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- Anwuli Emenanjo
- February 08, 2011
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The trees swayed violently in the strong wind and there was a scent in the air that signaled coming rains. The talisman on Massassi's staff shook and dirt from the road swirled around her in a perfect circle rendering her motionless until it subsided. "I have to hurry back to the shrine before the rain starts" she thought to herself and she attemped to pick up her pace but her legs failed her. Her body seemed foreign to her these daysŌĆ"slow legs, aching back, tired hands and blurry vision; signs that her age was finally catching up with her. She knew that her failing body could spell disaster for the oracle because she was regarded as the "omnipotent messenger of the gods with unmatched powers". It was very believable because even though she had witnessed over eighty yam festivals, she moved like she had only been around for half that number. Massassi was always full of energy. She often trekked from one village to another and it took her half the time it would take most young men. There were rumours going around the village that Massassi was visited by the great goddess and was given an elixir that made her ageless and powerful. Lately, her body was reminding her that she had been around for too many moons but she knew that she had to continue to appear strong. Her strength was indeed her power and any sign of weakness would make the King and the villagers doubt her messages. As she made her way back to the temple from the Kings Palace, she pondered on the discussion that had taken place. Her summon was not a good one. The King was angry and anxious and rightfully soŌĆ"there was a bad wind coming towards their direction. This storm had been brewing for decades and its coming was inevitable. It was now only a question of when it will come and who will survive it but it was definitely headed their wayŌĆ"this day of reckoning felt closer than it ever did before and it scared Massassi but she could not show her fear in front of the King. She needed to appear unshakeable especially in these difficult times as the stability of the Kingdom depended on her. She abruptly stopped in her tracks and whispered under her breath "Yes, it is upon usŌĆ"great goddess, protecting your children". She could smell danger; just as she could smell the rain. She saw a flash of lightening and roaring thunder with a few raindrops followed shortly. She shivered in fear as if the rain was a confirmation from the gods that inescapable doom was heading their way. She began walking again and this time, she did not attempt to walk faster.
Massassi had a keen sense. She sensed a change in Udo. She seemed very absent minded lately and had gotten a few slaps from her this week to remind her to pay attention. The other day she overcooked the leaves for the medicine rendering the whole pot useless and today she just stared blankly into the air as she broke nuts for the soup at a snail's pace. "What has gotten into this girl?" she wondered. She looked at her again, this time, examining her body and she suddenly realized that the little slave girl that she had taken in was now becoming a woman. She never looked at her this closely, until nowŌĆ"She had little time for the girl and she viewed her as more of an irritant than any help but now, looking at Udo closely, she realized that the young girl that was brought to her a few moons ago as a malnourished child with tattered clothes, was quickly becoming a womanŌĆ"a very beautiful woman. She would have to speak to the King soon before one of these sex starved village men had their way with her "The time has come. Yes, the gods are beckoningŌĆ"" Massassi thought to herself. She picked up a stick to draw lines in the sand. At the same time, she chanted some words and danced in a cirle to summon the mother goddess.
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Re: Alu Part 3
Iyke posted on 02-09-2011, 13:29:59 PM
My little opinion: I guess you should maintain the use of "shrine" and avoid "temple." Reason: temple conjures up the image of oriental religions or christianity. Shrine seems perfect and switching for the sake of diversity of word may be superflous.
Re: Alu Part 3
Prof penkelemess posted on 02-09-2011, 15:52:04 PM
like the OSUN shrine in Odogbolu:
they don't have a 'temple' there...
Prof of Shrinonolgy
Re: Alu Part 3
Anwulika posted on 02-09-2011, 16:04:06 PM
Thank you Iyke! Noted.
Re: Alu Part 3
Chi2 posted on 02-09-2011, 16:15:58 PM
Glad you took Iyke's advice seriously. I have nothing to add to your beautiful story other than to call your attention to the last line of your piece for typo error:
"At the same time, she chanted some words and danced in a cirlecirle. You may have wanted to write (circle) but the godess from the shrine captivated your attention.
Re: Alu Part 3
Abeg posted on 02-09-2011, 19:40:15 PM
Massassi sounds abstract. Where does the name come from? Does it fit into the society about which you are writing? And, King? Definitely not in Igboland? Because I see the name Udo. How can you explain that? Your story flows well.
Re: Alu Part 3
Anwulika posted on 02-09-2011, 19:54:30 PM
Thanks for your comment abeg. I describe this writing as "purely fictional with some influences from reality". There is really no society per se, as I gather inspiration from everywhere in my writing. Here is a breakdown of some of the characters, their names, the origin of the names and it's meaning:
Negasi (m) Main male character-Ethiopian meaning "he will be crowned".
Udo (f) Main Female Character- Ibo meaning "peace".
Ajani (m) Main male character's rival- Yoruba meaning "Warrior".
Kambili (f)-Ibo meaning "allow me join this family".
Kaaria (m) Village Wiseman/royal adviser-Kenyan meaning "one who speaks softly with wisdom".
Massassi (f) Priestess- Zimbabwe meaning "first woman on earth".
Ismitta (f) Messenger from Udo's hometown-North African name meaning "southern wind".
Chiku (f) Village gossip- Swahili name meaning "talkative".
Machupa (m) Village drunk-Swahili name meaning "one who enjoys drinking".
Matata (m)-Swahili name meaning "troublemaker".
Re: Alu Part 3
Zebrastripe posted on 02-09-2011, 21:23:11 PM
Sister, fine work. I'm definitely proud of you. May you infinitely succeed!
Re: Alu Part 3
Iyke posted on 02-10-2011, 01:50:01 AM
Anwuli, granted that you are writing a fiction, it has to be contextualized. Even the title already suggests an Igbo context. From that point of view Abeg is really right. Fiction must reflect a bit of reality if not it strays into the nebulos zone of delusion.
I love your idea of pan-africanism, for sure you will not be the first at that. Soyinka did that in his OGUN ABIBIMAN though that is a poem and he gave a kind of explanotary notes at the end, stating that Abibiaman is from the "Akan" etc. I think that Prose may not go well with such clossary. But you can take a clue from Chimamanda who ofetn and subtley disects the meaning of a name and the context in which it arose.
You may just give a subtle reference to the meaning and context of such names. For instance, "story has it that he was named Negasi after the respected king of the Ethopians etc" or he earned the name Ajani owing to the structure of his nose akin to that of Yoruba warriors etc. no definite mode but a subtle and stylistic contextualization.
Finally, am sure I have come across "Kambili" in Chimamanda's work. A change of name may assert originality. "may." No shortage of names with the same meaning.
Re: Alu Part 3
Chi2 posted on 02-10-2011, 08:27:40 AM
Anwuli, Iyke's latest input into your literary work should be treasured. The resemblance to a name in Chimanmada's work "Kambili" might either be coincidental or deliberately done. Whichever, do all you can to change it in order not to offend the literary pride of your colleague. You can as well maintain a shortened form of it, if you can't shop for more Ibo names. "Kambili" can be written Bilikam or just Bili. You can also consider the name, Nonye or Nonyelum. The final choice is yours.
Your fiction has a continental underpinning, I would love to see more of its Africaness by injecting African scenario and phenomena such as the effect of raindrops on our soil - ..."with a few raindrops" (aroma of wet soil and shrubs), the connection of our god of thunder, Amadioha in relation with your expression of "..a flash of lightening and roaring thunder.."
A love journey of 50 miles may be tiresome but but rewarding.
Good luck.
Re: Alu Part 3
Prof penkelemess posted on 02-10-2011, 08:28:13 AM
Dante, Shakespeare, Hafiz and Soyinka are all
prof penke


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Apple Defect Detection and Quality Classification with MLP-Neural Networks Devrim UNAY, Bernard GOSSELIN TCTS Laboratory, Faculte Polytechnique de Mons Initialis Scientific Park, 1, Copernic Avenue B-7000 Mons Belgium Phone : +32 (0)65 37 47 45 Fax : +32 (0)65 37 47 29 E-mail: email@example.com Abstract- The initial analysis of a quality classification threshold technique. The algorithm was only able to system for 'Jonagold' and 'Golden Delicious' apples is discriminate between all-bruised and non-bruised apples and shown. Color, texture and wavelet features are extracted was not applicable to on-line detection. from the apple images. Principal components analysis was Pla and Juste [3] presented a thinning algorithm to applied on the extracted features and some preliminary discriminate between stem and body of the apples on performance tests were done with single and multi layer perceptrons. monochromatic images. However the task of classifying the Keywords- computer vision; image processing; defect calyx and defected parts real-time was missing. segmentation; feature selection; neural networks Yang and Marchant [4] used the 'flooding' algorithm for initial segmentation and 'snakes' algorithm for refining the I. INTRODUCTION boundary of the blemishes on the monochromatic images of Accurate automatic classification of agricultural apples. They applied both median and gaussian filters to products is a necessity for agricultural marketing to remove impulsive noise and smooth small features. increase the speed and minimize the miss-classifications. Nakano [5], studied color (red, green, and blue) grading of The European Union defines three quality classes "San Fuji" apples by two types of neural network. First one ("extra", "I", and "II") for the fresh apples with the classified the pixels into six categories with an overall tolerances of 5, 10, and 10 per cent by number or weight accuracy of over 95 per cent, but mistook the injured surfaces of apples, respectively [1]. The apples in the "extra" as vines. The second one classified the fruit into five class must be of superior quality with no defects or categories with the recognition rate of 75 per cent for irregularity in shape, whereas the classes "I" and "II" damaged fruits. However, the recognition rate of class A was can contain defects up to 1 and 2.5 cm2, respectively. not higher than 33 per cent. Also, Belgian Trade Practices define four classes for Miller et al [6] compared different neural network models 'Golden Delicious' apples with respect to the ground for detection of blemishes of various kinds of apples by their color of the fruit ('++' for the greenest, '+', '', and 'r' reflectance characteristics and concluded that multi-layer for yellow). It is clear that the classification of different back propagation (MLBP) method gave the best recognition kinds of apples into predetermined categories as rates. Also they found that increased complexity of the neural accurate and quickly as possible is a hard task. network system did not yield to better results. Many researchers have made considerable efforts in Leemans [7], segmented defects of 'Golden Delicious' the field of machine vision based classification of apples by a pixel-wise comparison method between the apples. Several approaches like monochrome-colored- chromatic (rgb) values of the related pixel and the color near infrared imaging, and local-global methods have reference model. The local and global approaches of been tried. comparison were effective, but further research was needed. Zion et al [2] introduced a computerized method to In his second research [8], Leemans used a Bayesian detect the bruises of Jonathan, Golden Delicious, and classification method for pixel-wise segmentation on Hermon apples from magnetic resonance images by chromatic images of 'Jonagold' apples. The method failed in discriminating between pixels of transition area and russet. Wen and Tao [9] introduced automated rule-based channels R-G were applied to eliminate gray and black system by near-infrared images to classify 'Red backgrounds, respectively. Delicious' apples as defected or not. They reached a Dimensions of the images were differing within the data speed of 50 apples per second with high recognition set. In order to decrease computation time while doing rates, but had problems in identification of stem/calyx. mathematical operations, images had to be square. So, areas Because of the concavity of the apple, the intensity of outside the apple were deleted and the remaining images the light decreases from the center to the boundaries. were resized to 128x128 dimension by nearest neighborhood Penman [10], introduced an array of blue light sources method. and an algorithm to correctly discriminate apple blemishes from stem, calyx and their concavities. B. Feature extraction However, the algorithm has to be improved in accuracy, 'The problem of classification is basically one of implemented in real time and used in conjunction with partitioning the feature space into regions, one region for defect detection algorithms. each category.' [18] So, high discriminating features will lead In the field of machine vision based classification, to high and accurate classification rates. scientists have used many other kinds of agricultural Color values (RGB-channels), as local features, are products other than apples. Kim et al [11] experimented directly related with the images, so they were introduced to on kiwi fruits. Guyer and Yang [12] used genetic the system without any change. For the classification of a artificial neural networks to classify cherries. Diaz et al pixel, neighboring pixels can provide vital evidence. So, two [13] introduced an algorithm to classify olives. Laykin et groups of color features were introduced to the system; one- al [14], used image processing techniques to classify to-one pixel mapping of color feature set in the first, whereas tomatoes. Patel et al [15] developed an expert sorting n-to-one in the other, with n (or neighborhood) determined by system for eggs. Brezmes et al [16] classified peaches the rgb-window size. and pears. Harel and Smith [17] used a texture-based Structural analysis will yield important information for approach to classify grapes. classification, so co-occurrence matrix of Haralick et al [19] is used to extract textural features. Co-occurrence matrix is a II. METHODOLOGY single level dependence matrix that contains the relative The acquisition system used in this study to retrieve frequencies of two coordinate elements separated by a the apple images was the same with Leemans' [7]. A distance d. As you move from one pixel to another on the colored camera with a frame grabber, were used to image, entries of the initial and final pixels become the acquire the images while the apples were passing coordinates of the co-occurrence matrix to be incremented, through a tunnel providing diffuse light. which in the end will represent structural characteristics of Data set was composed of 229 images (22 bruised, the image. Therefore, moving in different directions and 207 defected) of 'Jonagold' apples and 76 images (12 distances on the image will lead to different co-occurrence bruised, 64 defected) of 'Golden Delicious' apples. The matrices. In literature, most commonly used pixel separation images contained various kinds of defects, like russet, distance and directions (angles) are 1 pixel and 0, π/4, π/2, scab, fungi attack, bitter pit, bruising, punches, insect and 3π/4 radians, respectively [20, 21], which are also used in holes and growth defects, as well as stem and calyx this study. areas. However, the initial analysis presented here The four textural features derived from the co-occurrence includes a small group of this data set. matrices are: 1. Energy A. Initial Processing 255 255 f 1 (d ) = ∑∑ s(i, j , d ) 2 During the acquisition of images orientation and i = 0 j =0 rotation of the apples were neither controlled nor fixed. Therefore, background had to be excluded from each 2. Entropy 255 255 image. The images of bruised apples of each kind f 2 (d ) = ∑∑ s(i, j , d ) ⋅ log s (i, j , d ) contained a bi-colored (gray, black) background, i =0 j =0 whereas the defected ones were imaged on black 3. Inertia background only. Low pass filter at level 150 on B- 255 255 f 3 (d ) = ∑∑ (i − j ) ⋅ s(i, j, d ) 2 channel and band-pass filter at levels 35-225 on i =0 j =0 4. Local Homogeneity Wavelet features were found by taking the average and 255 255 1 standard deviations of the coefficients of each decomposition f 4 (d ) = ∑∑ ⋅ s(i, j, d ) class. At the end of feature extraction, there were 8 textural, j = 0 1 + (i − j ) 2 i =0 28 wavelet and 3 color features (27 for 3x3, or 75 for 5x5 rgb-windows) making a total of 39 (63, or 111) features. In the above equations, s(i, j, d ) refers to the normalized entry of the co-occurrence matrices found by C. Feature selection dividing the initial entries with total number of pixels of In order to get high performance of classification, the the sub-image, where (i, j ) are the coordinates of the features introduced to any neural network system should be co-occurrence matrices and d is the pixel separation in the same range, which can be achieved by normalization. distance. The features are normalized so that the mean is 0 and the In order to locate the spectral differences within and standard deviation is 1 by the formula: between images, many of the spectral analysis methods f i′ = [ f i − µ ( f i )] like Fourier, wavelet or cosine transforms could be used. σ ( fi ) The advantage of localization in time and frequency made wavelets preferable. Within the orthogonal and where f i & f i′ are the initial and final values of a feature, compactly supported wavelets (daubechies, symlets, and respectively, µ ( f i ) is the mean and σ ( f i ) is the standard coiflets), coiflets have more number of vanishing deviation of all the values of the class that feature belongs to. moments at the same order, so have more information on "The designer usually believes that each feature is the details. Therefore, 2nd order coiflets wavelet useful for at least some of the discriminations." [18] decomposition is applied on each sub-image retrieving 1 However, superfluous and class-conditionally dependent approximate and 2x3 detailed (horizontal, vertical and features may lead to terrible classification performance. So, diagonal for each order) coefficients. principal components analysis was applied on the features to Calculating the texture and wavelet features of the get an uncorrelated data set. First covariance matrix of the whole image will yield important global results maybe, feature set was calculated and then the matrix of the but obviously will not provide us enough information eigenvectors of this covariance matrix was multiplied with about both the size and type of the defects that are the feature set, producing transformed feature set whose crucial in classification or discrimination between stem, components are uncorrelated and ordered according to the calyx and defected areas. Because of that, these features magnitude of their variance. Then the components, which were calculated on windowed sub-sections of each contribute only a small amount (1 per cent in this case) to the image. total variance in the transformed feature set, are eliminated. Two different window approaches were used to get the sub-images. In discrete window approach, images D. Neural Network model were divided into 64 16x16 non-overlapping sub- As the literature review indicates there are few researches images. On each sub-image, both textural and wavelet in this field done with neural networks, which are used in this features were calculated and they were related to each work. The true power and advantage of neural networks lies pixel within that sub-image. However in sliding in their ability to represent both linear and nonlinear approach, features were calculated a pixel at a time on relationships and to learn these relationships directly from the the 16x16 neighborhood by zero-padding the areas data being modeled. outside the image. That's why sliding window method The neural network in this study is composed of required 256 times more computation than discrete perceptron neurons with an adaptive supervised learning window for 128x128 image size and 16x16 window back-propagation algorithm. size, which is undesirable for an automatic process. Initial analysis showed that B-channel provided very E. Manual Segmentation of Apples little information of classification compared to R and G Segmentation of apple images into determined classes was channels, so the texture and wavelet features were done manually by an image processing software. calculated on the R and G channels of the images only. One of the images of 'Golden Delicious' apples and its The resulting four texture features of a pixel were from segmentation into four classes is shown below (Figures 1, 2). the average of co-occurrence matrices in all directions. result, the training and validation sets were composed of 111 samples. Three different rgb-window sizes (1x1, 3x3, and 5x5) and two different window types (discrete and sliding) were used to extract color features and texture, wavelet features, respectively. Normalization and principal components analysis were applied on all the feature sets by the schemes Figure 1: Original image (Gold001.tif) explained before. 'Train with one, test with rest' method was used for the simulations of 19 images with a single layer perceptron neural network. The average results of all 19 simulations are in Table 2. Figure 2: Segmentation into four-classes (left-to-right: wind rgb-wind tr vl rec c1 c2 c3 background, healthy skin, defected, stem/calyx) 1x1 90.19 92.75 67.53 72.51 39.15 29.59 discrete 3x3 90.80 92.03 68.19 72.81 44.36 32.96 The original images were 128x128 in dimension with 5x5 90.61 93.03 66.11 70.04 51.05 35.45 three-color channels (rgb). In Figure 2, resulting images 1x1 89.38 89.33 66.66 71.03 47.00 33.02 sliding are binary and the segmented pixels are the areas white 3x3 93.46 92.22 67.87 72.17 52.48 34.40 in color. The difference between the sizes of the original 5x5 92.03 93.08 66.97 70.86 55.26 36.36 and segmented images is due to visual preference of the Table 2: Three-class simulation results of authors; i.e. there was no alteration in dimensions. 'train with one, test with rest' method. Table 1 represents the class-distribution of the pixels of the segmented image. The above results are all in percentages. 'c1, c2, c3' in the Class Pixel # Ratio % first row represents the classes healthy, stem/calyx and Background 3520 21.48 defected, respectively. Recognition rates of each method on Healthy skin 9355 57.10 training and validation data sets are over 90 per cent (except Defected skin 3048 18.60 'sliding' window, '1x1' rgb-window method), whereas the Stem/Calyx 461 2.81 validation rates are between 65-70 per cent. The training and Table 1: Pixel class-distribution of Gold001.tif validation sets include same number of samples from each class, but simulation sets are composed of all the pixels of the 18 more apple images containing both defected and images and the average distribution of the images is 1.5, 9.5, stem/calyx areas were segmented like the above making and 89.0 per cent for stem/calyx, defected and healthy a total of 19 images (8 of 'Golden Delicious' and 11 of classes, respectively. This unequal distribution results in the 'Jonagold') for the current data set. The following difference between the validation and recognition rates. results are obtained analyzing these images. 'Sliding window' method provides more information to the system than the 'discrete' one, by definition. Although III. RESULTS & DISCUSSION there is no significant difference in the overall recognition A. Three-Class SLP Test rates, recognition rates of the stem/calyx ('c2') and defected The background pixels in the images can be ('c3') classes show this increase in performance. As the size separated from the apple region by simple image of the 'rgb-window' is increased, performance of the system processing techniques. So, without the background, a should increase also. It is observable in the 'c2', 'c3' classes. pixel-wise three-class classification test can be done on The effects of different methods on the performance of the the current data set. system are obvious, but the class recognition rates are lower For each image, 37 pixels (samples) selected than the standards, which courage the authors to continue on homogeneously from each three classes were testing with increased size and dispersion of the training and homogeneously mixed and introduced to the system for validation sample sets. The reader should also be aware that training. Then for the validation set, same approach was more information introduced to the system will improve the used to select samples from the rest of the image. As a performance with an increase in the computation times of not only the recognition but also the feature extraction and C. Three-Class Homogeneous Sampling Test selection parts of the system. In the previous tests, the system trained with one of the apple images was expected to accurately recognize the rest of B. Three-Class MLP Test the apples. It will be more realistic if a group of samples from The results of the three-class single layer (SLP) test each apple variety ('Golden Delicious' and 'Jonagold') is encouraged the authors to make tests with multi layer introduced to the system as the training set. perceptrons. Samples selected homogeneously will yield more realistic According to its performances in the previous test, results about the population. For this reason all the 19 images one of the images (Gold002.tif from 'Golden Delicious' segmented (11 'Jonagold' and 8 'Golden Delicious') were apples) was selected for this test. The method was again distributed evenly within the training, validation and 'train with one, test with rest' in order to compare the simulation sets as 7 (5 'Jonagold' - 2 'Golden'), 6 (3-3) and 6 results with single layer ones. 1 and 2 hidden layers with (3-3), respectively. To enable a comparison with the previous 0, 50, 100, 150, and 200 neurons were used in the tests, the sample size selected from each class of each image system. was 37, making a total of 777 samples for training, 666 wind rgbwind system rec c1 c2 c3 samples for validation and all samples of the simulation 1x1 0-0 65.98 70.65 68.83 22.10 images for simulation. Discrete windowing and 3x3 rgb- discrete 3x3 0-0 61.10 65.10 84.69 20.39 window methods were used for feature extraction. 5x5 0-0 68.53 73.32 85.29 21.40 The important problem at this point is 'Which image 1x1 0-0 63.74 64.69 41.31 58.24 should be in which data set?' or 'Which samples provide more information of discrimination about the population?' A sliding 3x3 0-0 65.95 66.16 56.58 65.42 method of random selection of images for each data set can 5x5 0-0 56.16 56.36 72.65 51.90 be a solution. 100 random selections were done and these Table 3: SLP results of Gold002.tif. sample sets were used to feed the single layer neural network. The average rates of these 100 tests were 73.38, 67.84, wind rgbwind system rec c1 c2 c3 76.94, 82.26, 64.75, and 35.77 per cent for recognition of 1x1 200-200 65.45 66.30 51.51 59.62 training, validation, simulation, healthy, stem/calyx and discrete 3x3 200-50 66.52 66.09 63.96 70.96 defected sets, respectively. 5x5 100-50 67.10 67.03 69.85 67.38 Table 5 displays the results of this method with the results 1x1 150-50 69.58 69.00 39.76 79.39 of three-class SLP test for comparison, where the sliding 3x3 200-0 68.99 68.89 65.24 70.56 abbreviations '1,8' (train with one, test with rest), '7,6,6' 5x5 150-50 67.80 67.15 70.34 73.45 (homogeneous sampling), 'A' (average) and 'B' (best) are Table 4: Best MLP results of Gold002.tif. used. test tr vl rec c1 c2 c3 The recognition rates found for multi layer 1,8 A 90.80 92.03 68.19 72.81 44.36 32.96 perceptron network with different number of neurons B 85.59 85.59 75.73 81.06 67.26 31.54 were promising. The best performances are displayed in 7,6,6 A 73.38 67.84 76.94 82.26 64.75 35.77 Table 4. An interesting observation is that, the B 67.05 60.36 89.89 90.45 62.23 83.69 recognition rates of multi layer network are higher than Table 5: Results of '1,8' and '7,6,6' tests. those of the single layer one (Table 3) for defected class ('c3'). A careful reader will notice that as the system The rows indicated as 'A' in Table 5, represent the gets more complex, recognition rates of defected class averaged results of all combinations of '1,8' and '7,6,6' (19 increase with a decrease in the recognition of healthy or combinations for '1,8' and 100 combinations for '7,6,6'), stem/calyx classes. Hence, there is a compromise while 'B' indicated rows show the results of best classifying between the recognition rates of each class independent combination in each test. of the complexity of the system. This explains the In the training step, the population (19 images) was constancy of the overall recognitions even though the represented by 7 images in '7,6,6' test, which was 1 for '1,8' system complexity changes. test. The effect of this different sampling can be observed in the results of average simulation rates. They are strictly higher for test '7,6,6' than those of '1,8'. The best recognition rates for '7,6,6,' are very promising with 90 3. Pla F., Juste F., "A thinning-based algorithm to characterize and 83 per cent for healthy and defected classes, fruit stems from profile images", Comp. Elec. Agric., 13, 301- respectively. However, even for the best case of '7,6,6' 314, 1995. class-recognition rates found are quite low with respect 4. Yang Q., Marchant J. A., "Accurate blemish detection with active contour models", Comp. Elec. Agric., 14, 77-89, 1996. to the standards. 5. Nakano K., "Application of neural networks to the color grading of apples", Comp. Elec. Agric., 18, 105-116, 1998. IV. CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK 6. Miller W. M., et al, "Pattern recognition models for spectral The field of automatic classification of agricultural reflectance evaluation of apple blemishes", Postharvest Bio. products is increasingly attracting the attention of Tech., 14n 11-20, 1998. researchers as well as governments and agricultural 7. Leemans V., et al, "Defects segmentation on 'Golden markets. However, an accurate automatic classification Delicious' apples by using color machine vision", Comp. Elec. system for apples requires highly detailed research due Agric., 20, 117-130, 1998. to the difficulty of the task and high number of 8. Leemans V., et al, "Defect segmentation on 'Jonagold' apples parameters affecting the performance. using color machine vision and a Bayesian classification method", Comp. Elec. Agric., 23, 43-53, 1999. Although the classification approaches used in the 9. Wen Z., Tao Y., "Building a rule-based machine-vision system literature (image-based or apple-based) are different than for defect inspection on apple sorting and packing lines", the pixel-based one of this study, the comparison of the Expert Sys. App., 16, 307-313, 1999. best homogeneous sampling result with the ones 10. Penman D. W., "Determination of stem and calyx location on achieved by other authors can guide the reader for better apples using automatic visual inspection", Comp. Elec. Agric., judgment. Nakano [5] reached over 75 per cent 33, 7-18, 2001. recognition rates for about 40 defected apples with his 11. Kim J., et al, "Linear and non-linear pattern recognition models neural network B, whereas our best results were 89.9 for classification of fruit from visible-near infrared spectra", and 83.7 per cent for overall and defected pixels of 6 Chemo. Intel. Lab. Sys., 51, 201-216, 2001. defected images. Also, Wen et al [9] reached about 84 12. Guyer D., Yang X., "Use of genetic artificial neural networks and spectral imaging for defect detection on cherries", Comp. per cent recognition for over 300 stem and calyx images, Elec. Agric., 29, 179-194, 2000. which is nearly 62 per cent for our case. 13. Diaz R., et al, "The application of a fast algorithm for the The preliminary results shown here are promising, classification of olives by machine vision", Food Res. Int., 33, but not enough. There is a lot more to do. More samples 305-309, 2000. of the population should be introduced to the training 14. Laykin S., et al, "Development of a quality sorting machine set, better discriminating features (local or global) using machine vision and impact", ASAE An. Int. Meet., paper should be searched, the affects of different feature no: 99-3144, July 18-21, Toronto, Canada, 1999. selection algorithms (like Fisher's linear discriminator) 15. Patel V. C., et al, "Development and evaluation of an expert on the performance should be compared, improvements system for egg sorting", Comp. Elec. Agric., 20, 97-116,1998. of combined methods like statistical analysis and neural 16. Brezmes J., et al, "Fruit ripeness monitoring using an Electronic Nose", Sensors and Actuators., B 69, 223-229,2000. networks should be examined, performance of the 17. Harel N. K., Smith T. E., "A texture based approach" system should be verified in real-time and in real http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs7321_97_winter/participant environment… s/smith/fp/final.html 18. Pattern Classification and Scene Analysis, Duda R. O., Hart P. V. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS E., Wiley & Sons, Canada, 1973. This project is known as the CAPA (Classification 19. Haralick R. M., et al, "Textural features for image Automatique de Produits Agricoles) project and is classification", IEEE Trans. SMC, 3, 610-621, 1973. funded by Ministere de la Region Wallonne, Belgium. 20. Latif-Ahmet A., et al, "An efficient method for texture defect detection: sub-band domain co-occurrence matrices", Image VI. REFERENCE Vision Comp.,18, 543-553, 2000. 1. UN/ECE Standard on apples and pears 21. "Epileptic activity detection in EEG with Neural Networks", http://www.unece.org/trade/agr/welcome.htm then select Varsta M. et al, research report B3, Comp. Eng. Lab., Helsinki Standards/Fresh fruit and vegetables Univ. Tech., Finland, April 1997. 2. Zion B., et al, "Detection of bruises in magnetic resonance images of apples", Comp. Elec. Agric., 13, 289-299, 1995.
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FRANZ KROMMER Bohemian Winds
Nachtmusique Eric Hoeprich
Performing artists
Nachtmusique Directed byEric Hoeprich
Production details
Playing time: 64'05Recorded in Cuenca (Iglesia de San Miguel), Spain, in May 2000Engineered by Isidro MatamorosProduced by Emilio Moreno & Carles RieraExecutive producer: Carlos CésterBooklet essay: Eric Hoeprich (English) Translations into English, French, German, Spanish
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Bohemian Winds
Partita in Eb (Manuscript, c. 1800)1 Allegro 2 Romance3 Menuetto 4 Presto
Trios for two clarinets & viola (1st edition, J. André, Offenbach, c. 1800) 5 Allegro 6 Polonaise 7 Andante 8 Menuetto 9 Rondo
Partita in C minor (Manuscript, c. 1800)10 Largo-Allegro11 Adagio12 Rondo. Allegro
13 Variations on a theme by Pleyel, for three clarinets (Trio in Eb, modern edition, Kneusslin, Basel, 1979)
Partita in Eb (1st edition, C. F. Peters, Leipzig, c. 1800)14 Allegro moderato15 Romanze. Andantino16 Menuetto. Allegro assai17 Rondo
Eric Hoeprich returns to Glossa on splendid form with two pillars of the chamber music repertory in the Clarinet Quintets of Mozart and Brahms. For this release – recorded in the tranquil English surroundings of St Martin's Church, East Woodhay in Hampshire, Hoeprich is joined by the recently-established and much-lauded London Haydn Quartet. [read more...]


text: New Patagonia Girl Down SweaterBoys and Girls Outerwear | Style #W068231 $119.00 (0 reviews) Be the first to write a review See it in an outfit > For all her adventures abroad and school days stateside. A warm, packable, extremely lightweight jacket by Patagonia in this season's best color has her covered through spring's first blooms. 600-fill-power European goose down insulation 100% Polyester shell with water repellent finishFull-zip frontDrawstring hemline keeps heat in and snow outImported This item is currently unavailable. + Roll over image to magnify Looks Good With #KIDSLOVETEA Pics How Does It Rate? Be the first to write a review Rating:


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Client Service Resources
We'll provide you with the resources necessary to view your clients analytically determining what their goals are and what products they'll need to help them get there.
Client Segmentation and Profitability
In order to fully understand your client base, you have to segment it. This tool allows you to segment based on first-year revenue, recurring revenue, assets under management, growth potential, and personal introductions.
Systematic Client Communication
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Lincoln Financial Network is the marketing name for Lincoln Financial Securities Corp. and Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp., both members of FINRA and SIPC and affiliates of Lincoln Financial Group.


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Jan. 10, 2011
News Release
State Council For Educator Effectiveness To Hold Retreat Thursday, Jan. 13 – Saturday, Jan. 15
The next meeting for the State Council for Educator Effectiveness will be a three-day retreat held on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Jan. 13-15. The retreat will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day at the University of Denver Morgridge College of Education, Ruffatto Hall, Community Room 105, 1999 E. Evans Ave., in Denver.
Due to the ambitious retreat agenda, there is no public comment opportunity at the retreat; however, this meeting is still open to the public. The council is developing a process for public input during February and March.
The agenda for this retreat will include work on the following topics:
- Teacher Standards
- Statewide Definitions of Teacher and Principal Effectiveness
- Model Statewide Teacher and Principal Evaluation Systems
- Framework for Measuring Teacher and Principal Quality Standards
- Approaches to Measuring Student Growth in Tested and Non-Tested Subjects and Grades
- Categories & Definitions for Teacher Effectiveness Performance Standards
- Involvement & Support of Parents/Guardians
- Student Engagement
- Implementation and Testing of New Performance Evaluation Systems
The 15-member council met for the first time on March 11, 2010. The purpose of the council, according to the governor's charge, is to provide a forum for considering options and providing recommendations to ensure that every educator is:
- Evaluated using multiple, fair, transparent, timely, rigorous and valid methods, at least 50 percent of which is determined by academic growth of their students.
- Afforded a meaningful opportunity improve their effectiveness.
- Provided the means to share effective practices with other educators statewide.
Among other charges, the council was given a April 1, 2011 deadline to draft definitions of teacher effectiveness and principal effectiveness and to "develop and recommend guidelines for adequate implementation of a high-quality educator evaluation system."
Council members represent the business community, teachers, higher education, school district administrators, school board members, charter schools, parents, students and the state department of education.
Additional dates have been added to the council's planning meeting schedule. All meetings will be held at Colorado Department of Education, 201 E. Colfax Ave., State Board Room, in Denver, unless otherwise noted. They are:
- Friday, Jan. 28, 2011 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
- Friday, Feb. 11, 2011 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
- Friday, Feb. 25, 2011 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
- Friday, March 11, 2011 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
- Friday, March 25, 2011 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
- Friday, April 8, 2011 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
- Friday, April 22, 2011 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
For more information, visit http://www2.cde.state.co.us/scripts/reforms/detail.asp?itemid=181271
Meeting minutes are available on the Governor's Web site at www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite/GovRitter/GOVR/1251573887411.


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Originally from New York, Eric Bibb has been described as 'the heir to the roots / blues throne created by Richie Havens and Taj Mahal'. Or more succinctly put from The Times ' A voice to die for!'
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Steve Keen
My talk to the Heterodox Economics Students at Cambridge University on November 28th 2012 on the necessity of a strictly monetary approach to macroeconomics.
An MMT site bringing you dogma-free economics without the pleadings of self interest
Oh God!
What next?
Cambridge Monetary Physics?
Force is not mass times acceleration. Force is mass times acceleration plus change in debt???
Whatever Keen says about and his quotes about Minsky, Schumpeter and Keynes are all right by themselves.
Keen simply uses them wrongly.
@Ramanan, are your complaints of an entirely formal nature of do they have implications on the story of how unproductive debt builds up and causes the formation of asset bubbles?
Ram, was any conclusion reached in your argument with Grasselli?


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2 October
2 October Colonel (Rtd) David Benest (late The Parachute Regiment)
'2 PARA Falklands – 30 Years On'
9 October
Professor Michael S. Neiberg (US Army War College)
'1914: A New Look at an Old Problem'
16 October
Air Vice-Marshal Professor Tony Mason CB CBE DL (University of Birmingham)
'The Harris & Cheshire Interviews - Exclusive Footage'
23 October
Joint session with Modern and Contemporary History Seminar
Professor Mustafa Aksakal (Georgetown University)
'The Ottoman Empire and the First World War'
30 October
Assignment Week: No Meeting
6 November
Patrick Longson (University of Birmingham)
'Germanophobia, Press Antagonism and a German Panic? 1902-1904'
13 November
Professor Andrew Lambert (King's College London)
'The War of 1812'
20 November
Matthew Powell (University of Birmingham)
'A Forgotten Revolution?: Army Co-operation Command and Artillery Reconnaissance, 1940-42'
27 November
Dr Keith Shear (University of Birmingham)
'Colonel Coetzee's War: Loyalty, Subversion and the South African Police, 1939-1945' 4 December
15 January
Paul Fantom (University of Birmingham)
'Zeppelins over the Black Country: 1916'
22 January
Dr Rob Johnson (University of Oxford) 'True to their Salt? Partnering Auxiliary Forces, Then and Now'
29 January
Andrew Preston (Clare College, Cambridge)
'Religion and the Vietnam War'
5 February
Paul Harris (King's College London)
'The Men Who Planned the War: The Staff of the British Army on the Western Front 1914-18'
12 February
Assignment Week: no meeting
19 February
Dr John Carman & Dr Patricia Carman (University of Birmingham)
'Bloody Meadows: Investigating Battlefields as Landscapes'
26 February
Dr Heather Jones (London School of Economics)
The British campaign against the blockade of Germany and Austria, 1918-1919
5 March
Dr John Bourne (University of Birmingham)
'The BEF on 29 September 1918'
12 March
Professor Gary Sheffield (University of Birmingham)
'Sir Henry Rawlinson: A Reassessment'
19 March
Joint Seminar with the Institute for Conflict, Co-operation and Security
Dr Robert Watt (University of Birmingham)
The Chiricahua Apache Warrior 1860-1886
30 April
Professor Andrew Lambert (King's College, London)
'John Terraine and the Naval History of the First World War
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Center for International Studies
|Rabat, Morocco
Rabat, Morocco's Coastal Capital, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2012 and was named to CNN's top 10 places to visit in 2013.
December 13, 2014- January 10, 2015
Local excursions in and around Rabat include: archaeological museum, Belghazi museum, Chellah, a local news station, mausoleum, Oudaya museum, and a local synagogue.
NOTE: Images provided by IES Abroad, OHIO's onsite partner for this program.
Eligibility and selection process
Applicants must be matriculated OHIO students. Non-OHIO applicants must have successfully completed high school or its equivalent.
Students who will be on probation at any point during the program for a judicial offense that took place less than a calendar year from the program start date may not study abroad. Click here to read the entire judicial policy.
Living Arrangements
For more information contact:
Keely Davin
Yamada International House, 56 E. Union Street, Athens OH 45701 (740) 593-1840


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What is OER?
What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
Open Educational Resources ( also termed open content or open courseware ) are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to be shared, remixed or improved to redistribute.
Open Educational Resources include:
- Learning content: full courses, course material, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals.
- Tools: software to support the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and online learning communities.
- Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content.
Why OER?
OER is a relatively new movement in education; educators and learners as well as learning institutions are driving its development. OER provides an alternative to the rising costs of education. For example, in some countries like South Africa, many educators and learners are using OER as the only source for textbooks. OER provides a exploratory mechanisms for others means of teaching and learning that are collaborative and participatory.
For additional information about OERs view Dr. Cable Green's Powerpoint slides here or read the following articles:
- ACRL Environmental Scan and Assessment of OERs, MOOCS, and Libraries: What Effectiveness and Sustainability Means for Libraries' Impact on Open Education
OER Definitions
There are many definitions of "Open Educational Resources" (OERs) . One of the most common defintion is provided by UNESCO:
Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.
And the one provided by OER Commons
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner. Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world.
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Below is the poem entitled Less Be More which was written by poet
Lee. Please feel free to comment on this poem. However, please remember, PoetrySoup is a place of encouragement and growth.
Read Poems by
Joel Lee
Perhaps I will like so much more
From nothing even to begin with
Of hate and of things to adore
With nothing and everything to believe
Did I want something?
Have I not everything to begin along?
What exactly does nothing mean?
What exactly is everything then to be set upon?
Can I be, am I even believable?
With the many ideas from a troubled mind
A Joel to fathom if conceivable
If a nobody can be everything you need sometime
Something more do you not need?
So much more to feel so incomplete
Silent cries echoing a never to plead
Are we all not guilty never to admit?
Would you like to have so much more?
With nothing and everything to believe
That of hate and of things to adore
When everything is nothing to begin with


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A Girl's Story, Like Their Own- by Ming Holden
In 'Survival Girls', Ming Holden introduces us to a remarkable group of Congolese refugees who use theater to tell a story of survival.
In 2011, Ming Holden traveled to Kenya and founded a theater group for Congolese refugee girls in the slums of Nairobi. Her new book about the experience, Survival Girls, traces her journey and the stories of the remarkable young women who joined her project. (Incidentally, all proceeds of the book go to the Survival Girls themselves, and Hillary Clinton and Anne-Marie Slaughter are reported to be fans.) Below, an excerpt from Holden's non-fiction novella introduces us to the sweet, spirited refugees she encountered in her theater workshop:


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The Moynihan Years
Appropriately enough, the event that marked the beginning of the end of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's political career was a thoroughly ambiguous occasion. The date was July 8, 1999, the setting the Moynihan country home at Pindars Corners in upstate New York. The previous November, the senior Senator from New York had announced he would not run for a fifth term in 2000, and now Hillary Rodham Clinton had prevailed on Pat and Elizabeth Moynihan to let her use their farm to inaugurate the "listening tour" of the state that would eventuate, observers were already reasonably sure, in her own candidacy.
As a laying-on of hands, the event was at once predictable and peculiar: predictable in that Moynihan, a loyal if idiosyncratic party man, should have put his considerable popularity at the service of his putative successor, peculiar in that he and the woman he was so warmly endorsing had so edgy a relationship. For Moynihan had been, at best, openly skeptical of the health-care legislation that was the First Lady's particular project and the centerpiece of Bill Clinton's first-term program, and the Senator's recalcitrance had been not least among the factors that eventually scuttled the proposal. In the intervening years, relations between Moynihan and the administration had never been warm, and there was a good deal of sniping back and forth.
Beyond that, according to a new biography of Moynihan by Godfrey Hodgson,1 social relations between the Clintons and the Moynihans were always less than intimate, with particular friction between the wives. On the eve of "the great Pindars Corners love-in," Hodgson reports, the Moynihans, annoyed with logistical demands from the Clinton entourage, had even threatened to call the whole thing off. But in the end, not uncharacteristically, Moynihan saw the political logic of the situation and acted accordingly.
Moynihan's has been, indeed, a curious career. Now seventy-three, he can look back on a lifetime of impressive success both as an intellectual—a raft of notable books and articles, a professorship at Harvard—and as a politician—a near quarter-century in the United States Senate, with four victorious campaigns in which his winning margins ranged between comfortable and overwhelming. Yet peers in both fields have given him mixed praise. No one has ever denied his intelligence, even brilliance, but a number of his academic colleagues have questioned the depth and rigor of his scholarship; and, for all his popularity with the voters of New York State, a number of senatorial colleagues will volunteer off the record that his roster of legislative accomplishments is slight and his judgment eccentric. (To the question of whether Moynihan is brilliant or a crackpot, Hodgson reports the response of an anonymous Clinton staffer: "I have to choose?")
Nothing in Moynihan's career is more controversial than the erratic path he has followed ideologically. He broke into New York politics in 1954 as a campaign worker and, later, administrative aide to Averell Harriman, who served a single term as governor before losing to a Republican, Nelson Rockefeller, in 1958. The New York Democrats were then torn between the "bosses"—machine regulars—and the "reformers"—liberal purists eager to preserve and extend the legacy of the New Deal. Intellectually, Moynihan was with the reformers, but he was put off by the class bias he saw in their disdainful attitude toward the predominantly Irish-and Italian-Catholic bosses.2
It is thus not altogether surprising that, from the mid-60's to the mid-70's, Moynihan grew progressively disenchanted with the liberal Left and found himself most comfortable in the company of similarly disillusioned leftists who came to be known as neoconservatives (though at the time the great majority of them resisted the label). His narrow defeat of Bella Abzug in the Democratic primary for the Senate in 1976 was widely understood as a victory for party moderates and neocons over the liberal-left wing of the party. Yet not very long after winning the general election, and especially after Ronald Reagan's accession to the presidency in 1980, Moynihan drifted back, with an occasional gesture toward heresy, into the liberal mainstream of his party—a party that had made it increasingly clear that neocons were not welcome—and became a sad, sometimes bitter, disappointment to those who had at the outset most enthusiastically supported him. The candidate of the neoconservatives wound up a neoconventional Democrat.
All this makes for a fascinating and complicated tale, about which I will have more to say later on, and it is unfortunate that it has not found a better storyteller. Hodgson, a longtime British observer of American politics and a close friend of the Moynihans since the early 60's, is an unabashed fan of the Senator. "[T]here is," he tells us, "no one in political life in the United States, or anywhere else, whom on balance I admire more." There is of course nothing wrong with a biographer who thinks highly of his subject; nor is Hodgson incapable of (generally very mild) criticism of Moynihan. The problem is that, in consistently making the best case for him, Hodgson proceeds from his own political perspective, which is very much that of a traditional liberal. Insofar as he attributes the same perspective to Moynihan, this leads him frequently into tortured and slightly off-center analysis, and sometimes into downright silliness.
Consider, as just one example, the concluding sentences of the book, in which Hodgson writes that Moynihan will likely most be remembered
as the man who—in the face of a generation that thought it had abolished the need for government—had the lucidity and the courage to restate the enduring propositions of the American political creed. That tradition holds many things, but above all a faith in the redemptive power of republican government.
This peroration is not merely hyperbolic, banal, and empty, it is simply wrong. Americans have always been unique in the West precisely for their mistrust of government, and even Moynihan, whose complex liberalism includes a belief, for certain purposes and on certain occasions, in activist government, would surely look askance at talk of its "redemptive power."
The book is a disappointment on other grounds as well. Its great strength is the access the author enjoyed to Moynihan and his family, to his public and private papers, and to dozens of friends and associates over the years. The Gentleman from New York is widely, if not deeply, researched, and it contains a wealth of fascinating information—even if, concerning a number of critical turning points, Moynihan was apparently not as forthcoming as might have been hoped. But the information is not often put to good use, and the coverage of Moynihan's career, the Senate years in particular, is frequently thin. Moreover, the book is awkwardly and confusingly organized and lazily written. It is marred by indeterminate chronology, anecdotes whose point or relevance is unclear, and narrative passages where the reader cannot quite be certain what is going on.
Still, it is what we have, and interested readers can use its mine of information to attempt to make sense for themselves of one of the most dazzling, frustrating, and enigmatic political figures of the past half-century.
The facts of Pat Moynihan's extraordinarily public and often very noisy life are better known than those of virtually any other contemporary politician who has not been nominated for President. His career began in obscurity, though not so great an obscurity as is sometimes supposed. Moynihan was not, contrary to legend, born or raised in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, and his childhood was not, for the most part, poverty-stricken. The central fact of his early life was not deprivation but instability. His father, a heavy drinker, walked out permanently when Moynihan was ten, and both before and after that the family was constantly on the move, its economic situation fluctuating frequently and unpredictably. No less chaotic was his educational experience: he attended a variety of grade schools, two high schools, and three colleges (CCNY, Middlebury, and Tufts). It is, indeed, easy to suppose that the psychological origins of Moynihan's later preoccupation with the fragility and instability of the political order lay in the unsettled and uncertain conditions of his upbringing.
Following graduation from college in 1948 and two years of graduate study at the Fletcher School at Tufts (where he eventually earned his Ph.D. in international relations), Moynihan spent three years in England studying—with, according to Hodgson, something less than intense rigor—at the London School of Economics. The career he launched on his return to the U.S. in 1953 alternated fitfully between politics and academia. After his four years with Governor Harriman, his pre-Senate experience consisted of teaching stints at Syracuse, Wesleyan, and Harvard interrupted by service in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations (1961-65), a failed race for New York City Council president in 1965, two years (1969-70) in the Nixon White House, two years as U.S. ambassador to India (1973-74), and eight months as Gerald Ford's ambassador to the United Nations (1975-76). Moynihan loved the world of ideas—he regularly insisted that nothing meant more to him than being a Harvard professor—but the ease with which he was so often lured away from Cambridge demonstrates an at least equal love for the political spotlight and political power.
Everywhere Moynihan went, controversy followed. His first—and perhaps most spectacular—experience of notoriety arose over the paper he wrote for President Lyndon B. Johnson in early 1965 while serving in the normally obscure position of Assistant Secretary of Labor. The essay, later known as the Moynihan Report, was titled The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. In it, Moynihan marshaled the ominous facts that signaled a crisis in the black family. He rehearsed the familiar story of the negative effects of slavery and discrimination on black employment rates and family stability. But—and this was not familiar—he presented additional statistics indicating that the pathology of the black family had taken on a life of its own. Up until 1960, Moynihan noted, unemployment rates and welfare rates had risen and fallen together. But in the early 60's, welfare rates—along with crime, illegitimacy, and single-parent households—shot upward even as black male unemployment declined significantly.
Moynihan's argument alerted the nation to the emerging phenomenon of what would later become known as the black underclass. Although the report included no policy recommendations, Moynihan supplemented it with memos to Johnson urging jobs programs with the government as employer of last resort and a family-assistance plan to supplement earned income. The report also supplied the framework for the President's historic speech at Howard University in June 1965, where Johnson argued that while black Americans had made great strides toward freedom, freedom was not by itself sufficient. "We seek," said Johnson, "not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and as a result," and he concluded with a call for a White House conference to explore ways to secure this equality.
But in the aftermath of the Howard speech, black civil-rights leaders and their white allies on the Left turned on the Moynihan Report, and its author, with a vengeance. Black spokesmen were unhappy with the suggestion that their community was in any way responsible for its own problems. To focus on family instability, they insisted, was to divert attention from the real menace: white racism, and its manifestations in job discrimination, lax civil-rights enforcement, and an inadequate national commitment to eradicate poverty. Moynihan's report, his critics charged, was misguided in its history, its statistics, and its implications, and Moynihan himself was "blaming the victim." In the face of the outcry, the administration retreated with alacrity, and at the White House conference that fall the only significant reference to the black family was an attack on the (unnamed) report that had helped inspire the Howard University initiative just a few months earlier.
Moynihan was by then out of government and back in academia.3 He had been seared by the experience and it set off a process of rethinking that led him for the first time seriously to question the liberal assumptions that he—along with virtually the entire post-New Deal American intellectual elite—had taken as self-evident. Although he did not move sharply to the Right, he did reject the Utopian and sentimental radicalism of the liberal Left, identifying himself instead with the thinkers (including Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Seymour Martin Lipset, and James Q. Wilson) who were involved in the launching of the quarterly Public Interest in the fall of 1965. (He had already coauthored Beyond the Melting Pot, an important study of ethnicity, with Glazer in 1963.)
All these men thought of themselves as social scientists, but they were less ready than most of their colleagues to see in social science the vehicle for an untroubled fulfillment of progressive aspirations. In Moynihan's case, his newly tempered liberalism also coincided comfortably with a streak of Irish melancholy in his character, and especially with the intuition that life, after all, is infinitely complicated and arbitrary and—as he had remarked at the death of John F. Kennedy—will occasionally break your heart.
His distancing from conventional liberalism continued with the appearance of James S. Coleman's 1966 study on education. Liberals had long assumed that economic inequality between blacks and whites had to do in significant part with unequal access to educational opportunities, which in turn determined life outcomes. Equalize those opportunities through governmental intervention—i.e., by spending more money on minority education—and economic disparities between the races would decline proportionately. The Coleman Report challenged all that. It showed, first, that the supposedly great divide in educational resources available to blacks and whites did not exist. Beyond that, it demonstrated that, of all the factors affecting student achievement, the most important was not levels of spending or curricular arrangements but family background.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the impact of the Coleman Report, about which Moynihan promptly organized a Harvard faculty symposium. As with the Moynihan Report, critics attacked both Coleman's data and his motives, but for those open to the evidence, reading it was a stunning experience. For the report undermined left-wing assumptions not just about race but about politics in general. If government attempts to equalize educational achievement were as ineffectual as Coleman indicated, what might that suggest about the ability of public policy in general to bring about desired social outcomes?
By the late 1960's, Moynihan was convinced that liberalism had taken the nation to the brink of disaster. Protests against the Vietnam war—a war, Moynihan noted, of "liberal anti-Communism"—had escalated into ever more violent confrontations on college campuses and into widespread alienation among the nation's allegedly best and brightest from the basic institutions and values of American society. In domestic policy, a war on poverty and a succession of civil-rights bills had left a legacy of destructive and terrifying summer riots in the nation's cities.
By 1967, Moynihan was advising his fellow liberals (he never entirely stopped thinking of himself as one) to seek a "politics of stability." To that end, he told the members of Americans for Democratic Action, liberals should rid themselves of the illusion that the nation—especially its cities—could effectively be run from Washington. They should also, he said, "overcome the curious condescension that takes the form of defending and explaining away anything, however outrageous, which Negroes, individually or collectively, might do." Finally, he suggested, they "must seek out and make much more effective alliances with political conservatives."
And he was prepared to act on his own advice. Prior to the 1968 presidential election, Moynihan put out a discreet feeler to Richard Nixon, and, after Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey in November, he accepted the new President's offer to serve as domestic counselor. The move surprised and appalled Moynihan's Harvard colleagues (as well as, Hodgson implies without explicitly saying so, his wife), and he was widely suspected of opportunism. But although Moynihan has never been lacking in ambition, or in the careful cultivation of those who might further his career, going to work for Nixon made a good deal of political and ideological sense. The Democratic party, in Moynihan's view, was currently so in thrall to radicals black and white that it was incapable of effective governance. More positively, Nixon seemed to Moynihan the sort of enlightened conservative open to unfamiliar ideas. His administration could be, he hoped, one of "Tory men and Whig measures."
Most particularly, Nixon was willing to take fresh initiatives in the interrelated areas of welfare, race, and poverty. Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, Moynihan concluded, had failed because it depended on a bewildering and vastly inefficient complex of bureaucratic structures, whose fecklessness was compounded by the requirement that anti-poverty programs include the "maximum feasible participation" of the poor—which reduced in practice to the intimidating theatrics of black radical "community organizing," or, as Tom Wolfe memorably put it, "mau-mauing the flak-catchers." What the poor needed, Moynihan persuaded Nixon, was not more programs but money.
Nixon, accordingly, made the Family Assistance Plan (FAP) the heart of his first-term domestic program. Under FAP, which included work incentives, the existing welfare system would be scrapped and families would instead receive supplements to their income sufficient to raise them above the poverty line. In the end, a coalition of conservatives and leftists defeated the program—the former because it was too radical, the latter because it was not radical enough. Although Hodgson attempts to saddle Nixon with much of the blame—for never having given the plan his unqualified support—Moynihan, in a view that he has not changed since, spoke highly of the President and placed most of the blame on the liberals.
His fissure with the Left deepened in the Nixon years not only over FAP but over a curious reprise of the Moynihan Report furor. In January 1970, Moynihan prepared for the President "a general assessment of the position of Negroes." Objectively considered, he said, blacks in America had made great economic and social progress, despite continuing unfavorable trends in crime and family instability. But radical rhetoric among groups like the Black Panthers and their white sympathizers had obscured much of that progress. "The time may have come," Moynihan advised,
when the issue of race could benefit from a period of "benign neglect." The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over [by] hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.
Someone leaked the memo to the New York Times, and the Left, willfully ignoring the sympathetic context in which the phrase "benign neglect" occurred, seized on it as evidence of the (at best) callous indifference toward blacks of the Nixon administration in general and of Moynihan in particular. As had been the case five years earlier, Moynihan was hurt and outraged by the manifestly unfair accusations of racism. Unlike in the earlier case, an administration unburdened by dependence on blacks or the Left offered him its full support.
When Moynihan left the Nixon White House toward the end of 1970—his strict two-year leave of absence from Harvard was coming to an end—he did so on continuing good terms with the President. Indeed, following Nixon's reelection in 1972, he accepted an offer to become ambassador to India. By now, the Watergate scandal was coming to a boil, but Moynihan, rather than strategically distancing himself from Nixon, wrote to the President in late March 1973 declaring his "unshaken loyalty" and offering to return to the White House—an offer that Nixon, no doubt fortunately for Moynihan, did not take up. Even so, Moynihan arranged a visit to the western White House in San Clemente three months later, following which he concluded, as he confided to a friend, "I belonged with this crowd."
During the Nixon years, Moynihan had aligned himself ever more closely with the neoconservative community, and in particular with Norman Podhoretz, the editor of COMMENTARY. Toward the end of his relatively uneventful service in India, he took up Podhoretz's suggestion that he write about America's increasingly isolated situation at the United Nations. The result, published in COMMENTARY in March 1975, was "The United States in Opposition." In this essay, Moynihan argued that the UN had come largely under the influence of a collectivist Third World ideology, much of it picked up by members of colonial elites who had been educated in England, where they absorbed the socialist beliefs of British academics. That ideology—against which much of the West now found itself unwilling or unable to contend—championed redistribution over production and equality over liberty, and had a pronounced anti-American flavor. It was time, Moynihan concluded, for the U.S. to "go into opposition" at the UN, time indeed "that the American spokesman [should come] to be feared in international forums for the truths he might tell."
Moynihan would never write anything more directly influential. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger read the article immediately, brought it to the attention of President Gerald Ford, and by May 1975 Moynihan was ensconced as ambassador to the United Nations, practicing what his essay had proposed. In his stormy eight months at the UN, Moynihan pursued a strategy (not always, he thought, with the full support of Kissinger and the State Department) of aggressively defending American ideals and interests and, in relations with other countries, rewarding the nation's friends and punishing its enemies.
One issue in particular defined Moynihan's UN stewardship. Over the years, as he observed, there had been no better friend of the U.S. in the UN than Israel. And so, in 1975, to the resolution introduced by Arab nations and supported by the Soviet bloc condemning Zionism as a form of racism, he responded with outraged fury. Although he could not muster the votes to defeat the resolution, he denounced it in an eloquent and widely noticed speech that began and ended with a defiant sentence provided him by Podhoretz: "The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the UN, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will never abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act."
The stint at the UN brought Moynihan renewed notoriety, but this time of a mostly favorable kind, and he used it as a springboard, declaring his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in June 1976. The Republican-Conservative incumbent, James L. Buckley, was considered vulnerable, but Moynihan faced formidable opposition in the September Democratic primary from Congresswoman Abzug, Paul O'Dwyer, and Ramsey Clark. Abzug was the favorite, and to this day many observers believe it was only the last-minute endorsement of Moynihan by the New York Times that allowed him to eke out a victory. He went on to defeat Buckley by a comfortable margin in November.
He was, though without affirming the label, the neoconservative candidate—a fact that was reflected both in the people who staffed his campaign and in those he brought with him to Washington. His closest associates were involved in the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM), an organization whose de-facto hero was Senator Henry M. ("Scoop") Jackson of Washington State and that hoped (in shorthand terms) to de-McGovernize the Democrats. After the defeat of Jackson in his second bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, the CDM people saw Moynihan as their paladin, and were soon urging him to mount a primary challenge in 1980 to the ineffectual President Jimmy Carter. But it was not to be. Moynihan not only declined to challenge Carter—he rightly saw this as a hopeless enterprise—but became, in the aftermath of Ronald Reagan's victory in 1980, a more or less standard liberal Democratic Senator whose politics his erstwhile enthusiasts found difficult to explain. Whatever happened, they wondered in dismay, to Pat Moynihan?
What happened was political reality. Moynihan had won nomination only because the liberal vote in the predominantly liberal New York Democratic electorate had been split three ways. He felt himself hostage to the good opinion of the New York Times, which had supported him in 1976 only after a heated internal struggle. He feared a primary challenge from the Left in 1982. As for his neoconservative friends, they were of little political use to him. CDM had made almost no inroads in pushing the Democrats toward the Center, or in making them hospitable toward neoconservatives.
And then there was the neocons' attitude toward Ronald Reagan. Prior to Reagan's nomination in 1980, many if not most of them had considered him an ultraconservative lightweight; but once he was nominated, and especially once he was elected, Reagan quickly won over most neoconservatives, who were anyway drifting away from the Democratic party. (Three members of Moynihan's early Senate staff, Elliott Abrams, Chester E. Finn, Jr., and Charles Horner, eventually joined the Reagan administration.)
It is hardly surprising, in retrospect, that Moynihan declined to follow the neocons. Were he to do so, he knew, the New York state Democratic party would disown him. It must have seemed that to act as his neoconservative friends urged him to do would be to guarantee a future as a one-term Senator. But he had other things in mind. As he stated in declining to run against Carter, "I have absolutely no interest in the presidency. I'd like to stay in the Senate long enough to have some consequence. What I'd really like to do, if I could, would be to serve four terms." And he proceeded to do what that ambition demanded.
This is not to suggest that he operated only out of political calculation. Moynihan had always been a fierce instinctive Democrat, and had never considered changing his party affiliation, even during his tenure in the Nixon White House. And whatever his flirtations with the Right, he never entirely lost faith in activist government and he certainly never supposed, as Reagan did, that government was the enemy. From very early on, he concluded that the large Reagan tax cuts—and the anticipated budget deficits resulting from them—were consciously intended to put a stranglehold on spending for domestic programs.
Ronald Reagan was, in any case, the most polarizing political figure of the last half-century, one about whom few people remained neutral. At whatever moment Moynihan decided he could not be a Reagan Democrat, he therefore became, willy-nilly, an anti-Reagan Democrat. Even as the political dynamics of the post-1980 situation drew most neoconservatives to the Right, they drew Moynihan, situated differently, in the opposite direction.
The decision to take on the Reagan administration solved his political problem. By 1982 he was invulnerable to attack from the Left, and from then until he had fulfilled his four-term ambition, he won renomination and reelection without significant opposition. As for the neoconservatives, what the Senator is quoted in this book as saying of his once close friendship with Norman Podhoretz and his wife Midge Decter could stand for his changing relationship with the neocons in general: "We didn't split up. We drifted apart."
Post-1982, Moynihan's career in the Senate is largely anticlimactic, at least in terms of ideological analysis, and need not be dwelt on in detail.
On domestic issues, he generally voted, Hodgson notes, as a "New Deal Democrat." From his progressively senior position on the Senate finance committee, he was particularly effective at securing for his New York constituents their fair share, and more, of government spending, and even those otherwise critical of his legislative record concede his skill at advancing his state's interests. He worked to reform the tax system, especially for those with low incomes, and to keep the social-security system solvent. He wanted health-care reform, but not the Clintons' comprehensive program. He vigorously opposed the line-item veto. After some early waffling, he opposed the attempt to impeach and convict President Clinton. He had, until his opposition to partial-birth abortion, an unblemished pro-choice record. (As a Catholic, he said, he considered abortion a sin, but he thought it a matter women would have to work out for themselves.)
Two items in Hodgson's account suggest Moynihan's limits as a legislator. The first is what the author holds up as perhaps Moynihan's "most accomplished legislative achievement": the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991. It is not, one feels safe in saying, one of the landmark pieces of legislation in our time, and readers are likely to finish Hodgson's summary unpersuaded of its significance if not baffled as to its content.
Then there is welfare reform, which had always been Moynihan's signature issue and yet on which, as Hodgson concedes, he wound up "all but isolated." He fought the welfare-reform act of 1996, which abolished the federal guarantee of cash assistance, largely on the grounds that welfare recipients were "in enormous proportion . . . essentially failed persons"—a condescension unusual for, and unworthy of, him. Perhaps more tellingly, his opposition was colored by a peculiar, and ever more indulgently sentimental, indignation:
Just how many millions of infants we will put to the sword is not yet clear. . . . Those involved will take this disgrace to the grave. The children alone are innocent. . . . I don't want to sound apocalyptic, but the effect on New York City would be something approaching an Apocalypse. . . . [J]ust you wait until there are a third of a million children in the streets. That's what you are talking about—children on grates. . . . Our only hope is to save the children.
Then there were the issues of foreign policy and national security, issues on which, in political terms, it probably would have been easier for Moynihan to stick with his neoconservative friends. Here too, however, he moved Left. He continued to share the contempt for Communism central to neoconservatism, but, having decided that the USSR was a declining power, he opposed much of the Reagan defense program. And although he would never have thought of himself as a dove in foreign policy, that is how, more often than not, he voted in the Senate. He disapproved of CIA covert-action programs in Central America and opposed efforts to undermine the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, at one point temporarily resigning in pique as vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. (Moynihan later concluded that the CIA should be abolished.) He came out against the invasion of Grenada in 1983 on the grounds that it violated international law, the scrupulous defense of which became for him an issue that took priority over national-security concerns. As Hodgson approvingly notes, Moynihan had moved some distance away from "orthodox anti-Communism." By the time he voted against the Gulf war in 1991, he seemed considerably removed in spirit from the man who had written "The United States in Opposition" and who had championed American interests so vigorously at the UN.
In the twilight of his career, tributes to Moynihan roll in (including, in early August, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation's highest civilian honor). The senior Senator has become, in Hodgson's words, "a legend, a monument, a Grand Old Man." Even his most severe critics acknowledge his astonishing intellectual range, his enormous, catholic curiosity about and polymathic knowledge of all manner of things. His voluminous writings have touched on, among other subjects, traffic safety, drugs, architecture, race, welfare, social security, international law, diplomacy, ethnicity, urban affairs, government secrecy, social deviance, crime, and education. Those writings demonstrate a mind that, while often inconsistent, is almost never uninteresting.
As a Senator, Moynihan has taken evident pleasure and satisfaction in living what is, as a former neoconservative aide put it, "a pretty damn good life." A quarter-century in the Senate might itself be considered the best revenge for the manifold slights he endured earlier in his career. He has been a significant intellectual and oratorical presence among his colleagues, and even those who disparage his legislative accomplishments have basked in the reflected glory his reputation as a scholar brings to the body.
Yet it is not clear what Moynihan's years in the Senate finally add up to. As a legislator, he has been, while more dutiful to his party than not, essentially unclubbable, and he has operated for the most part as an independent agent. Moynihan's Senate career brings to mind the irritation expressed by a prominent New Dealer concerning certain eccentric progressive senators of his day who insisted, above all else, on their independence. "They cannot lead," he complained, "and they will not follow."
To contemporaries and historians alike, the great controversy over Moynihan will always involve his ideological peregrinations. His defenders, like Hodgson, think that Moynihan finally "came home" to the liberalism that was always his natural place of residence and from which he had strayed only under extraordinary circumstances. The more gentle of his neoconservative critics conclude with resignation that as a Senator he followed, perhaps understandably, the path of least resistance. The still embittered among them say bluntly that he sold out. Moynihan himself insists that he stayed essentially stationary as the political spectrum shifted around him.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to sort this out definitively. But consider a thought experiment. Suppose that, in 1976, Moynihan had lost the Democratic primary rather than narrowly winning it, and had thereupon returned permanently to academic life. Where then would he finally have found his ideological home? The conclusion seems inescapable that he would have continued to develop as one of the most powerful critics of the liberal Left on the contemporary American scene, an eloquent and consistent champion of neoconservative-style reform, and one of the most truly influential voices of the age. One wonders if, in moments of reflection, Daniel Patrick Moynihan himself ever contemplates such a counter-scenario.
1 The Gentleman from New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, A Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 464 pp., $35.00.
2 The first of Moynihan's many appearances in COMMENTARY was with an article entitled " 'Bosses' and 'Reformers'—A Profile of the New York Democrats" (June 1961).
3 His reflections on this entire episode are contained in "The President & the Negro: The Moment Lost," COMMENTARY, February 1967.


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Class Notes
Six DPS high schools among the nation's best
Hillside New Tech High School was named to the U.S. News 2014 Best High Schools list, recognizing high schools with strong academic performance among low-income and minority students. The school received a "silver medal" for ranking in the top 2,000 high schools in the nation.
Five other Durham Public Schools are represented on The Washington Post's America's Most Challenging High Schools list. The list recognizes the top 9 percent of the approximately 22,000 public high schools in the United States for their ability to provide rigorous college-level classes for their students.
Durham School of the Arts ranked highest on the list at 410th in the nation and 12th in North Carolina. City of Medicine Academy and Jordan High join DSA on the list in the top 25 schools in North Carolina.
Rounding out the list were Northern High and Riverside High.
Hillside High's student council honored
Hillside High's Student Council was presented a Louise Hunter Honor Council Award by the N.C. Association of Student Councils at its state conference March 28-30 at North Surry High School in Mt. Airy.
The award is "designed to recognize those Student Councils who present evidence of having an effective and progressive council in many areas."
DPS has 3 National Achievement Scholarship winners
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation today announced that Hillside High's Sydney N. Brown, Hillside New Tech's Jeliyah S. Clark and Jordan High's David Yeyeodu, each were named National Achievement Scholars.
They join about 800 outstanding African-American high school seniors from across the United States who earned Achievement Scholarship awards in 2014.
The National Achievement Scholarship Program is a privately financed academic competition established in 1964 specifically to honor scholastically talented black youth and to provide scholarships to a substantial number of the most outstanding participants in each annual competition.
Brown, Clark and Yeyeodu each will receive a National Achievement $2,500 Scholarship in recognition of their "strongest record of accomplishments and greatest potential for academic success in college."
Advanced Academics Expo
The Department of Advanced Academics is hosting an expo highlighting the services and programs provided by Durham Public Schools.
The Advanced Academics Expo takes place May 6 at 5:30 p.m., at the DPS Staff Development Center, 2107 Hillandale Road, Durham. Guest presenters Tisha Duncan from Meredith College and Michelle Himmelman from Education Resource Group will speak about the social and emotional needs of gifted students, and parents can visit booths demonstrating the enrichment programs offered at various schools.
Math fair honorees
Matthew Congiusta, a fifth-grader from Forest View Elementary School, took first place in the third- through fifth-grade division of the state Central Region Math Fair in Asheboro this month.
Congiusta's project was titled, "Which North American City is it Best to be a Sports Fan in?"
Also receiving honors were Rogers-Herr Middle School's Gianni Lacey-Howard (third place, sixth- through eighth grade, "The Math Path Game") and Spring Valley Elementary School's Ethan Blackmon and Cody Surface (honorable mention, kindergarten through second grade, "Super Math").
The students qualify to submit their projects for the State Math Fair at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics on May 2. The fairs are sponsored by the North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Students win science competition
Hannah McShea of Durham and Michael Zhou of Chapel Hill were among the first-place winners in the 2014 N.C. Student Academy of Science (NCSAS) competition held recently at the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics.
McShea is a student at NCSSM and Zhou attends East Chapel Hill High School.
The first-place winner in each of the high school categories has been invited to attend the American Junior Academy of Science/American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Jose, CA.
NCSAS is a not-for-profit organization for students in sixth through 12th grades in alliance with the NCSAS.
Its objectives are to promote the study of science, technology and mathematics; assist students to pursue careers in science and technology; and encourage students to use their talents for the improvement of themselves, their schools, and their communities.