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Closing Ceremony, Banjaluka, BiH
Wednesday, 21 August 2013 09:53
The French Girls with their hard fought for medal.
Throughout the competition - Live Results available - follow this link
Videos available on YouTube - follow the link and the Playlists.
By the end of the closing ceremony everyone was humming the French National Anthem –' Les Marseillaise'. The French delegation was represented on every single podium, only being beaten by Belgium's Hayabusa in the 4-Way Open in both events (European Championships and World Cup) and by the UAE in the 4-way VFS (World Cup). The great atmosphere of the whole competition continued through the prize giving and the closing banquet, held on the DZ.
The organisers received a huge round of applause for the helpful and friendly way they had conducted the whole event, and in his closing speech the President of the Parachute Club of Banjaluka reminded everyone that next year they would be hosting the CF and Style & Acc WC – and who knows he may welcome everyone back in 2015!
The two competitors' meetings held in the afternoon continued the general good feeling. In the Formation Skydiving meeting the competitors on the whole were happy with the conduct of the championships and the judging.
There was some discussion around the way "head up" and "head down" are specified in the regulations and the problems some had with interpreting or understanding them. There was also a suggestion following the situation at the end of the 4-Way Female event.
The USA felt that the tie-break round should be timed so that the team that is fastest to the last point (if a tie continues) should be declared the winners – rather than the count back system which is currently in the rules. That meant the competition was decided on one jump – however the same could be said of the proposal as the tie break round would be the deciding one. It does however seem a neater solution.
At the Artistic Events' competitors meeting concerns were raised about the situation teams found themselves in following exit commands that had them landing well off the airfield and then being asked to jump through cloud when they could not see the ground. Some competitors felt they could not take the risk of not jumping for fear of their concerns would not be considered pertinent.
The British Freestyle team asked for a formal letter of apology over the error made in announcing them as placed 3rd in the European Championships – before the adjustment had been made. They had announced this to their sponsors and now had to correct the situation. This will be forthcoming.
The competitors expressed being satisfied with the way the compulsory rounds had been judged believing the judges had listened to their suggestions and concerns before the competition started – and they believed the judging was an improvement on previous years.
All videos from the competitions, both Artistic Events and Formation Skydiving are on the IPC pages of YouTube – and over the coming days they will be sorted into the Playlist to make them easier to find. Unfortunately a few got corrupted between being judged and the transfer so unfortunately these are not available.
Ted Wagner (OmniSkore!HD) is already working on a faster and easier system of transfer to us so that all videos will be available on both the FAI/IPC site (and OmniSkore) as soon as the internet connection will allow after judging – for Prostejov (Czech Republic) 2014.
After the closing ceremony we were treated to an amazing gymnastic display by Daphney – Israel Freestylist. We hope to post the video very soon. This is one talented young lady with her sights set on becoming World Champion.
Blue Skies to all.
18/08/2013 Banjaluka, BiH
Sunday, 18 August 2013 11:00
Day 5
Day 3.
Artistic Events first event has completed:
In both the European Championships and World Cup
Freestyle is finalised:
Congratulations to all the medal winners and to all the competitors for a great competition.
Formation Skydiving
20.20 The Round 8 4-way Female continued the excitement - France scored 23 points - the USA 20 (two busts) so we are back to a tie for first place - bodes well for an exciting finish tomorrow.
18.30 The end of the day and a real surprise - the USA Golden Knights Female 4 scored 21 points on round 7 - the French 17 - The USA is now in first position with a 3 point advantage. An exciting end is in store.
17.00 hrs Round 9 of 8-way completed with France consoildating their lead and dominance in this year's competition. France has received 3 "busts" during the 9 rounds and Russia a total of 4 - the turning point is obviously France's 30 points in round 5 gave them a huge advantage.
The 4-Way Female event at the end of Round 6 has France in the lead by 1 point having conceded a point to USA Golden Knights Female 4. The fight for third place between the two UK teams widened with Bodyflight Isis now on 100 points and Kaizen on 96.
Round 7 of 4-way just completed with no change in the placings at the top.
The plan for today was to complete VFS, take the 8-way to the end of round 9, leaving one round for tomorrow and the 4-way (open and female) to the completion of round 8 - so 2 rounds for the morning.
However, by 12.00 VFS was put on a weather hold - caused by the SUN - that has got to be a first! The Drop Zone was visited today by the Commander of EUFOR, Major General Dieter Heidecker of Austria. An ex-parachuter himself he was very interested in the competition and spent some time here this morning.
8.00 An early start for the 8-way and VFS teams this morning. Beautiful day, no sign of the clouds of the past couple of days. It will be interesting to see if France's 8-way increases their lead over the rest of the field - curreently 28 points ahead of Russia with France's 2nd team 5 points behind the Russians.
UAE have established a 6 point advantage over France in VFS with Norway 3rd but not in the same league (yet). Meanwhile this afternoon the hot competition between France and USA 4-way Female continues - the last round saw France pull ahead by 2 points with 5 rounds still to be jumped. The two UK teams are in 3rd and 4th positions fighting their own battle.
Hayabusa (Belgium) are well established in first position in the 4-way Open (continuing this afternoon) with Russia 2nd and France in 3rd position - the real competition is taking place further down the table.
Artistic Events continue this afternoon also having already completed 5 rounds: France is in 1st place, Russia 2nd and Norway 3rd. The French boys have scored 9.0 points in each of their free routines. France is dominating Freestyle with teams in all 3 placings. We shall see what today brings.
FS Judges and the Jury arrive for work
Day 2: A simple but effective opening ceremony yesterday evening formally started the FAI European Championships and World Cups in Formation Skydiving and Artistic Events. Competitors paraded behind their national flags onto the stage one at a time - and were applauded by everyone.
FAI 9th European Championships & 10th World Cup in Artisitic Events and
FAI 12th European Championships and 19th World Cup in Formation Skydiving
Banjaluka, Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2013
Artistic Events
FAI 9th European Championships & 10th World Cup in Artisitic Events and
FAI 12th European Championships and 19th World Cup in Formation Skydiving
Banjaluka, Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2013
Formation Skydiving
4-Way Female: Golden Knights
FAI 9th European Championships & 10th World Cup in Artisitic Events and
FAI 12th European Championships and 19th World Cup in Formation Skydiving
Banjaluka, Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2013
Artistic Events
FAI 9th European Championships & 10th World Cup in Artisitic Events and
FAI 12th European Championships and 19th World Cup in Formation Skydiving
Banjaluka, Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2013
Formation Skydiving & Artistic Events
4-Way Open : Raykipo - National Team
4-Way Open : Eclipse
4-Way Open : Hyrrokkin
4-Way Female : Bodyflight Isis - National Team
4-Way Female : Team XXX
4-Way Female : Kaizen
4-Way Female : Seraphim
Artistic Events
Freestyle: Euphoria
Freefly: Varial Freefly
FAI 9th European Championships & 10th World Cup in Artisitic Events and
FAI 12th European Championships and 19th World Cup in Formation Skydiving
Banjaluka, Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2013
Formation Skydiving
4-Way Open : Asaar Black - National Team
4-Way Open : Asaar Yellow
4-Way Female
4-Way VFS
|Artistic Events


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Always one for thought-provoking features, Jonathan returns with his Sunday column, this week searching for the meaning of civilisation.
Sunday, 29th March, 2015 10:59am
By Jonathan Dodd with one comment
OnTheWight is run on journalistic principles of honesty, transparency and balance. Every so often, there will be a subject or issue that the editors or contributors wish to share that reflects their personal opinion.
These Isle of Wight opinion pieces will be clearly marked as such. We believe their inclusion adds to the diversity of content available to readers.
Always one for thought-provoking features, Jonathan returns with his Sunday column, this week searching for the meaning of civilisation.
Sunday, 29th March, 2015 10:59am
By Jonathan Dodd with one comment
As the General Election draws ever closer and the rhetoric broadcast across the airwaves increases ten-fold, Jonathan shares his thoughts on what's being said and why.
Sunday, 22nd March, 2015 7:56am
By Jonathan Dodd with 22 readers' comments
Jonathan returns with another engaging and thought-provoking piece. Always a good read on Sunday morning.
Sunday, 15th March, 2015 10:06am
By Jonathan Dodd with 15 readers' comments
Jonathan explores the role of robots in our lives, along the way touching on ISIS, artificial intelligence and change.
Sunday, 8th March, 2015 10:54am
By Jonathan Dodd with one comment
We're finally into the third month of the year and it has certainly felt in the last week or so as though Spring has sprung.
Sunday, 1st March, 2015 10:21am
By Jonathan Dodd with 9 readers' comments
Jonathan returns with another interesting and thought provoking column that many of us will relate to.
Sunday, 22nd February, 2015 9:42am
By Jonathan Dodd with 5 readers' comments
Jonathan returns a little earlier this week. As it's Valentine's Day and he is clearly in the mood for love, we thought we'd shift his Sunday piece to Saturday.
Saturday, 14th February, 2015 12:15pm
By Jonathan Dodd with 4 readers' comments
Jonathan Dodd gets the mind racing once again. This week his train of thought (and the distraction of the Internet) has led him to research well-known quotations.
Sunday, 8th February, 2015 11:45am
By Jonathan Dodd with 3 readers' comments
Jonathan returns with his Sunday column and once again gives us plenty of food for thought. This week it's religion.
Sunday, 1st February, 2015 10:13am
By Jonathan Dodd with 12 readers' comments
With the General Election campaign well underway, Jonathan shares his views.
Sunday, 25th January, 2015 10:56am
By Jonathan Dodd with 26 readers' comments
It's not often that we publish Opinion Pieces these days, but this, around the launch of the Isle of Wight Conservative MP's re-election campaign deserves it, we feel.
Monday, 12th January, 2015 9:29am
By Simon Perry with 34 readers' comments

subset: commoncrawl


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SAN FRANCISCO — Bonhams & Butterfields' March 1, 2010 San Francisco auction of property from the collections of Antonio and Lillian Mariani, owners of the well-respected San Francisco firm Antonio's Antiques, brought more than $1.75 million Read More +
Venetian canal scene headlines Kaminski's February auction
BOSTON — Kaminski Auctions, one of Massachusetts' premier auction houses, announces its February Estates Auction. The auction features fine art, antiques and collectibles from estates spanning Massachusetts to Kaminski's second location in Beverly Hills, Calif. Read More +
SOFA Chicago sees increase of 'young collectors'
CHICAGO — Crowds packed the 16th International Exposition of Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Chicago Opening Night gala on Nov. 5, with Navy Pier Festival Hall security estimating 3,200-3,500 in attendance over the course of the evening Read More +
Weschler's kicks off its fall season with stellar results
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Weschler's Auctioneers & Appraisers began its 2009/2010 auction season Sept. 25 with heavy bidding attributable to property consigned by one of D.C.'s most exclusive neighborhoods: Kalorama. Read More +
California's eco-conscious shoppers turning to vintage
ROSEVILLE, Calif. – They say that everything old is new again. With the vintage trend sweeping fashion, home décor and everything in between, the eco-conscious and penny-savvy are turning to their grandmothers' pastime: antiquing. Read More +
Regional Roundup: What's going on in the West
Eighty-year-old Winifred Green (Winn, for short) has been selling antiques in Phoenix for 42 years. "It's not really a long time when you're having fun," she said. Read More +
Hal Hunt to auction the contents of famous Alabama antebellum home Sept. 5
EUTAW, Ala. – The contents of the Kirkwood mansion – one of the most famous and stately privately-owned antebellum homes in the South – will be auctioned on Sept. 5 by Hal Hunt Auctions, which is based in Northport, Ala. Read More +
Maxwell Street Days caters to bargain hunters
A Cedarburg (Wis.) Volunteer Fire Department tradition for more than 40 years, Maxwell Street Days is a large outdoor sale with more than 800 spaces filled with antiques, collectibles, crafters, produce and rummage plus food, beverages and music.
Read More +
Regional Roundup: North
How are antique shops and malls faring in the Northern U.S.? Eric Bradley and Kelly Krumsee team up to spotlight antiques businesses and let us know how they are doing.
Read More +
Jackson's International to offer entire inventory of high-end antique shop in no-reserve sale
CEDAR FALLS, Iowa—Jackson's International Auctioneers of Cedar Falls, Iowa, will offer the entire inventory of Katelman Antiques of Omaha, Neb., in a one-day, on-site sale to be held Aug. 15 beginning at 10 a.m. Read More +


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Actress Mila Kunis all but admitted she was married after being prodded by late night talk show host James Corden early this week.
James Corden is really going all out to draw the A-listers during his first week on The Late Late Show. After kicking off his new gig with Tom Hanks and Mila Kunis Monday night, Corden enlisted Mariah Carey for a special guest appearance...Show More Summary
James Corden is off to a great start hosting The Late Late Show this week, chatting with Mila Kunis and reciting lines from Tom Hanks movies with Tom Hanks. For his latest skit, he enlisted Mariah Carey for some karaoke in the car. Though at first the pop diva was hesitant, they ended up singing to some of Carey's greatest hits. Show More Summary
James Corden's unique, relaxed style not only won over viewers — it lulled Mila Kunis into sorta revealing that she and Ashton Kutcher were married! Of course, a little prodding from Tom Hanks helped! What great first guests! Which got us thinking… Who did all our other favorite late night talk show hosts get on their first nights? CLICK [...]
Mila Kunis has been a mother for five months and it looks like she's adjusting well to motherhood. The other night Kunis went on James Cordon's Late Late Show for his premiere week, and while talking about life with the new baby things got a little TMI. Show More Summary
I think they keep dropping hints that they're married to stay in the news. And it's obviously working, because here I am, WRITING ABOUT IT.
Her whole life has changed since giving birth to her daughter Wyatt, and Mila Kunis can't seem to get out of mommy mode as of late. During her interview on "The Late Late Show" last night (March 23), the "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" star...Show More Summary
The couple was spotted having a romantic dinner together - ET Dancing With the Stars partners finally address dating rumors - Us Weekly The latest on Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher's relationship - Gossip Girl An SAT prep book misquotes...Show More Summary
The new mom opened up on the reality of parenthood on the first episode of 'The Late Late Show' with James Corden.
Mila Kunis is totally married to Ashton Kutcher. Neither the actress nor the actor will confirm this union for some reason, but Kunis appeared (alongside Tom Hanks) on The Late Late Show with James Corden yesterday and was asked whether...Show More Summary
Bethenny Frankel admits she's too thin, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence get the giggles during sex scenes, Harry Potter meets 'Uptown Funk,' and more celeb news.
British comedian and actor James Corden made his debut as host of The Late Late Show Monday night, with guests Tom Hanks and Mila Kunis. If you didn't stay up to watch it, here are five highlights. 9 charming reasons why James Corden is the perfect Late Late Show successor 1. Show More Summary
Ooh, is this a thing parents do?? Mila Kunis and Tom Hanks joined James Corden for his The Late Late Show debut on Monday evening and they talked about parenting, having kids, dealing with them, etc. [ Related: Here's Everything You Need To Know About New Host James Corden! ] You know, the usual things people with children [...]
Post by Kiri Blakeley. What the hell is going on? Is Mila Kunis married to Ashton Kutcher or not? For some reason, the pair are keeping this a tighter secret than how many times Ashton cheated on Demi. I mean, this is a topper secret than the identity of Kim Kardashian's plastic surgeon. Show More Summary
Did wedding bells already ring for Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher?In a preview clip from her appearance on the debut episode of James Corden's "The Late Late Show" Monday night, Kunis leaves fans wondering whether she and Kutcher have tied the knot.In the clip, Corden asks the 31-year-old star, "Are you married? Did you get married?""I don't know, maybe," she coyly responds.
Are they or aren't they? That's still the question swirling around Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher's marital status, and the actress' recent vagueness on the new "Late Late Show With James Corden" isn't helping set the record straight...
It's time to play another round of 'Wait, Is Mila Kunis Married Or Not?' The Jupiter Ascending actress is a guest on the inaugural episode of The Late Late Show With James Corden, which premieres Tuesday at 12:35/11:35c. CBS has released...Show More Summary
Wedding bells have rung for Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher -- at least that's what the new "Late Late Show" host James Corden deduces in his premiere episode.Kunis joins Tom Hanks as Corden's first guests on the show, which premieres Monday (March 23) on CBS. Show More Summary
James Corden let the cat out of the bag on his new 'Late Late Show.'


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Tue January 8, 2013
Spike Lee is MSU's Next Presidential Lecturer
Writer and director Spike Lee is Murray State University's 2013 Presidential Lecturer. Lee's lecture is called "An Evening with Spike Lee: America Through My Lens."
Lee's talk will focus on the history of America as well as its future and will touch on race relations and social issues. The lecture historically has been free and open to the public. Lee is scheduled to speak at 7:30 p.m. on February 4th in MSU's Lovett Auditorium.


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Mark Wahlberg: Hollywood life 'Nothing Compared' to Fighting in Afghanistan
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by Adrienne Mayor (regular contributor)
A great many exotic birds flocked to London in the seventeenth century, imported by the East India Company, retired sea captains, and sailors. The first mynah bird to reach England was a gift from the Company to the Duke of York in 1664. The Bengal mynah knew phrases in English and could neigh like a horse. Fashionable Londoners loved to stroll along Birdcage Walk in St James Park to admire the aviaries of hundreds of beautiful birds donated by the Company during the reign of Charles II.
Charles II, however, preferred to keep a tame British starling with an impressive vocabulary in his bedchamber. Samuel Pepys, the great diarist of the British aristocracy in the 1660s, later acquired the royal starling. Pepys exclaimed in his journal that "the king's starling doth talk and whistle finely, which I am mighty proud of."
Pepys also enjoyed his bevy of canaries, given to him by a sea captain, while his wife loved her garrulous parrot. "For talking and singing," marveled Pepys, "I never heard the like!" Pepys was amazed when his neighbor's parrot immediately recognized a new servant named Mingo, whom he'd known from a previous household. Pepys also described a bad-tempered parrot that almost pecked out the eye of a different friend.
Yet another parrot of Pepys' acquaintance belonged to Lord Batten who "hath brought it from the sea." Batten's parrot often entertained guests at dinner parties. When Pepys visited the parrot was well behaved: "It speaks very well and cries Poll so pleasantly," wrote Pepys. But Lady Batten and her mother detested Poll. It seems that Poll's seafaring days had influenced its vocabulary in a vulgar manner–a typical problem with talking birds in general.
A similar case was described by Reverend Samuel Wesley of Epworth Rectory. This parrot lived in Billingsgate, the crowded, noisy street of fish markets frequented by sailors and fishermen notorious for their foul language. The parrot naturally developed a vast vocabulary of filthy phrases, cheerfully squawking out offensive insults and dirty slang to passersby. The owners, hoping to reform the bird, sent the him away to live in a genteel tea room across town. In less than a year the parrot's bawdy expressions were replaced with inoffensive tea room chatter, along the lines of "What's new?" and "Please bring another cup of coffee."
Thus converted, the parrot was allowed to return home to Billingsgate. "But within a week," the minister reported, "it had got all its wicked cursings and swearings down as pat as ever."
Another cursing parrot appeared in a poem by George Crabbe (1809). In this tragic tale, a parrot lost his mistress's favor and his life when he "was heard to speak / such frightful words as tinged his lady's cheek." The parrot, now stuffed, was replaced by a "clipped French puppy."
At Andrew Jackson's funeral in 1845, his pet parrot was hustled out for cussing. Then in New York City in 1938 a seafaring parrot named Popeye caused an uproar during a radio contest for talking birds. Some 1,200 contestants were judged on vocabulary, diction, and originality of expression. Entrants included an Italian fruit vendor's African grey parrot who called out fruits in English; a 90-year-old Boston parrot who recited the Lord's Prayer; and an Omaha parrot named Theodore Metcalf who barked, mewed, groaned, and gurgled. Popeye, who was sponsored by the NY Seaman's Church Institute, was immediately disqualified for his salty vocabulary–despite his excellent diction and originality.
About the author: A research scholar in Classics and History of Science, Stanford University, Adrienne Mayor is the author of The Poison King: Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy, a nonfiction finalist for the 2009 National Book Award, and The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World (2014).
By Helen King (Regular Contributor)
So there I was watching a superb drag burlesque act, The Down and Dirty Show, featuring The Gentleman King and Foxy Tann, the scheduled entertainment at the 2011 Berkshire Conference for Women Historians. And the sky opened. Sometimes moments of insight come when you least expect them.
How many times have you assumed that the person walking down the street in front of you was a man, and then when the person turned round you realized it was a woman? We read various cues, but then we have to change our minds. In this show, men became women who became men again in front of our eyes; which raised the question, were they men to begin with? Gender was most emphatically shown as something to be performed, meanings shifting with clothing and context, so that binaries dissolved and the world became a very different place.
And suddenly the imaginary ancient Greek midwife on whom I was writing a book, Agnodice, started to mean something very different. My main research question had never been the traditional one, namely 'Was Agnodice a real person, a pioneering midwife who fought for the right of women to attend those giving birth?' That question, the one asked by existing articles and books aimed at midwives, is I think a dead end. Of course this young girl, who is supposed to have disguised herself as a man to learn medicine and then practiced her profession until accused by jealous rivals, never existed. The story, culminating in her displaying her body to the court to prove she is really a woman and can't have been seducing female patients, has many of the features of an ancient novel.
Having a 'founding father' for a profession is traditional, so claiming Agnodice as 'first midwife' just plays the same game as medicine and its specialisms: from Hippocrates as 'father of medicine' to Robert Koch as 'father of microbiology'. Such games involve consolidating an identity for a newly emerging specialism, or making nationalist claims to precedence in a contested field. I was always more interested in how people over the last 500 years or so had refashioned Agnodice: was she, they wondered, a midwife or a female doctor? How that question has been answered can help us think today about debates over what midwifery is, how gender is relevant, and where the professional boundaries between midwives and doctors should be drawn.
One of the aspects of Agnodice in modern discourse that most fascinates me is her use in the name of the excellent Agnodice Foundation, a Swiss group working for the integration of those who are transsexual, intersex or transgender. I asked their founder, Dr Erika Volkmar, why Agnodice had been chosen. She was well aware that the story is a myth but replied that 'We can assume that if Agnodice was successful in practicing OBG as a man, she must have been at least very androgyne and gender variant … Agnodice is perfect as she was both gender variant AND an outstanding professional. Equally, our foundation council is composed of a majority of great professionals with atypical gender identity. She is a model because as a gender variant person she obtained a major victory against the prejudice and sexism of our society, i.e. making medical studies accessible to women.'
The Agnodice Foundation is not the first to take Agnodice as gender variant. Here is James Sprague in 1912 imagining Agnodice speaking:
And so I reasoned, 'twas a blunder made, for which the gods were not responsible. Dame Nature 'twas who in erratic mood had linked a man's mind to a woman's form. And none suspected, none in all these years, the secret of my sex. Oh, strange indeed, the ways of gods are not like those of men — that by mere change of garb a woman is transformed into the semblance of a man, and that great inner difference concealed !
Her sex is female, in bodily terms, but here her mind is not. Would she have wanted to change her body to match her mind, had such an option been available to her? And it's not just Agnodice's mind that is male: for Sprague the court hears a voice whose full, rich, swelling tones were like unto an organ's.
What The Down and Dirty Show showed me is that assuming that Agnodice was easily able to pass for a man because she was gender variant may make us miss an even larger point; namely, that gender is always potentially ambiguous. How do we read the signs? We assume we know who the boys are and who the girls are, but it only takes a change of dress or hairstyle or gesture and our carefully constructed binaries fall apart. Seeing Agnodice as gender variant glosses over the inadequacies of gender binaries, in history and today.
Sprague, James S., 'Agnodice', Dominion Monthly and Ontario Medical Journal, 38 (1912): 13–17.
By Laura J. Snyder (Guest Contributor)
It was June 24, 1833, at the meeting of the recently-founded British Association for the Advancement of Science. William Whewell (pronounced "who-ell"), a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and former professor of Mineralogy, had just finished a speech opening the conference. When the applause died down, the members were shocked to see a frail, grizzled man rise slowly to his feet. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the celebrated Romantic poet, had written a treatise on scientific method decades before. Coleridge had hardly left his home in Highgate for the past thirty years, yet he had felt obliged to make the journey to attend this meeting.
At that time, the practitioners of science were known primarily as "natural philosophers." Coleridge remarked acidly that the members of the association should no longer refer to themselves this way. Men digging in fossil pits, or performing experiments with electrical apparatus, hardly fit the definition. They were not, he meant, "armchair philosophers," pondering the mysteries of the universe, but practical men – with dirty hands, at that. As a "real metaphysician," he forbade them the use of this honorific.
The hall erupted in a tumultuous din, as the assembled group took offense at the insult Coleridge clearly intended. Then Whewell rose again, quieting the crowd. He courteously agreed with the "distinguished gentleman" that a satisfactory term with which to describe the members of the association was wanting. If "philosophers" is taken to be "too wide and lofty a term," then, Whewell suggested, "by analogy with artist, we may form scientist."
It was fitting that the term was invented by Whewell who, along with three of his friends, transformed the natural philosopher into the modern scientist.
Laura J. Snyder is associate professor of philosophy at St. John's University, and the author of Reforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society (University of Chicago, 2006) and The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends who Transformed Science and Changed the World (Broadway, February 22, 2011).
This post was first published on Wonders & Marvels in January 2011.
If there's a big, fat lie in waffledom, it's that good waffles can be made from pancake batter. Sure, pancakes and waffles both contain eggs, flour and leavening, and they're both served for breakfast. But differences abound.
— Pancakes may be brown on the outside, but they're floppy, soft and spongy, with an interior that looks a lot like cake.
— Waffles, on the other hand, are crisp on the outside and light on the inside, like beignets, funnel cakes, hush puppies or doughnuts. In short, waffles are fried, only instead of being immersed in hot oil, they are encased in hot-oil-covered metal.
A few points about waffle batter:
— Waffle batter contains a higher percentage of sugar (for caramelization) than pancake.
— Waffle batter includes a bit more fat (for a crisp exterior) than pancake.
Even with all of this knowledge concentrate, I don't think one breakfast item is better than the other, so make both:
Scott Akerman
Poor Pentax :(
As has been widely reported over the past few days, we've released data for 2013-2014 showing camera ownership trends among Flickr members. With this blog post, we give you more detail about the data and let you parse the minutia.
This analysis goes from the period of January 2013 to mid-December 2014. We estimate camera ownership per-week by only counting a camera once per-account, per-week, to compensate for community members uploading different quantities of photos.
This analysis offers an estimate of camera ownership by brand and cameras all together, and then looks in detail at mobile cameras, mirrorless and DSLR cameras.
Overall, Nikon and Canon steadily held on to their share of cameras on Flickr. What changed was that the big two smartphone camera manufacturers, Apple and Samsung, which moved up the chart.
Mid-2014 is where most of the significant changes happened. Kodak dropped from 1.5 percent to off the chart entirely, but the biggest change was in the cameras using the Android operating system. In the last 6 months of 2014, Samsung saw growth from 6 percent weekly use, to nearly 15 percent, and both LG and Motorola came on to the scene at nearly 2 percent each, close to their older peer, HTC, which held steady at around 2.5 percent.
When comparing all the cameras on Flickr, the iPhone 5S, 5, 4S and 4 have consistently been the most popular on Flickr over the past two years. While Nikon and Canon remain very popular, they offer a huge range of individual cameras and the overall popularity of individual models likely is lost in the diversity.
Outside of smartphones, the next most popular cameras are all classic DSLR's. The full-frame Canon 5D MkII is the next most popular camera outside of smartphones in 2013, but took second place to the Canon 600D (T3i in some locales). Entry to mid-level DSLRS round out the rest of the top 10 (all APS-C) with the exception of the Canon 5D MkIII which makes an appearance at the bottom of the top 10 for 2014.
For all of 2013 and well into 2014, Apple made up 60% of the mobile cameras owned on Flickr, with, as mentioned earlier, the iPhone 5 taking the biggest share. However, mid-2014 saw a dramatic change, with Android camera phones gaining a 10-15% share of camera usage. Samsung in particular grew strongly, the Galaxy S3 and S4 contributing significantly to the brand's popularity.
Nokia started out at 8% weekly of the cameraphone share but has been steadily declining, at a bit below 3% weekly at the end of 2014.
For both 2013 and 2014, the most popular mirrorless camera by far was the Micro 4/3 Olympus E-M5, and by 2014 it was one of two Micro 4/3 format mirrorless cameras in the top 10. The high-end, full-frame Sony A7 took the second spot, followed closely by APS-C contenders Sony NEX-6 and Fujifilm X-E1.
At the start of 2013, there were four big players contributing to mirrorless cameras on Flickr: Sony, at over 35 percent weekly of mirrorless cameras, Olympus at nearly 30 percent weekly, Panasonic at 25 percent weekly, and Fujifilm under 10 percent weekly. Both Panasonic and Olympus started out with a huge variety of cameras and ended 2014 with a smaller share (20 percent weekly for Panasonic and 25 percent weekly for Olympus) and a much smaller variety of cameras. Sony closed out 2014 with a much bigger variety of cameras and a 40 percent weekly share of mirrorless cameras used, while Fujifilm saw a similar growth with models and nearly a 20 percent weekly share of the cameras owned.
Within DSLR's Canon, Nikon and Sony were the top 3 contenders, holding steady at 55% weekly, 40% weekly and a bit less than 5% weekly (respectively) of the DLSR cameras owned on Flickr. The Canon 7D topped was first in 2013 and bumped to second by the Canon 600D in 2014. In 2014 the Nikon D7000 and Canon 60D jockeyed for the next two spots, with the Canon 5D Mark III being the most popular full-frame camera. Not just for professionals, there is a healthy selection of entry-level DSLR's in the top 10 for both years, Nikon being more popular in this category.
This article has been updated to correct an error where certain camera types were under-counted.
By Pamela Toler (Regular Contributor)
A letter written on papyrus from the 3rd century BCE
For hundreds of years papyrus was the principal material on which books (or at least hand-copied scrolls) were written. Since it could only be made from the pith of freshly harvested papyrus reeds, native to the Nile valley, ancient Egypt had a monopoly on the product–and a potential monopoly on the written word.
In the second century BCE, the kingdoms of Egypt and Pergamum* got into an academic arms race.
The library at Alexandria in Egypt had been an intellectual power house since it was founded by King Ptolemy I Soter in 295 BCE. Ptolemy set out to collect copies of all the books in the inhabited world. He sent agents to search for manuscripts in the great cities of the known world. Foreign ships that sailed into Alexandria were searched for scrolls, which were confiscated and copied. (According to Greek physician, philosopher and author Galen, the seized books were cataloged under a special heading:"books of the ships".)
Thirty years later, King Eumenes of Pergamum founded a rival library in his capital. Both kingdoms were wealthy and the two libraries competed for sensational finds.
In 197 BCE, King Ptolemy V Epiphanies took the rivalry to a new level by putting an embargo on papyrus shipments to Pergamum. The idea was that without papyrus, scholars in Pergamum could not make scrolls and therefore could not copy manuscripts.
You can't stop a librarian that easily. Pergamum turned to a more expensive, but more durable, material made from the skin of sheep and goats. We know it as parchment, from the medieval Latin phrase for "from Pergamum".
* Not a small place, as you can see:
Pergamum at its greatest extent in 188 BCE
The journal contexts has an excellent article on the long history of exploring the sex lives of sex researchers as a veiled attempt to discredit their work.
…these stories suggest a troubling pattern: they tend to focus on researchers' alleged sexual proclivities, spinning them as deviant motivations which compromise the research.
For example, James Miller's biography of Michel Foucault links Foucault's work to unconventional sexual activities like sadomasochism. Thomas Maier begins his biography with Virginia Johnson losing her virginity, portrays her as a sexually conniving secretary, and delights in exposing complicated aspects of the researchers' sex life together. And historian James Jones depicts Kinsey as deeply twisted.
The problem is not simply that sexuality research remains stigmatized. It is that, in many circumstances, sex itself remains stubbornly discrediting. Sexuality's cultural meanings are paradoxical—it is simultaneously repulsive and attractive, taboo yet vital to our happiness. It is difficult to write sexual stories without reproducing what Michael Warner calls "the ordinary power of sexual shame." Moreover, stories that examine sex research through the prism of the researcher's sex life rely on the simplistic notion that there is a specific connection between one's sexual experiences and research.
A fascinating piece which covers the sort of leering interest sex research continually attracts despite it being one of the most important and under-investigated aspects of human health and behaviour.
Link to 'The Sex Lives of Sex Researchers' in contexts.
By Caroline Lawrence (Wonders & Marvels contributor)
When I was researching my sixth Roman Mystery, set during the mid-winter festival called the Saturnalia, I was amazed by how many ancient Roman customs have survived, embedded in our Christmas celebrations. Here are twelve!
1. Five day vacation. In the first century AD the Romans set aside five days holiday to celebrate the festival of the Saturnalia, a mid-winter pagan festival to bring back the sun. We take approximately the same number of days off for Christmas.
2. December 25th. Romans sacrificed to Saturn but by the first century some were celebrating the birth of an eastern god of light on the 25th of December. No, not Jesus: Mithras! His rites and rituals shared many similarities with our Christian ceremonies. There was a baptism, a sacramental meal, an observance of Sunday, and the god himself was born on the 25th of December
3. Christmas tree, mistletoe, wreaths, etc. Romans decorated their houses with greenery. As Sheldon from Big Bang Theory says, "In the pre-Christian era, as the winter solstice approached and the plants died, pagans brought evergreen boughs into their homes as an act of sympathetic magic, intended to guard the life essences of the plants until spring. This custom was later appropriated by Northern Europeans and eventually became the so-called Christmas tree."
4. Lights & candles. Romans also decorated their houses with extra lights at this darkest time of the year. Again, this was a pagan attempt to bring back the sun. Torches, tapers, candleabra and oil-lamps flickered throughout the houses of the rich. Because of this Rome was a particular fire hazard in the winter. One historian estimates that a hundred fires broke out daily in the Eternal City, which had its own entire corps of firemen, the vigiles.
5. Feasting! In mid-winter instinct tells us to build up a nice layer of fat, to feast in preparation for lean times ahead. A bit like a bear before hibernation. Yum. Carbohydrates are on the menu again.
6. Drinking. It has been medically proven that a small amount of wine added to water will kill off most known bacteria. For most of the year Romans drank diluted wine, but during the Saturnalia they often drank neat wine, heated and spiced. That's my excuse for a glass of mulled wine: it's hygienic.
7. Partying & Role Reversal. For the five days of the Saturnalia, slaves didn't have to work. They could eat, drink and be merry. Some masters let their slave switch roles. Others, like Pliny the Younger, just left them alone to get on with it. Today, office employees find Christmas the time when they are tempted to take the most liberty. Be careful. Once the Saturnalia is over, you have to go back to being a slave… er, employee.
8. Board games and/or cards. In first century Rome, the only time gambling was legally permitted was during the Saturnalia. Even children and slaves could roll dice for nuts or money without fear of punishment. In the West, Christmas is the only time many families play board games or cards.
9. Party pieces. On the first night of the Saturnalia many households threw dice to determine who would be the King of the Saturnalia. The "King" could command people to do things like prepare a banquet, sing a song, or run an errand. Today we often perform party pieces at our Christmas parties, but Mom usually gets landed with preparing the banquet.
10. Santa hats. Many Roman citizens wore the hats traditionally given to slaves when they were set free. The pileus or pileum – both forms are attested – showed that freeborn Roman citizens were "extra free" from the usual restrictions and laws. These "freedom caps" were conical in shape and made of colourful felt, perhaps fur-trimmed in the winter. Hmmm. A red felt conical hat trimmed with white fur. Remind you of anything?
11. Presents! The Romans gave gifts on the Saturnalia, especially small clay or wooden figures – sigillum singular, sigilla plural – often with moveable joints. Action figures, LEGO and Barbies are our modern equivalent!
12. Gift tags. Finally, Romans often composed two-line epigrams to accompany their Saturnalia gift. So come on all you NaNoWriMo graduates and would-be writers: try composing your gift tags as a two line poem!
Caroline Lawrence has been writing detective stories about first century Rome and the Wild West for over a dozen years. Her passion for plotting combined with an obession with historical accuracy means her history-mystery stories are popular with children, parents and teachers. Here she is at a Christmas booksigning, wearing her pileum or freedom cap.
This post was first published on Wonders & Marvels in December 2012.
By Alexander Watson (Guest Contributor)
"Every day now brings turnips, turnips and still more turnips." The hunger felt across Central Europe during the First World War is barely remembered today, but for millions of German and Austro-Hungarian civilians, as for the Hamburg girl who wrote those words in January 1917, it was the conflict's defining experience. A desperate search for food dominated wartime life. Malnutrition and, in some places, starvation had killed around a million people in Central and Eastern Europe by the end of 1918.
People queue in front of a "goulash gun". The deployment of these mobile field kitchens onto the streets of Germany was one method by which the government tried to rationalize the feeding of the population. Each contained around 1,400 portions of stew.
The food shortages were partly a consequence of mobilisation for "total war". By 1915, the drafting of hundreds of thousands of farm workers and horses to the army, soil exhaustion and bureaucratic inefficiency had precipitated crises in production and distribution. Yet the shortages were also engineered deliberately by the ring of enemies surrounding Germany and Austria-Hungary. Britain used its naval supremacy and diplomatic clout ruthlessly to halt imports to Central Europe. The Royal Navy closed the entire North Sea to international trade. What could not be blocked was purchased: Norway's herring catch, for example, was cornered by the British and then left to rot, solely to deny it to hungry Germans.
The Central Powers struggled to overcome dearth. Officials slowly tried to centralise food management and experimented with rationing and mass soup kitchens. More darkly, occupied territories' food stocks were callously seized. Society mobilised to search for substitutes. At universities, historians scoured dusty manuscripts to discover what people had eaten in earlier famines. Chemists tried to extract oils from grape and poppy seeds. Private business also strove to fill gaps in the markets. In all, 11,000 so-called "Ersatz" (replacement) foods were produced. Most ranged from the unappealing, through disgusting to actually poisonous. For example, in the absence of flour, wartime sausages could legally be filled with 70 per cent water, becoming squidgy tubes of slime. Walnut shells, plum stones and even turnip heads went into wartime coffee, and dishonest traders mixed sawdust into bread and marketed ash as pepper substitute.
"Citizens' Cooking Recipe". A satirical German postcard from 1917 explaining how to make a meal solely from ration coupons unredeemed because the food was unavailable: "Take the meat ration card, coat it in the egg ration card and fry nicely brown with the butter card …"
The unappetising and inadequate diet had disastrous consequences for Germany and Austria-Hungary. Hunger eroded popular support for the conflict. It also delegitimised governments incapable of feeding their peoples. In both states, malnourished citizens rose up at the war's end in revolution. Worse, the obsession with food security provoked by the trauma would contribute to even greater horrors a quarter of a century later. The Nazis' genocidal ambitions to annex agricultural "living space" in the east would be motivated not just by vicious racial ideology but also – with the memory of the First World War still strong – by determination to make Germany, as Hitler himself put it, "the most blockade-proof place in the world."
Alexander Watson is Lecturer in History at Goldsmiths, University of London. His new book, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I, has just been published by Basic Books.
W&M is excited to have two (2) copies of Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I for this month's giveaway! Be sure to enter below by 11:00pm EST on December 31st to qualify (your entry includes a subscription to W&M Monthly).
Please note that, at this time, we can only ship within the US.
Scott Akerman
I'm so glad I don't have to deal with this kind of rote memorization on a regular basis anymore.
Want to enhance your memory for facts? Tom Stafford explains a counterintuitive method for retaining information.
If I asked you to sit down and remember a list of phone numbers or a series of facts, how would you go about it? There's a fair chance that you'd be doing it wrong.
One of the interesting things about the mind is that even though we all have one, we don't have perfect insight into how to get the best from it. This is in part because of flaws in our ability to think about our own thinking, which is called metacognition. Studying this self-reflective thought process reveals that the human species has mental blind spots.
One area where these blind spots are particularly large is learning. We're actually surprisingly bad at having insight into how we learn best.
Researchers Jeffrey Karpicke and Henry Roediger III set out to look at one aspect: how testing can consolidate our memory of facts. In their experiment they asked college students to learn pairs of Swahili and English words. So, for example, they had to learn that if they were given the Swahili word 'mashua' the correct response was 'boat'. They could have used the sort of facts you might get on a high-school quiz (e.g. "Who wrote the first computer programs?"/"Ada Lovelace"), but the use of Swahili meant that there was little chance their participants could use any background knowledge to help them learn. After the pairs had all been learnt, there would be a final test a week later.
Now if many of us were revising this list we might study the list, test ourselves and then repeat this cycle, dropping items we got right. This makes studying (and testing) quicker and allows us to focus our effort on the things we haven't yet learnt. It's a plan that seems to make perfect sense, but it's a plan that is disastrous if we really want to learn properly.
Karpicke and Roediger asked students to prepare for a test in various ways, and compared their success – for example, one group kept testing themselves on all items without dropping what they were getting right, while another group stopped testing themselves on their correct answers.
On the final exam differences between the groups were dramatic. While dropping items from study didn't have much of an effect, the people who dropped items from testing performed relatively poorly: they could only remember about 35% of the word pairs, compared to 80% for people who kept testing items after they had learnt them.
It seems the effective way to learn is to practice retrieving items from memory, not trying to cement them in there by further study. Moreover, dropping items entirely from your revision, which is the advice given by many study guides, is wrong. You can stop studying them if you've learnt them, but you should keep testing what you've learnt if you want to remember them at the time of the final exam.
Finally, the researchers had the neat idea of asking their participants how well they would remember what they had learnt. All groups guessed at about 50%. This was a large overestimate for those who dropped items from test (and an underestimate from those who kept testing learnt items).
So it seems that we have a metacognitive blind spot for which revision strategies will work best. Making this a situation where we need to be guided by the evidence, and not our instinct. But the evidence has a moral for teachers as well: there's more to testing than finding out what students know – tests can also help us remember.
Read more: Why cramming for tests often fails
This is my BBC Future column from last week. The original is here
The origins of the oral traditions about the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts across the Black Sea to the land of golden treasure (ancient Colchis, modern Georgia) are uncertain. The tale evolved into an epic poem sometime before Homer (8th century BC). While the epic sailing expedition to find the Golden Fleece is an imaginary adventure set in the Bronze Age and features several magic and other mythic episodes, the story also contains many nuggets of historical, ethnographic, geographic, and natural realities. Greek travelers reached the far shores of the Black Sea at a very early date, since names from the languages of Colchis and the Caucasus are preserved in archaic Greek myths and appear in inscriptions on ancient Greek artifacts. For example, Apsyrtos, Medea's brother, has an Abkhazian name, and Circe, the seductive sorceress in Homer's Odyssey) means "The Circassian."
The Golden Fleece sought by the Argonauts has been taken by scholars to merely symbolize the wealth of Colchis. But the true identity of the Golden Fleece was already recognized in antiquity, by the the natural historian Pliny. The meaning of the Golden Fleece was also understood by the geographer Strabo, a native of Pontus who had probably traveled to neighboring Colchis.
Appian (Roman historian born ca. AD 95), gives the fullest explanation of the local tradition that explains the Golden Fleece. People of western Colchis (Svaneti) submerged ram's fleece in streams and rivers to collect gold grains and flakes carried down from the mountains. This ancient technique is still used by local mountain villagers in Svaneti. It is plausible that it was employed in the Bronze Age. Geologists today report that gold is still suspended in rivers of western Colchis. The fact that gold adheres to the fleece would have been discovered serendipitously when people washed new lambskins in rushing streams that contained plentiful gold flakes.
When Greek adventurers sailed to Colchis and reported on its golden treasures in archaic times, they may have repeated vague rumors about the mysterious "Golden Fleece," as something unknown associated with the fabulous gold treasures of Colchis. Later Greek travelers heard explanations of the technique and then observed it firsthand. By the 7th century BC, Greeks had established trade colonies along the coast of Colchis in order to obtain the famous Scythian and Caucasian gold. Archaic Greeks were fascinated by the romance and mystery of "golden fleece" before they understood the technology.
This fleece technique was mystery to the Greeks because it only works in certain geographic/geological conditions, where rivers and streams are laden with gold sand eroding from high mountains bearing igneous rock with rich veins of gold. In the famous Scythian gold fields of the Central Asian deserts, for example, Bronze Age prospectors could not use the fleece method; they sifted sand for placer gold, brought down by erosion into dry gullies along the silk route below from the Altai ("gold") Mountains.
Among the small gold and bronze artifacts of rams of Colchis are what scholars describe as a curious "ram-bird" figurine (see image above), supposedly combining a ram's head with a bird's tail. But it seems obvious that this figure is not meant to depict a hybrid ram-bird. Instead it resembles a ram's hide with the head attached, a common way to display and identify hides (think bearskin rugs with head attached). The texture on the hide indicates gold particles. The so-called ram-bird figurines likely represent the Golden Fleece.
About the author: A Research Scholar in Classics and History of Science, Stanford University. Adrienne Mayor is the author of "The Poison King: Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy," a nonfiction finalist for the 2009 National Book Award, and "The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World" (2014).
Scott Akerman
Ugh, the fake courtesy in writing an email is a butt. I still send and get emails from people I talk to everyday of the form: "Hi ____, Yadda yadda yadda. Thanks, ___"
Hello me.
Bonus Wendell for everyone. This is the face he makes when you give him a bit of an orange. My girlfriend and I call it his Orange Face.
This Orange Face is currently the wallpaper on my phone and it makes me happy.
I just opened up a couple of my todo.txt files. Yeah, there is a lot of stuff that was never to-done…
Maybe I'll go old school and go with the Post-It approach.
Surprise balls are one of the ultimate DIY gifts. Seriously. These gifts are like mini parties in one: your recipient has the joy of unwrapping their gift and getting multiple tiny surprises, while covering themselves with colorful crepe paper! Plus, you look like a wonderful and creative human being, and it only took you a few bucks and a few minutes! Win-win.
The premise is simple: Start with your largest gift in the center and wrap around it with crepe paper streamers. Continue to wrap the streamer around, working it towards a ball-shape, and pause every once in a while to add another small gift. Continue to do this until all gifts are fully wrapped inside of the ball. That's it!
The fun, though, is coming up with ways to decorate and theme the ball. You can change the color of the streamers throughout by taping two colored streamers together, you can dress up the front with washi tape and stickers, or you can create a replica of a round object and theme the gifts inside appropriately.
Here are some ideas for geeky surprise balls:
The Golden Snitch
Using gold crepe paper, create a surprise ball and add wings to the back. Fill with Harry Potter-themed goodies! These can include:
The Dungeon Master
Invite your friends to a Dungeons and Dragons game, and give them everything they'll need to start their adventure! This can include:
Here are some other fun ideas:
What type of surprise ball do you want to make? Let me know in the comments!
Truffles are one of my go-to treats for the holidays. They're a delicious treat that would be considered a bit of a luxury when bought from a chocolate shop. Once you get the hang of the recipe, it's a lot of fun to create custom flavor and presentation combos to suit the recipient. These fireball truffles were created for a Dungeons and Dragons lover. The truffle, named after a popular spell from D&D, has a hint of spice and a bit of a kick from the Pop Rocks. Use them to butter up a new DM or make them for everyone in your adventuring party!
In a medium-sized saucepan, mix the cream, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon together over medium-low heat. Heat until it starts simmering.
Turn off the stove and start adding 12 oz. of semi-sweet chocolate chips into the mixture. Stir until the chocolate has melted and everything is smooth and mixed together.
Pour the mixture onto a wax paper lined pie plate or shallow casserole dish. Place in the fridge to chill for 1+ hours or until firm but scoopable.
Remove the plate from the fridge and roll the truffle filling into small balls using a spoon and your hands. Sizing of the balls is up to you, I'd recommend sizing them somewhere between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. Place the balls on a plate covered in wax paper and place back in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Place the other 12 ounces of chocolate in a bowl and microwave for 30 seconds. Stir, then microwave in 10 second intervals while mixing in between until the chocolate is smooth. Microwaving for longer can result in burnt chocolate. Trust me–you don't want that. (If your chocolate stops melting/mixing and starts looking clumpy/gritty while smelling bad, you've burnt it.)
Pull the truffle balls out of the fridge and dip into the melted chocolate. (Use a fork to fish the truffles out of the chocolate so any excess can go through the tines.) Place the dipped chocolates on a wax paper lined plate or cookie sheet.
While the chocolate is still wet, sprinkle red Pop Rocks on the top.
Place back into the fridge until you're ready to serve!
Did you know Raleigh is the home of the nation's "First Temple of the Atom"? You can find out why this week on Flashback Friday as we visit the Nuclear Reactor Building on the NC State campus.
No message this week!
Nuclear Reactor Building
This is the first facility of its kind to be devoted exclusively to peacetime development of the atom. The unique one-story building which houses the reactor also contains the training and research laboratories, and an observation room.This is the first college-owned reactor and is open to the public without restriction.
The R-1 reactor was the first non-government-run nuclear reactor in the world and the first designed, built, and operated by an academic institution. Design and construction began in 1950, and was completed in 1955.
In this ca 1955 photo the brand new Nuclear Reactor Building is ready to split its first atom.
National attention was brought to NC State in 1955 when the first nuclear reactor in the world devoted solely to the peacetime application of nuclear fission was installed in a building on campus specifically designed for the purpose.
Nicknamed the 'first temple of the atom' by the Associated Press, the nuclear reactor building, later renamed Burlington Nuclear Laboratories, was designed in 1951 by Raleigh architect G. Milton Small, Jr. It was his first major commission following the establishment of his own firm in 1949, and the first of his several subsequent projects for NC State.
The site chosen for the reactor building was an open, unpaved plaza on central campus, adjacent to the Diesel Engineering Building. At the time, a large concrete fountain, which had been built in 1947 as a cooling tower for the diesel engines, occupied the site.
The futuristic-looking concrete fountain cooled the water which cooled the diesel engines located in the nearby Diesel Building. It was well over 20 feet tall.
(Note to readers: the structure seen in the background is not the Diesel Building. Anybody care to guess what that building is and what later replaced it; and where the Diesel Building itself is located?)
Construction of the Nuclear Reactor Building began with the installation of the R-1 reactor. Below, the steel framework of the building and its cooling tower takes shape.
The reactor sits in the center of a room that is 8 feet below ground level, 60 feet in diameter, and 35 feet high.
Here is the control panel which operated the reactor.
At the dedication of the Nuclear Reactor Building in 1955 Gov. Luther Hodges himself takes the controls.
This 1960s video features technicians operating the R-1 nuclear reactor. (Run time 6 minutes. Courtesy NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center)
Curiously, in November 1963, as a condition of maintenance, 60 gallons of anti-freeze were poured into the reactor's cooling tower to keep the 250 gallons of water in the tower from freezing during the winter.
The nuclear reactor building was enlarged in 1973, at which time the name was changed from Burlington Nuclear Laboratories to Burlington Nuclear Engineering Laboratories.
Nowadays nuclear studies at NC State University include training of nuclear reactor operators, methods of power generation using nuclear science, and the medical and industrial uses of radiation.
This mid-1960s aerial view shows Burlington Labs and the adjacent diesel cooling fountain. The oddball campus landmark was demolished in 1972 to make way for a three-story addition to Burlington Labs. The rest of the plaza was later transformed into the Gardner Arboretum in the mid-1970s.
Our Flashback Friday photochrome postcard this week was printed by Colourpicture Publishers of Boston, MA.
Colourpicture Publishers (1938-1969)
Boston and Cambridge, MA
A major publisher and printer of linen view-cards of the United States. They later went on to publish photochromes and small spiral bound picture booklets under the name trade name Plastichrome in the 1950's.
"Flashback Friday" is a weekly feature of Goodnight, Raleigh! in which we showcase vintage postcards depicting our historic capital city. We hope you enjoy this week end treat!
Scott Akerman
Debunking (especially online debunking) is so tricky and the backfire effects are largely why I've just stopped trying.
Fed up with futile internet arguments, a bunch of psychologists investigated how best to correct false ideas. Tom Stafford discovers how to debunk properly.
We all resist changing our beliefs about the world, but what happens when some of those beliefs are based on misinformation? Is there a right way to correct someone when they believe something that's wrong?
Stephen Lewandowsky and John Cook set out to review the science on this topic, and even carried out a few experiments of their own. This effort led to their "Debunker's Handbook", which gives practical, evidence-based techniques for correcting misinformation about, say, climate change or evolution. Yet the findings apply to any situation where you find the facts are falling on deaf ears.
The first thing their review turned up is the importance of "backfire effects" – when telling people that they are wrong only strengthens their belief. In one experiment, for example, researchers gave people newspaper corrections that contradicted their views and politics, on topics ranging from tax reform to the existence of weapons of mass destruction. The corrections were not only ignored – they entrenched people's pre-existing positions.
Backfire effects pick up strength when you have no particular reason to trust the person you are talking to. This perhaps explains why climate sceptics with more scientific education tend to be the most sceptical that humans are causing global warming.
The irony is that understanding backfire effects requires that we debunk a false understanding of our own. Too often, argue Lewandowsky and Cook, communicators assume a 'deficit model' in their interactions with the misinformed. This is the idea that we have the right information, and all we need to do to make people believe is to somehow "fill in" the deficit in other people's understanding. Just telling people the evidence for the truth will be enough to replace their false beliefs. Beliefs don't work like that.
Psychological factors affect how we process information – such as what we already believe, who we trust and how we remember. Debunkers need to work with this, rather than against if they want the best chance of being believed.
The most important thing is to provide an alternative explanation. An experiment by Hollryn Johnson and Colleen Seifert, shows how to persuade people better. These two psychologists recruited participants to listen to news reports about a fictional warehouse fire, and then answer some comprehension questions.
Some of the participants were told that the fire was started by a short circuit in a closet near some cylinders containing potentially explosive gas. Yet when this information was corrected – by saying the closet was empty – they still clung to the belief.
A follow-up experiment showed the best way to effectively correct such misinformation. The follow-up was similar to the first experiment, except that it involved participants who were given a plausible alternative explanation: that evidence was found that arson caused the fire. It was only those who were given a plausible alternative that were able to let go of the misinformation about the gas cylinders.
Lewandowsky and Cook argue that experiments like these show the dangers of arguing against a misinformed position. If you try and debunk a myth, you may end up reinforcing that belief, strengthening the misinformation in people's mind without making the correct information take hold.
What you must do, they argue, is to start with the plausible alternative (that obviously you believe is correct). If you must mention a myth, you should mention this second, and only after clearly warning people that you're about to discuss something that isn't true.
This debunking advice is also worth bearing in mind if you find yourself clinging to your own beliefs in the face of contradictory facts. You can't be right all of the time, after all.
Read more about the best way to win an argument.
If you have an everyday psychological phenomenon you'd like to see written about in these columns please get in touch @tomstafford or firstname.lastname@example.com. Thanks to Ullrich Ecker for advice on this topic.
This is my BBC Future column from last week, original here
Scott Akerman
Ciphers are so friggin cool. I need to read up on this stuff more so I can actually have decent understanding of them.
By Riley Dankovich (Guest Contributor)
In the wake of World War II, when cryptography had largely become mechanized, no one expected one of the most difficult-to-crack ciphers to be one created using pencil and paper.
In the summer of 1953, a young boy in Brooklyn received payment for a newspaper sale — unlike ordinary payment, one of the nickels was hollow. Something about the nickel seemed strange to the boy; he threw it to the ground, where it promptly split open. Inside was a piece of microfilm with 10 columns of numbers. Within days, word had reached a detective about the hollow nickel, which was quickly turned over to the FBI. The nickel, it turns out, was given to the paperboy by the wife of a Russian spy.
For four years, the FBI struggled with this cipher. They referred to the case as the "Hollow Nickel Case" (Rudolph), as they knew next to nothing else about the cipher text on the piece of microfilm, and had no further cipher text. Fortunately for the FBI, in 1957, a man approached them, declaring that he was a Russian intelligence officer, and wanted to defect. This man was Reino Häyhänen, codenamed "VICTOR," from which the VIC Cipher, as this cipher came to be called, derives its name. After nearly four years without making much progress, Häyhänen's defection was the FBI's lucky break.
Likely the most complex pen and paper cipher ever created, the technical name for the VIC Cipher would be "a 'straddling bipartite monoalphabetic substitution superenciphered by modified double transposition'" (Kahn). Most hand ciphers are either substitution ciphers, in which the letters are substituted for either other letters or numbers, or transposition ciphers, in which the order of the letters is scrambled. As cryptography became more advanced, cryptographers began to combine the two. The VIC Cipher contains not only a substitution and two transpositions, but also is passed through a straddling checkerboard to obtain the substitution, and then split in half (bipartite). Though this all seems incredibly complicated, the agent enciphering the text needed only to remember four simple key words or phrases, making messages much simpler to encipher for the Russians than to decipher for foreign intelligence.
The Straddling Checkerboard
A straddling checkerboard is a manner in which to obtain a more complex substitution, one that is therefore more difficult to decipher. It needs a keyword, which, in the case of the VIC Cipher, was СНЕГОПА, or "snowfall" in Russian. The numbers 0-9 are scrambled and placed above a ten-column-by-four-row grid.
Under the numbers, the keyword (СНЕГОПА) is placed in the first row, leaving the last three columns blank. In the next three rows, the rest of the Russian alphabet follows, including a "." and a "," as well as the symbols Н/Ц, П/Л, Н/Т, and ПВТ, each of which have a meaning helpful to decipherment. The three numbers above the blanks left by the keyword are placed at the beginning of the second, third, and fourth rows. The letters in the first row, the keyword, will be enciphered as the numbers at the top of their subsequent columns. Any letter in the other rows, however, will be enciphered as two numbers: first, the number at the beginning of its row, and then the number at the top of its column. The word СПОСИБО ("thank you") would be enciphered as 5 9 8 5 8 20 65 8. Before the plaintext is run through the straddling checkerboard, it is bisected. As a bisected cipher, the plaintext is cut into two parts in some random place, and the first half is attached to the end of the last half. The symbol H/T is placed before the true beginning of the cipher.
Next Comes Transposition Tables
After being run through the straddling checkerboard, what is now the cipher text is run through two transposition tables. This cipher uses three pieces of information (the first twenty letters of a popular Russian song, the date of Allied victory over Japan, and Häyhänen's personal identification number) to generate a string of seemingly random numbers. These numbers determine the number of columns and rows in the tables, and several other minor factors. The cipher manipulates these three pieces of information, which have all been converted to numbers, using arithmetic modulo 10 and chain arithmetic. In modulo 10 arithmetic, once two numbers are added, the digit in the tens place is dropped. In chain arithmetic, numbers in a series are added continually until a desired series length is reached.
Riley Dankovich (2014). Beginning of Transposition Table 2, with disruption areas outlined
If the original series is, for example, 4, 9, 5, 3 7, the first two digits, 4 and 9, are added together (dropping the tens digit) to get 3, which is then added to the end of the series. Then the second and third digits, 9 and 5, are added to get 4, to get a series of 4, 9, 5, 3, 7, 3, 4, … until the desired series length (one of the factors determined by the seemingly random numbers) is reached. The numbers obtained from the straddling checkerboard are arranged in the first transposition table and then taken out in a different order and put into the second table. The numbers are taken in order from this table to form the final ciphertext.
Transposition ciphers, even without added manipulations, are difficult to decipher, though less so with the use of a strong computer. Because a transposition cipher simply rearranges the letters, the number of possible plaintexts can be determined easily, though the correct one is difficult to determine. If a cipher text has only 10 letters, it will have 10! (10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1) possible arrangements. This amounts to upwards of three million possibilities, and the VIC cipher is a great deal longer than 10 letters.
FBI (2008). The original cipher text of the VIC Cipher on microfilm
The VIC Cipher that Häyhäden explained to the FBI was sent to him from the Soviet Union soon after he arrived in the United States. Far from containing sinister instructions, the beginning of the decoded message read (in Russian): "We congratulate you on a safe arrival. We confirm the receipt of your letter to the address "V repeat V" and the reading of letter number 1" (Rudolph). Knowing the mechanism of this cipher, however, allowed the FBI to arrest, among others, Colonel Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, a Russian spy. He was sentenced to prison on three counts of conspiracy. As written in the FBI's article Rudolph Ivanovich Abel (Hollow Nickel Case), "an investigation which had started with a newsboy's hollow nickel ultimately resulted in the smashing of a Soviet spy ring."
This cipher, though written with the simplest of utensils, pencil and paper and some arithmetic, stumped the United States' foremost intelligence bureau for four years. Without the defection of Häyhänen, the world would still probably see the VIC Cipher as only 1035 numbers on microfilm (Kahn).Widely regarded as "the most complex hand-operated cipher ever seen," the VIC Cipher was, to put it simply, an astronomically impressive feat of cryptographic skill.
This post is part of a series of essays on the history of cryptography produced by students at Vanderbilt University in honor of the release of The Imitation Game, a major motion picture about the life of British codebreaker and mathematician Alan Turing. The students wrote these essays for an assignment in a first-year writing seminar taught by mathematics instructor Derek Bruff. For more information on the cryptography seminar, see the course blog. And for more information on The Imitation Game, which opens in the US on November 28, 2014, see the film's website.
Book cipher, running key cipher, vic cipher and secom cipher. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://rageuniversity.com/PRISONESCAPE/COMMUNICATION%20CODES%20AND%20INKS/BOOK%20CIPHER,%20RUNNING%20KEY%20CIPHER,%20VIC%20CIPHER%20AND%20SECOM%20CIPHER.pdf
Clarke, B. (2008, October 13). Hollow nickel spy case. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://www.prc68.com/I/NickelSpy.shtml
FBI. (2008). Hollow Nickel [Photograph], Retrieved October 14, 2014, from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hollow_Nickel.jpg
FBI. (2008). Hollow Nickel Message [Photograph], Retrieved October 14, 2014, from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hollow_Nickel_Message.jpg
Kahn, D. (1993, September 22). Number one from Moscow. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol5no4/html/v05i4a09p_0001.htm
Rudolph Ivanovich Abel (hollow nickel case). (n.d.). Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/hollow-nickel/rudolph-ivanovich-abel-hollow-nickel-case/


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Students & Community Celebrate Plans For New School In West
In West, students held what looked and sounded like a homecoming. After all, they want to come home. Adults also joined in the celebration for a soon-to-be built combined West High School and Middle School.
West Getting New Schools After Explosion
The Central Texas town which was devastated by a 2013 fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people is getting two new schools.
Silver Alert Issued For Missing West Man
The McLennan County Sheriff's Office has issued a Silver Alert for a missing 78-year-old man with cognitive impairment. Joseph LaVerne Mapes was last seen Monday morning.
New Bill On West Blast Would Delay New Rules
The massive fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people last year is unlikely to meaningfully change regulatory or safety rules in Texas until at least 2016 under the latest bill offered Tuesday by lawmakers tasked with scrutinizing the blast.
West Streets Still Not Repaired, A Year After Explosion
The long road to recovery for the city of West is proving to still be full of bumps and cracks.
West Residents Petition, Protest To Save High School From Demolition
More than 300 people have signed a petition to protect the historic West High School building from being demolished.
Abbott: Texans Can Ask 'Any Plant' About Chemicals
Anyone can ask companies what they're storing and get answers within 10 days.
Athens Plant Fire Treated As Crime Scene
More than 300 residents were evacuated from their homes Thursday after a fire started at a fertilizer storage facility in the east Texas city of Athens. Thankfully, nobody was hurt.
Los Alamos Container Linked To Nuke Dump Leak
Questions about the safety of barrels stored at a temporary site in West Texas were raised after a radiation leak at the government's troubled nuclear waste dump.
Texas Agency To Report On West Blast
The men who died last year fighting a fire at a fertilizer plant that then exploded in West have been called heroes, but they have also been called victims of a failed system.
Sheriff: 2 Killed, 9 Hurt In Oil Field Explosion
A buildup of pressure caused an explosion as workers were changing a wellhead Wednesday at a West Texas oil field, killing two of them and injuring nine others, a sheriff said.
CSB: West Firefighters Weren't Aware Of Explosion Risk
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board found that West volunteer firefighters were not fully aware of the risk of ammonium nitrate exploding at the West Fertilizer Co. plant.


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Author has written 19 stories for Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Beka Cooper series, Circle of Magic, Ender's Game series, Mysterious Benedict Society series, Unnatural History, NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, and Criminal Minds.
Hi, I love reading and writing. (well, duh, why else would I be creating an account)
I love anything by Tamora Pierce, JKR, Brandon Sanderson.
My favorite books (other than those by the above authors) include the Hunger Game trilogy, Artemis Fowl series, the Series of Unfortunate Events, and the Bartimaeus trilogy.
I came up with everything on my profile. Feel free to PM suggestions to add.
Reasons Why Geeks Will Rule The World
1. Try to shove me in a locker . . .
2. Try to use me as a football in our tackle football unit . . .
3. Try to flick a spitball at me . . .
4. Try to steal my lunch money . . .
5. Try to make me ashamed of being a geek . . .
A Guide to OC's
-All characters must have a personality. "Hyper" is not a personality.
-Nor is "random"
-All characters must have reasonable hair and eye colors.
-And by reasonable, I mean within the range of human possibility.
-All characters must have some personality flaw. "Clumsy" is not a personality flaw.
-Nor is "self-sacrificing," "too loyal," or "too modest."
-All characters must have some physical flaw. "Too beautiful" is not a flaw.
-Nor is "too strong."
And, in a Shocking Twist . . .
. . . a congenital birth defect kicked in, and Bourne died of a heart attack.
. . . The Capulets decided that rather than encase her in a tomb, they would cremate Juliet's body.
. . . Harry Potter discovered that Trelawny was drunk on cooking sherry when she made that prophecy.
. . . the terrorists gave Jack Bauer forty-eight hours to meet their demands, and he died of shock.
. . . the villain set the timer on the doomsday device to go off a :007, thus blowing up Bond while he's still escaping.
World's Worst Last Words
Don't worry, I don't think it's loaded.
I thought you packed the parachutes!
I wonder what this red "self-destruct" button does?
Clip the red wire! No, the blue! Wait—
Pass me a match so I can check the gas tank.
I need a fork to get the toast out of the toaster oven.
Look, the power line is sparking! Ooh, sparkly . . .
Wait, the gas is the pedal on the left, isn't it?
Don't worry, he's a third year medical student.
They'll never take me alive!
Bad First Lines
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-The moment she opened the door and saw his glistening bloody fangs, eerie red eyes, dark silk cape, and powdery white skin, she knew instantly three things: the gorgeous, sexy, teen was a vampire; she loved him instantly and with all her heart; and she had forgotten to get candy for Halloween again.
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It was quite the blow up. And the effects have lingered for too long, says East Africa Metals management.
What do you know about Inexco Mining? Likely not a lot. Change that.
Are you talking about Ricahrd Clarke and co. NO THEY DON'T. Kinross had to write down 80% of the red back mine. They are the team from RB...
Board of directors have great track record. @New ceo. @gold going up. tonnes of cash. @ Just wait.
i'm betting on a pump by deadlock anytime now. careful with that, his promtions usually go up short term and a year later are cut in...
Many bargain hunters are beginning to pull the trigger on metals, mining and exploration stocks. Is Orca Gold a good bet? 4 Stocks...


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Western Sydney Wanderers roar back to beat champions Brisbane 2-1
- From: The Courier-Mail
- January 21, 2013
WESTERN Sydney Wanderers have completed a remarkable hat-trick of victories over Brisbane Roar, coming from behind at Suncorp Stadium to beat the struggling A-League defending champions 2-1 yesterday.
The Wanderers made it three from three courtesy of second-half goals from Mark Bridge and Youssouf Hersi.
Second-best for the entire first-half, the Wanderers came out with much greater intensity after the break and the Roar - who had taken a 22nd-minute lead through Mitch Nichols - were unable to cope with the visitors' onslaught in front of 11,917 fans.
Bridge, who scored the Wanderers' first A-League goal at the same venue in October, equalised in the 65th minute after being given too much space on the edge of Brisbane's penalty area. Nevertheless, it was a shot that should have been dealt with by Roar goalkeeper Michael Theo, who despite getting a hand to the ball, could not keep out the near-post strike.
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May 25, 2011 at 01:00PM EDT
I'd love to help out on your game project, if you need help with art assets :)
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Ray, beautiful photos. Wish I could smell the fragrance.
I think this is one of the most beautiful roses in the world. Wish I had a rose as beautiful as this one.
Wow, thanks for sharing the pictures. I just got this rose and haven't seen it bloom yet, I really hope it is as pretty as yours.
Mine died after its first winter. Yours is spectacular!!! Mine wasn't much of anything. :)
If this year my roses grow well, next year will order this rose. But if my roses fail to blossom then I will never order anymore.
Beautiful roses and the 2nd pic is terrific. I bet your neighbors enjoy your rose garden with what they can see.
bgrose, why would you think your roses would fail to bloom this year?


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I went into full-blown Heroic BSOD mode while watching Clannad.
I have to stop watching after
a certain somebody dies
and cried for a whole hour and a half before i could contain myself and continue watching and crying.
I think I spent the whole last half of the second season sobbing.
And yet it's one of the best anime ever, but you have to be a serious masochist to keep watching.
Tomoya cried
I would pause, wail, and then keep going.


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Hotel Kurrajong Canberra, Barton
Located in Barton (Capital Hill), Hotel Kurrajong Canberra is close to National Archives of Australia, Old Parliament House, and National Gallery of Australia. Also nearby are Parliament House and National Museum of Australia.
Hotel Features.
Dining options at this Barton hotel include a restaurant, a coffee shop/café, and a bar/lounge. Wireless Internet access is available in public areas (surcharges apply). Onsite parking is offered for a surcharge. This is a smoke-free property.
Rooms open to balconies. The 95 guestrooms at Hotel Kurrajong Canberra include minibars and coffee/tea makers. Wireless high-speed Internet access (surcharge) is provided. All accommodations provide safes and phones. Additional amenities include hair dryers and irons/ironing boards. Housekeeping is offered daily.
I stayed here for 6 weeks while visiting ANU (uni visitors' housing was ludicrously…
What was Great? History stylish vibe, stay was comfortable, great credit to Alex, Hotel…
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Hotel Info: 866-539-8117from $138
- Classic Room
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Hotel size
- This hotel has 95 rooms
- This hotel is arranged over 2 floors
- Check-in time starts at 2 PM
- Check-out time is 11 AM
Required at check in
- Credit card or cash deposit required
- Government-issued photo ID required
Travelling with others
- Pets not allowed
- WiFi in public areas *
- WiFi in rooms *
- Self parking *
Other information
- Smoke-free property
Nearby Four Star Barton hotels
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- Restaurant
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- Number of meeting rooms - 6
- Conference space
- 24-hour front desk
- Tours/ticket assistance
- Number of buildings/towers - 1
- Accessible path of travel
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- Minibar
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- Statesman HotelFrom
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- Alivio Tourist ParkFrom
"This tourist park is in a perfect location, and is modern and clean. Friendly service was exceptional and facilities were great. Just thought the hot tub was not very hot."Jan 16, 2015
- Best Western Plus Garden City HotelFrom
"The hotel worked perfect for us as we just stayed overnight and the breakfast was very good! Easy to find and get to."Dec 19, 2014
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Special features
DiningIsabellas Cafe and Bar - This café serves breakfast and lunch. Guests can enjoy drinks at the bar.
Hotel Kurrajong Canberra, Barton's small print
WiFi Policy: Up to 100mbs data is complimentary per 24 hours, per room; up to 4 devices can connect. Additional data is available for the remainder of the 24 hour period (surcharge).
The property has connecting/adjoining rooms, which are subject to availability and can be requested by contacting the property using the number on the booking confirmation.
Optional extras
Self parking costs AUD 15.00 per night
Rollaway beds are available for AUD 40 per night
Cribs/Infant beds are available for an extra charge
WiFi is available in guestrooms for AUD 9.95 per 24-hour period (rates may vary)
WiFi is available in public areas for AUD 9.95 per 24-hour period (rates may vary)
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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Head to Austin, Texas, home of Tarantino's film festival, Mumblecore – and possibly the best cinema chain in the world