text:
Data Management
The data warehouse that supports worldwide visa and passport verification operations is sputtering along, but the State Department says the problems that brought it down were not caused by anything "malicious."
The system, the Consular Consolidated Database (CCD) at the State Bureau of Consular Affairs, is operating at limited capacity after an unspecified glitch crippled it July 19, according to Marie Harf, deputy spokesperson for the State Department.
"We do not believe there was any malicious action or anything untoward here," Harf said at the end of the department's daily press briefing July 24. "This was a technical issue, and again, we are working to correct it and should be fully operational again soon. We're operating at a little bit of limited capacity right now, though, so we're trying not to overload the system," she added.
Harf shed some light on a few of the details surrounding the CCD's problems, saying it crashed shortly after maintenance was performed, leading to the conclusion that malicious action probably wasn't the cause.
"We don't know the root cause yet," she said.
Harf said the CCD was operational but not running normally, and backlogs were building. She didn't have an estimate on when the backlog would be cleared or when the system would return to normal operations.
"So don't everybody go apply for a visa right now," Harf joked to reporters at the briefing.
About the Author
Mark Rockwell is a staff writer covering acquisition, procurement and homeland security. Contact him at email@example.com or follow him on Twitter at @MRockwell4.
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Leidos, Accenture and Cerner pull off an unexpected win of the multi-billion-dollar Defense Healthcare Management System Modernization contract, beating out the presumptive health-records leader.
Millions of background-check records were compromised, OPM now says. Here's the jaw-dropping range of personal data that was exposed.
The General Services Administration is going to great lengths to gather feedback on its IT services GWAC. Will it make for a better acquisition vehicle?
Agency details results of an "interagency forensic investigation," plans for assisting affected individuals.
Merit Systems Protection Board data from as far back as November 2014 could be missing.
Three-time Federal 100 winner is leaving government in July.
Members of Congress heaped hard questions on federal IT leaders at a June 16 hearing and suggested strongly that somebody needs to be fired.
Senate bill carves out exemption for supercomputing and other lab IT; an earlier version of the measure would have exempted the entire Department of Energy.
OPM is partnering with CSID to try to manage the fallout from a massive breach of some 4 million federal personnel records.
Sounds like someone in the upper level Information Assurance chain or higher up computer "support" groups pushed something that sounded like a good idea on paper but not in real life. We get pushes (seems like every week) from back east that are best ignored until our local computer support team can check them out and then do a safe install. The last three pushes I recall seeing broke the people who blindly obeyed the instruction to install the update such they had to have the hard drive re-imaged. Right now we have an unknown program "they" want us to install (SQL something, sounds like another babysitting virus from up above) - NO Thanks!
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text:
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Cigna for Health Care Professionals
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Cigna strongly encourages you to submit claims electronically, including Coordination of Benefits claims.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
A Look Inside the US Magazine Hunger Games Edition
It's always exciting to see new pictures from The Hunger Games movie. Now thanks to a special Hunger Games edition of US Weekly, we get a few more sneak peeks from the film
The magazine isn't due out until next month, but there are some early scans doing the rounds (click on images for full size).
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Source: DWTC


text: SoapError Object ( [sCode] => SOAP-ENV:Server [sString] => SOAP-ERROR: Encoding: string 'Our hotel in Aberfoyle Nestled within the breath-taking scenery of The Trossachs, Macdonald Forest Hills Hotel & Spa, provides a luxurious getaway right on your doorstep. Our hotel in Aberfoyle is located just 20 minutes from Stirling, 40 minutes from Glasgow and less than an hour from Edinburgh, offering the perfect retreat from city life. There are plenty of reasons to indulge in a short break at Macdonald Forest Hills Hotel & Spa; the only four-star hotel in The Trossachs. Our beautiful \xa3...' is not a valid utf-8 string [sDetails] => getProduct: )


text:
What would you do if you won the lottery? Most people would be to quit their job. That is not the case for the three Mega Millions winners from Maryland. The "Three Amigos," as they like to call themselves, will continue working in public education despite the fact that they each netted about $35 million from their lucky win.
It may seem strange that these three lucky Mega Millions winners, who have chosen to remain anonymous, would continue working in the public school system, but Maryland Lottery Director Stephen Martino said the three have "a strong commitment to their students." What a wonderful testament to their dedication to the young people in their state!
Martino also said, "We are thrilled that three such deserving Marylanders have won this money. It's gratifying to know that these individuals, who have given so much to the public through the years, have had this wonderful luck. It couldn't have happened to nicer people."
The three are a man in his 50s, a woman in her 40s, and a woman in her 20s. They each have a plan in place for taking care of their fortune. Can you imagine being in their shoes? What an exciting couple of weeks this must have been for them!


text:
February 20, 2013
A state union and advocates of New York's Erie Canal system are pushing back against proposed job cuts for canal workers.
The Thruway Authority's plan to eliminate 234 employees in order to save money includes 42 Canal Corporation employees.
The layoffs come as an alternative to proposed toll hikes on the Thruway last year.
The Civil Service Employees Union says the cuts to canal staff will hurt efficiency and the ability to maintain the state's waterways.The CSEA has started an online petition and canvassed a boat show in Syracuse over the weekend.
The 524 mile canal connecting the Hudson River to Lake Erie was once a major economic corridor through upstate New York, but is now used mostly for recreation and tourism.
Advocates say the canal is still an "economic lifeline" for the communities along it.
Read more on the Innovation Trail website here.


text:
Course Abstract Details
LEA-101, Emergency Vehicle Operations
Credits: 3
Course Description
LEA-101, Emergency Vehicle Operations, course is designed to meet the Maryland Police Training Commission training objectives. Minimum requirements are mandated by the state of Maryland for every entry level police officer in the safe operation of an emergency vehicle operated in the state of Maryland. Each student will be lectured and tested on each objective and evaluated via practical exercises specifically designed to answer the individual objectives. Course also includes lab hours for traffic and vehicle stops. Fifteen hours of classroom lecture, sixty hours of lab experience. Three credits. Three billable hours. Available to Police Academy Students only.
Course Objectives and Grading Information
Course Objectives:
Students must identify all components of MPTC Objectives #085 through #097.
Students must demonstrate MPTC Objectives #098 through #104.
Students must describe or demonstrate MPTC Objectives #425 & #426.
Course Requirements and Grading Procedures:
70%- Student must pass minimum standards established by the Maryland Police Training Commission.
30%- Student must pass classroom exam.
MPCTC Objectives:
Objective 085 Identify the components and importance of defensive driving, such as attitude, skill, vehicle capability, driving conditions.
Objective 086 Identify driver attitudes or conditions which greatly contribute to the occurrence of traffic accidents, such as: over-confidence, self-righteousness, impatience, preoccupation, and fatigue.
Objective 087 Identify driving activities which most frequently contribute to collisions; backing up, parking, and left turns.
Objective 088 Identify qualities of a good driver, to include: driving within own limitations, maintains good physical condition. Uses mature judgment, has knowledge of rules of the road, is rested and alert.
Objective 089 Identify hazards of driving at night, such as reduced visibility and over-driving headlights.
Objective 090 Identify importance of knowing traffic conditions in all directions and all visible distances and the necessity of acting accordingly.
Objective 091 Identify conditions which affect the stopping distance of a vehicle, such as driver, vehicle, road and weather.
Objective 092 Identify in proper sequence the following components that make up total stopping distances: perception of danger, decision time, reaction time, braking distance.
Objective 093 Identify advantages and disadvantages to high-speed pursuit.
Objective 094 Identify elements of high speed pursuit, utilization and limitations of emergency equipment and pursuit tactics.
Objective 095 Identify circumstances of a police officer's liability and exemption from liability when operating an emergency vehicle.
Objective 096 Identify differences of procedure for high-speed pursuit in a congested area vs. open road vs. off road
Objective 097 Describe or demonstrate the ability to regain control of vehicle experiencing a front wheel skid.
Objective 098 Demonstrate through driving exercises proper road position, weight transfer, throttle control, braking and steering accuracy both forward and backward while performing the following maneuvers: 90 degree turn, stopping, accelerating and decelerating, 180 degree turn, lane changes, serpentine of "S" curves.
Objective 099 Demonstrate the ability to maneuver a vehicle forward and backward in restricted space areas. Objective 100 Demonstrate ability to safely operate and control a law enforcement vehicle, for example, during a controlled low or high-speed pursuit to include headlights, emergency lights, siren and communications equipment, and driving at night.
Objective 101 Demonstrate the techniques of accident avoidance by smoothly and rapidly displacing the vehicle left or right upon command.
Objective 102 Demonstrate proper procedure for operating a vehicle, for example, driving in rain during controlled and high-speed pursuit, pumping brakes when stopping, turning wheel in direction of skid, regard for reduced visibility, ice, and snow.
Objective 104 Be able to perform first line maintenance on patrol vehicle; i.e., replenish fluid levels, adding air to tires, washing vehicle, or changing a tire using the jack provided by the manufacturer.
Objective 425 Describe or demonstrate the ability to regain control of a vehicle experiencing a rear wheel skid.
Objective 426 Describe or demonstrate the ability to regain control of a vehicle experiencing an all wheel skid.
Objective 504 Identify the disadvantages of high-speed pursuit.
Learning Goals
The abbreviations in parentheses represent Learning Goals which have been identified for this course and program of study:


text:
Please Stop Talking John Kerry
America's chief diplomat is saying way too much about the Iran deal.
The Boy Scouts Just Dropped Their Ban on Gay Leaders. That's Good, but They Must Go Further.
A Spiritual Utopia Struggles With Crime and Corruption
The Apple Watch Isn't the Most Impressive Watch Launched This Year
Why, Exactly, Is American Ninja Warrior So Mesmerizing?
Google Gives Up
It will no longer force you to use a Google Plus account to log in to its other sites.
- Donald Trump Lawyer Responds to Trump Rape Allegation by Not Knowing What Rape Is
- Obama Meets 3-Million-Year-Old Ancestor, Misses Chance to Troll Trump With Ultimate Birther Joke
- Beirut Is Literally Covered in Hot Garbage
- Famed Zimbabwe Lion Allegedly Lured Out of Protected Park, Killed by Foreign Hunter
Is the 1 Percent That Different From the Rest of Us?
Google Finally Admits Defeat on Google Plus
Is the 1 Percent That Different From the Rest of Us?
Jul 28, 5:45 AM - JAY DESHPANDE - 8M to read The Timepiece That Will Revolutionize the Watch World Isn't Made by Apple. It's by Swatch.
Jul 28, 2:00 AM - BRIAN KOPPELMAN - 1M to read Divya Narendra Talks Trust in the Years Following the Facebook Lawsuit
Jul 27, 10:52 PM - AMY X. WANG - 1M to read A Facebook Post May Have Driven Topshop to Ditch Its Scary-Skinny Mannequins
Jul 27, 10:27 PM - ELLIOT HANNON - 2M to read Trump Lawyer Responds to Rape Allegation by Not Knowing What Rape Is, Totally Melting Down
Jul 27, 9:54 PM - WILLIAM SALETAN - 6M to read Why John Kerry Needs to Stop Blabbing About the Iran Deal
Jul 27, 9:27 PM - SHARAN SHETTY - 1M to read Never Seen a Mission: Impossible Movie? This Video Will Get You Caught Up in Six Minutes.
Jul 27, 9:01 PM - ELLIOT HANNON - 1M to read George Washington University Drops SAT and ACT Requirement for Admission
Jul 27, 7:42 PM - MIKE DESOCIO - 3M to read Boy Scouts Drop Ban on Gay Leaders, but Discrimination Lingers
Jul 27, 5:58 PM - JOSH VOORHEES Obama Meets 3-Million-Year-Old Ancestor, Misses Chance to Troll Trump With Ultimate Birther Joke
Jul 27, 5:55 PM - CHRIS BERDIK - 4M to read How Students Are Using Balloons and Kites to Map Pollution Around New Orleans
Jul 27, 5:05 PM - WILLA PASKIN - 4M to read American Ninja Warrior Is One of TV's Biggest Hits. What's the Source of Its Crazy Appeal?
- An Entire History of Life on Earth, In Under 8 Minutes The Best Boxing Scenes in Cinema
- This Adorable Ohio Canine Helps Socialize Young Zoo Animals. I know. A Concise Video History of Teens Climbing Through Each Others' Windows
- Here's an Exclusive Peek at the Sword in the Stone Remake by a Game of Thrones Writer The Moment the Old West Shootout Was Born
- Why People Like to Stare Endlessly Into Fires Jurassic World Would Be Better if Everyone Wore Heels—Even the Dinosaurs
- 1. We've Been Cheated Out of Condoms That Actually Feel Good During Sex
- 2. The Best Dear Prudence Vacation Advice
- 3. Google Finally Admits Defeat on Google Plus
- 4. Trump Lawyer Responds to Rape Allegation by Not Knowing What Rape Is, Totally Melting Down
What a Trip
The best Dear Prudence vacation advice, in time for the peak of summer.
Touchy Tutorial
My Boyfriend Crossed the Line
Home Invasion
Biological Favorites
- 1. Google Finally Admits Defeat on Google Plus
- 2. 35 of Bill Cosby's Alleged Sexual Assault Victims Join Together for Powerful Photo
- 3. Rick Perry: Guns Should be Allowed in Movie Theaters
- 4. One of NASCAR's Most Storied Speedways Is Now a Decaying Wreck
- 5. Lithuania's Startling Campaign to Erase Its Ugly History of Nazi Collaboration
- 6. How Did Armies Keep Archers Supplied With Arrows While Fighting?
- 7. Obama Cracks Birther Joke in Kenya
Is the 1 Percent That Different From the Rest of Us?
One of NASCAR's Most Storied Speedways Is Now a Decaying Wreck
This Is Where Your Coffee Comes From
How the Dutch Celebrate Their Birthdays: From 1 to 100
The Neurotic, Sexy, and Gross World of Food-Eating Competitions
Magnum Photographers Show How Covering Civil War Has Changed
Meet the Scientists Who Helped Make Those Groundbreaking Pluto Photos Possible
The People You Meet While Traveling Cross Country on a Greyhound Bus
- The Moment Divya Narendra Talks Trust in the Years Following the Facebook Lawsuit
- The Gist What Adam Davidson Would Tell Jeb Bush About Capitalism
- Hang Up And Listen Is the NBA Ready for a Female Head Coach?
- Lexicon Valley The Jittery History of a Very Nervous Phrase
"I had to get fingerprinted by an FBI mobile unit—all this, just to provide a monthly snack to a handful of 3-year-olds." Background Check Provision Gets Chucked From No Child Left Behind Rewrite
"Jeb Bush might be the grown-up in the room. But you have to consider the room." Jeb Bush's Magic Trick: Making Radically Conservative Ideas Seem Boring
Poison Control Much of the Russian media is toxic. Here's how the U.S. can help the journalists who are not.
Behind the Scenes
The Great Writing Vs. Talking Debate Is it harder to be a good writer or a good talker?
A Brief History of Everything A supersized MinutePhysics that tackles our evolution, from the Big Bang to present day.
Sports Nut
Push It to the Limit The women's 1,500-meters record just fell after 22 years. What's the fastest humans can possibly run?


text:
Duke NPHC responds to Kappa Sigma party
As members of the Duke greek community, the National Pan-Hellenic Council feels obligated to reach out to our fellow greeks, the brothers of Kappa Sigma fraternity. Too often in years past, Duke fraternities have hosted parties with themes that marginalize and ostracize entire minority populations based on misguided representations. This level of ignorance is antagonistic to the principles on which many of our organizations were founded. When an essential part of one's identity is used as a point of laughter for another group's amusement, the extent of damage caused cannot be overstated. We are speaking out against this type of conduct, but also against the fundamental belief that such insensitivity is permissible among leaders of the Duke community. We call upon the brothers of Kappa Sigma fraternity, and indeed all greeks, to reflect upon our principles. Is this what we truly aspire to represent?
Kyle Jones, Trinity '13
President, National Pan-Hellenic Council


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"Don't tell nobody about this."
This was written by a teacher's aide to an 11-year old student in one of many "love" letters. Why a teacher's aide is passing inappropriate notes to a child is unclear but the equally troubling question is why a teacher's aide has such poor grammar. This is just one of the many problems plaguing Miramonte Elementary School in Los Angeles.
Two teachers at Miramonte have been accused of sexually assaulting students: Martin Springer was charged with molesting young girls and Mark Berndt reportedly blindfolded his young students and told them to engage in a "game" which required the students to be spoon-fed his semen, while Berndt stupidly photographed the children.


text:
Hotels in 44272 - Rootstown OH
Only hotels in 44272 zip code are listed below. Search for cheap and discount hotel rates in Rootstown, OH for your upcoming leisure or conference / group travel. We list the best 44272 hotels and motels so you can review the Rootstown hotel list below to find the perfect lodging. Hotels in Portage county and area code 330 are also listed.
44272 Hotels, Motels & Accommodations
Next: Show All Available 44272 Hotels with Pricing >


text:
Hold down Control (PC) or Command (Mac) key + mouseclick to select more than one option
|Avg. Dinner Entrée
|Greater than $25
|$18.01 - $25
|$12.01 - $18
|$7.01 - $12
|Less than $7
Posted by Anonymous on 07/03/2008
After reading the revews I was looking forward to eating at Honey's, but I have to say I was very disappointed. Being of the Jewish faith I thought the potato latke was so far away from being authentic, it was burnt and dry. Not enough nova lox in the eastern omlette, the chalah was not authentic either, the pancakes were dry, breakfast quesidilla was bland and had to much egg and last but not least the cole slaw had no taste. Overall I think it was pricey and would not recommend your restaurant or return.
Posted by Rachel on 01/11/2008
Went to Honey's for my second time recently, this time for dinner. It wasn't nearly as hectic as brunch but still busy. The byob factor is nice too. We started off with the bacon cheddar fries w/ homemade ranch dip. I ordered the Mahi Mahi Tacos and my friend had the Turkey Meatloaf and Chipotle Mashed Potatoes. We also split an oversized piece of Mocha Choc cake. All were fabulous. We were stuffed to the gills and didn't burn a hole in the wallet.
Posted by Anonymous on 05/15/2007
Honey's is amazing. There are numerous vegetarian options and everything is always amazing. You have to get there early on the weekends or you have to wait. The food is always fresh and interesting. I recomend going there on a week night for a super chill experience. Try the tofu scramble and the breakfast burrrito! I recently had the lobster mac 'n cheese and it was super.
Posted by Anonymous on 01/29/2007
Posted by Anonymous on 01/15/2007
Went there for the first time with a group of friends and everyone left there smiling and full. They close at 4pm on Sundays and by the time we left it was emptying out and was rather quiet. I liked that much more then when we first got there and it was packed and noisey. We are planning to go back this Sunday as I have deemed this my favorite Sunday lunch spot.
Posted by athrahans on 09/07/2006
Honey's is the perfect place for brunch when your parents visit. Just make sure to get there extra early to get a seat, as they don't take reservations. Yummy biscuits and gravy, but don't order as a side dish. It is big enough for a meal. Their huevos rancheros dish is the best I have ever had. Service is okay--I find I get better service at the bar. Definitely worth a visit.


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For decades, Mustangs have been the most popular pony car, both in terms of sales and in terms of customization, and this 1999 35th... More
GR Auto Gallery is pleased to present this extremely clean 2-owner 1999 Ford Mustang SVT Cobra Convertible for purchase. 1999 marked the first year... More
For the 35th anniversary of the Mustang, Ford put out a limited run of pretty special Mustang GT convertibles. This is one of the... More


text: NEW YORK – Kobe Bryant marched out of the interview room, down the small flight of stairs and walked stiffly through the back corridors of Madison Square Garden. He winced once, and again, slowing to straighten his aching back. For all of the ferocity and frustration that washed over him across one more embarrassing defeat, a strange sense of serenity buoyed Bryant late Thursday.


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Choosing fertilizers, soil amendments that suit your garden
Fertilizers, both chemical and organic are usually chosen for N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium or potash) content. But is that all that's needed to grow healthy and nutritious vegetables, herbs and fruits?
What does each nutrient do?
N — Nitrogen helps plant foliage to grow strongP — Phosphorous helps roots and flowers grow and developK — Potassium (Potash) is important for overall plant health
Is more better?
Higher N-P-K levels don't necessarily mean healthier plants. For instance, high nitrogen fertilizers will result in quick growth, but quick growth can result in weaker plants that are more susceptible to attacks by diseases and pests.
Who came up with the idea that N-P-K was the answer to the fertilizer question?
German scientist Justus Von Liebig was responsible for the theory that nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium levels are the basis for determining healthy plant growth. However, this theory, which dates to the 1800s, doesn't take into account the dozens of other nutrients and elements that are essential to plant growth such as sulfur, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, magnesium, etc. Nor does the theory include the importance of beneficial soil organisms that helps plants flourish and fight off pests and diseases. Additional nutrients such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, magnesium, copper, cobalt, sodium, boron, molybdenum, and zinc are just as important to plant development as N-P-K. Unfortunately, Justus Von Liebig's theory has developed into the dominant formula by which we nourish our edible and ornamental plants, lawns and trees.
What's in your fertilizer?
When reading fertilizer labels, you'll notice that the N-P-K numbers don't add up to 100 percent. So, what is the rest of your fertilizer made up of?
Chemical fertilizers can have any number of additional ingredients including dirt, sand, and even materials that are potentially hazardous to your health and to the environment. Chemical fertilizer fillers are needed so that the nutrients aren't so concentrated that they will "burn" your plants, your skin, and anything else they touch. Organic fertilizers don't necessarily contain fillers, because they are made up of a variety of natural components that in one way or another benefit your plants.
Chemical fertilizers differ from organic fertilizers in the rate at which the nutrients become available to the plant. For example, the type of nitrogen typically found in chemical fertilizers dissolves very quickly in water. This means that excess nitrogen may find its way into groundwater and freshwater sources and contaminate the water. Additionally, many chemical fertilizers are now using phosphoric acid to create a high phosphorous content quickly and cheaply. According to research, this kind of phosphorous essentially neutralizes other important trace minerals from the soil that your plants need.
Although organic and natural fertilizers usually have a lower N-P-K number, they are considered soil amendments that work slowly over time to improve your soil and to help your plants grow strong. They avoid the fast growth and flowering provided by chemical fertilizers that can actually weaken plants. High N-P-K numbers don't necessarily mean a better fertilizer.
Do You Need a Soil Amendment or a Fertilizer? You might not need much fertilizer in your garden. You may just need to liberate the nutrients already present in your soil with beneficial soil organisms, proper soil aeration, soil drainage, and re-mineralization. For the gardener, this means that organic fertilizers with low N-P-K labels are perfectly adequate for your garden as long as you're properly caring for your soil. Without proper soil aeration, mineral nutrients, and other factors, your plants may not be able to absorb phosphorous and potassium anyway, so loading up your soil with high levels of phosphorous and potassium may not make much difference with the health of your plants.
Nitrogen is typically available to the soil without additional fertilizers. The trick is having healthy soil full of beneficial microorganisms that can make use of the nitrogen that is available in the air. Earthworm castings and properly prepared compost are teeming with these beneficial organisms. Also, companion and cover crop plants like beans and clover can fix nitrogen that boost soil's health. Other excellent natural sources of nutrients are fish meal, kelp, alfalfa meal, and bat guano.
According to the National Academy of Sciences, even though farmers uses fertilizers more widely, homeowners uses 10 times more fertilizer per acre. You should only use the proper amount of any fertilizer, and not anything more. This will save you money, and it will also keep your yard and garden healthier at the same time. This applies to organics as well as chemical fertilizers!
At Windcrest Farm, our motto is: Feed the soil that feeds the plants that feed you!
Mary Roberts and Ray Tarlton are owners and managers of Windcrest Farm, a USDA Certified Organic farm and greenhouse in Monroe, NC . Visit www.WindcrestOrganics.com for more information about plants, produce and classes.


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Jewish Bible Commentary
An introduction to the different ways in which Jews have read the Bible throughout history.
By MJL Staff
We Also Recommend
The Bible is a complex and self-referential text. In the period of the classical midrash (rabbinic homiletical interpretation of Scripture during the 2nd to 7th centuries), the sages wrote midrashim (plural) to connect the various biblical texts to each other, to the life of sanctification prescribed by halakhah (Jewish law), and to their own contemporary experiences. This midrashic approach was virtually the only way that Jews read the Bible until the Islamic conquest in the seventh century.
As Jews began to learn from Arabic scholars the principles of grammar and philology, a new model of Bible interpretation developed–the p'shat (plain) method. To its medieval practitioners, p'shat meant the search for the meaning of the text in its linguistic, literary, and historical context. Thanks to developments in Hebrew grammar, beginning with the research of Saadiah Gaon in the 10th century and continuing in Spain with rabbi-linguists such as Jonah Ibn Janach, the practitioners of the p'shat method had powerful tools to help them.
The p'shat method rejects the basic assumptions of the midrashic or d'rash (homiletical) method. Consider this verse reporting God's words to Moses prior to the revelation on Mt. Sinai: "Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel" (Exodus 19:3). For Rashi, the pre-eminent biblical commentator who relied heavily on the d'rash method, the two halves of the verse must refer to different things. Rashi: "To the house of Jacob–these are the women, speak to them in a soft voice. And tell the children of Israel–explain the punishments and the details to the men." Apologists might argue that Rashi implies that God instructs Moses to lay down the law with the naturally rebellious men, while the women don't need threats, but however one understands Rashi, it is clear that Rashi is bringing a midrashic agenda to his reading of this verse.
On the other hand, Avraham Ibn Ezra, of the medieval Spanish school, presents two different p'shat readings. The first is based on philological analysis; "To the house of Jacob–this refers to the those who are here today as well as their descendants…and the word house I have already explained" referring to his commentary on Exodus 1:1, where he shows that "house" means one's descendants. He explicitly rejects the reading that "house" means wife, as Rashi had read it. Ibn Ezra's second reading is literary:
Did you like this article? MyJewishLearning is a not-for-profit organization.


text:
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Thursday 07 March 2013
5pm - 7pm
Giving What We Can Warwick present Rob Mather - the Founder and CEO of Against Malaria Foundation - to talk at Warwick University.
What's the Big Match?
Rob Mather, the founder of Against Malaria Foundation (AMF), tells the story of how he built AMF into the most lean and cost-effective charity in the world. According to charity evaluators GiveWell and Giving What We Can, AMF has more impact per dollar donated than any other charity they have assessed. As well as this, we'll be celebrating the end to The Big Match afterwards with free wine and pizza!
Donate here and read The Boar article about our scheme.
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text:
Chorizo and potato soupMobile version Email a friend Print
By: From: Market Kitchen
On TV Tonight
- 20:00 - Rachel Khoo's Kitchen Notebook: Cosmopolitan Cook - Istanbul
- 20:30 - Rachel Khoo's Kitchen Notebook: Cosmopolitan Cook - Amalfi Coast
- 21:00 - MasterChef: The Final Three - MasterChef
- Prep time:
- 15 min
- Cook time:
- 25 min
- Serves:
- 6
You'll probably have potatoes and onions in the house even if the cupboard are otherwise bare, so you could make Darina Allen's simply delicious soup at a moment's notice
Method1. Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan. When it foams, add the potatoes and onion and toss in the butter until well coated. Sprinkle with salt and a few grinds of pepper.
2. Cover the vegetables closely with a butter wrapper or disc of greaseproof paper and then the lid of the saucepan. Sweat on a gentle heat for about 10 minutes until softened.
3. Meanwhile bring the stock to the boil in a separate pan. When the vegetables are tender but not coloured, add the hot stock and continue to cook until the vegetables are soft.
4. Puree the soup in a blender or food processor. Taste for seasoning and reheat, thinning it down with as much milk as you need for a good consistency.
5. Just before serving, fry the slices of chorizo in a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil for a minute or two on each side. Paprika-flavoured oil will render out of the chorizo.
6. Serve three slices of chorizo on top of each bowl of soup. Sprinkle a few flat parsley sprigs on top and drizzle over a little chorizo oil.
- 40 g butter
- 450 g potatoes, peeled and cut into 1cm dice
- 1 onion, peeled and cut into 1cm dice
- 900 ml homemade chicken stock, or vegetable stock
- about 250 ml milk
- 12 slices chorizo
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- flat leaf parsley, snipped
Tips and suggestions
- If the chorizo slices are large, cut them into bite-sized pieces before frying.


text:
How the Mind Works is a synthesis of cognitive science and evolutionary biology that aims to explain the human mind with three ideas: (1) Computation: thinking and feeling consist of information-processing in the brain; (2) Specialization: the mind is not a single entity, but a complex system of parts designed to solve different problems; (3) Evolution: as with the organs of the body, our complex mental faculties have biological functions ultimately related to survival and reproduction. The book lays out criteria for attributing an evolutionary function to a trait, and applies them to many hypotheses using data from cognitive science, psychology, anthropology, and biology.
In their review, Jeremy Ahouse and Robert Berwick dismiss it entirely. "Don't believe a word of it," they say about what they take to be its key assumptions. "More is not always more ... it is sometimes disastrously less." Despite their vehemence, it is not easy to see what the substantive disagreement is about. Some scientists disagree with (1) and assert that the mind is a direct product of the biochemistry of the brain, but Berwick cannot be among them: he himself takes a computational approach to language and mind.(Note 1) Other disagree with (2) and assert that there is a generic neural network learning algorithm which the brain uses for every mental process. But Berwick cannot among them, either: he works in a Chomskyan framework in which language is treated as a specialized module, and presumably he does not believe that language is the brain's only specialized module. As for (3), evolution, Berwick cannot be opposed in principal to examining the phylogenetic basis of mental faculties, since he himself has recently done just that for language.(Note 2)
There remains an issue of which mental processes are functional adaptations, as opposed to by-products of adaptations or the result of chance. It is unlikely that Ahouse and Berwick would deny that one can ever say that some part of the mind is an adaptation: the idea that stereo vision, fear, and sexual desire are adaptations to see in depth, avoid danger, and beget children are as indispensible and uncontroversial as the idea that the heart is an adaptation to pump blood or the kidneys are adaptations to filter it. There may be disagreements over whether particular mental faculties (such as probabilistic reasoning, grief, or humor) are adaptations, and if so, what they are for, but such arguments do not appear in Ahouse and Berwick's review.
The review becomes a bit less mysterious when we recognize that their accusations are taken, often wording and all, from their mentor in biology, Richard Lewontin. The review is the latest example of a conventional genre in modern intellectual life: the all-out attack by Lewontin or his collaborators (including Steven Rose, Stephen Jay Gould, and Philip Kitcher) on attempts to connect psychology with standard evolutionary biology. Since 1975, when Lewontin and others published their "Against Sociobiology" manifesto claiming that such attempts were politically reactionary and encouraged eugenics and Nazism, the attacks have recycled the same accusations and tactics: fuzzy scare words ("atomism," "reductionism," "determinism"), misreportings and doctored quotations, shameless straw-manning, empty name-calling ("vulgar," "pop"), political smears, personal innuendo, and most of all, the scientific snow job: seemingly damaging technical findings that general readers are unlikely to know about and hence unlikely to recognize as red herrings.(Note 3)
HTMW tried to pre-empt this kind of attack by patiently raising and refuting all the standard criticisms, both political and scientific. But Ahouse and Berwick seemed determined to discredit the book by any means necessary, and so rather than engaging its arguments, they have redoubled the use of shoddy tactics. As an example of their standards of fairness, here is an excerpt in which they try to show that I am ignorant of basic evolutionary biology:
Pinker asks, "Why don't women give virgin birth?" Certainly the correctThis guy Pinker sure does sound naive! Unfortunately for the readers of The Boston Review, the "hollow bluster" is a sentence fragment that A&B chopped out of context:
answer will not make particular reference to humans. Mammals, including
humans, just do not have this as a developmental option. Put otherwise,
it would take more than just a shift in selection regimes to make
humans start reproducing asexually. For these reasons it is hollow
bluster to talk about the selective advantage of sex in humans if the
traits we are discussing evolved and became established long before the
human lineage branched.
Why is there sex to begin with? ... Biologically speaking, the costsThe discussion that follows also makes it clear that that sex is puzzle for all organisms; humans are presented just as an example.
are damnable indeed, so why do almost all complex organisms reproduce
sexually? Why don't women give virgin birth to daughters who are
clones of themselves instead of wasting half their pregnancies on sons
who lack the machinery to make grandchildren and are nothing but sperm
donors? Why do people and other organisms swap out half their genes
for the genes of another member of the species, generating variety in
their offspring for variety's sake? (p. 461-462).
This is not the first time that Berwick has been caught doctoring a
quotation in these pages; he also did it in his dismissive review of Richard
Dawkins' fine book Climbing Mount Improbable.(Note 4) Nor is it the last
time. As we shall see, A&B repeatedly fabricate the content of HTMW and
misinform their readers about the technical results they marshal to criticize
Distortion 1: I uncritically believe that all traits are adaptations.
Let's compare the accusations with what I wrote:
A&B: "In evolutionary terms, every trait we examine is an admixture
of physical constraints, natural selection and chance with history.
These features are constitutive, not optional. Pinker presents a
mutually exclusive conception pitting these factors against each
HTMW: "Natural selection should not be pitted against developmental,
genetic, or phylogenetic constraints, as if the more important one of
them is, the less important the others are" (p. 169). ... "Organisms
can be understood only as interactions among adaptations, by-products
of adaptations, and noise" (p. 174).
A&B: "All traits do not lead to a selective advantage, the origin of
traits and their maintenance do not demand the same selectionist
account. Pinker never embraces this distinction as a vivid part of his
HTMW on all traits leading to selective advantage: "The mind is an
adaptation designed by natural selection, but that does not mean that
everything we think, feel, and do is biologically adaptive (p. 23)."
"The major faculties of the mind ... show the handiwork of selection.
That does not mean that every aspect of the mind is adaptive" (p. 174).
"Some readers may be surprised to learn that after seven chapters of
reverse-engineering the major parts of the mind, I will conclude by
arguing that some of the activities we consider most profound are
nonadaptive by-products" (p. 525).
HTMW on origin versus maintenance: "Many organs that we see today
have maintained their original function. .... Others changed their
function. ... [Sometimes] before an organ was selected to assume its
current form, it was adapted for something else. (p. 170)"
Distortion 2: I am an atomist and a genetic reductionist, reducing every behavior to a simple trait, and then, in a straight line, to a single gene. This is exactly backwards. Behavior reduced to a single trait?
[The generator of behavior is] the package of information-processing
and goal-pursuing mechanisms called the mind. ...Any particular deed
done today is the effect of dozens of causes. Behavior is the outcome
of an internal struggle among many mental modules, and it is played out
on the chessboard of opportunities and constraints defined by other
people's behavior. (p. 42)
The on-board computers of social organisms, especially of humans,Behavioral traits reduced to single genes?
should run sophisticated programs that assess the opportunities and
risks at hand and compete or cooperate accordingly. (p. 429)
The organization of our mental modules comes from our genetic program,
but that does not mean that there is a gene for every trait (p. 23).
An emphasis on innate design should not, by the way, be confused with
the search for "a gene for" this or that mental organ. ... Complex
mental organs, like complex physical organs, surely are built by
complex genetic recipes, with many genes cooperating in as yet
unfathomable ways (p. 34-35).
Neither adultery nor any other behavior can be in our genes (p. 42).
A&B's specific charges are equally backwards. They charge, "A behavior like
`incest avoidance' gets boiled down to a simple heritable trait." I wrote the
opposite: "Incest avoidance showcases the complicated software engineering
behind our emotions for other people" (p. 456). A particularly blatant
caricature comes in an attempt to educate us on birth order:
Birth order is a clear example of environment, not inheritance, as aMust claim? Here is what I do claim:
prime mover (later-born children could not be expected on average to
receive more gullibility genes from their parents). With the wind of
adaptationism filling his sails, Pinker must claim that the whole
behavioral repertoire response [sic] of first-borns or the inverse
behavior of later-borns is all selected for.
[Children] should calculate how to make the best of the hand thatAll children being equipped with strategies for competing with siblings is very different from parents' directing gullibility genes to later-borns.
nature dealt them and of the dynamics of the poker game they were born
into. The historian Frank Sulloway has argued that the elusive
nongenetic component of personality is a set of strategies to compete
with siblings for parental investment, and that is why children in the
same family are so different. Each child develops in a different family
ecology and forms a different plan for getting out of childhood alive.
Oddly enough, A&B write as if they themselves believe that genetic atomism
and determinism are required by the theory of evolution:
If genes are to serve as accurate bookkeeping chits for maximizingMust? It is a commonplace of evolutionary biology that genes are selected because of their probabilistic effects: a gene "for" a trait is a gene that, in comparison with rival alleles, and averaged over environments and over the other genes it appears with, increases the probability that the trait will appear. As A&B acknowledge later in the review, "Biologists have long said a lot about evolution without any detailed knowledge of the steps from genotype to phenotype. All you need are statistical correlations to move from gene to phenotype without a full causal story." Indeed they have. But A&B have just refuted their own claim that "the dotted lines from gene to behavior must run straight and true"!
fitness, all the way to love's blushes, then the dotted lines from
genes to behaviors must run straight and true. Any deviation, any
non-determinism or interaction between and among the stepping-stones,
and our explanatory hold slips [emphasis added] (p. 38).
Distortion 3: HTMW us just story-telling, and presents no basis for
evaluating its hypotheses about the biological function of mental
Pinker knows that we can always replace one adaptive story by anotherIn fact I "know" no such thing, do offer us a way, and do refrain from doing so myself.
or add more useful modules as required, but offers us no way to
reasonably refrain from doing do.
First, I present standard criteria in biology for evaluating hypotheses about adaptive function. Obviously such criteria must exist. As Ernst Mayr, one of the century's seminal evolutionary biologists, has noted, "The adaptationist question, `What is the function of a given structure or organ?' has been for centuries the basis of every advance in physiology. If it had not been for the adaptationist program, we probably would still not yet know the functions of thymus, spleen, pituitary, and pineal. Harvey's question `Why are there valves in the veins?' was a major stepping stone in his discovery of the circulation of blood."
I detail these criteria right from the first chapter (p. 36-40; also 155-174, 524-526). A good adaptationist explanation specifies a goal relevant to survival or reproduction, the causal structure of the organism's environment, and the engineering designs suited to attain that goal in that environment. It then requires empirical data showing that the trait in question uncannily meets the engineering specs, showing signs of complexity, effectiveness, and specialization in solving the assigned problem, especially in comparison with alternative designs that are biologically possible for that kind of organism.
These criteria are applied throughout. Frequent comparisons with other primates and mammals show that alternatives to what we find in humans, such as lacking language, living in solitude, or mating indiscriminately, are developmentally possible (thus A&B's logical possibility in which genetic variation for such traits is "meager" can be dismissed). And HTMW cites close to 300 empirical reports or literature reviews in evaluating specific hypotheses.
A&B conceal this from the reader. For example, they write, "Are wicked step-parents and parent-child conflict the natural outcome of genetic-payoff investment calculations? HTMW relies on readers' willingness to supply examples from their own lives ..." No, HTMW relies on cross-cultural and ethnographic surveys, studies of of stepparents in the United States, and national statistics on child abuse and filicide (p. 433-434).
Here is a particularly unfortunate example:
A&B: "There are many stories we tell ourselves. HTMW presents oneA&B do not explain my personal views of relationships, my autobiographical history, or how they claim to know them; their innuendo is another attempt to hide the empirical content of HTMW. The "story" in question is the theory of sexual selection and parental investment, and it is a clear counterexample to the claim that adaptationist hypotheses are sterile and unfalsifiable post hoc stories. Darwin first noticed an asymmetry in mating in much of the animal kingdom: males compete, females choose. In the 1960s and 1970s George Williams, John Maynard Smith, and Robert Trivers provided an elegant explanation in terms of parental investment: whichever sex invests more in offspring becomes a limiting resource for the other, and so the less-investing sex competes, the greater-investing sex chooses. In 1979 Donald Symons amassed a vast set of data on human sexuality that supported this theory, refuted competing adaptationist hypotheses, and made many new predictions about promiscuity, jealousy, mate selection, and physical attractiveness. In the 1980s and 1990s these predictions were tested in laboratory experiments, sociological data, in vivo field studies, surveys of the ethnographic literature, and cross-cultural surveys involving tens of thousands of people in thirty-seven cultures -- and largely confirmed (p. 460-493). A&B make no mention of these empirical tests, preferring snide, ad hominem remarks.
that allows Pinker to ... rationalize his particular view of
relationships. Read as autobiography this may provide some insight, but
as storytelling there are certainly more interesting organizing myths.
Finally, HTMW refutes A&B's cliche that "in adaptationist history/fictions that Pinker fancies there is no end to plausible story telling ... we can always replace one adaptive story by another or add more modules as required, but [Pinker] offers us no way to reasonably refrain from doing so." A&B do not mention that a major conclusion of HTMW is that many of the most momentous human activities do not meet the criteria for adaptations, including written language, dreams, science, mathematics, music, art, religion, philosophy, and most narrative (p. 174, 302-306, 340-342, and all of Chapter 8).(Note 5)
1. Vision. In the chapter on vision, I suggest that the visual system uses a local, topographic, viewer-centered representation of visible surfaces and their depths, which David Marr called a "2 1/2-D sketch" and which contemporary researchers have modified into what they call a "visual surface representation" (p. 256-261). A&B claim that "practically no one" believes in it anymore. That is false. Recent overviews by leading perception psychologists such as Berkeley's Stephen Palmer and Harvard's Ken Nakayama rely on a modified 2 1/2-D sketch; HTMW's discussion was based on a 1995 synthesis by Nakayama whose title tells a story: "Visual surface representation: A critical link between lower-level and higher-level vision." A&B cite "scientists at MIT" as disproving the visual-surface representation; when I showed two of them A&B's claim, the responses were: "To say `no one believes in it' sounds overly strong. My sense is that surfaces of this sort remain quite popular, both in computer vision and in human vision," and "The claim you cite below is very misleading and exaggerated!"(Note 6)
2. Behavioral Genetics. I report a near-consensus among human behavioral geneticists: that "much of the variation in personality -- about fifty percent -- has genetic causes." A&B assert that this naively confuses causation with correlation. I agree that A&B's definition of heritability -- "the tendency of offspring to resemble their parents" -- does not show that a trait is genetically influenced. But A&B have caricatured an entire field. The claim that variation in adult personality has substantial genetic causes is based on far more than that: that identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins, that biological siblings are more similar than adopted siblings, that these correlations are much the same whether the siblings are reared together or apart, that they remain even after one statistically controls for every possible contaminating factor ever proposed (including shared placentas), that these findings replicate across labs, decades, and countries, and that in several recent studies the variation has been tied to identifiable genes for neurotransmitters or their receptors or transpoters.(Note 7)
Perhaps fearful that they cannot make the charge stick, A&B turn to other tactics. First, guilt-by-association: they triumphantly refute a silly nine-year-old quotation about IQ from a newspaper reporter. Second, misreporting: they write that I "evidently" rely on Thomas Bouchard's studies of "25" monozygotic twins. In fact Bouchard and his collaborators have studied over 1200 monozygotic twins (112 of them raised apart), and I cite reviews of converging studies of thousands of twins and adoptees conducted by independent teams in half a dozen countries. And finally, the political card: "Pinker's assertion is simply the authority of modern science pressed into the service of speculative fictions -- truly biology as ideology." The latter is another trope from Lewontin, summarizing his theory that the current attention to DNA by molecular biologists is an attempt to root social problems in individual failings and thus preserve the status quo.(Note 8)
3. Population genetics. A&B claim that HTMW falters by not presenting
calculations from population genetics, the mathematical modeling of genetic
change in evolution:
HTMW contains nothing -- literally not one thing -- resembling either
evolutionary modeling, explicit fitness calculations, or the basics of
population or behavioral genetics.
This is false. HTMW was written for a wide audience and does not present equations or proofs, but I explain many results from the explicit modeling of evolution. These include the fundamental theorem of population genetics (p. 163), models of the rate of evolution (p. 163-164, 205), reconstruction of phylogeny through DNA comparisons (p. 202-205), Hamilton's models of kin selection (p. 398-401, 429-430), Trivers' formulation of reciprocal altruism (pp. 402-403, 502-504), Trivers' calculations on parental investment (p. 440-442, 463-464), models of the genetic costs of incest (p. 456-458), Grafen's modeling of sexual selection (p. 500-501), Maynard Smith & Price's game-theoretic analysis of conflict (p. 494-495), the game-theoretic analyses of bargains, threats, and promises by Schelling, Frank, and Hirshleifer (p. 409-412), Rogers' calculations of age- and sex-specific discounting of the future (p. 498), Tooby & Cosmides' calculations on coalitional aggression (p. 514), and computer simulations of the evolution of neural networks (pp. 177-179), eyes (p. 164), and strategies of cooperation (p. 503-504). Data on fitness are cited in discussions of children's age-specific value to parents (p. 452), incest (p. 456), male parental investment (p. 469), dominance (p. 495), and aggression (p. 510), among others. Behavioral genetics is discussed in pages 20-21, 448-449, and elsewhere.
It is true that I do not back up every hypothesis with mathematical models of changing gene frequencies, but then neither do biologists when they study the evolutionary function of the stomach or the eye. Pointedly, neither does Berwick himself in his own foray into evolutionary psychology, in which he confidently states that Chomsky's latest grammatical theory supports a saltationist account of the evolution of language.(Note 9)
A&B claim to know of specific results from population genetics that
undermine HTMW. First they say that population genetics casts strong doubt on
whether adaptations can easily evolve: if genes combine in complex ways to
determine phenotypes, then the fittest phenotype may not evolve. Of course, fit
phenotypes do evolve. Living things have improbable, intricately engineered
parts: eyes and wings and lungs and immune systems and leaves and DNA repair
and the other complex machinery that lets plants and animals stay alive. So
the fact that some combinations of genes don't evolve into adapted phenotypes
simply shows that organisms are not restricted to those combinations of genes
over the evolutionary long run. A&B concede the point late in their review:
In recent conversation, James Crow, our foremost population geneticist,There surely is, but they did not have to go to "our foremost population geneticist" to learn it. They could have asked me -- or any biologist who treats population genetics as a tool to be applied with care and common sense, rather than as a weapon with which to beat opponents.
has insisted to us that if there were not some trait independence,
evolution would grind to a halt, because any change would change all
the traits in an organism and so nothing of lasting substance could be
built. There is surely something to this.
A&B's specific charge is that I am unaware of a seldom-cited twenty-year-old paper reporting a mathematical model in which "the entire kin-selection- maximize fitness [sic] edifice collapses." Since kin selection -- the evolution of traits that benefit relatives because of their shared genes -- is a cornerstone of the modern evolutionary analysis of social relations, this would appear to be a major flaw. But A&B's reporting is highly distorted.(Note 10)
First of all, A&B are incorrect in saying that "Hamilton's original calculation was done only for haploid-diploid organisms where sisters have only half the usual number of chromosomes; this makes the bookkeeping easy, allowing us to conflate genes and genotypes." Or as Berwick put it in his other review of HTMW in the Los Angeles Times, the "cost-benefit arithmetic doesn't balance the genetic books properly, unless you assume people are either ants or bees." In fact Hamilton published his results in two classic papers: the first analyzed the standard diploid case, the second extended it to the haplodiploid social insects.
Second, the paper by Feldman and Cavalli-Sforza does not say that in their interpretation, the entire edifice of kin selection "collapses." It says only that Hamilton's original results are "model-dependent" -- a very different claim. Apparently A&B are unaware that in the ensuing two decades many mathematical biologists have developed plausible models in which kin-directed altruism can be proven to evolve, and without the bizarre parameter values that Feldman & Cavalli-Sforza deduced.(Note 11)
There is a more general error in A&B's referring to population genetics as
"the auto mechanics of evolution" and their implication that those who do not
use it at every step are courting elementary errors. Models in population
genetics are, by necessity, grossly simplified thought experiments about
evolution over the short term. A typical model might posit two genes (compared
to our 75,000), each coming in two or three alleles (compared to the
astronomical numbers possible over the long term), with their interactions
fixed (though the interactions themselves may change over the long term), and
model the entire environment and entire phenotype as a single coefficient. As
in economics, sophisticated mathematical models may be restricted to artificial
toy worlds and have little connection to reality. One reformed population
geneticist, a collaborator of Feldman's, has recently written:
It seems, thus, that the repeated failure to apply empirically the
results of population genetic models to non-trivial evolutionary
problems (see e.g. Lewontin, 1974) stems from an attempt to predict
one process (say, long-term evolution) on the basis of a model,
corresponding to another process (say, short-term evolution). This
long-persisting attempt was based on the postulate, tacitly accepted by
most in the field (the author of this note included), that at least
qualitatively, the behaviour of the long-term process can be fully
understood by extrapolation of the analytically well-defined short-term
process. We see that this postulate is mathematically wrong.(Note 12)
No doubt there is much to criticize in HTMW. But bystanders have a right
to an accurate characterization of the book's content and of the relevant
technical results. Readers of their review and of similar attacks on
evolutionary psychology should ask: if the approach were really that empty,
would these critics need to resort to so many misreportings, caricatures, and
other questionable tactics?
(1)R. C. Berwick, 1985. The acquisition of syntactic knowledge. MIT Press.
(2)Robert Berwick, 1997, Syntax facit saltum: Computation and the genotype and phenotype of language, Journal of Neurolinguistics, 10, 231-249.
(3)See HTMW 44-58, 165-174, and my letter to The New York Review of Books, October 9, 1997; also Richard Dawkins' The extended phenotype, Oxford University Press, 1982, Daniel Dennett's Darwin's dangerous idea, Simon & Schuster, 1995, and Robert Trivers' chapter in In E. White (Ed.) (1981) Sociobiology and human politics, D. C. Heath.
(4)Dan Dennett, Letter, January 1997.
(5)An irony in A&B's accusation about positing modules is that, Berwick,
when arguing in the area of research in which we both work, is quite happy to
"add more modules as required" in support of his critique of -- surprise! --
We can show that the Pinker and Maratsos accounts are misguided. We can
do a better job of explaining things via the interaction of two
components of language, the morphological and the syntactic. By carving
things this way, we shall arrive at an explanation where each "module"
is simpler than one in which the explanatory burden is shouldered by
the syntactic component alone. (R. Berwick & A. Weinberg, 1984, The
grammatical basis of linguistic performance, p. 214. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.)
(6)A&B also misreport the Nature letter by Sinha & Poggio. (1) It was Clinton's facial features, not his "head and shoulders," that were grafted onto Gore. (2) Sinha & Poggio's conclusions were about head shape, not "global pose and stance." (3) Sinha & Poggio say nothing about a 2 1/2-D representation, because their demonstration has nothing to do with it.
(7)Plomin, R. 1989. Environment and genes: Determinants of behavior. American Psychologist, 44, 105--111; Genes and behavior: A special report, Science, 17, 1994, 1685-1739; Special issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science on Behavioral Genetics, October, 1997; Dean Hamer, 1998, Living with our genes, Doubleday. The Devlin et al. Nature letter that A&B refer to is highly tendentious and is answered by Thomas Bouchard in a forthcoming issue.
(8)Richard Lewontin, 1991, Biology as ideology: The doctrine of DNA. HarperCollins.
(9)Robert Berwick, 1997, Syntax facit saltum: Computation and the genotype and phenotype of language, Journal of Neurolinguistics, 10, 231-249.
(10)A&B unsystematically insert Trivers' very different theory of reciprocal altruism into their critique, but kin selection is the theory relevant to Hamilton and to Feldman & Cavalli-Sforza's principal model and to A&B's mention of step-parents that kicks off their discussion.
(11)See, e.g., Charlesworth, B. and Charnov, E. L., 1981, Kin selection in age-structured populations. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 88, 103-119; Toro, M., Abugov, R., Charlesworth, B. and Michod, R. E., 1982, Exact versus heuristic models of kin selection, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 97, 699-713; Taylor, P. D. and Frank, S. A., 1996, How to make a kin selection model, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 180, 27-37; Taylor, P. D., 1996, Inclusive fitness arguments in genetic models of behaviour, Journal of Mathematical Biology, 34, 654-674; Grafen, A., 1985, A geometric view of relatedness, Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology, 2 28-89.
(12)Eshel, I., 1996, On the changing concept of evolutionary population stability as a reflection of a changing point of view in the quantitative theory of evolution. Journal of Mathematical Biology, 34, 485-510.


text:
Puppy Love: This Is How Jaden Smith Likes To Dress For Dinner Dates With Kylie Jenner
Jaden Smith is quite the character! And Kylie Jenner loves it!
This past week, just before the premiere of his new movie, After Earth, the 14-year-old Smith kid was spotted arriving to a dinner date with Kim Kardashian's little sister Kylie while dressed in an Iron Man costume. Although his dad wasn't too pleased about it, seeing as though Jaden was promoting a movie that wasn't their own, Kylie thought it was pretty funny. She told AJ Calloway of Extra TV:
He's crazy. He has fun, I just let him have fun with all his stuff. He showed up at dinner with me and my friend Pia. We invited he and his friend and he showed up in an Ironman costume, it was really great.
Although Jaden and Kylie have been spotted wining and dining with each other at expensive restaurants from New York to London (Lucky Kids!!), don't write them off as a couple just yet. When he was recently asked how his dad keeps the girls that are coming after him in check, Jaden revealed that the best advice he has received from Will is, "Don't have a girlfriend. The stress is real."
Will also elaborated further on why he is against Jaden having a girlfriend right now:
At this point, I just want him to establish his dreams, establish his desires. Find out who he is. And blending with another person is very difficult, and a lot of times you can lose yourself in that process. So my encouragement to him is to be honest with anybody that he interacts with. Don't make commitments that a 14-year-old can't live up to.
True indeed. [Watch that interview here]
By the time Jaden turns 18, he's definitely going to be one of the most eligible bachelors in Hollywood.


text:
Canadian airport operator The Greater Toronto Airports Authority reported total revenues of CND 273.4m for the three months ended June 30, 2013 for a CND 4.7m decrease from the same period in 2012.
The decrease was due to the implementation of lower aeronautical fees on January 1, 2013, GTAA said.
For the six-month period ended June 30, 2013, the GTAA reported total revenues of CND 540.9m a CND 16.7m reduction from the same period in 2012. The decrease in revenues in 2013, as compared to 2012, was primarily attributable to the reduction in overall aeronautical fees implemented on January 1, 2013.
In 2013 the GTAA reduced overall aeronautical fees by approximately 10% from 2012 levels when measured as the average air carrier cost per enplaned passenger. The decrease is part of a three-year rate strategy of reducing aeronautical rates in 2013 and holding them at that level in 2014 and 2015.
This will make aeronautical rates at Toronto Pearson more competitive and provide air carriers with rate certainty to facilitate their longer-term planning of air services offered at Toronto Pearson, the authority said. The rate strategy is part of the GTAA´s overall strategic objective to position Toronto Pearson as North America´s premier gateway airport.
Total operating expenses were CND 355.6m, a CND 15.5 m increase when compared to the first half of 2012. Earnings before interest and financing costs were CND 185.3m for the six-month period. After accounting for interest and financing costs, the GTAA recorded net loss of CND 9.2m for the six months ended June 30, 2013, compared to net income of CND 10.5m in the comparable 2012 period.
The GTAA is the operator of Toronto Pearson International Airport, the largest airport in Canada, the second largest airport in North America in terms of international traffic (international and transborder) and one of the largest airports in North America in terms of total passenger and air cargo traffic.
Find out more at www.torontopearson.com.
Greater Toronto Airports Authority posts lower Q2 revenues
Canadian airport operator The Greater Toronto Airports Authority reported total revenues of CND 273.4m for the three months ended June 30, 2013 for a CND 4.7m decrease from the same period in 2012.
One Comment
Let's clarify one pretty misleading point in this article, though the way it's written it is technically correct, just for the general public, it's very misleading. Toronto Pearson is far from the second largest airport in North America, in fact it doesn't even break into the top 10. The way it's written on transborder flights, it lumps those in with all long range international flights, which is misleading as it is located only 70 miles from the US border. Canada has about one tenth the population of the United States, and few Americans choose to vacation in the frigid north of Canada. On the other hand, a large amount of Canadians like to vacation in the US, as one would expect with places like Florida and California. Bottom line is that Toronto Pearson is an extremely inefficient airport, charging just about the highest fees in the world, I believe the third highest in the world according to a study released by the University of BC.
Again, looking at Toronto Pearson in its entirety, the airport doesn't even rank in the top 10 based on total traffic served; that is a much better representation of the actual role the Pearson airport plays in North America.
Just making sure readers understand the metrics used in this article. Cheers!


text:
News Issue No.14 Autumn 2002
Giottos Santa Maria Novella Crucifix:
Restoration and re-evaluation
Giotto, Crucifix, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
Last year Giottos great crucifix for Santa Maria Novella, Florence, returned to the church for which it was made, after a fourteen-year campaign of extensive technical examination, consolidation and cleaning by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence. On 11 May 2002 the Courtauld was honoured to have the opportunity to host a day of talks in the Lecture Theatre by Cristina Acidini Luchinat, Soprintendente of the OPD, Marco Ciatti, director of the restoration, and other members of the team. The OPD is one of only two state-funded restoration institutions in Italy. There is a long association between the Courtauld and the OPD at both institutional and personal levels, so it was a great pleasure to welcome back to the Institute old friends, and to make new ones.
The S. Maria Novella Crucifix is one of only a handful of works with an attribution to Giotto that is backed up by convincing documentary evidence. For many years the panel hung high on the wall of the sacristy of S. Maria Novella, obscured by dirt and a certain amount of repainting. Study was only possible with the aid of torch and binoculars. The OPD restoration marked a dramatic change. Scholars were welcomed to the OPD to observe the campaign close up and were rewarded with remarkable views of the gradual revelation of the paint surface in its remarkable detail and refinement. The return of the Crucifix to S. Maria Novella last year was marked by an exemplary publication, lavishly illustrated, in which information and new ideas about all aspects of the restoration were made available. The Courtauld Giotto day marked the publication of this work in English (Giotto: the Santa Maria Novella Crucifix, ed. M. Ciatti and M. Seidel, Edifir, Florence, 2002). The enthusiasm with which this publication, and the day itself, were greeted, may be judged by the speed at which the discounted books sold out (copies are still available at discount through the Courtauld Institute Bookshop). In addition to Dr. Acidini Luchinat, and Dr. Ciatti, talks were given by Mauro Matteini, director of the scientific department, Ciro Castelli, head of restoration of wooden supports, and Paola Bracco, chief restorer of easel paintings. Hero Lotti, British Academy Research Fellow in the Courtauld conservation department, was on hand to summarise and translate during the last two papers. Joanna Cannon and Caroline Villers, co-organisers of the day, gave the introductory and concluding remarks.
In a day of many valuable moments, two images stand out. One is that of the underdrawing beneath Christs head, revealed in an infra-red reflectogram of stunning quality, in which the artists experiments with foreshortening are movingly revealed. The other is the moment when, towards the end of her talk, Paola Bracco showed a slide of the Crucifix on its return to S. Maria Novella, after its long stay in the OPD, with the restoration team standing beneath it. The speaker herself was evidently moved by this image, and the audience broke into spontaneous applause — for the speaker, for the OPD team and their achievements, and for the magnificence of the Crucifix itself.


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Falling in love with native plants has been a process for me. It didn't happen overnight. It was a long, slow love affair.
It might have been beauty that attracted me first. A bright orange flower on the roadside was intriguing and colorful. I also admired how hardy it was – how it could stand up to harsh conditions on the side of the busy roads. That was the beginning and the plant was butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa.
I learned more. I learned about both individual plants and the role that native plants play in the local ecosystem. There is so much to learn. Every plant and every fact made it all seem so … right.
You see, there is no single reason to love and appreciate these plants. Let me count the ways:
They are beautiful. Native flowers can be every bit of beautiful as non-native ones. It's fun to show someone a gorgeous flower and then tell them that it's native. "Oh, it's too pretty!", they say.
They are versatile. There are plants that will thrive in your wet spots and your dry spots. Need something for hot sun or full shade? There's a native plant for that. Whatever your conditions, there was a plant that used to live there and thrive in those conditions.
They are beneficial to wildlife. They have what it takes to satisfy all the native bugs, beetles, birds and butterflies in your yard. They grew up together … native plants know what those guys like.
They are hardy and perfectly adapted to your area, the seasons and the conditions. They love Georgia clay, for example, and they know about wet spring rains and hot dry summers.
They are natural and appropriate for the local ecosystem, especially when you select plants native to your state and your county.
They are unique and unlike any others with special adaptations that help them thrive.
As you discover native plants and the many reasons to love and appreciate them, remember that these are no "flash in the pan" heart-throbs. These guys are for keeps.
© 2013, Ellen Honeycutt. All rights reserved. This article is the property of BeautifulWildlifeGarden.com We have received many requests to reprint our work. Our policy is that you are free to use a short excerpt which must give proper credit to the author, and must include a link back to the original post on our site. Please use the contact form above if you have any questions.


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These past few weeks have found me in uncharted territory… single parenting. Hubs has changed jobs and with it came some training in Atlanta. Meaning… he was basically gone for two and a half weeks. Now, for some, this may not be out of the norm, but for the past (almost) 9 years of marriage, the man has taken lunch at 11 and gotten home by 5:30. I knew going into it that it was going to take some adjusting, but I just wasn't prepared for how much.
For those of you that are single parents 24/7/365.. KUDOS. I don't know how you do it and keep your sanity. Seriously, being a mom is the hardest job I have ever imagined. How y'all are both mom and dad, is an amazing feat that deserves many medals and "you go girl's!". Or at least copious amounts of cupcakes.. and wine. Most definitely wine. Both of which should be hidden and consumed after bedtime, when the entire house is silent.
I knew one of the first things I would have to give up was my running. No amount of early bird running will allow to leave your child unattended in their beds. I am pretty sure that DHR frowns on that. When I am able to fit a run in, it basically turns out to be something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. I am not acclimated to the humidity or heat and the fact that I am not consistently running is reminded to me on each and every step.
When J comes home from work, it helps break up the day. I can pass the torch, so to say. But if he doesn't come home.. it's just me. Which leads me to my next point, I have to make any and all food decisions. I'm used to Hubs making them for me. He likes to eat like it's his last meal… therefore, I go basically mute when it's up to me to come up with dining solutions. For the first week of him being gone, we ate out. Which doesn't bode well with the not being able to run part. I've gained a total of 10 lbs over these past couple of months. How is that even possible with all the running I do?
There is no alone time. EVER. Thought you were going to shower or go to the bathroom solo? FORGET IT. It's not happening. Chances are, you will find yourself refereeing a fight with shampoo in your hair. Which is another valid point. You are the only referee in town. When a fight breaks out that's worse than the battle at the O.K. Corral, you're the only sheriff in town, and you better hope that your badge is all shined up, because you've got zero back up coming to your aide.
Maybe after the long day of refereeing, chauffeuring, and being asked what "fun" thing they can do next is, you'd like some adult conversation, with possibly a glass of wine? I'm sorry to burst that bubble, but that's just not happening. Some nights, I've been too tired to text how tired I am to J. There is no adult conversation and I go to bed exhausted, only to wake up exhausted… possibly because my oldest insists on waking up at 5:30 and there isn't someone to hit and say "Your turn to get up with them". Speaking of, can I exchange my kid for one of those that sleeps late and is impossible to wake up? Because we've started this new and creepy trend of me being woken up because someone is standing over me watching me sleep. No thank you.
He brought presents when he came home… He's taken, ladies!
It's safe to say that I am glad J is home and we can get back to our new normal, because one or two days of travel, I can handle. But weeks at a time? That is for the birds.


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Credit : The Live In Kitchen/Simple Comfort Food/The Kitchn/Munchin With MunchkinEarn Points
8 Delicious Cinco de Mayo Recipes For Your Mexican Fiesta
Cinco de Mayo is almost upon us, which means we finally have an excuse to break out our sombrero, binge eat giant vats of jarred cheese sauce (a.k.a. chile con queso) and take out all our aggression on an innocent pinata. This traditional Mexican holiday is a perfect excuse for a delectable feast of guacamole, more guacamole, and even more guacamole, and we've rounded up our favorite traditional Mexican recipes for you to recreate! Including dessert, because nothing says "fiesta" like a mouthful of cookies.
Also, the only acceptable soundtrack for this list is Selena's "Bidy Bidy Bom Bom."


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DESCRIPTIONThis module slices a uniform 3D lattice by taking regular samples on a cutting plane. The plane can have any orientation, passed in as a transform. The output lattice will be of the same datatype and number of channels as the input lattice.
The sampling rate onto the output lattice will be 2Resolution samples over the diagonal of the 3D input lattice. However, the output lattice will be clipped to minimize the number of samples outside the volume. For a given resolution, the sampling rate will remain the same, but the size of the output lattice will vary.
The output lattice is created with uniform coordinates. A transform is also output from this module that will convert the output lattice coordinates back into the coordinate space of the input volume. This avoids using more expensive curvilinear coordinates.
Port: Input
Type: Lattice
Constraints: 3-D
Constraints: uniform
This is the volume to be sliced.
Port: Transform In
Type: Lattice
Constraints: 2-D
Constraints: 1-vector
Constraints: float
This is a 4x4 transformation matrix. This matrix transforms the slice plane, which is initially located parallel to the XY plane, passing through the center of the input volume. This matrix should be a pure rotation matrix, with no scaling, translation, or skew. The TransformGen module is commonly used to produce this input.
Port: Offset
Type: Dial
This is the offset of the slice from the center of the volume. The direction is always taken normal to the slice plane. The range is normalized to the length of the volume diagonal.
Port: Resolution
Type: Slider
The resolution (log base 2) of the slice along the volume diagonal. This indirectly controls the size of the output lattice.
Port: Interp Type
Type: Radio Box
Menu Item: Point
Menu Item: TriLinear
This controls the type of subvoxel interpolation.
- 0
- Nearest neighbor interpolation
- 1
- Trilinear interpolation
Port: Coordinates
Type: Radio Box
Menu Item: Uniform coords
Menu Item: Curvilinear coords
This controls whether the curvilinear coordinates of the slice are generated.
Port: Output
Type: Lattice
Constraints: 2-D
This is the output slice plane. It will have the same data type and number of data variables as the input volume.
Port: Transform Out
Type: Lattice
Constraints: 2-D
Constraints: 1-vector
Constraints: float
This 4x4 transform takes the output slice plane back into the coordinate space of the original input volume.
If the slice does not intersect the volume, no new lattice is output. Once this happens, the firing algorithm can become confused so that modules that read the output lattice and transform will not receive these data in sync.
If this module happens to receive a volume that does not have uniform coordinates (which can happen if the upstream module can put out both uniform and nonuniform coordinates), the volume is sliced as if it did have uniform coordinates.
The value of Offset is not directly related to the coordinate space of the data. Offset is normalized so that the range [-1..1], will span the entire input volume. That is, if the slice is oriented perpendicular to a diagonal of the volume, offsets of -1 and 1 will slice through opposite corners of the volume.
SEE ALSOProbeLat, OrthoSlice, LatToGeom, TransformGen.
[Documentation Home]
© The Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd, Oxford UK. 2000


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Fancourt offers stylish and sophisticated wedding facilities, with the picturesque gardens and Outeniqua Mountains providing a beautiful backdrop for your special day.
Our Ballroom and gazebo are both wonderfully suited to the most memorable of weddings and our impeccable service and attention to detail ensure that from the reception to the main event itself, Fancourt is proud to make your perfect wedding, that much more perfect.
Set in beautiful gardens overlooking The Links golf course and its ex...read more
Morning Glory
With views of the Outeniqua Mountain range and overlooking the first ...read more


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Keep it right here for the year-round calendar of activities including NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits, SHOT Show, Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Camp Perry National Championships, National Police Shooting Championships, addresses by NRA leaders and more.
July 6th, 2015Camp Perry National Matches
The National Rifle & Pistol Championships have been a tradition at Camp Perry since 1907.
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Audio editing question
I have a video that was accidently recorded in mono. Only has sound on the left audio channel. I have loaded the video onto my hard drive. How do I create a right channel to match the left one so that when I post it on You Tube both of the listeners ears will be kept busy?
I have Garage Band and imovie in my editing arsenal. I don't think that these programs can do what I want. Do I need a sound mixing program? If so, is there an inexpensive one that will perform this task?
I recently downloaded Audacity but my computer had issues with the program so I had to delete it before I used it much.
Re: Audio editing question
You can do it in either or both. Just copy the audio in iMovie and paste it into the R channel. If you want it to sound stereo, offset it by a few milliseconds.
You could also export the audio file from iMovie into garageband and do the same thing there, then move it back to iMovie.
Good luck!
Re: Audio editing question
Re: Audio editing question
Do the program give you the option of saving movies as mono? That way, at least, you have balanced output.
MediocreFunkyBeat is good with tech so, if he's around, he might have some ideas.
Re: Audio editing question
Is there a way of creating a mono bus and then adding the signal (at 100%) to that and then panning it to the right? You'll end up with a balanced mono output this way. I've actually faked stereo before doing this by having slightly different reverb levels on each bus. My way of doing it is to set up the single source, send to Aux 1 and 2, then to have no level from the original track. Then I will pan Aux 1 fully left and Aux 2 fully right. Does that make sense?
Re: Audio editing question
Re: Audio editing question
Re: Audio editing question
Let me just have a look at Garageband so I can get an idea of what you can do.
EDIT: Email me the .mp3 file and I'll sort it out. I can't find a way of doing what I'm saying on Garageband or Audacity. It will take me a minute or two. Bounce the track down to .mp3 so my email I've PM'd you with will accept it.
Essentially, yes. I'm sure you could do it in Reaper (a 'free' DAW), but it's a bit daunting to look at for a novice and it'll take me minutes to do it in Logic.
Re: Audio editing question
1 Attachment(s)
Should be receiving my reply any minute now. It's not 'in' Stereo as such, as in the instruments aren't panned left and right, but there are slightly different sends going to left and right from the same source (the .mp3 you sent me) so it effectively sounds reasonably stereo. I had to save some recordings I did a while back (a brass band no less) using the same trick and everyone was fooled.
I'm just going to post up the screenshot I sent, just to show people how to do it if they need to rescue a recording.
This won't produce a stereo image in the traditional sense - but it does produce a stereo effect.
Re: Audio editing question
Thanks to Mediocrefunkybeat, I now have simulated stereo audio tracks for my videos. I separated the audio tracks from the video in Garage Band. I emailed the tracks as mp3 files to Duncan in the UK, He sent them back to me with two channels of sound in a short amount of time. Wonderful thing, the internet is! 3000 miles is right next door! I'm in Connecticut.
Thank you once again Duncan.
Re: Audio editing question
No problem mate. It's just a shame I can't find a way of doing it in Garageband. I hope they release a version where you can.
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We know that the result of the 2010 elections will be gridlock, because the federal government is just wired that way. Even if Democrats manage to by some miracle keep the House and Senate, they'll lose some seats in the upper chamber, enough to enable a successful filibuster to any initiative worth passing. And I don't see a Senate Democratic caucus under siege doing a whole lot to change that. And if Republicans take even one chamber of Congress, they will control some level of the appropriations process, and the budget resolution that funds the government. The resulting gridlock could easily lead to a government shutdown. The Republicans are actually salivating at the prospect of this, and have learned the lesson from the 1995 shutdown controversy that they simply lacked the will to carry forward their demands. Here's Spencer Bachus, who would chair the House Financial Services Committee if Republicans win, framing it as Obama "forcing" Republicans to shut down the government:
BACHUS: I would think when we send the spending bills to the president he will veto them, and then the hard vote will be when he sends them back and we will be faced with another situation where he will probably try to force us to shut government down and we are going to have to be brave this time.
HOST: So you're predicting a government shutdown?
BACHUS: Well I'm predicting that he will veto our spending bills because he'll say it doesn't spend enough. And at that point, if he wants to shutdown the government, we're not going to cave to him and we're not going to increase taxes. And we're not going to lose our resolve to cut spending. And it's going to take bravery […]
HOST: But are you worried about overplaying your hand here if you're talking government shutdown? I mean the last time Republicans did that back in '94 and '95, that didn't work out too well for then-Speaker Newt Gingrich.
BACHUS: Well, we wouldn't be shutting it down. We would be cutting out the excessive spending. And if the president wanted to shut the government down, but we wouldn't want to shut the government down.
This is of course nonsense, but given the ability of Democrats to counter conservative narratives, I'd say it'll take hold pretty quickly.
Michael Steele said over the weekend that Republicans "wouldn't compromise" on raising the debt ceiling, which could potentially not only shut down the government in the absence of a continuing resolution to fund it, but in a worst-case scenario lead to a default. Some analysts claim that the government could roll over debt and engage in enough creative accounting to hold out for a while. But I've seen this play out in California – it only lasts for so long before you have to send out IOUs or something. And the creditors aren't sovereign wealth funds, but contractors with less influence. I side with catastrophe. [cont'd.]
There's also the possible government shutdown over defunding the Affordable Care Act. In short, there are a number of different ways that the GOP can force a shutdown this year. And I haven't seen the word compromise cross their lips in a while; that would be at the discretion of the President.
Even if these worst-case scenarios are avoided, and I really don't think they will be, the resultant gridlock will not end well for America. We're facing crises on multiple fronts, with slow growth, high unemployment and record foreclosures, a warming planet, a broken immigration system, underfunded federal agencies supervising worker and food safety, etc., etc. A failure to act on any of these challenges may sound good to status quo conservatives and business leaders wary of "uncertainty," but the facts are that divided government is worse for the stock market, worse for business profits, and arguably worse for the economy as a whole. That will be particularly true over the next two years.
But given the expectations, a mere failure to meet the challenges of the 21st century might be the best of all possible worlds.


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Road Trips With Pets: Preparation is Key
If you have children, you know how trying a road trip can be. Children waste no time in letting you know they are either hungry, sick or bored. You do everything in your power to make them as comfortable and entertained as possible. Do you do the same when you take a pet on a road trip? Many people do not realize that pets need the same preparation and care as children in order to ensure a smooth ride and a content pet. Here are some tips for making your pet's travel experience a positive one.
Pets need familiarity. They get anxious and sometimes frightened by new places and strange sounds, such as a car engine. Your pet will be more content and comforted if you bring along his favorite toy and a familiar blanket. Make a little bed for him on the floorboard in the back seat, and he will be better able to rest or sleep.
Be sure you pack any supplies your pet may need while you are on the road. Of course, he will need food and food dishes. You can bring water from home in a jug or bottle for quick drinks. An old towel may come in handy for quick wipe-ups, as pets often get car-sick.
Just like humans, pets need frequent rest stops in order to stretch their legs, eat, drink and get a potty break! Be sure to bring a leash, as most rest stops require pets to be leashed. Walking your pet can also give you a chance to move around and get in some walking. It is not good to sit for extended periods of time, including during car travel.
You can comfort an anxious pet by talking soothingly to him during the ride. Pets know their owner's voice, and immediately calm down when they hear it. Reaching back for a quick ruffle of his fur can give him added security and let him know you are there.
If your pet gets car-sick, a good idea is to bring along a plastic bag and a water-proof pad used for babies' cribs to put under his blanket. A common cause of car-sickness is lack of fresh air. When traveling with your pet, keep the windows cracked open an inch or two in the back seat to give him some fresh air to breathe. If there is no rest stop in sight to let him out, clean-up will be quick and easy. Just fold up the pad and dispose of it in the plastic bag at the next stop.
Most importantly, NEVER leave your pet unattended in a hot car, even for a few minutes. It may be only 80 degrees outside, but after a few minutes, the temperature in a car can spike up to over 100 degrees. This is not only cruel and uncomfortable for your pet, it can endanger his life as well. Cracking the windows is not enough to keep an animal alive in a hot car. Instead, always leave a responsible family member with your pet who can take him out for a walk and remove him from the heat. This may mean no stops at fancy restaurants, but your pet's health is more important!
As you can see, pets are a lot like children when it comes to car travel. Keep them comfortable, comforted and entertained, and you should have a peaceful ride with very few mishaps.
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text: Airport Operations Development Programme Want to represent the UAE's culture and values across the 90 destinations that we operate to? Want to feel and experience the opportunity to assist our guests each and every day? Now imagine being responsible for the smooth transit of millions of guests through a dynamic and high security environment alongside leading an operational team. It's not easy but we have experts to help you get there. At Etihad Airways we groom high-potential UAE nationals for senior management roles to enable them to run an entire airport anywhere across our vast global network. It's an opportunity to showcase the core values and hospitality of Abu Dhabi towards a multicultural audience. So if you are keen to discover your true ability as a problem solver, strategist and as a leader, this could be the professional challenge you are looking for.


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Police have arrested a suspect in the bomb threat that led to the evacuation of the Louisiana State University campus earlier this week but don't believe he is connected to threats made against three other universities recently. LSU Police Capt. Corey Lalonde said officers arrested William Bouvay Jr., 42, of Baton Rouge late Tuesday night after an investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies.
Lalonde said Bouvay was not an LSU student and appeared to have no connection to the campus. He did not know what the suspect's motive might have been.
Investigators don't think Bouvay is connected to threats made last week at college campuses in Texas, North Dakota and Ohio.
"We don't believe at this point that there is any connection to the bomb threats at other universities," Lalonde said.


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Allentown police said a man armed with a gun robbed a city gas station yesterday morning and made off with an undetermined amount of money.
The man entered the Lukoil station, 1452 Tilghman St., at 6:31 a.m. yesterday, pulled a gun on a cashier and demanded money, Allentown police said. The man made off with money and fled. No injuries were reported.


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NeoBiota is a peer-reviewed, open-access, rapid online journal launched to accelerate research on alien species and biological invasions: aquatic and terrestrial, animals, plants, fungi and micro-organisms.
The journal NeoBiota is a continuation of the former NEOBIOTA publication series; for volumes 1-8 see http://www.oekosys.tu-berlin.de/menue/neobiota
All articles are published immediately upon editorial approval. All published papers can be freely copied, downloaded, printed and distributed at no charge for the reader. Authors are thus encouraged to post the pdf files of published papers on their homepages or elsewhere to expedite distribution. There is no charge for color.
ISSN 1314-2488 (online) | ISSN 1619-0033 (print)
Indexed by Google Scholar, Vifabio, BHL Citebank. Download the NeoBiota Press Release.
Archived in CLOCKSS.