text:
This hotel is a short distance from the airport in a secluded area on a hillside. There is a beautiful view. You do not see the coffee planation from the hotel, you need to take the walking tour. You have no idea how big the plantation is. You have an opportunity to walk through the plantation on the 2.5 hour tour. There is a small fee for the plantation tour. The hotel rooms a nicely appointed, the hotel staff is friendly and the food is very good. The coffee tour is excellent and you will learn a lot about how coffee is grown. We ate all of our meals here, swam in the beautiful pool and enjoyed the hot tub together. This really is a lovely Costa Rican property and would recommend once you arrive in San Jose to stop here first.
- Official Description (provided by the hotel):
- Finca Rosa Blanca Coffee Plantation and Inn is a world class 13 room resort located in the middle of an organic, shade grown coffee plantation and lush colorful gardens, framed by awe inspiring views of the Central Valley below. The recipient of many awards for being a global leader in responsible tourism and luxury, Finca Rosa Blanca Coffee Plantation and Inn is the perfect choice for discerning and knowledgeable travelers who want to be surrounded by beautiful coffee fields while nestled in a cozy world famous hotel awarded with the highest levels of certified sustainability. ... more less
- Reservation Options:
- TripAdvisor is proud to partner with Expedia, Travelocity, Hotels.com, Tingo and Jetsetter so you can book your Finca Rosa Blanca Coffee Plantation & Inn reservations with confidence. We help millions of travelers each month to find the perfect hotel for both vacation and business trips, always with the best discounts and special offers.
- Also Known As:
- Finca Rosa Blanca Coffee Plantation Hotel Santa Barbara
- Finca Rosa Blanca Coffee Plantation And Inn
- Country Inn Heredia
- Finca Rosa Blanca Coffee Plantation & Inn Costa Rica/Santa Barbara


text:
"Self-respect is nothing to hide behind. When you need it most it isn't there.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
1.the overthrow of a government by those who are governed
2.disturbance usually in protest
3.(geology) a rise of land to a higher elevation (as in the process of mountain building)
4.a violent disturbance"the convulsions of the stock market"
5.a state of violent disturbance and disorder (as in politics or social conditions generally)"the industrial revolution was a period of great turbulence"
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UpheavalUp*heav"al (?), n. The act of upheaving, or the state of being upheaved; esp., an elevation of a portion of the earth's crust. Lubbock.
agitation, commotion, convulsion, earthquake, eminence, eruption, excitement, hullabaloo, hysteria, mutiny, revolution, riotousness, storm, Sturm und Drang, turbulence, turmoil, turnover, uplift, uprising, upthrow, upthrust
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war; warfare[Classe]
mouvement violent de révolte sociale (fr)[Classe]
événement historique durable (fr)[Classe]
révolution (bouleversement social) (fr)[Classe]
se révolter (fr)[Classe]
revolutionist; revolutionary; subversive; subverter[ClasseHyper.]
partisan de parti extrémiste (fr)[Classe]
(civil war)[Thème]
(rebel; insurgent; insurrectionist; freedom fighter; mutineer)[Thème]
imprévu (fr)[Thème]
(celerity; velocity; rate; speed; swiftness; fastness; rapidness)[Caract.]
(of short duration; short-lived), (briefness; brevity)[Caract.]
event, happening, incident, occurrence - act, deed, human action, human activity - bring down, overthrow, overturn, subvert - arise, rebel, rise, rise up - radical - freedom fighter, insurgent, insurrectionist, mutineer, rebel[Hyper.]
revolution, turnover, upheaval - insurrection, rebellion, revolt, rising, uprising - revolutionism - revolution - insurgent, seditious, subversive - revolutionary[Dérivé]
civil war[Classe]
acte ou action brève ou rapide (fr)[ClasseParExt.]
révolution (bouleversement social) (fr)[Classe]
turnover; upheaval; revolution[ClasseHyper.]
soudain et imprévu (fr)[Caract.]
group action[Hyper.]
revolutionize - revolt - revolutionary, revolutionist, subversive, subverter - byltingar- (is)[Dérivé]
upheaval (n.)↕
motility, motion, move, movement[Hyper.]
disturb, touch[Dérivé]
upheaval (n.)↕
ground; terrain[Classe]
fold; pleat; plait[Classe]
élément du relief terrestre émergé (fr)[Classe]
terrain, lieu élevé (fr)[Classe]
forme définie (fr)[Classe...]
geography; geographics[Classe]
(ground; terrain), (earth; ground)[Thème]
haut (fr)[Caract.]
(emptying; voidance; evacuation), (outside; exteriorly; on the outside; out), (exterior; outer; outermost; outmost; outside; outward; external)[Caract.]
saillant (fr)[Caract.]
La Terre (fr)[termes liés]
élément du relief géographique (fr)[DomainDescrip.]
change of location, travel - heave, heave up, heft, heft up - earth science - science, scientific discipline[Hyper.]
arise, ascend, come up, go up, lift, move up, rise, uprise - ascend, go up - ascend, come up, rise, uprise - ascensional - upheaval, uplift, upthrow, upthrust - geologist - geologic, geological[Dérivé]
terrain, lieu élevé (fr)[Classe]
pli de terrain (fr)[Classe]
petite élévation de terrain (fr)[Classe]
ascension, ascent, rise, rising[Hyper.]
upheaval (n.)↕
désorganisation (fr)[Classe]
chose désordonnée (fr)[Classe]
agitation (personnes) (fr)[Classe]
grande quantité de choses présentes en un lieu (fr)[Classe]
chaos, commotion, confusion, disorder, disruption, disturbance, flutter, fuss, hoo-ha, hoo-hah, hurly burly, kerfuffle, maihem, mayhem, to-do[Hyper.]
upheaval (n.)↕
mouvement violent de révolte sociale (fr)[Classe]
qui refuse une autorité institutionnelle établie (fr)[Classe]
politics; political science; government[ClasseHyper.]
(politician; political schemer), (policy), (reformation; reform)[Thème]
state - social science[Hyper.]
political pundit, political scientist, politician[Dérivé]
administration, governance, governing, government, government activity[Domaine]
disorder, disorders, revolt, riot, riots, trouble[Hyper.]
defiant, disruptive, insubordinate, riotous, troubled, tumultuous, turbulent[Dérivé]
government, political science, politics, politology[Domaine]
upheaval (n.)↕
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The English word games are:
○ Anagrams
○ Wildcard, crossword
○ Lettris
○ Boggle.
Lettris is a curious tetris-clone game where all the bricks have the same square shape but different content. Each square carries a letter. To make squares disappear and save space for other squares you have to assemble English words (left, right, up, down) from the falling squares.
Boggle gives you 3 minutes to find as many words (3 letters or more) as you can in a grid of 16 letters. You can also try the grid of 16 letters. Letters must be adjacent and longer words score better. See if you can get into the grid Hall of Fame !
English dictionary
Main references
Most English definitions are provided by WordNet .
English thesaurus is mainly derived from The Integral Dictionary (TID).
English Encyclopedia is licensed by Wikipedia (GNU).
The wordgames anagrams, crossword, Lettris and Boggle are provided by Memodata.
The web service Alexandria is granted from Memodata for the Ebay search. The SensagentBox are offered by sensAgent.
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text:
EDC receives rural tech grant to host series of 'hackfests'
WILLMAR — Over the next couple of years, Kandiyohi County will play host to a series of hackfests aimed at bringing the information technology crowd to town to mingle, swap ideas and gain exposure to what the community has to offer.
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text:
Find an Internship or Volunteer in Dover, Ohio ( OH )
If you're looking for internships or volunteer work in Dover, Ohio or even to get a summer job, you've come to the right place! With over 30,000 around the county, chances are that GrooveJob.com has the right job for you and wants to be your only source for finding internships and volunteer positions in Dover, Ohio.
We've got plenty of intern and volunteer work in Dover, Ohio. Check out the list of employers below who have positions in Dover. Remember to check back with Groovejob.com on a regular basis. We add new internships and volunteer jobs listings to our database every week, so you'll find new opportunities every time you check back with us.
|Browse by Employer (Click On Logos)
|Click for Intern or Volunteer at SEAWORLD ADVENTURE PARK
|Click for Intern or Volunteer at INROADS
Jobs by Title
Python Intern (Paid)
Juju is looking for a Paid Intern with a strong knowledge of Python. Initial responsibilities will be writing and maintaining XML...
Dover, OH
Job Opportunities @ CBORD: Technical Support Intern
…Inte ships Technical Support Inte - Canton Location: Canton, OH In conjuction with Stark State College or a college affiliated with the...
Canton, OH
Logistics Engineer Intern (Summer 2015)
As a Logistics Intern with Diebold, your primary responsibility will be to help support the functions of the Global Logistics department....
North Canton, OH
Mechanical Engineer Intern /Co-Op - Terminal Engineering- Fall
As a Mechanical Engineer Intern /Co-op with Diebold, Incorporated, you will have multiple opportunities to gain corporate experience by...
North Canton, OH
IT Service Desk Intern (Summer 2015)
As an IT Service Desk Intern /Co-Op with Diebold, you will have multiple opportunities to gain corporate experience by being involved in...
North Canton, OH
Manufacturing Engineer Intern /Co-Op (Fall 2015)
As a Manufacturing Engineer Intern /Co-Op with Diebold, Incorporated you will have multiple opportunities to gain corporate experience by...
North Canton, OH
Service Material Analyst Intern (Summer 2015)
As a Service Material Analyst Intern with Diebold, Incorporated you will have multiple opportunities to gain corporate experience by...
North Canton, OH
Job-Applications.com is looking to add an intern to our staff of writers. The successful candidate will be a college student who is...
Canton, OH
Logistics Engineer Intern
…problems while clearly documenting the assumptions, logic and execution processAs a Logistics Intern with Firm, your primary...
Canton, OH
Community Pharmacy Internship
One of Walgreens most exciting paths to becoming a pharmacy professional is our internship program. This program will provide you with...
Dover, OH
Community Store Management Internship
…is different, and how far you go is up to you. Our step-by-step Community Management Internship Program equips you to become a...
Dover, OH
Full Time Paid Internship - Graphic Design / Social Media / Marketing
…deserve the talents of Cutler Real Estate. Job Description: Full Time Paid Internship Graphic Design / Social Media / Marketing...
Canton, OH
Kent State University Students Only Internship opportunity
KENT STATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ONLY Internship opportunity Tracking Code 3870-415 Job Description THIS IS A GRANT FUNDED POSITION FOR...
Canton, OH
|<< First < Previous 1 Next > Last >>


text:
OP Junior Member
Thanks Meter: 0
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Join Date:Joined: Aug 2013
I have tried the latest nightly ROMs for CyanogenMod 10.1 and 10.2 for my TF201, both of which get stuck in CM's boot animation. I just tried the same with the newest Baked ROM, only to be stuck in its boot animation as well.
I'm trying to figure out if there was something I forgot to do. I have been able to revert to a backup of my stock Jellybean 4.1.1 that I stored using TWRP, but haven't been able to use anything else.
Are there any thoughts on this? Have I missed something? I was able to use the unlocker utility and each boot offers the confirmation in the top-left that my bootloader is unlocked. I am able to enter TWRP from the recovery mode. Shouldn't it be as simple as selecting a ROM's zip archive and installing it from TWRP?


text:
Our special coverage of the closest race for years
Explore the personal stories of Syrian refugees in Lebanon
10 Sep 2012 00:34 GMT | Sport, Tennis, US & Canada, Australia, Italy
Serena Williams has captured her 15th Grand Slam title and fourth career US Open crown with a 6-2, 2-6, 7-5 victory over World No.1 Victoria Azarenka.
On Sunday, in the first three-set final at the US Open since 1995, US fourth seed Williams joined her sister Venus and Steffi Graf as the only women to win Wimbledon, the Olympics and the US Open in the same year.
The American showed all her great fighting qualities to claw her way back from the brink of defeat to become the oldest women's champion at Flushing Meadows in nearly four decades.
Against the odds after losing the first set, Azarenka looked to be on the verge of an unlikely victory when she led 5-3 in the decider.
She got within two points of winning the championship but was unable to prevent Williams reeling off the last four games in a row to seal her win and enhance her status as one of the greatest players the game has seen.
Doubles title
Earlier, Italy's Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci won their second grand slam title of the year when they beat the Czech pair Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka 6-4, 6-2 at the US Open.
The number two seeds came through a tough opening set before running away with the second to add the US Open to the French Open title they won in June.
For Errani, it was the perfect pick-me-up after her defeat by Serena Williams in the semi-finals of the singles event.
"It is better to finish with a win," said Errani, who also reached the French Open singles final and who will go to the top of the doubles rankings on Monday, with Vinci rising to number two.
For Hlavackova and Hradecka, it was the third near-miss this summer, having lost to Serena and Venus Williams at Wimbledon and the Olympics.
"We should walk away from this tournament with a big smile," Hlavackova said.
Errani said becoming world number one was a dream come true.
"We played an amazing year so this is very important for us," she said. "We played good from Australia, where we made the final, and we won Paris. Of course it's an amazing year. We hope to continue."
Source: Agencies
After finally regaining form over the last year, gold medallist Serena Williams is already planning her title defence.
Serena Williams returns to major success with her first grand slam win since battling illness in 2010 and 2011.
Sport, Tennis, Poland
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In religiously conservative Brazil, women risk jail time and their lives to undergo the procedure that is illegal but commonplace.
Health, Human Rights, Latin America
Trash is a fast-growing import in the Scandinavian country, which turns it into heat for people's homes.
Environment, Europe, Sweden
Critics say the UK's home secretary is using Muslims as a 'political punchbag' in a bid to shore up right-wing support.
Human Rights, Politics, Racism
2014 was the worst year in more than a decade for polio infections, with at least 306 new cases reported.
Polio, Asia, Pakistan
Official vote count to resume on Tuesday with opposition challenger leading President Jonathan in overall tally.
Politics, Africa, Nigeria, Elections, Nigeria Decides
At least 40 dead amid conflicting reports on whether camp in Hajjah was housing displaced people or Houthi fighters.
War & Conflict, Middle East, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Houthis
It is a source of sustenance but also of tension and new political realities are now increasing uncertainty.
Egypt, Sudan, Middle East
A media post-mortem into the UK's surveillance report. Plus, why five years on in Argentina the media looks so familiar.
Media, Edward Snowden, Security
The untold story of how the Lebanese community overcame the odds and found their place in multicultural Australia.
Asia Pacific, Australia, Lebanon
How to keep a telenovela profitable and demanding sponsors happy while inspiring the production team to stay passionate.
Arts & Culture, Mexico, Latin America


text:
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text:
SALADO, Texas (AP) — Emergency crews are responding to a reported bridge collapse along an interstate in Central Texas.
If you just have to have it now, as in one hour, you can, at least in the Dallas area, as Amazon.com Inc. announced Thursday it will offer Prime Now.
Downtown Fort Worth's dining scene is about to get spicier with the opening of a new restaurant featuring Latin-inspired coastal cuisine.
The future of a redevelopment plan for the 50-year-old Westchester Plaza on Fort Worth's Near Southside is unclear.
Texas unemployment fell to 4.3 percent during February for the sixth straight month of declines, the Texas Workforce Commission reported Friday.
Healthcare Heroes, 2014. Photos by Mayda Arista Rios
Attendees at the Healthcare Heroes event. Look for more photos in the March 10 issue of the Fort Worth Business Press.
The Fort Worth Business Press' Healthcare Heroes event recognizes the people and organizations wholse standout work in health care makes them heroes. Smith & Nephew is the presenting sponsor..
The event was held last night at the City Club in Fort Worth.
This year's awardees:
Doug Hawthorne
Texas Health Resources received the Lifetime Achievement Award
AIDS Outreach Center
Artemis Medical Society
TCU's Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences
Jim Cox
Emergency Medicine Consultants LTD
Stan Davis
Cook Children's Health Care System
Debra Ennis
Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Southlake
Judy Horton
Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth
Alan Johns
Baylor Research Institute, Fort Worth
Paul Lansdowne
Methodist Mansfield Medical Center
David McReynolds
JPS Health Network
John Phillips
Methodist Mansfield Medical Center
Laura Standish
University of North Texas Health Science Center
Jason Terk
Cook Children's Health Care System
Nancy Williams
The Health Industry Council
Mayor Betsy Price
City of Fort Worth
< back


text:
Tags praise & worship, gospel & religious
Genres christian, worship, christian rock, praise & worship, contemporary christian (beta)
(flag as incorrect)
Artists Audrey Assad, Chris Tomlin, Geoff Moore (beta)
February 02, 2012
amazing, the powet of the holy spirit,sung out through the words of the songs!!!:- praise god!!!:)
Night Drive. by kataryna.grace
sultry, night drive, dubstep, alternative, acoustic
Shake it Out. by kataryna.grace
Very random mix made on 17 March 2012 (this is shortened.
spring, slightly upbeat, chill
Just as you are. by kataryna.grace
praise & worship, gospel & religious
I find myself in love racing the earth. by kataryna.grace
17 tracks from artists including The Civil Wars, Bon Iver, and Anberlin.
breakup, melancholy, confused


text:
|By Marketwired .
Article Rating:
|December 20, 2012 08:01 AM EST
REDWOOD SHORES, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 12/20/12 -- Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Eloqua, Inc. (NASDAQ: ELOQ), a leading provider of cloud-based marketing automation and revenue performance management software for $23.50 per share or approximately $871 million, net of Eloqua's cash. Eloqua's modern marketing cloud delivers best-in-class capabilities to ensure every component of marketing works harder and more efficiently to drive revenue.
The combination of Oracle and Eloqua is expected to create a comprehensive Customer Experience Cloud offering to help companies transform the way they market, sell, support and serve their customers. The combined offering is expected to enable organizations to provide a highly personalized and unified experience across channels, create brand loyalty through social and online interactions, grow revenue by driving more qualified leads to sales teams, and provide superior service at every touchpoint.
The Board of Directors of Eloqua has unanimously approved the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2013, subject to Eloqua stockholder approval, certain regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
"Modern marketing practices are driving revenue growth and is a critical area of investment for companies today," said Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President, Oracle Development. "Eloqua's leading marketing automation cloud will become the centerpiece of the Oracle Marketing Cloud and is an important addition to the Oracle Customer Experience offering, which includes the Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Commerce Cloud, Oracle Service Cloud, Oracle Content Cloud and Oracle Social Cloud."
"Exceptional customer experience starts with knowing your customer's preferences and delivering a highly personalized buying experience," said Joe Payne, Chairman and CEO, Eloqua. "Together with Oracle, we expect to accelerate the pace of the modern marketing revolution and help our customers transform the way they market, sell, support and serve their customers."
More information on this announcement is available at http://www.oracle.com/eloqua.
About Oracle
Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), visit www.oracle.com.
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This document contains certain forward-looking statements about Oracle and Eloqua, including statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning Oracle's proposed acquisition of Eloqua, anticipated customer benefits and general business outlook. When used in this document, the words "anticipates", "can", "will", "look forward to", "expected" and similar expressions and any other statements that are not historical facts are intended to identify those assertions as forward-looking statements. Any such statement may be influenced by a variety of factors, many of which are beyond the control of Oracle or Eloqua, that could cause actual outcomes and results to be materially different from those projected, described, expressed or implied in this document due to a number of risks and uncertainties. Potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the possibility that the transaction will not close or that the closing may be delayed, the anticipated synergies of the combined companies may not be achieved after closing, the combined operations may not be successfully integrated in a timely manner, if at all, general economic conditions in regions in which either company does business, and the possibility that Oracle or Eloqua may be adversely affected by other economic, business, and/or competitive factors. Accordingly, no assurances can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what impact they will have on the results of operations or financial condition of Oracle or Eloqua.
In addition, please refer to the documents that Oracle and Eloqua, respectively, file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K. These filings identify and address other important factors that could cause Oracle's and Eloqua's respective operational and other results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements set forth in this document. You are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this document. Neither Oracle nor Eloqua is under any duty to update any of the information in this document.
Oracle is currently reviewing the existing Eloqua product roadmap and will be providing guidance to customers in accordance with Oracle's standard product communication policies. Any resulting features and timing of release of such features as determined by Oracle's review of Eloqua's product roadmap are at the sole discretion of Oracle. All product roadmap information, whether communicated by Eloqua or by Oracle, does not represent a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decision. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract.
Additional Information about the Merger and Where to Find It
In connection with the proposed merger, Eloqua will file a proxy statement with the SEC. Additionally, Eloqua and Oracle will file other relevant materials in connection with the proposed acquisition of Eloqua by Oracle pursuant to the terms of an Agreement and Plan of Merger by and among, Oracle, OC Acquisition LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle, Esperanza Acquisition Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of OC Acquisition LLC, and Eloqua. The materials to be filed by Eloqua with the SEC may be obtained free of charge at the SEC's web site at www.sec.gov. Investors and security holders of Eloqua are urged to read the proxy statement and the other relevant materials when they become available before making any voting or investment decision with respect to the proposed merger because they will contain important information about the merger and the parties to the merger. Oracle, Eloqua and their respective directors, executive officers and other members of its management and employees, under SEC rules, may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies of Eloqua stockholders in connection with the proposed merger. Investors and security holders may obtain more detailed information regarding the names, affiliations and interests of certain of Oracle's executive officers and directors in the solicitation by reading the proxy statement and other relevant materials filed with the SEC when they become available. Information concerning the interests of Eloqua's participants in the solicitation, which may, in some cases, be different than those of Eloqua's stockholders generally, is set forth in the materials filed by Eloqua with the SEC, including in Eloqua's Registration Statement on Form S-1, and will be set forth in the proxy statement relating to the merger when it becomes available.
Contact Info
Carol Sato
Oracle Corporate Communications
+1 650.633.5551
Email Contact
Ken Bond
Oracle Investor Relations
+1 650.607.0349
Email Contact
SYS-CON Events announced today the IoT Bootcamp – Jumpstart Your IoT Strategy, being held June 9–10, 2015, in conjunction with 16th Cloud Expo and Internet of @ThingsExpo at the Javits Center in New York City. This is your chance to jumpstart your IoT strategy. Combined with real-world scenarios and use cases, the IoT Bootcamp is not just based on presentations but includes hands-on demos and walkthroughs. We will introduce you to a variety of Do-It-Yourself IoT platforms including Arduino, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, Spark and Intel Edison. You will also get an overview of cloud technologies s...
Mar. 31, 2015 11:00 AM EDT Reads: 2,170
SYS-CON Events announced today that Litmus Automation will exhibit at SYS-CON's 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Litmus Automation's vision is to provide a solution for companies that are in a rush to embrace the disruptive Internet of Things technology and leverage it for real business challenges. Litmus Automation simplifies the complexity of connected devices applications with Loop, a secure and scalable cloud platform.
Mar. 31, 2015 10:32 AM EDT Reads: 301
Containers and microservices have become topics of intense interest throughout the cloud developer and enterprise IT communities. Accordingly, attendees at the upcoming 16th Cloud Expo at the Javits Center in New York June 9-11 will find fresh new content in a new track called PaaS | Containers & Microservices Containers are not being considered for the first time by the cloud community, but a current era of re-consideration has pushed them to the top of the cloud agenda. With the launch of Docker's initial release in March of 2013, interest was revved up several notches. Then late last...
Mar. 31, 2015 09:15 AM EDT Reads: 2,276
The WebRTC Summit 2014 New York, to be held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York, NY, announces that its Call for Papers is open. Topics include all aspects of improving IT delivery by eliminating waste through automated business models leveraging cloud technologies. WebRTC Summit is co-located with 16th International Cloud Expo, @ThingsExpo, Big Data Expo, and DevOps Summit.
Mar. 31, 2015 09:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,676
SOA Software has changed its name to Akana. With roots in Web Services and SOA Governance, Akana has established itself as a leader in API Management and is expanding into cloud integration as an alternative to the traditional heavyweight enterprise service bus (ESB). The company recently announced that it achieved more than 90% year-over-year growth. As Akana, the company now addresses the evolution and diversification of SOA, unifying security, management, and DevOps across SOA, APIs, microservices, and more.
Mar. 31, 2015 08:30 AM EDT Reads: 2,097
Wearable technology was dominant at this year's International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) , and MWC was no exception to this trend. New versions of favorites, such as the Samsung Gear (three new products were released: the Gear 2, the Gear 2 Neo and the Gear Fit), shared the limelight with new wearables like Pebble Time Steel (the new premium version of the company's previously released smartwatch) and the LG Watch Urbane. The most dramatic difference at MWC was an emphasis on presenting wearables as fashion accessories and moving away from the original clunky technology associated with t...
Mar. 31, 2015 03:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,530
SYS-CON Events announced today that robomq.io will exhibit at SYS-CON's @ThingsExpo, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. robomq.io is an interoperable and composable platform that connects any device to any application. It helps systems integrators and the solution providers build new and innovative products and service for industries requiring monitoring or intelligence from devices and sensors.
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The list of 'new paradigm' technologies that now surrounds us appears to be at an all time high. From cloud computing and Big Data analytics to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and the Internet of Things (IoT), today we have to deal with what the industry likes to call 'paradigm shifts' at every level of IT. This is disruption; of course, we understand that – change is almost always disruptive.
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SYS-CON Events announced today that Solgenia will exhibit at SYS-CON's 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, and the 17th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 3–5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Solgenia is the global market leader in Cloud Collaboration and Cloud Infrastructure software solutions. Designed to "Bridge the Gap" between Personal and Professional Social, Mobile and Cloud user experiences, our solutions help large and medium-sized organizations dr...
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The world's leading Cloud event, Cloud Expo has launched Microservices Journal on the SYS-CON.com portal, featuring over 19,000 original articles, news stories, features, and blog entries. DevOps Journal is focused on this critical enterprise IT topic in the world of cloud computing. Microservices Journal offers top articles, news stories, and blog posts from the world's well-known experts and guarantees better exposure for its authors than any other publication. Follow new article posts on Twitter at @MicroservicesE
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SYS-CON Events announced today that SafeLogic has been named "Bag Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 16th International Cloud Expo® New York, which will take place June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. SafeLogic provides security products for applications in mobile and server/appliance environments. SafeLogic's flagship product CryptoComply is a FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic engine designed to secure data on servers, workstations, appliances, mobile devices, and in the Cloud.
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After making a doctor's appointment via your mobile device, you receive a calendar invite. The day of your appointment, you get a reminder with the doctor's location and contact information. As you enter the doctor's exam room, the medical team is equipped with the latest tablet containing your medical history – he or she makes real time updates to your medical file. At the end of your visit, you receive an electronic prescription to your preferred pharmacy and can schedule your next appointment.
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GENBAND has announced that SageNet is leveraging the Nuvia platform to deliver Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) to its large base of retail and enterprise customers. Nuvia's cloud-based solution provides SageNet's customers with a full suite of business communications and collaboration tools. Two large national SageNet retail customers have recently signed up to deploy the Nuvia platform and the company will continue to sell the service to new and existing customers. Nuvia's capabilities include HD voice, video, multimedia messaging, mobility, conferencing, Web collaboration, deskt...
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SYS-CON Media announced today that @WebRTCSummit Blog, the largest WebRTC resource in the world, has been launched. @WebRTCSummit Blog offers top articles, news stories, and blog posts from the world's well-known experts and guarantees better exposure for its authors than any other publication. @WebRTCSummit Blog can be bookmarked ▸ Here @WebRTCSummit conference site can be bookmarked ▸ Here
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SYS-CON Events announced today that Cisco, the worldwide leader in IT that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate, has been named "Gold Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Cisco makes amazing things happen by connecting the unconnected. Cisco has shaped the future of the Internet by becoming the worldwide leader in transforming how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Cisco and our partners are building the platform for the Internet of Everything by connecting the...
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Temasys has announced senior management additions to its team. Joining are David Holloway as Vice President of Commercial and Nadine Yap as Vice President of Product. Over the past 12 months Temasys has doubled in size as it adds new customers and expands the development of its Skylink platform. Skylink leads the charge to move WebRTC, traditionally seen as a desktop, browser based technology, to become a ubiquitous web communications technology on web and mobile, as well as Internet of Things compatible devices.
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Docker is an excellent platform for organizations interested in running microservices. It offers portability and consistency between development and production environments, quick provisioning times, and a simple way to isolate services. In his session at DevOps Summit at 16th Cloud Expo, Shannon Williams, co-founder of Rancher Labs, will walk through these and other benefits of using Docker to run microservices, and provide an overview of RancherOS, a minimalist distribution of Linux designed expressly to run Docker. He will also discuss Rancher, an orchestration and service discovery platf...
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SYS-CON Events announced today that Vitria Technology, Inc. will exhibit at SYS-CON's @ThingsExpo, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Vitria will showcase the company's new IoT Analytics Platform through live demonstrations at booth #330. Vitria's IoT Analytics Platform, fully integrated and powered by an operational intelligence engine, enables customers to rapidly build and operationalize advanced analytics to deliver timely business outcomes for use cases across the industrial, enterprise, and consumer segments.
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SYS-CON Events announced today that Liaison Technologies, a leading provider of data management and integration cloud services and solutions, has been named "Silver Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 16th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York, NY. Liaison Technologies is a recognized market leader in providing cloud-enabled data integration and data management solutions to break down complex information barriers, enabling enterprises to make smarter decisions, faster.
Mar. 29, 2015 03:00 PM EDT Reads: 3,509
@ThingsExpo has been named the Top 5 Most Influential M2M Brand by Onalytica in the 'Machine to Machine: Top 100 Influencers and Brands.' Onalytica analyzed the online debate on M2M by looking at over 85,000 tweets to provide the most influential individuals and brands that drive the discussion. According to Onalytica the "analysis showed a very engaged community with a lot of interactive tweets. The M2M discussion seems to be more fragmented and driven by some of the major brands present in the M2M space. This really allows some room for influential individuals to create more high value inter...
Mar. 29, 2015 01:45 PM EDT Reads: 4,711


text:
Wikimedia Platform Engineering
See also a series of articles presenting the Platform engineering group:
- What is "Platform Engineering"?
- Data analytics at Wikimedia Foundation
- Technical Liaison; Developer Relations (TL;DR) (former name of the "Engineering community team")
- The MediaWiki Core group
- Meet the Analytics Team
- A Multimedia Vision for 2016
- Platform
- Features
- Mobile
- Language
- Analytics
- Status dashboard
- 1 MediaWiki Core
- 2 Release Engineering
- 3 Multimedia
- 4 Engineering Community Team
MediaWiki Core[edit | edit source]
Tim Starling (lead)
Responsibilities[edit | edit source]
- Improve the stability, security, performance and architectural cleanliness of MediaWiki
- Ensure that MediaWiki core is meeting the evolving needs of the website
- Develop and document a clear set of APIs so that external developers can create applications that easily interface with MediaWiki
Current activities[edit | edit source]
Main projects[edit | edit source]
|Support in MediaWiki for HHVM (HipHop Virtual Machine) and deployment to the Wikimedia cluster [edit]
|Team [edit]: Ori Livneh, Tim Starling, Aaron Schulz, Chad Horohoe, Antoine Musso, Dan Garry, Max Semenik
Rollout is ongoing. The plan is to deploy HHVM on 100% of app servers by Christmas, barring unforeseen issues. Tim Starling and Giuseppe Lavagetto isolated and resolved an issue with OAuth: Authorization header was not available to HHVM via apache_request_headers() due to a mod_proxy_fcgi bug. It was resolved by reinjecting the header via a SetEnvIf directive in the Apache config. Tim Starling isolated and fixed an API throughput issue (phab:T758). Shelling out to tidy didn't perform well on HHVM. It was solved by making the tidy extension for PHP compatible with HHVM (at least for essential functionality) and using that instead. This needs to be tested and fully deployed.
|Admin tools development
|Feature development and bugfixes on tools for stewards and local power-users [edit]
|Team [edit]: Chris Steipp, Tim Starling
The majority of admin tools resources are currently diverted towards the SUL finalisation project. In September, minor UX enhancements were applied to the Special:CentralAuth page.
|Search infrastructure maintenance and overhaul [edit]
|Team [edit]: Chad Horohoe, Nik Everett
In December we wound down the search project after successfully deploying CirrusSearch to enwiki. We fixed a few bugs and did some work on preventing very complex queries from putting undue load on the servers. We don't plan to do any work on this project in January.
|SUL finalisation
|Resolve any remaining clashing user names, so that in the future every user may have a single username to log in with on all Wikimedia projects. [edit]
|Team [edit]: Keegan Peterzell (product owner), Kunal Mehta, Chris Steipp, Bryan Davis, Brandon Harris, Dan Garry
Special:GlobalRenameRequest and Special:GlobalRenameQueue have tested and out are ready for production, Special:GlobalUserMerge continues to be problematic and buggy. An upstream HHVM bug that showed up in late December has caused us to turn off Special:MergeAccount, a vital function to getting unattached accounts to globalize. This is a blocker bug until it gets fixed (estimated late January).
|Library infrastructure for MediaWiki
|Enable management of MediaWiki codebase using versioned dependencies [edit]
|Team [edit]: Bryan Davis, Kunal Mehta, Aaron Schulz, Chad Horohoe
Work on integrating XHProf as the preferred method of profiling an individual request has largely been completed. Ori Livneh has also built a parallel infrastructure for use on the Wikimedia Foundation servers that profiles HHVM using a extension named Xenon. The flame graph output of the Xenon based reporting can be seen at performance.wikimedia.org and the scripts that power it are available on GitHub.
Documentation on the addition of external libraries to MediaWiki core is underway. An RFC on guildelines for extracting, publishing and managing libraries has also been drafted and will be under discussion by the MediaWiki developer community. A blog post describing the accomplishments and next steps for the continuation of the project is being drafted as well and is expected to be published in January 2015.
Antoine Musso and Timo Tijhof are finalizing a standard practice for testing Composer managed projects using CDB as a test bed for refining the techniques.
Structured logging implementation is continuing with the use of Monolog and Redis transport being tested in the beta cluster and a subset of the production Wikimedia Foundation cluster. A new Monolog handler was written and upstreamed to Monolog to support the use case of randomly sampled log event streams. Chris Steipp also contributed a security related patch to Monolog based on a security review he did for deployment on the Wikimedia Foundation cluster.The project's "top priority" status expires with the end of the fiscal year quarter, but organic contributions and a raised awareness of the functionality offered by library extraction and integration of high quality third party code is expected to continue. A list of future projects has been started and Bryan Davis and others who have participated in the project have high hopes for the transformative changes that this project has unblocked in MediaWiki.
|Editing performance
|Improving the user-perceived performance associated with all aspects of the editing experience [edit]
|Team [edit]: Ori Livneh, Ori Livneh, Tim Starling, Aaron Schulz, James Forrester, Roan Kattouw
This is a top 5 project for Q2 (October-December 2014) Work will start upon the completion of HHVM
|Wikibase indexing
|Get a WDQ-like thing into production! [edit]
|Team [edit]: Nik Everett, Stas Malyshev, Nik Everett
We've selected Blazegraph as our platform and RDF/SPARQL as the underlying technology we will be basing on.
Continuous responsibilities[edit | edit source]
|Shell requests
|Ongoing processing of Phabricator requests that require shell access to fix [edit]
|Team [edit]: Chad Horohoe, Mukunda Modell
Currently at 92 open (query for latest number), 3414 total resolved since the beginning of tracking (query for latest number), 2924 total fixed (query for latest number), and 38 resolved in October (query for October)
|Security auditing and response
|Inspection of code and training of developers [edit]
|Team [edit]: Chris Steipp
MediaWiki 1.24.1 was released, fixing issues in core and several extensions. Reviews for kafkatee and plancake email parser were finished. During December, the WMF also participated in a security assessment of MediaWiki by iSec Partners, sponsored by the Open Technology Fund. The results will be made public in February.
Planned or backburner projects[edit | edit source]
|<span class="mw-statushelper-project" data-projpage="API/maintenance" data-projname="
Perennial maintenance of the MediaWiki API [edit]
|Team [edit]:
|[[Replicated session handling|]]
|' [edit]
|Team [edit]:
|App-level monitoring
|Implementation of application-level parameters monitoring [edit]
|Team [edit]: Rob Lanphier, Sam Reed
|An authentication proxy to allow selected users to access third-party academic publishing sites [edit]
|Team [edit]: Chad Horohoe, Ryan Lane
Academic Access to Poor People
|Configuration management
|A core feature of MediaWiki to handle a wiki's configuration options through a web interface [edit]
|Team [edit]: Chad Horohoe
This project was mainly on hold in July.
|Template profiling
|Create a project page for this activity (how-to)
|Continuous external storage recompression
|Create a project page for this activity (how-to)
|Database sharding
|Enabling sharded tables in MediaWiki [edit]
|Team [edit]: Aaron Schulz, Asher Feldman
Aaron Schulz wrote a new class (ExternalRDBStore) used for sharding tables in MediaWiki, and is now in bugfixing mode. He also wrote a patch to shard some of the tables associated with FlaggedRevs as a first use of this class. Asher Feldman is currently investigating hardware requirements for utilizing sharding.
|Code review management
|Review of changes made to the MediaWiki core code and extensions used on Wikimedia wikis. [edit]
|Team [edit]: Rob Lanphier, Tim Starling, Chad Horohoe, Sam Reed, Aaron Schulz
Volunteers have been of a lot of help in managing the wiki configuration (operations/mediawiki-config) repository. The WMF analytics code review graphs[dead link] show an uptick in patchsets awaiting review at the end of September, and a Signpost analysis showed (among other statistics) that WMF staff provide 86% of first reviews for core patchsets, and just five staffers collectively account for about 55% of that total.
|REST proposal
|REST implementation of MediaWiki's web API for greater flexibility, usability, and standardization [edit]
|Team [edit]: Federico Lucignano (Wikia)
Yuri started gathering requirements for the RESTful (content-oriented) API as part of the overall planning for the API v2.0 roadmap. Also, Wikia's focused R&D sprint has led to remove all the remaining obstacles identified previously and Wikia has identified a new, larger dedicated Product team to get to a final implementation of the REST API following the directions set by the existing prototype and internal RFC; the team (API/Data) is the same one in charge of Search and all the related API's, this will ensure a better integration of this product into the new API strategy. At the moment of writing the knowledge transfer required for the team to start this new phase has just begun and the team has to first to complete the current work on another project already in progress. In the meantime, Wikia will make an RFC public for review and feedback.
|Password storage update
|' [edit]
|Team [edit]: Chris Steipp
FIxed bug 62623 so that patches with lots of tests (such as the password api) can be merged. Continued refinement of Password API patch.
|Site performance and architecture
|Various initiatives geared toward improving site responsiveness, decreasing resource consumption, and/or improving site maintainability [edit]
|Team [edit]: Tim Starling, Ori Livneh, Aaron Schulz, Antoine Musso, Andrew Garrett
Aaron Schulz has been reviewing the Petition extension for deployment to the cluster, working with Peter Coombe to improve its performance. In addition, the reliability and speed of media uploads was increased by removing many failure cases on Commons. There were many other minor fixes over the course of the month.
|Auth systems
|Improvement of authentication and authorization systems, and adding new auth mechanisms such as OpenID and OAuth [edit]
|Team [edit]: Chris Steipp, Tim Starling, Brad Jorsch, Aaron Schulz
Most work was spent on SUL Finalization tasks. Phpunit and browser tests were added for CentralAuth, global rename was deployed, and lots of small fixes were made to CentralAuth to clean up user accounts in preparation for finalization.
|Deployment tooling
|Improve the deployment process and operational monitoring capabilities in use for the Wikimedia content projects and related infrastructure. [edit]
|Team [edit]: Bryan Davis, Greg Grossmeier, Aaron Schulz, Brad Jorsch, Ori Livneh, Antoine Musso, Sam Reed
Bryan Davis continued the Pythonification of our deployment tooling with the conversion of the remaining bits, namely all sync-* scripts (sync-common, sync-file, sync-dir, and sync-db). Work continues on modifying our deployment tooling to provide easier and more robust automatic access to our version information (available at Special:Version).
Recently completed projects[edit | edit source]
|Disk-backed object cache
|A supplement to memcache-based object cache, which will allow us to greatly increase the amount of space dedicated to caching parsed pages. [edit]
|Team [edit]: Rob Lanphier, Tim Starling
To improve the MySQL-based version of this system, Domas Mituzas suggested to split the cache into several tables, which Tim Starling implemented in MediaWiki. The system was then deployed on July 11th and the cache has been filling up since then, thus increasing the parser cache hit ratio from about 30% to 80%. Possible future steps include adding previous page revisions to the cache.
|Heterogeneous deployment
|A system allowing the deployment of different versions of MediaWiki to different production wikis [edit]
|Team [edit]: Rob Lanphier, Tim Starling, Aaron Schulz
This feature is now deployed on Wikimedia's sites, and we use it to do staged rollouts of new versions of MediaWiki to our wikis.
Deployment and release of MediaWiki 1.18 [edit]
|Team [edit]: Sam Reed, Tim Starling (pretty much everyone else is involved)
Developers sprinted to fix the last blocker bugs, and the ones uncovered by testers. Sam Reed announced the first beta release and first release candidate of MediaWiki 1.18. Mark Hershberger followed up on comments on the English Wikipedia's Village pump related to the deployment of 1.18, bugs reported in bugzilla, and installation and upgrade reports. Sam announced the final 1.18.0 release on November 27th, as well as the 1.17.1 security release.
Deployment and release of MediaWiki 1.19 [edit]
|Team [edit]: Rob Lanphier
We have now released the tarball of MediaWiki 1.19. Work on 1.19 is now complete, barring future security updates, and engineers are now working on MediaWiki 1.20.
|MediaWiki 1.20
|Release of MediaWiki 1.20 [edit]
|Team [edit]: Sam Reed, Mark Hershberger
Mark Hershberger published the MediaWiki 1.20 stable tarball on November 7th. Chris Steipp published a security update (1.20.1) on November 29th.
|MediaWiki 1.21
|Deployment of MediaWiki 1.21wmf versions and release of MediaWiki 1.21 [edit]
|Team [edit]: Sam Reed
No new releases were made for 1.21 in June of 2013.
|Wikivoyage migration
|Migrating data and code to set up the new Wikimedia travel site [edit]
|Team [edit]: Erik Moeller, Daniel Zahn, Chris Steipp, Sam Reed, Matthias Mullie
Wikivoyage officially launched on January 15. Most of the Wikimedia Foundation's involvement was completed in November, but some minor bugfixing was done in support of the official launch.
|Deploy the VipsScaler extension to the Wikimedia cluster [edit]
|Team [edit]: Tim Starling, Bryan Tong Minh
This month saw a significant change to the structure and organization of browser tests, with tests and builds for CirrusSearch, UniversalLanguageSelector, and VisualEditor following the example of MobileFrontend and now residing in the git repositories for those extensions, rather than in the /qa/browsertests repository. This creates opportunities for more frequent and more accurate Jenkins builds of the tests, while also reducing the overhead required for analyzing test failures.
|Lua scripting
|Support for Lua as a scripting language for MediaWiki end-users [edit]
|Team [edit]: Tim Starling, Brad Jorsch (anomie)
Some bugs were fixed and internationalization changes merged this month; no major changes were made. The community continues to develop Lua-based templates, such as the citation templates on the English Wikipedia.
|Git conversion
|Conversion of the MediaWiki source repository from Subversion to Git [edit]
|Team [edit]: Chad Horohoe
With the migration of pywikipediabot from Subversion to Git, we were able to switch svn.wikimedia.org to read-only mode, thus completing this migration. We plan to keep the Subversion service around indefinitely for archival purposes, and can still migrate any dormant project that hasn't already been migrated on request.
|MediaWiki 1.22
|Deployment of MediaWiki 1.22wmf versions and release of MediaWiki 1.22 [edit]
|Team [edit]: Sam Reed
The last deployment from the 1.22 MediaWiki release was on October 24. To see all the changes that occurred during the 1.22 development cycle, see the main 1.22 release page or the RELEASE NOTES file. Final release of MediaWiki 1.22 is expected to be November 29.
|MediaWiki 1.23
|Deployment of MediaWiki 1.23wmf versions and release of MediaWiki 1.23 [edit]
|Team [edit]: Sam Reed
The first deployment using the newly-branched 1.23 version of MediaWiki was deployed to Wikimedia servers on October 24.
Release Engineering[edit | edit source]
Responsibilities[edit | edit source]
The Release Engineering team is responsible for the tooling and resources that help MediaWiki developers write better code and get that code out for our users faster.
Team[edit | edit source]
Current activities[edit | edit source]
|Quality Assurance
|Software testing and quality assurance for Wikimedia engineering activities [edit]
|Team [edit]: Chris McMahon, Mostly Wikimedia Release Engineering Team
In November we made significant improvements to the Vagrant development environments, and also conducted a poll of Vagrant users to guide future development. We sorted out issues with HHVM on beta labs, and we made improvements to Jenkins and Zuul for speed and efficency. We introduced the Ruby linter "rubocop" to all of the Jenkins builds, one more step in managing technical debt and improving the quality of our browser test code.
|Browser testing
|Automated testing of MediaWiki within various browsers to improve quality [edit]
|Team [edit]: Chris McMahon, Željko Filipin
Quality Assurance/Browser testing/status
Planned or backburner projects[edit | edit source]
|Release Engineering
|Working to improve the quality of code and reduce the time it takes users to get it. [edit]
|Team [edit]: Greg Grossmeier, Antoine Musso, Chad Horohoe, Chris McMahon, Dan Duvall, Elena Tonkovidova, Mukunda Modell, Rummana Yasmeen, Tyler Cipriani, Željko Filipin
This month, the Release and QA Team became the Release Engineering Team, mostly reflecting the transition of this team from being made up of members of other distinct teams to that of a coherent self-contained (mostly) team. This will, hopefully, allow better coordination of "Release" and "QA" things (broadly spreaking).
A lot of progress was made on making Phabricator suitable as a task/bug tracking system for Wikimedia projects. You can see the work to be sorted and completed at this workboard.
The Beta Cluster now runs with HHVM, bringing us much closer to full HHVM deployment. In addition, the Language Team deployed the new Content translation system on the Beta Cluster with the help of the Release Engineering team.
The second round of public RFP for third-party MediaWiki release management was conducted and concluded.We now no longer use the third-party Cloudbees service for any of our Jenkins jobs and run all jobs locally. This will enable us to better diagnose issues with our build process, especially as it pertains to our browser tests (which still mostly run on SauceLabs).
|Beta cluster
|Production-like environment suitable for final-stage testing of new features. [edit]
|Team [edit]: Antoine Musso, Chris McMahon, Sam Reed, Mukunda Modell
There was a substantial effort to migrate the Beta cluster over from the Tampa data center to the Ashburn, VA ("eqiad") data center. This was led by Antoine Musso with assistance from Bryan Davis and many others.
|Continuous integration
|A testing platform to provide continuous quality control for MediaWiki [edit]
|Team [edit]: Antoine Musso, Timo Tijhof, Chad Horohoe
Erik Bernhardson and Chad Horohoe created jobs using Jenkins Job Builder (JJB) based on the tutorials on installing JJB and Adding a MediaWiki extension.
Multimedia[edit | edit source]
Team[edit | edit source]
Responsibilities[edit | edit source]
The Multimedia team is responsible for features that provide a richer experience and support more media contributions on Wikipedia, Commons, and MediaWiki sites.
We develop features to:
- improve the viewing experience for our readers
- develop feedback and curation tools
- help editors add media files to articles.
We are also upgrading our current infrastructure to:
- improve the upload pipeline
- implement structured data
- better integrate multimedia across all our sites.
Current activities[edit | edit source]
Overview[edit | edit source]
|Handling of images, sound and video files, from infrastructure to contributions, curation, publishing and viewing. [edit]
|Team [edit]: Rob Lanphier (engineering director), Gilles Dubuc, Mark Holmquist, Gergő Tisza, Pau Giner, Keegan Peterzell
In December 2014, the team fully migrated its tasks and workflow to Phabricator.
Active maintenance was performed on Media Viewer and CommonsMetadata, which have both seen several minor improvements. The long tail of small bugs affecting Media Viewer in particular was a source of several Google Code-in tasks, which several volunteers tackled.
UploadWizard has been the continued focus of major code cleanup and test coverage increase efforts. Bugs were fixed along the way as well.
Thumbnail chaining was deployed for a short period of time and subsequently undeployed following concerns about over-sharpening it caused. Investigations regarding the performance improvements or lack thereof introduced by thumbnail prerendering at uploaded time and thumbnail chaining were conducted. The discussion and further research are happening on our mailing list.
Significant work has gone into creating an extension to support Sentry, a tool designed to log javascript errors. This effort should benefit the entire organization and give engineering visibility on the live client-side errors encountered by users. In our team's case, it is being worked on in order to identify client-side errors that might be happening in UploadWizard and which wouldn't have been the subject of bug reports yet.
For more information about our work, join the multimedia mailing list.
Main projects[edit | edit source]
At this time, our two main projects are:
- Media Viewer, an immersive multimedia browser; and
- UploadWizard, an incremental upgrade and code refactoring of our contribution pipeline.
Next projects[edit | edit source]
Here is our Multimedia Vision for 2016, to give you a sense of what we are working on this year. In coming months, we will be working on a variety of projects to help our users view, contribute, curate and use images, sound and video files. We believe that audio-visual media offer a unique opportunity to engage a wide range of users to participate productively in our collective work.
|A feature that provides an easier way of uploading files to Wikimedia Commons, the media library associated with Wikipedia. [edit]
|Team [edit]: Rob Lanphier (engineering director), Gilles Dubuc, Pau Giner, Mark Holmquist, Neil Kandalgaonkar, Keegan Peterzell, Gergő Tisza, Bryan Wolff
UploadWizard is currently undergoing major refactoring, alongside an increase of unit test and browser test coverage.
|Structured Data
|Improve how to store and retrieve metadata on Wikimedia Commons, the media library associated with Wikipedia. [edit]
|Team [edit]: Rob Lanphier (engineering director)
Fabrice Florin (product manager), Multimedia: Gilles Dubuc, Pau Giner, Mark Holmquist, Keegan Peterzell, Gergő Tisza, Bryan Wolff
Project started.
Engineering Community Team[edit | edit source]
Responsibilities[edit | edit source]
- Attract and support volunteer technologists so that they can become an even more powerful force in driving improvement on the website
- Help nurture volunteer-developed extensions and widgets
- Provide communications support for all groups in the engineering department
- Develop clear documentation for MediaWiki so that new staff, volunteer developers and external users have a smooth ramp-up process to becoming MediaWiki developers
Team[edit | edit source]
Quim Gil (lead)
Current activities[edit | edit source]
See also Engineering Community team meetings.
|Bug management
|Management of Wikimedia's bug tracker. [edit]
|Team [edit]: Andre Klapper
Several projects were created or archived. The Triage documentation received a section about Cookie licking.
|Phabricator migration
|Preparation and execution of the migration of our development toolchain to Phabricator [edit]
|Team [edit]: Andre Klapper, Andre Klapper (Phabmaster), Mukunda Modell (development), Chase Pettet (ops) & stakeholders.
Phabricator was upgraded and received several fixes such as improved matching in the "Projects" dropdown proposals. Also, project links by default show the workboard (if set up) instead of the project summary, received a project bar on the left, and some URLs changed. The Sprint extension shows avatars on cards, is invoked by setting a checkbox in the project settings instead of using an "§" in the name, the Burndown chart does not depend on Maniphest task status anymore, and supports setting "Can Edit Task Status" and "Can Assign Tasks" policies (currently not enabled). The full list of changes is available and corresponding documentation was updated. Regarding migration of teams to Phabricator, the Collaboration team migrated from Trello (thanks to improvements on the Trello migration script) and Language Engineering team migrated from Mingle. Phabricator's search was reverted from ElasticSearch to the MySQL backend, fixing numerous issues. Furthermore, the separate legalpad.wikimedia.org was removed (superseded by phabricator.wikimedia.org), work continued on turning Bugzilla into a static version. The "Needs Volunteer" priority was renamed to "Lowest", Gerrit repository ownership permission handling moved fom the wiki to Phabricator, the documentation about the "Security" dropdown got improved, Gadget-BugStatusUpdate.js got adapted to Phabricator, email task creation instructions were clarified, the "Export to Excel" button renamed, and guidelines for tracking tasks versus projects were written.
|Outreach programs
|Google Summer of Code, LevelUp, Outreach Program for Women and other programs that mentor contributors [edit]
|Team [edit]: Quim Gil
Wikimedia took part in Google Code-in 2014, a contest for 13-17 year old pre-university students. In those seven weeks, 48 students successfully completed 226 Wikimedia tasks, supported by 30 mentors from the community.
Five out of seven FOSS Outreach Program for Women/Round 9 interns passed the mid-term check-point (Roxana and Priyanka are still under evaluation). You can check their weekly reports:
|Events coordination
|Organization of physical and online events [edit]
|Team [edit]: Rachel Farrand, Engineering Community Team
155 people from from 24 countries met in San Francisco for the [Developers Summit 2015] on January 26th and January 27. The MediaWiki Developers Summit consisted mostly for discussions lasted for two days, but included optional hacking time in the evenings. Some of the main topics discussed include: Mobile, Visual Editor, Consistent User Experience, and Service Oriented Architecture. The summit followed the WMF All-Hands event, so the majority of the WMF developers were able to attend however the event was open to the entire engineering community.
Wikimedia Belgium and the Wikimedia Foundation joined efforts in a Wikimedia stand at FOSDEM, meeting potential and actual contributors to our developer and content projects, and giving away shirts, bottles, pins, pens, pencils, and more. Andre Klapper and Quim Gil gave a presentation about Wikimedia adopts Phabricator, deprecates seven infrastructure tools in front of a full room with ~200 people. Details: phab:T84972.
|Documentation improvement
|Improve MediaWiki docs (bug 1) [edit]
|Team [edit]: S Page, Engineering Community Team
See phab:T88269
Planned or backburner projects[edit | edit source]
|Architecture process
|' [edit]
|Team [edit]:
Developers finished the security architecture guidelines, and discussed several requests for comment in online architecture meetings:


text:
So when you get closer
You got fired.
So when you get happier
You got lost.
So when you get ...
And this is where the story goes
Why karma hasn't kill you yet?
Why are you still alive?
I am wondering, how is it possible to be such an ass.
- Special thanks for my very best model:
Izabela Góral
any questions?


text:
Obituary & Guest Book Preview for Mary Jean KIRCHER
Mary Jean KIRCHER Obituary
Published in The Sacramento Bee on Jan. 14, 2013
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: KIRCHER, Mary Jean 12/24/1922 - 01/07/2013 'I count myself in nothing else so happy, As in a soul remembering my good friends' William Shakespeare Our...
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J Two S Pratunam Hotel, Bangkok
Located in Bangkok (Ratchadaphisek - Rama 9), J Two S Pratunam Hotel is close to Bangkok Hospital, J Avenue Thonglor, and Embassy of India. Also nearby are Emporium Shopping Complex and Benjasiri Park.
Hotel Features.
A complimentary breakfast is served each morning. In addition to tour/ticket assistance and dry cleaning/laundry services, J Two S Pratunam Hotel features an elevator (lift). Complimentary wireless Internet access is available in public areas and a computer station is located on site. For a surcharge, guests have access to a roundtrip airport shuttle (available on request).
Rooms open to balconies. The 70 air-conditioned guestrooms at J Two S Pratunam Hotel include safes and complimentary bottled water. Guests can use the in-room complimentary wireless high-speed Internet access. Rooms are equipped with LCD TVs with satellite channels. Bathrooms offer bathtubs or showers and complimentary toiletries. In addition, housekeeping is offered daily and amenities available on request include hair dryers.
An experience which will be cherised all my life. The location was a boon as it was placed in the heart of the shopping paradise. BE smart to handel the tuk-tuk guys as few of…
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Hotel Info: 866-539-8117from $26
- Deluxe Bathtub
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Key facts
Hotel size
- This hotel has 70 rooms
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Travelling with others
- One child (4 years old and younger) stays free when occupying the parent or guardian's room, using existing bedding
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Extra people
- Roll-away beds available, charges may apply*
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In the hotel
- Free buffet breakfast daily
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- Number of buildings/towers - 1
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In the room
- Air conditioning
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- Balcony
- Private bathroom
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For transfers, guests must contact the property before arrival at the number on the booking confirmation.
Optional extras
Rollaway beds are available for THB 500 per night
Airport shuttle service is offered for an extra charge of THB 1200 per vehicle (one way)
We have included all charges provided to us by this hotel. However, charges can vary, for example, based on length of stay or the room you book.


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What do atheists and ducks have in common, aside from the fact that both are gathering this weekend at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis?
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What do atheists and ducks have in common, aside from the fact that both are gathering this weekend at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis?
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The real John Locke, "apostle of the Revolution of 1688″ (Russell) apparently had trouble walking too.
He was naturally very active, and employed himself as much as his health would permit. Sometimes he diverted himself with working in the garden, which he well understood. He loved walking, but not being able to walk much, through the disorder of his lungs, he used to ride out after dinner…
[I have to keep reminding myself that these "riding" philosophers were on horseback, not bikes. Philosophy Rides, the sequel, will not be a historical survey.]
His bad health was a disturbance to none but himself… his usual drink was nothing but water…
Good for him, I guess. He's not the philosopher I'd most like to spend time in a pub with, though I admire his most pragmatic statement that "the actions of men [are] the best interpreters of their thought."
His near-dying words were that we should regard this world and life as nothing but a vanity and "a state of preparation for a better." Repugnant words, to a humanist. And yet, other words of his ("all mankind being equal and independent, none ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty") inspired some of our greatest social and political experiments.
And some of our strangest television. Don't tell me what I can't do.
The Locke who inspired the eighteenth century was the philosopher who wired Aristotle's most important insight, that all knowledge comes through experience, into the modern western mind. (Cave & Light)
"The world may be saved, on condition that its parts shall do their best. But shipwreck in detail, or even on the whole, is among the open possibilities."
"Consider the herds that are feeding yonder: they know not the meaning of yesterday or today; they graze and ruminate, move or rest, from morning to night, from day to day, taken up with their little loves and hates and the mercy of the moment, feeling neither melancholy nor satiety. Man cannot see them without regret, for even in the pride of his humanity he looks enviously on the beast's happiness. He wishes simply to live without satiety or pain, like the beast; yet it is all in vain, for he will not change places with it. He may ask the beast—"Why do you look at me and not speak to me of your happiness?" The beast wants to answer—"Because I always forget what I wished to say"; but he forgets this answer, too, and is silent; and the man is left to wonder."
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it — "I refute it thus." Boswell's Life of Johnson[Johnson's Boswell]
There's a story that when George Berkeley, the future philosopher, was a student he decided to see what it was like to approach death. He hung himself, arranging to have a friend cut him down and revive him after he lost consciousness…Berkeley is now hung again, as large as life, but only in portrait form on the campus that is his namesake.
Common sense is BETTER for one sphere of life, science for another, philosophic criticism for a third; but whether either be TRUER absolutely, Heaven only knows.
There is therefore a justification for common sense in philosophy, but only as showing that our theoretical principles cannot be quite correct so long as their consequences are condemned by an appeal to common sense which we feel to be irresistible.
Calvin, btw, seems to have taken the Bishop seriously.
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Sitting in the Nashville airport lounge last evening, awaiting the return from Florida of my Spring Breaking family, the inescapable television presence of CNN suddenly grabbed my attention with something genuinely newsworthy: American Atheists uncloseted and partying in Tennessee, with a paid tv spot proclaiming next week's national convention right here in our backyard. It was surreal. Or maybe, finally, simply honest and real.
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Sometimes (Einstein) was really using God as just a sort of convenient metaphor. But he did have, I think, a genuine cosmic religious feeling, a sense of admiration at the intellectual ingenuity of the universe. Not just its majesty, but its extraordinary subtlety and beauty and mathematical elegance.
In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
Nothing in nature is by chance… Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.
The passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature… I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.
In Spinoza's vision, there is no ultimate distinction between different individuals. We are all part of the same single substance, which is also God. This means that our sense of isolation from and opposition to one another is an illusion, and it also means that our sense of distance from God is mistaken… Given that the universe is God, we can therefore be confident that whatever happens to us happens for a reason. Passion for Wisdom
He's still a good guy to follow on Twitter, btw.
- "It is the #nature of reason to conceive things under a form of eternity." (E5p29pr) @philosophyideas
But, there are difficulties involved in trying to internalize a "Spinozism of freedom"…
Spinoza is led to a complete and undiluted pantheism. Everything, according to Spinoza, is ruled by an absolute logical necessity. There is no such thing as free will in the mental sphere or chance in the physical world. Everything that happens is a manifestation of God's inscrutable nature, and it is logically impossible that events should be other than they are. This leads to difficulties… Bertrand Russell
Also today: art. We'll try to discern the artfulness of Duchamp's Fountain, Dewey's ballplayer, maybe even Mapplethorpe's transgressive iconoclastic work. We'll introduce Wittgenstein's family resemblance, the Institutional Theory, and more.
And then we'll be done with Philosophy: The Basics.
Arthur Danto, premier aesthetician of his generation (and former MTSU Lyceum speaker), had interesting thoughts on what makes Andy Warhol's Brillo cartons and Marcel Duchamp's urinal (click, then scroll to the bottom to see his "Fountain") works of art. In a word: interpretation. Or in another word: philosophy. "Things which look the same are really different" is Danto's "whole philosophy of art in a nutshell." Thus spake the "weightiest critic in the Manhattan art world" of his generation. [The end of art]
Dewey's antipathy for spectator theories of knowledge did not block his acute perception of "the sources of art in human experience [that] will be learned by him who sees how the tense grace of the ball-player infects the onlooking crowd."
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Somewhere in Walden Thoreau says something about needing a little water in his world, to provide a reflective glimpse of eternity. He also has things to say to today's headliner Pascal, about not being cowed by the scale of the cosmos. Pascal famously confessed: "the eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me." (No wonder he was frightened, say J & M.) Henry said, in reply to neighbors who wondered if he wasn't lonely out there by the lake in the woods:"Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?" Unlike his French predecessor, our transcendentalist was at home in the universe.
Trivial pop-culture factoid: last night on "Madam Secretary," the husband (a teacher)mentioned Pascal.
Less trivially, Voltaire (we'll soon see him skewering Leibniz) intervened in the Pascal-Montaigne conflict. He called Pascal a "sublime misanthropist" whose vision of humanity as imprisoned and terrorized by the immensity and uncertainty of the cosmos was "fanatic."
Bertrand Russell mostly felt sorry for him, approvingly citing Nietzsche's critique of Pascal's "self-contempt and self-immolation." He meant Pascal's intellectual suicide, driven by fear.
Fortunately there's much more to Blaise Pascal than his famous Wager [SEP], which we've already encountered in CoPhi.
Besides his mathematics and "Pascaline," his proto-computer, there are all those thoughts ("Pensees"-you can listen for free, here) and there's also his antipathy for his fellow philosophe Francais, Montaigne. I usually compare-&-contrast Montaigne and Descartes, so this makes for a nice new menage a trois. Blaise is hostile to both Rene and Michel but is a cautious gambler, finding Descartes' God too antiseptic and too, well, philosophical. And he finds Montaigne a self-absorbed, trivia-mongering potty-mouth.
"Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it." And "It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth."
"There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason."
"The nature of man is wholly natural, omne animal. There is nothing he may not make natural; there is nothing natural he may not lose."*
"The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me…" [Or as Jimmy Buffett says, carry the weather with you.]
"Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?"
"Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death."
Reminds me of what Montaigne said about needing to kickstart his mind with his legs.
So how can I come up against this biggest question, the ultimate question, "Do I really believe in a personal God," and then turn away from the evidence? How can I believe, just because I want to? How will I have any respect for myself if I did that?
I thought of Pascal's Wager. Pascal argued that it's better to bet there is a God, because if you're wrong there's nothing to lose, but if there is, you win an eternity in heaven. But I can't force myself to believe, just in case it turns out to be true. The God I've been praying to knows what I think, he doesn't just make sure I show up for church. How could I possibly pretend to believe? I might convince other people, but surely not God.
And probably not Richard Rorty, for whom philosophy is not about nailing down the unequivocal Truth but rather continuing the never-concluding Conversation of humankind.
Rorty was the most controversial philosopher on the scene back when I began grad school, having just published his brilliantly and infuriatingly iconoclastic Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.
Everybody had to have a view on it, and on his view that philosophy's long quest to represent "external reality" accurately was a waste of time we were free to give up. We could ditch our "comic" efforts "to guarantee this and clarify that."
Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister–corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.
My current position, after several oscillations, has settled at last into the earnest wish that more philosophers wrote as wittily and as well as he did. Almost none do. Did he get pragmatism and truth right? I guess that's what he'd call a duct tape question.
Rorty, with his metaphor of mind as (cloudy) mirror, is a good segue to the discussion of philosophy of mind, also on tap today.
Dualism gets us ghosts and spirits and other non-physical entities. Scary! But not for most students, I've found, so deeply have most of them drunk from the holy communion trough. It's not a question of evidence but of familiarity and fear, in many cases – fear of the alternative. A student expressed that just the other day, asking with incredulity and contempt how anyone could possibly ponder facing the end of mortal existence without an immortal safety net firmly in place (in mind).
Why do they think the evolution of mind so closely parallels that of the brain? They don't think about it, mostly.
Nor do most think much about the possibility of mind and body being on parallel but never-converging tracks, pre-arranged to keep a synchronous schedule and never throw up a discordant discrepant "occasion." And forget too about epiphenomenalism (which Sam Harris seems to be trying hard to revive).
If neuroscientists ever succeed in mapping the brain (TED) and modeling the causal neurological events correlated with thinking, will that solve the mystery of consciousness? [John Searle's view…] Is there a gap between the explanation and the experience of pain, pleasure, happiness, etc.? I say no and yes, respectively. But let's try and draw that map, it may take us to interesting places none of us have thought about.
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Rene Descartes, not at all (Pythons notwithstanding) a "drunken fart," simply wanted to know what he could know for certain. He asked his version of the Howard Baker question. (The majority of students in my Tennessee classrooms could not identify the statesman-Senator when asked, the other day. Sigh.)
His skepticism was methodological, his goal was indubitable certainty. This, he thought, would serve the new science well. He misunderstood the self-correcting, probabilistic, fallibilistic nature of empirical reasoning. But most philosophers still think it's worth wondering: how do you know you're not dreaming, not being deceived by a demon or by your senses, not mistaking your own essential nature?
Reducing the operations of the universe to a series of lines,circles, numbers, and equations suited his reclusive personality. His most famous saying, "I think, therefore Iam" (cogito, ergo sum), could be stated less succinctly but more accurately as 'Because we are the only beings who do math, we rule.'
For Descartes, the essence of mind is to think, and the essence of matter is to exist-and the two never meet… we are the ghosts in the machine: souls in a world machine that operates inexorably and impersonally according to the laws of geometry and mechanics, while we operate the levers and spin the dials." The Cave and the Light
Or ghost.
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Our father-daughter Spring Break/Spring Training adventure can't happen fast enough.
We greet the dawn snow-and-ice-bound this morning, she in sub-zero Illinois, me surrounded by a record (for this date in Nashville) snowfall. But in our minds we're already there, a stone's throw from the best Grapefruit League venue ever (Al Lang Stadium) and short drives from next week's games in Clearwater (Tigers-Phil), Tampa (Red Sox-Yanks), Bradenton (Sox-Bucs), and Dunedin (O's-Jays). So, my topic for next month's 20th annual Baseball in Literature and Culture conference at my school is inevitable: Spring Training and the Perennial Renewal of Life.
Daniel Norris ("The Van Man") has a consistent 92-mile-an-hour fastball, a $2 million signing bonus, a deal with Nike and a growing fan club, yet he has decided the best way to prepare for the grind of a 162-game season is to live here, in the back of a 1978 Westfalia camper he purchased for $10,000. The van is his escape from the pressures of the major leagues, his way of dropping off the grid before a season in which his every movement will be measured, catalogued and analyzed.
If a baseball life requires notoriety, the van offers seclusion.If pitching demands repetition and exactitude, the van promises freedom."It's like a yin-and-yang thing for me," he says. "I'm not going to change who I am just because people think it's weird. The only way I'm going to have a great season is by starting out happy and balanced and continuing to be me. It might be unconventional, but to feel good about life I need to have some adventure."
We need to have some adventure too, Older Daughter and I. We need to get out of this deep freeze and into the sunshine. Vamanos!
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One thing we know for sure is the historical timeline. Montaigne comes first, but since I always introduce him as the anti-Descartes he rarely gets top billing. The late Robert Solomon did the same thing. Not fair, for a guy who gave us the essay and (as Sarah Bakewell says) is so much "fun" to read. Unlike Descartes he was a true skeptic (again though, not so far over the cliff as Pyrrho) and "quite happy to live with that." His slogan was Que sçais-je?
Montaigne retired in his mid-30s to think and write, and ponder what must have felt to him (ever since his unplanned equine-dismounting event) like ever-looming mortality. He inscribed the beams of his study with many of his favorite quotes, including "nothing human is foreign to me" and "the only certainty is that nothing is certain."
Some of Montaigne's life-lessons and rules for how to live, as decoded by Sarah Bakewell: Don't worry about death; Pay attention; Question everything; Be convivial; Reflect on everything, regret nothing; Give up control; Be ordinary and imperfect; Let life be its own answer.
Montaigne leaps from the page as mindful, both ruminative and constantly attentive to the present moment. He has good advice for the walker.
When I walk alone in the beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been dwelling on extraneous incidents for some part of the time, for some other part I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me.
Sarah Bakewell quotes Montaigne, disabusing us of the false image of him "brooding" in his tower. He was a peripatetic, too: "My thoughts fall asleep if I make them sit down. My mind will not budge unless my legs move it." So, like Emerson he might have said "my books are in my library but my study is outdoors."
There's just something irresistibly alluring about the candid and disarming familiarity of his tone, that's drawn readers to this original essayist for four and a half centuries and obliterates the long interval between him and us. He makes uncertainty fun.
[Montaigne @dawn… M on Self-esteem (deB)… M quotes… M's beam inscriptions… M "In Our Time" (BBC)…M's tower…M's Essays…]
Also today, we'll consider the philosophical status of science. Montaigne the fallible skeptic actually had a better handle on it than Descartes, the self-appointed defender of scientific certainty. That's because science is a trial-and-error affair, making "essays" or attempts at evidence/-based understanding through observation, prediction, and test, but always retreating happily to the drawing board when conjectures meet refutation.
To answer some of my own DQs today:
Q: Are there any "authorities" (personal, textual, political, religious, institutional, traditional…) to whom you always and automatically defer? Can you justify this, intellectually or ethically? A: I don't think so. Whenever I feel a deferential impulse coming on I remind myself of the Emerson line about young men in libraries…
Q: Can you give an example of something you believe on the basis of probability, something else you believe because it has to be true (= follows necessarily from other premises you accept as true), and something you believe because you think it's the "best explanation")? Do you think most of your beliefs conform to one or another of these kinds of explanation? A: Hmmm… The sun will probably rise within the hour. I'm mortal. Life evolves. Yes.
Q: Do you think science makes genuine progress? Does it gradually give us a better, richer account of the natural world and our place in it? Is there a definite correlation between technology and scientific understanding? Do you think there is anything that cannot or should not be studied scientifically? Why? A: Yes, yes, yes, no. Science is a flawed instrument, because the humans who practice it are finite and fallible; but we have nothing to take its place. We shouldn't be scientistic, to the neglect of all the other tools in our kit (including poetry, literature, history, humor), but we definitely should be as scientific as we can.
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Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.
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"Hobbes (the English social contract philosopher, not the tiger) was fond of his dram," sang the Pythons. But he was fonder of his stick. His walking stick. (See below.)
He was also a Royalist, a materialist, a determinist, and a pessimist about human nature. He was "difficult to classify" (Russell). I had an undergrad prof at UMSL, back in the day, who spoke weirdly of "mainlining on utopia with Tommy Hobbes." The Hobbesian utopia is no place I want to live.
But still I like much of what I know about him, particularly his daily morning ramble habit.
I was amused when my old friend said he'd just spent five weeks in Britain and came away with nothing more philosophical than a visit to a castle where Hobbes had tutored. My colleague answered rightly by noting that an ancient English castle's more likely to stimulate the philosophical imagination than is a dusty library in Tennessee. But in any event, Hobbes is a fascinating and over-maligned figure whose steps I look forward to tracking with our Study Abroad course in Britain.
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Jan 24 - Homily: Intelectualism Old and New
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Uploaded by AirMaria on Jan 24, 2010
From today's Gospel Fr Bonaventure preaches on the fact that Jesus is God and our Salvation. He contrasts this to the ancient heresy of Gnosticism that placed the hope of salvation in human knowledge. Listen as he explains that this was an early form of Modernism, containing a very dangerous, prideful intellectualism that has become an almost universal mindset today and how only Christ can guide us away from the resulting shipwreck. Ave Maria! Third Sunday in Ordinary Time 1: Neh 8:2-4,5-6,8-10 R: Ps 19:8-10,15 2: 1 Cor 12:12-30 G: Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21 To Download Audio go to http://airmaria.com?p=10059
Bonaventure Christ Gnosticism God Gospel Heresy Hope Intellectualism Jesus Knowledge Mindset Moderni
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text: Exclusively ours! Look your very best at the office in this comfortable dress shirt with buttondown collar. Original: $34.00 Sale: $19.98 Wrinkle-resistant fabric keeps this shirt off the ironing board Solid color looks great with any tie Regular fit, long-sleeve dress shirt Buttondown collar Front chest pocket Cotton/polyester Imported More


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In a 2- to 3-quart pan, bring broth to a boil over high heat.
Add pasta, reduce heat, and boil gently for 8 minutes.
Add asparagus and continue to cook, stirring often, until almost all liquid has been absorbed and pasta and asparagus are just tender to bite (5 to 7 more minutes).
Stir in 14 cup of the cheese.
Spoon risotto into a warm serving dish; sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup cheese


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|ESPN.com: SEC
|[Print without images]
"They're going to list him on the roster," Brown said. "He'll be participating in spring, as far as I know. He's pretty much committed to football now, as far as the whole (2012) season. Whether or not he's going to play basketball, I don't know if he's sure about that yet. That's what I understood (from talking to Cox)."


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