'îš lāšōn [Qoh 10:11, Ps 140:12], ḥakam ḥarāšîm [Isa 3:3], and lāṭ [Exod 7:22]); and "Loanwords" (i.e., 'aššāp [Dan 1:20] and ḥarṭom [Exod 8:3]). Schmitt examines separately those terms that have been proposed but remain outside scholarly consensus (i.e., 'āwen [Ps 10:7], šāw' [Exod 20:7, Deut 5:11], and 'ōkēr [1 Kgs 18:17]). This chapter offers a useful collation and assessment of the linguistic evidence, though here Schmitt appears to have overlooked the root hāgah "mutter" (e.g., hiphil Isa 8:19), noted for its connection to cursing and incantations already by I. Goldziher in 1896.7 One important conclusion reached at this juncture, and revisited in greater detail in Chapter Six, is that one cannot recognize a critical religious attitude toward professional magicians in the early literary prophets until Isaiah. Indeed, one does not find such an attitude present until the Deuteronomistic corpus and exilic and post-exilic prophets.
The fourth chapter is devoted to the performative character of words,8 objects, and various techniques that constitute magical praxis as defined by Schmitt. This includes detailed studies on curse terms found in the Hebrew Bible ('rr, qll, 'lh, qbb, z'm, and nqb) and in epigraphic materials from Syria, Mesopotamia, and Israel. He also examines the ritually charged import of eyes, hands, hair, and other human parts of the body and the use of various materials (blood, flour, hyssop, crimson, cedar wood, water, and oil) in rituals of performative power. Schmitt also studies various terracotta remains and amulets that appear to have possessed performative significance. Useful illustrations are included.
In chapter five one finds exhaustive discussions of figures in the Hebrew Bible who serve as practioners of performative rituals and symbolic acts. Naturally this includes the prophets, priests, and elders, and close examinations of a number of biblical pericopes (especially healing narratives and ritual descriptions).9 This chapter is especially useful in that it considers the social functions of these figures and the roles of editors in shaping the narratives, and because it dialogues with important works by anthropologists (e.g., Mary Douglas) and historians of religion (e.g., Jonathan Z. Smith).
Having laid the methodological and philological groundwork Schmitt devotes Chapter Six to biblical descriptions and definitions of elicit magic and the subject of polemic. Here Schmitt argues that magic played a vital role in the religious and daily lives of the ancient Israelites (at the state, official cult, local, and family levels) and that the polemics against various forms of magic are aimed only at foreign, harmful, and other forms of "unauthorized" magic.
A concluding chapter then follows in which Schmitt summarizes the history of magic as represented in the Hebrew Bible from diachronic and synchronic perspectives. The material analyzed from a diachronic perspective is divided into the following eight sections: 1) The 9th Century bce—the Time of the Great Holy Men; 2) The 8th Century bce—the Differentiation of Ritual Specialists: Magic in the Service of Prophetic Proclamation; 3) Crisis and Reform during the Later Monarchy; 4) Magic in the Deuteronomistic Literature; 5) Magic in the Priestly Literature; 6) Magic in Prophetic Literature of the Exile and Post Exilic Times; 7) Magic in Jewish Literature from the Graeco-Roman Period until Late Antiquity; and 8) Archaeological Finds of the Iron Age II B-C. The synchronic treatment contains one section: "Magic as Cosmological Praxis and Its Socio-Religious Functions." A useful list of abbreviations, a bibliography, and indices then follow.
In many ways this is a bold work. While it may be grouped with a growing number of studies that approach "magic" as a category of ritual practice,10 its integration of the cosmological concepts that inform ritual lend it an innovative theoretical framework.11 This study thus broadens the definition of magic in a way that permits us to see magic in ancient Israel neither as a vestige of earlier "primitive" practices nor as the "negative" influences of its more dominant neighbors (though the issue of influence in general may be worth investigating further). Rather we may see it as an emic system and category of thought whose polemical use in Israel registers an ancient competition for ritual authority brought about by the increasing monopolization of the central cult.
This is an important work for those engaged in the comparative study of ancient Near Eastern magic. It is certain to provoke a useful debate among Bible scholars, theologians, and historians of religion.
[1] I admittedly include my own work here. See, Scott B. Noegel, Joel Walker, and Brannon Wheeler, eds., Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World (Magic in History Series, 8; Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003).
[2] The editors of the AOAT series also should be thanked for producing this work in such a timely manner in order to ensure its immediate relevance. The speedy turn around time, however, does result in the work reading more like a dissertation than a book and in a number of typographical errors. E.g., see inter alia p. 110 where one must read menaḥēš for menaḥēś pp. 115–116 where the diacritic for the ṭ appears is missing on the words harṭom (3X) and lehāṭîm; and p. 336 where one finds a lack of spacing in the Akkadian text quoted there.
[3] The skepticism concerning whether magic is a legitimate category of thought and practice in antiquity informs the tendency to place "magic" in quotation marks—a tendency that has begun to influence biblical scholars. See, e.g., Todd Klutz, ed., Magic in the Biblical World: From the Rod of Aaron to the Ring of Solomon (JSOTSup 245; London: T. and T. Clark International, 2003). Schmitt's research usefully moves away from this tendency.
[4] Though this work is very comprehensive, I note here in chronological order a number of important studies not cited by the author in this section: Anton Jirku, Mantik in Altisrael (Rostok: Rats- and Universitatsbuch druckerei von Adlers Erben, G.m.b.h., 1913); "Zur magischen Bedentung des Kleidung in Israel," ZAW 17 (1917/18), 19–125; Alfred Bertholet, Kulturgeschichte Israels (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1919); Gustav Hölscher, Geschichte der israelitischen und jüdischen Religion (Giessen, Alfred Töpelmann, 1922); S. Mowinckel, Psalmstudien, V: Segen und Fluch in Israels Kult und Psalmdichtung (Kristiana: Videnskapsselskapts Skrifter II, 1924); Franz Dornseiff, Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie (Leipzig: Verlag und Druck von B. G. Teubner, 1925); A. Lods, "Les ideés des Israélites sur les maladies, ses causes et ses remèdies," in K. Budde, ed., Von Alten Testament, Karl Marti zum 70 Geburtstag gewidmet (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1925), 181–193; "Le rôle des idees magiques dans la mentalite isráelite," OTE (London: C. Griffin, 1927), pp. 55–76; "magique hébraïque et magie cananéene," Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuse 7 (1927), 1–16; E. G. Kraeling, "The Real Religion of Ancient Israel," JBL 47 (1928), 133–159; A. Le Fèvre, "La Bible et la Magie," in L. Pirot, ed., Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplement. Vol. 5, (Paris: Librairie Letouzey, 1928-), pp. 732–739; Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, from its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile (Tel Aviv: Mosad Byalik, 1937) (in Hebrew).
[5] The discussion of the contest between Moses and the Egyptian priests (pp. 97–100) appears to be unaware of Scott B. Noegel, "Moses and Magic: Notes on the Book of Exodus," JANES 24 (1997), 45–59.
[6] Given the author's definition of magic, it might have been useful to integrate the following two relevant works: Jørgen Podmann Sørenson, "The Argument in Ancient Egyptian Magical Formulae," AcOr 45 (1984), 5–19; Robert A. Yelle, "Rhetorics of Law and Ritual: A Semiotic Comparison of the Law of Talion and Sympathetic Magic," JAAR 69 (2001), 627–647.
[8] In the discussion on the performative power of words (pp. 124–128), readers should be aware of the following important works not mentioned by Schmitt: I. Rabinowitz, A Witness Forever: Ancient Israel's Perception of Literature and the Resultant Hebrew Bible (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1993); Sheldon W. Greaves, The Power of the Word in the Ancient Near East (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation; University of California, Berkeley, 1996); Sanders, Seth, "Performative Utterances and Divine Language in Ugaritic," JANES 63 (2004), 161–181. The latter article appeared after the book under review was in press.
[9] Schmitt's discussion of Jacob's manipulation of Labans flocks (pp. 302–305) treats this narrative as describing a ritual of performative power. However, the process is well known to those experienced in animal husbandry. See Scott B. Noegel, "Sex, Sticks, and the Trickster in Gen. 30:31–43: A New Look at an Old Crux," JANES 25 (1997), 7–17.
[10] See most importantly Einar Thomassen, "Is Magic a Subclass of Ritual?," in David R. Jordan, Hugo Montgomery, and Einar Thomassen, eds., The World of Magic: Papers from the First International Samson Eitrem Seminar at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 4–8 May 1997 (Norwegian Institute at Athens: Bergen, 1999), pp. 55–66.
[11] Bolstering the author's treatment of the cosmological underpinnings of ancient Near Eastern and Israelite religion are the following studies. Francesca Rochberg, "Heaven and Earth: Divine-Human Relations in Mesopotamian Celestial Divination," in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, pp. 169–185; Mark S. Smith, "Astral Religion and the Representation of Divinity: The Cases of Ugarit and Judah," in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, pp. 187–206.


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The great Jacinta High neck nude lace gown from Elle Zeitoune has sold out. We did have it in8, 10 & 12.
Start a "Find It For Me" to notify hundreds of Australian Boutiques that you're looking for it and then be notified if it comes back in stock.


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Next Photo Back to Generic Hologram Store
We have 200 different designs adhesive tamper-evident security solographic sticker labels security, authentication and protection against counterfeit. These hologram label make size available from 5mm*5mm to 150mm*150mm. Customized special shapes, size, serial number, over printing and barcode printing also is available on these holograms which can have different material, such as tamper evident, high security VOID Tamper Evident, high security HoneycombTamper Evident, high security ORIGINAL Tamper Evident, Transparent Tamper evident, etc.
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Come view this Modern, updated large 98 sqm bright end unit with two bedrooms, one bath apartment available for long term rental. Located on the fourth floor with nice pool views just outside rear balcony.
Large 16 sqm Balcony with high railing is great for entertaining guests. Unit is very light and bright in the living room area.
Apartment can be rented for holiday season for the following rates per month: Min 3 months. If less please write.
- November 40,000
- December (before 23rd) 50,000
- December including x-mas and NewYears 70,000
- January 70,000
- February 60,000
- March 40,000
- 6 month high season rental 45,000
This unit can be rented monthly for only Thirty thousand (30,000) average for 1 year rental. We also have cars available for those who may need a rental car.
Unit available starting October 1st, 2017 on. We also have 1 and 3 bedroom units available in Late September and early October. Thinking about moving apartments ? Come take a look.....
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Rental features:
- Free Parking
- Free Weekly Maid Service
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- Free Use of Pool Table in Common areas
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The Virginia Class Submarine is the first U.S. submarines to be designed for a broad spectrum of open-ocean and littoral missions around the world.
They were designed as a cheaper alternative to the Cold War era Seawolf-class attack submarines, and are slated to replace aging Los Angeles class subs, thirteen of which have already been decommissioned. The Virginia class is tailored to excel in a wide range of war-fighting missions. These include anti-submarine and surface ship warfare; special operation forces; strike; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; carrier and expeditionary strike group support; and mine warfare.
The Virginia Class Submarine has a weapons launch of four 21-inch torpedo tubes & 12 vertical launch system tubes. Its weapon comprises of tomahawk land-attack missiles, Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUV), Mark 48 advanced capability torpedoes, and advanced mobile mines. The New Attack Submarine also features an integral Lock-Out/Lock-In chamber for special operations and can host Special Operations Forces' underwater delivery vehicles.


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Message Board
Sam Weller Message Board
Talk about the novels, new and used books that Weller has written!
Author Weller's Book Reviews
The Bradbury Chronicles
Chicago-based journalist Weller wrote a pleasant, respectful, and authorized 2005 biography of "the man from Mars," born Rae Douglas Bradbury in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920. The book studies Bradbury's Midwestern roots, his restless father, the aunt who nurtured his creative fantasies, his early brief acting career, and his subsequent life as a writer. Bradbury comes across as more ambitious and driven than one might think him to be from his lovely books...


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Getting a first-rate nose job
Many facets of hot rodding are surrounded by style and creativity. Just because something isn't usually found on a car doesn't mean it might not look bitchin' if it can be worked into the mix. It's this type of inventiveness that adds excitement and many times a newfound classic look if worked into the design phase of your project.
On a recent visit to the Rolling Bones Hot Rod Shop in Greenfield Center, New York, we came across Dick DeLuna's '34 Ford coupe in mock-up form, sporting a truly unique front nose to see if the formula might work. To give the car a signature style all its own the team came up with a rarely seen vintage Cockshutt tractor nose and were preparing to adapt it to the frontend of the coupe. With all of the different models of tractors produced over countless decades there are plenty of unique designs available for adaptation into hot rod projects. Let's see just what it takes to bring this distinctiveness into the rodding world.
Once the decision was made to incorporate the nose into the project, the team prepared the coupe for mock-up to see what types of revisions would be required to make it all fit together. Incorporating the stock hood, cardboard hood sides were added and the nose was set in place. A number of measurements were taken and close attention was paid to placement and how it would be mounted to the frame. It was determined that 13-1/2 inches would need to be removed from the rear section of the nose. While wearing safety glasses, a cutoff wheel was used to separate the nose and a flat file was then used to deburr the surface areas. The nose was then media blasted to remove any old paint as well as expose any potential issues in need of attention (there were none).
Team member Ken Schmidt then created a cardboard template of the front of the hood and sides of the coupe to assist in identifying the adjustments needed to flawlessly incorporate the nose section. Seeing the nose sides were extremely flat in their original design, this would require both sides be re-contoured to make the proportions work.
Schmidt proceeded by first disassembling the nose by removing the grille sections and grille center nameplate. He followed by removing the nose side panels where they met the crown by using a cutoff wheel. With the nose completely disassembled the first step was to rework the grille sections and center nameplate seeing as they had suffered some abuse over the years in the agricultural world.
To straighten out the grille bars, a sandbag was used as a base while a number of homespun dollies were worked through a body hammer to remove any minor dents and smooth out the individual bars. It's a good idea to take your time on this and gradually rework the metal. Schmidt continued to use the sandbag with the nameplate section, only this time he worked with a pick hammer on the inside of the letters to make them crisp once again. To regain the original exterior contours a small dolly was anchored in a bench vise and a body hammer was carefully used to rework the original shape to perfection. So the grille sections could be easily mounted to the nameplate centersection, two strips of 1/8-inch steel plate were first mildly contoured to mirror the centersection. The plates were then clamped together and marked for five holes drilled with a 1/4-inch bit using a drill press. Threaded studs were then MIG welded to one plate using a Miller Electric Mfg. Co. Millermatic 35 and final welded to the rear of the center nameplate. A small disc grinder topped with a 40-grit disc was used to smooth everything out.
To reestablish the proportions of the nose sides for a smooth transition to the hood sides Schmidt began the process by adding a graceful contour to each panel using a Mittler Bros. planishing hammer. It's a good idea to wear ear protection during this step as the process is quite loud. Moving the panel slowly from left to right and up and down, the section was gradually worked into its new shape.
Schmidt followed by using a sandbag and body hammer for some minor adjustments to each panel. He then proceeded with a dolly and body hammer to reset the contour of the nose crown and prepare it for the newly contoured sides. Satisfied with the lines, the sides were clamped to the crown and TIG-welded using a Lincoln Electric Precision TIG 225 unit. Be sure to cool your welds as you proceed with an air gun to dissipate the heat and avoid panel warping. To stabilize the nose from flexing a temporary section of steel strapping was MIG-tacked to the bottom rear of the side panels. Schmidt then ground the TIG welds smooth using a disc grinder and 40-grit disc, followed by a combination flat and half-round file for final deburring.
He then returned to the planishing hammer to make a few small contour adjustments. The grille sides were then mocked in place to illustrate the progress made on the nose. To add some devilish good looks to the upper and lower grille corners small sections of flat steel stock were TIG-welded in each area to act as a base. Schmidt used standard welding rod to establish a neat bead line and carefully formed the upper and lower curves using a section of bar stock anchored in a bench vise. Once satisfied with the curves, the rod was clamped and TIG-welded in place, remember to cool your welds as you go. The welds were then ground smooth using a small grinder capped with a 40-grit disc and hand finished with a combination file. For added strength to the inside of the nose, 1/2-inch solid steel rod and 1/2-inch square steel tube was TIG-welded in place, making the unit rock solid.
In order to add the final allure to the nose it was necessary to fabricate a bottom section to tie everything together. Starting with cardboard a simple template was fashioned from which team member John Cintula cut a piece of fir wood to form a buck. Using a combination of grinders and sanding blocks topped with 40-grit paper he was able to create a final shape with perfect contours to accent the nose. A second cardboard template was created approximately 2 inches larger in diameter than the buck. It was then traced onto 18-gauge sheet steel and cut out with a plasma cutter. Schmidt then screwed the buck to the steel and fastened the unit to a workbench where he made the first of four pie cuts per side in order to wrap the steel across the buck's edges. With a body hammer and dolly he then worked the shape to perfection. Note this step takes time to finesse and once completed the section was TIG-welded and ground smooth using a grinder topped with a 40-grit disc followed by a combination file. The completed section was then mocked in place and TIG welded to the bottom of the nose.
Finally bodywork was completed in lead and massaged to perfection. The finished nose looked downright wicked and added a unique signature to the coupe, echoing its post-war styling cues.
Rolling Bones Hot Rod Shop
(518) 893-2646


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Resources & Services
The Careers Network specializes in the early stages of career exploration and planning. Students can get help developing a resume, seeking internships or other experiential learning opportunities.
The Diversity Programs Office (DPO) has positively impacted the academic, professional and personal growth of tens of thousands of underrepresented minority students through a range of programs. The DPO programs and services offered include The Guided Learning Center, supplemental advising, undergraduate scholarships, student volunteer opportunities, and more!
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An electronic time sheet for Engineering bi-weekly employees. Click here to download the Excel spreadsheet.
After completing the time sheet, please submit to your department supervisor.
The Engineering Machine Shop and Industrial Project Lab (IPL) are full services shops that provide the students with the needed tools and equipment to design and manufacture projects. Our mission is to provide a safe and productive environment for all Engineering students.
The Guided Learning Center (GLC) is a resource for students provided by the Diversity Programs Office in the College of Engineering. The Academic Assistance program is designed to include supplemental instructions for first and second year students as well as for the more demanding and challenging courses in the engineering curriculum. This program is provided for engineering students at no cost.
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Our goal in the Mathematics Learning Center is to bring high-quality, friendly, free math help to MSU undergraduates. All you need to bring is your MSU ID!
Our main site is located in Wells Hall room C126A, but there are also five satellite locations in MSU's neighborhoods so help is never far away!
Get free help for 1825, all 100 and 200 level math classes, and even some upper-level courses. Our experienced tutors, trained by the Math Department, will answer your questions in a relaxed, friendly atmosphere. Most of our tutors actually instruct mathematics in MSU undergraduate courses. In addition to tutoring, the MLC also offers practice tests, problem sessions, exam reviews, and online tutoring in selected courses.
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The Statistics Help Room is a great resource for students seeking additional guidance in any statistics course.
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Socorro is Moving! (From 505 to 575), Aug. 27, 2007
by Kathy Hedges
SOCORRO, N.M., Aug. 27, 2007 – OK, everybody, pick up all your stuff and move three steps to the right.
Just kidding. Socorro is moving, but there is no heavy lifting involved.
Beginning on Oct. 7, 2007, Socorro's area code moves from 505 to 575. (Actually, the 575 code works already, but Oct. 7 is the official starting date.)
From Oct. 7 until Oct. 5, 2008 (almost a year later) BOTH area codes will work. After Oct. 5, 2008, ONLY 575 will work.
That gives you a year to
- re-program all your phones
- let all your friends, relatives, business contacts, and other important people know;
- use up all your business cards, letterhead, brochures, and other printed things,
- print new business cards, letterhead, brochures, etc, with the 575 area code.
According to Quest, "Services that operate with automatic dialing equipment may require changes or reprogramming. Some examples are life safety systems, fax machines, Internet dial-up numbers, alarm and security systems, security gates, speed dialers, call forwarding settings, voicemail, and similar services."
You can start RIGHT NOW using the 575 area code and giving out the new number.
Here's the hard part: Remembering which part of the state gets what number.
575: Socorro, T or C, Alamogordo, Carlsbad, Clovis, Deming, Hobbs, Las Cruces, Penasco, Roswell, Raton, Silver City, and Taos are some of the biggest towns changing numbers.
505: Albuquerque, Belen, Los Lunas, Rio Rancho, Santa Fe, Espanola, Farmington, Gallup, Las Vegas, Shiprock, and most of the Navajo Nation, as well as points in between, get to keep 505.
New Mexico Tech wll be changing the template on its web pages so that the phone number on the bottom of every page will have the 575 code.


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The following sections describe adjustments you can make to the operating system, JVM, communication protocols, and persistent data store.
See your system documentation for tuning your operating system.
By default, the broker uses a JVM heap size of 192MB. This is often too small for significant message loads and should be increased.
When the broker gets close to exhausting the JVM heap space used by Java objects, it uses various techniques such as flow control and message swapping to free memory. Under extreme circumstances it even closes client connections in order to free the memory and reduce the message inflow. Hence it is desirable to set the maximum JVM heap space high enough to avoid such circumstances.
However, if the maximum Java heap space is set too high, in relation to system physical memory, the broker can continue to grow the Java heap space until the entire system runs out of memory. This can result in diminished performance, unpredictable broker crashes, and/or affect the behavior of other applications and services running on the system. In general, you need to allow enough physical memory for the operating system and other applications to run on the machine.
In general it is a good idea to evaluate the normal and peak system memory footprints, and configure the Java heap size so that it is large enough to provide good performance, but not so large as to risk system memory problems.
To change the minimum and maximum heap size for the broker, use the -vmargs command line option when starting the broker. For example:
/usr/bin/imqbrokerd -vmargs "-Xms256m -Xmx1024m"
This command will set the starting Java heap size to 256MB and the maximum Java heap size to 1GB.
On Solaris or Linux, if starting the broker via /etc/rc* (that is, /etc/init.d/imq), specify broker command line arguments in the file /etc/imq/imqbrokerd.conf (Solaris) or /etc/opt/sun/mq/imqbrokerd.conf (Linux). See the comments in that file for more information.
On Windows, if starting the broker as a Window's service, specify JVM arguments using the -vmargs option to the imqsvcadmin install command. See Service Administrator Utility in Chapter 15, Command Line Reference
In any case, verify settings by checking the broker's log file or using the imqcmd metrics bkr -m cxn command.
Once a protocol that meets application needs has been chosen, additional tuning (based on the selected protocol) might improve performance.
A protocol's performance can be modified using the following three broker properties:
For TCP and SSL protocols, these properties affect the speed of message delivery between client and broker. For HTTP and HTTPS protocols, these properties affect the speed of message delivery between the Message Queue tunnel servlet (running on a Web server) and the broker. For HTTP/HTTPS protocols there are additional properties that can affect performance (see HTTP/HTTPS Tuning).
The protocol tuning properties are described in the following sections.
The nodelay property affects Nagle's algorithm (the value of the TCP_NODELAY socket-level option on TCP/IP) for the given protocol. Nagle's algorithm is used to improve TCP performance on systems using slow connections such as wide-area networks (WANs).
When the algorithm is used, TCP tries to prevent several small chunks of data from being sent to the remote system (by bundling the data in larger packets). If the data written to the socket does not fill the required buffer size, the protocol delays sending the packet until either the buffer is filled or a specific delay time has elapsed. Once the buffer is full or the timeout has occurred, the packet is sent.
For most messaging applications, performance is best if there is no delay in the sending of packets (Nagle's algorithm is not enabled). This is because most interactions between client and broker are request/response interactions: the client sends a packet of data to the broker and waits for a response. For example, typical interactions include:
Creating a connection
Creating a producer or consumer
Sending a persistent message (the broker confirms receipt of the message)
Sending a client acknowledgment in an AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE or CLIENT_ACKNOWLEDGE session (the broker confirms processing of the acknowledgment)
For these interactions, most packets are smaller than the buffer size. This means that if Nagle's algorithm is used, the broker delays several milliseconds before sending a response to the consumer.
However, Nagle's algorithm may improve performance in situations where connections are slow and broker responses are not required. This would be the case where a client sends a nonpersistent message or where a client acknowledgment is not confirmed by the broker (DUPS_OK_ACKNOWLEDGE session).
The inbufsz property sets the size of the buffer on the input stream reading data coming in from a socket. Similarly, outbufsz sets the buffer size of the output stream used by the broker to write data to the socket.
In general, both parameters should be set to values that are slightly larger than the average packet being received or sent. A good rule of thumb is to set these property values to the size of the average packet plus 1 kilobyte (rounded to the nearest kilobyte). For example, if the broker is receiving packets with a body size of 1 kilobyte, the overall size of the packet (message body plus header plus properties) is about 1200 bytes; an inbufsz of 2 kilobytes (2048 bytes) gives reasonable performance. Increasing inbufsz or outbufsz greater than that size may improve performance slightly, but increases the memory needed for each connection.
In addition to the general properties discussed in the previous two sections, HTTP/HTTPS performance is limited by how fast a client can make HTTP requests to the Web server hosting the Message Queue tunnel servlet.
A Web server might need to be optimized to handle multiple requests on a single socket. With JDK version 1.4 and later, HTTP connections to a Web server are kept alive (the socket to the Web server remains open) to minimize resources used by the Web server when it processes multiple HTTP requests. If the performance of a client application using JDK version 1.4 is slower than the same application running with an earlier JDK release, you might need to tune the Web server keep-alive configuration parameters to improve performance.
In addition to such Web server tuning, you can also adjust how often a client polls the Web server. HTTP is a request-based protocol. This means that clients using an HTTP-based protocol periodically need to check the Web server to see if messages are waiting. The imq.httpjms.http.pullPeriod broker property (and the corresponding imq.httpsjms.https.pullPeriod property) specifies how often the Message Queue client runtime polls the Web server.
If the pullPeriod value is -1 (the default value), the client runtime polls the server as soon as the previous request returns, maximizing the performance of the individual client. As a result, each client connection monopolizes a request thread in the Web server, possibly straining Web server resources.
If the pullPeriod value is a positive number, the client runtime periodically sends requests to the Web server to see if there is pending data. In this case, the client does not monopolize a request thread in the Web server. Hence, if large numbers of clients are using the Web server, you might conserve Web server resources by setting the pullPeriod to a positive value.
For information on tuning the file-based persistent store, see Configuring a File-Based Data Store.