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Search Results
There are 180 item(s) tagged with the keyword "American Values".
- Displaying: 1 - 10 of 180
- 1. Memorial Day 2018 - We Will Remember
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13Click here to read more
- 2. Why I Support Jim O'Connor for AZGOP Chair, and Not Jonathan Lines
#1: My personal experience of Jim O'Connor has been extremely positive. First, he educated me on the serious problems associated with Rep. J. D. Mesnard's National Popular Vote bill (HB2456), which he brought up during last year's legislative session. This was a complex issue, and Mr. O'Connor and I exchanged several emails and telephone calls in the process. I also did independent research. This resulted in an article that I published titled "Stop the National Popular Vote Compact in Arizona." Mr. O'Connor made a very impressive appeal before the House of Representatives against the National Popular Vote leading them to defeat that bill last session. He's prepared to do it again.
Second, as a member of the Mommy Lobby, I deeply appreciated Mr. O'Connor's leadership in LD23 in helping to pass HB2088, which protects students against surveys that gather private, personally identifiable information. He advised his representative in LD23, Heather Carter, "Our 444 Precinct Committeemen are reflecting the opinions of the 70,000 registered republican votes in our district overwhelmingly protecting the rights of parents and children. Please represent these and other republicans who desire to restrain government overreach." She voted in favor on reconsideration, and this bill passed. Mr. O'Connor has stood firmly in support of legislation that honors parental authority and rejects federal control of education in Arizona.Click here to read more
- 3. Pearl Harbor plus 75 Years
On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, an attack planned by Isoroku Yamamoto, Japanese Marshal Admiral and commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II, was carried out to demobilize the US Navy. See Pearl Harbor plus 75 Years.
You probably have family members in their 80s and older who remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they got the news: "We've just been attacked!" Some memories fade quickly. But not this one.
My mother remembers. She and my father had been married for less than a year. He was a sergeant in the Army Air Corp stationed at Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois. "It was a Sunday," she told me. They were visiting his parents on their farm in down state Illinois that day. My father and grand-father were driving around the countryside looking at the land, which is what farmers often did and probably still do, after church on a Sunday. They heard the news on the car radio. "It was a '40 Ford," Mom said. They returned immediately to tell my mother and grand-mother. "It was a total shock," remembers my mother. "It was scary." She and my dad returned quickly to their home. "From that moment on, he had to be in uniform until the end of the war."
The next spring, he shipped out to Seymour Johnson Air Field in North Carolina. Mom remembers that the base had been quickly constructed, using trees from the forest where the base was located. It was still being constructed when they arrived. She recalls that it was a training base for mechanics and pilots. My mother remembers that, throughout the war, she rarely saw pictures or got much word of what was happening. "We didn't have television." Mostly, she saw newsreels in the local theater. My father was eventually sent to India. "It took thirty days for him to get there. The ship had to zigzag across the ocean, to stay clear of submarines. He didn't know where he was going until he got there."
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese killed 2402 Americans, destroyed 188 planes and damaged 159. They sunk 4 battleships and damaged another 4. "The Pearl Harbor attack spurred America into World War II, leading ultimately to Allied victory over the Japanese in the East and Nazis and other Axis powers in the West. And the country promised never to forget this day of infamy." See Unforgettable photos from the Pearl Harbor Attack, 72 years ago today.
One of the battleships that was sunk was the USS Arizona. See photos below.Click here to read more
- 5. Please Reelect Jared Taylor for Gilbert Town Council
(Gilbert Watch welcomes this guest letter by Jared Taylor, who is currently serving as the Vice Mayor in Gilbert. He has lived in Gilbert since 1996 with his wife and three daughters.)
Over the last few years, Gilbert has been showered in recognitions. I'm running for re-election to build on our strengths, address our challenges, and keep Gilbert the best place to grow a family and build a business.
Here are a few of the recognitions our wonderful residents and Town have earned: 22nd Best Place to Live (Money Magazine, 2014); 2nd Safest City in the US (Law Street Media, 2016); Best City for Raising a Family (Move.org, 2016); 7th Happiest City in America (Zippia, 2016), and Top 5 Safest Cities to Build Your Startup (Tech.Co, 2016).
We couldn't live in a better place at a better time. Who would have thought that Gilbert would have grown from "The Hay Capitol of the World" to one of the most successful cities or towns in the US?
My appreciation goes to the many wonderful residents and Town leaders who have made Gilbert so great.
While we have had tremendous success, we continue to need strong leadership to address the challenges we face.
Over the last few decades, a large part of Gilbert's budget has come from construction sales taxes.Click here to read more
- 6. Lindblom and Lewis and their Questionable Endorsements
Jimmy Lindblom is running as a conservative against proven conservative, Warren Petersen, for the open Senate seat in LD12. LaCinda Lewis is running as a conservative against proven conservative Eddie Farnsworth and Travis Grantham for one of the House seats in LD12.
Lindblom's website cites Protecting Individual Freedoms • Limited Government • Local Control • Education Advocate • Business Friendly. Under the heading "Media", you will see several flyers, including one titled "Our Conservative Team for the State Legislature," which includes LaCinda Lewis as his team mate. (See below.)
Lewis touts Family - Education - Economy from a a "unique conservative perspective."
It's hard to fathom why voters would believe that Lindblom and Lewis are conservatives. Conservatives abide by the Republican platform. They work very hard to stand up for and defend those principles. RINO's and Democrats don't. Why work hard when it's easier to vote for something that sounds good.
Lindblom and Lewis have listed many endorsements they have received from local leaders. Gilbert Watch took a look at some of those endorsements.Click here to read more
- 7. Meet The Candidates! Andy Biggs, Warren Petersen, Eddie Farnsworth, Travis Grantham, Jake Hoffman
Please attend a Meet the Candidates event on Wednesday, July 27, 2016, 6:30 – 8:30 pm. Hosted by Rick & Jacque Gurney and Frank & Tricia Groe. To request the address, please RSVP email@example.com.
Senator Andy Biggs is running for Congressional District 5 U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. Warren Petersen is running for the Arizona Senate in Legislative District 12.
Rep. Eddie Farnsworth is running for the Arizona House of Representatives in Legislative 12.
Travis Grantham is running for the Arizona House of Representatives in Legislative District 12.
Jake Hoffman is running for Queen Creek Town Council
See below for a few articles and endorsements relating to these great conservative candidates.Click here to read more
- 8. Gilbert Watch Supports Warren Petersen for Arizona Senate
It has never been more important than now to elect solid conservatives with a voting record that backs up their rhetoric. So it is with Warren Petersen, who is running for Arizona Senate in LD12. As a state representative, he stood up for families and the unborn, for local support and control of education, and for the independent business person. His votes are testimony to his fight against overbearing regulations that hurt businesses and our economy. He has repeatedly protected our Second Amendment rights. Rep. Petersen is very knowledgeable about complex issues, and he knows how to protect the hard-working taxpayer from the big spenders at the Capitol.Click here to read more
- 9. Warren Petersen 2016 - Family, Freedom, Economy, Prosperity
Below are a few bills that Rep. Petersen introduced or sponsored that were signed into law:Click here to read more
- 10. McCain-Assisting PAC Misleads Voters about Conservative Opponent Kelli Ward
by Patrick O'Malley and Anita Christy
The Arizona Grassroots Action PAC has been running a negative ad about Kelli Ward for weeks on radio stations and FaceBook. The ad claims she failed to support our military with the funding needed to pay the troops. It also claims she sponsored a bill to prevent law enforcement in Arizona from cooperating with the feds to prevent terrorism.
Both claims are false.
Every year, Congress passes a National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to fund the military. A serious criticism of the 2013 NDAA was that it continued to include a provision that allows the military to detain individuals, including US citizens, indefinitely and without trial, as part of the war on terror.
Kelli Ward was a State Senator and couldn't vote on the NDAA, but she was asked about the bill and specifically about the indefinite detention of individuals issue on a talk radio show. The show is Love, Guns, and Freedom with Luca Zanna, and the discussion about the NDAA with Kelli Ward is part of the December 1, 2013 show. That's where the quote "I don't support the bill" comes from. It was in response to a direct question about the indefinite detention provision.
In 2014, many brave conservatives joined Ted Cruz in opposing this tyranny for the same reason given by Kelli Ward. See Ted Cruz: Indefinite Detention Retained in NDAA 2014.
The second issue concerns Arizona SB1156 in 2014. Dr. Ward was the prime sponsor, along with 13 co-sponsors. The Grassroots Action PAC claims the bill would restrict Arizona law enforcement from cooperating with the feds to fight terrorism. Do you remember back when we found out the NSA was monitoring our phone calls? That it wasn't just suspected terrorists' international calls like we'd been told? It was everybody's calls all the time? And people were wondering what had happened to their Fourth Amendment protections from search and seizure? SB1156 stated that the NSA and other federal agencies that wanted cooperation from local law enforcement in their investigations and wanted to collect information in Arizona had to get a warrant. No cooperation without a warrant.
The AZ Grassroots Action PAC was organized in 2014 supposedly to support or oppose multiple federal candidates and is classified as an independent expenditure committee.
Not quite. According to an article in Politico titled McCain's big purge:
- Displaying: 1 - 10 of 180


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Friday, July 01, 2011
Neptune Completes First Orbit Since Discovery: 11th July 2011 (at 21:48 U.T.±15min)
19 comments:
- PaulB said...
Thank you for this fascinating snippet.
What should we do. We should dust of our telescope's and get out there and observe the two distant ice giant's of the solar system.
Remember you our part of an exclusive club, if you manage to spot Uranus, and Neptune through small to medium sized binoculars.
- 6:37 am, July 05, 2011
- Bob said...
Thanks Paul!
Spotting it through small-to-medium-sized binoculars is exactly what I've been attempting to do. I'm getting the sense that it might not be feasible (especially after reading forum posts) but I haven't given up yet!
It's passing very close by a little 5.4 mag star "e Aqr" according to Stellarium: 15' directly underneath. So now seems to be a good time. I'm going to take my small-to-medium-sized binoculars to somewhere with a clearer sky and try again...
- 1:18 pm, July 05, 2011
- AstroFloyd said...
I have a silly question - perhaps I'm misunderstanding something: if Neptune was discovered early on the 23rd Berlin time (12:00:15 am = 0:00:15 hours), shouldn't that correspond to late (23:06:40 hours) of the *22nd* UT?
- 7:15 pm, July 09, 2011
- AstroFloyd said...
Looking at the discovery story, Galle received Le Verrier's letter on the 23rd and they discovered Neptune the same night, so that must have been the night of September 23/24, which means that the date in MNRAS is wrong and you used the correct UT date/time.
Indeed, when I use the true heliocentric (rather than barycentric) longitude and your UT date/time of discovery, I find 2011/07/12, 17:30:43 UT as the anniversary moment, using VSOP.
- 11:36 pm, July 09, 2011
- Bob said...
Hi AstroFloyd,
Yes, it's definitely the night of 23/24. It's not uncommon for "Sep 23" to mean the period from noon on 23rd to noon on the 24th. Noon on the 23rd is Sep 23.0, and midnight is Sep 23.5. If you look through some of the other pages of the MNRAS (e.g. this one) you'll see this convention is in use. So there's no contradiction there.
Intrigued by your 17:30 on the 12th - could you explain how you got that? HORIZONS gives 21:03 using heliocentric ecliptic longitude; the correction to 'true' longitude would be of the order of one minute, so you're three and a half hours early...
- 1:30 am, July 10, 2011
- Bob said...
On the subject of visibility, I am very happy to say that I saw Neptune this evening, using only a small pair of 10 X 25 binoculars.
A clear night, and a few miles from urban area (not brilliant location - some yellow glow), at 1.45am, and with Neptune at only 19º altitude.
It took a few minutes after finding the right star field for fainter stars to reveal themselves; Neptune itself was only visible with a bit of averting, but it was there, clear as anything.
I didn't know it was possible with such tiny binocs, but it can be done!
I'm especially pleased to have seen it during its first orbit since discovery :)
- 2:39 am, July 10, 2011
- AstroFloyd said...
Hi Bob,
I used VSOP87 instead of DE405. The problem is that I don't have a routine for precession of heliocentric coordinates, so I used a simplified scheme. I'm not too surprised that my result is off by a few hours - without correction for precession is was off by ~1 year.
BTW, you can use HORIZONS to compute data for a given set of date/times by selecting "discrete time(s)" on the Time Span page. And you can actually specify seconds (down to ms I think) even though it's not documented, using hh:mm:ss.sss.
- 3:34 pm, July 11, 2011
- Bob said...
Ah, that's useful to know - thanks.
- 5:58 pm, July 11, 2011
- Bob said...
@Astrofloyd: even more intriguingly, Phil Plait gets a result consistent with yours for the heliocentric return: he uses a discovery time 1 hr and ~8min later, and finds the same longitude is reached at ~18:38, 1hr ~8min later than the time you gave. So it looks like you're vindicated! I'll have to redo my attempt again sometime.
- 6:22 pm, July 12, 2011
Hi Bob and everyone else who has posted.
I love this topic. I respect your analysis using the SSB, but the consensus among my expert friends is that the heliocentric longitude is the more appropriate reference for a birthday. Nonetheless, I hope you had a good celebration today. In London, Ontario, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada's local group celebrates with dinner at a local restaurant this evening. We might even sing an appropriate Nep-TUNE for the occasion.
- 6:57 pm, July 12, 2011
- Bob said...
Thanks for your comment.
Re heliocentrism: yes, that appears to be a common opinion. I don't understand why - I see it regularly thrown out as the orthodox view, rather than explained with any reasoning. I'd love to hear why you or anyone else chooses to take that view.
In terms of the observed nature of the orbit, it is extremely clear from the two plots (this one and this one) that the motion about the barycentre is a lovely smooth approximation to an elliptical orbit; and meanwhile, the Sun is doing its own wiggly dance in the middle.
In terms of the physical forces governing the trajectory of Neptune, it is also very clear that it is continually pulled towards something very close to the centre of mass of all the objects within its orbit, and can therefore be expected to follow something close to a Keplerian ellipse with the centre of mass of everything-within-its-orbit-plus-itself at one focus. As I explained above.
The only reason I can see for preferring a heliocentric longitude is if you were concerned with the moment when the Sun appears at the same point in the Neptunian sky relative to the background stars. I can see the attraction of that, but to me it seems trivial in comparison with the physical nature of the orbit itself.
Certainly if you're talking about completing a physical orbit, you'd think you'd be primarily interested in what it is physically orbiting.
So I respect these traditions and inspiring astrophysicists who stick to them, or who see it as a matter of taste or of definition (such as Carolyn Porco - here's what she had to say), I don't see the benefit in agreeing with them in the face of very good reasoning to the contrary.
Let me know if you or anyone else fancies presenting an argument the other way - I'd love to hear it!
- 7:26 pm, July 12, 2011
I'm impressed with your detailed analysis. Don't let the likes of Carolyn Porco put you off, these sorts of calculations are certainly worth doing, if only for educational purposes. It may be a matter of definition but once that has been agreed, precise calculations can be done and a lot can be learned from that process. It's the way I like to work, have been for many years, and sometimes it does uncover limitations, or downright errors, in the work of the "professionals".
Anyway, the thing that caught my attention was the fact about how close Neptune returns to its original direction, a mere 1.5 arcseconds. I thought it would have been much greater. So I decided to check it myself and in the process see if I could reproduce your results for the time of Neptune's return.
I've used the ecliptic and mean equinox of J2000.0 as my fixed reference system and expressed the position (direction) of Neptune as an ecliptic longitude and latitude. There's no great advantage to using the invariant plane, unless it more closely matches Neptune's orbital plane. The ecliptic and equinox do move, but if we fix them at some epoch (J2000.0 for example) then there's no reason why we can't use them as the basis of an inertial reference frame.
Relative to the SSB (solar system barycentre) the discovery and return events are (CT, long, lat):
1846 Sep 23 23:06:47 329-05-33.323 -00-31-35.195
2011 Jul 11 21:50:34 329-05-33.323 -00-31-36.687
Relative to the SUN the corresponding events are (CT, long, lat):
1846 Sep 23 23:06:47 329-06-10.844 -00-31-35.998
2011 Jul 12 21:34:05 329-06-10.844 -00-31-37.197
So you can see there's almost a day's difference between using the SSB and the SUN. This is consistent with the estimates produced by others, if not in detail.
Also note that I've used CT not UT. CT is a uniform time scale used by the JPL ephemerides, whereas UT is non-uniform because of its connection with the Earth's rotation. More importantly there is a significant difference between the time scales, currently about 66 seconds and growing, although at the time of discovery it was only 7 seconds. I suspect that your results for the return time are strictly CT, so are out by more than a minute, though still well within your "tolerance" of 15 minutes.
By the way, CT has nothing to do with considerations regarding light-times. It is just the independent variable used in the numerical integrations that produce the JPL ephemerides (a time coordinate to complement the space coordinates). It is thought to be a uniform time scale and corresponds closely with other astronomical time scales you might have heard of: TDB and TT.
These results were obtained from JPL's DE405 ephemerides (as used by Horizons) but I have also done the calculations with a more up-to-date version, DE423, with the following results:
Relative to the SSB (CT, long, lat):
1846 Sep 23 23:06:47 329-05-32.032 -00-31-35.209
2011 Jul 11 20:23:26 329-05-32.032 -00-31-36.702
Relative to the SUN (CT, long, lat):
1846 Sep 23 23:06:47 329-06-09.552 -00-31-36.012
2011 Jul 12 20:06:58 329-06-09.552 -00-31-37.211
Here the return events are about 1h 27m earlier than those obtained from DE405, although the events still occur on the same day. This might give you some idea about the errors involved in using DE405.
- 6:39 pm, July 21, 2011
So we can see that the major issue is with the choice between using the SSB or the SUN as the centre of motion. Like you I prefer the SSB because the motion of Neptune more closely follows a keplerian path than it does around the SUN. As you have shown the heliocentric orbit has false perihelia and aphelia, which are peculiar to Neptune and are a direct result of the intrinsic motion of the SUN. The SUN's motion complicates things and should really be excluded.
But there is another reason.
We can use the ecliptic latitude to estimate the angular difference between the events. This gives 1.5 and 1.2 arcseconds, from the SSB and SUN respectively, the former confirming your own result. This might suggest that the discovery and return events will be seen to overlap, which is certainly the case for the SSB (as you have depicted) but from the SUN it isn't. Again, this is purely an effect of the SUN's motion, a parallax effect in fact as the SUN is in a different position between the events. From the SUN the angular difference is about 21.5 arcseconds (DE405), mostly in longitude.
You can look at it in another way. From the SSB the discovery and return events could be termed "sidereal" whereas from the SUN they would be "synodic", and it is the former which better reflects the orbital period of Neptune. The synodic period looks to be about one day longer than the sidereal period, accounting for the excess of 21.5 arseconds in longitude.
Interestingly from the SUN, at about 2011 Jul 11 21:50 CT (DE405) there is an overlapping conjunction between Neptune and its discovery direction. This is very close to the return time as seen from the SSB. I don't quite understand this but I suspect it is because at this time the SUN happens to lie close to a line between the SSB and the discovery/return positions and is just a coincidence. Perhaps worthy of closer scrutiny though...
- 6:41 pm, July 21, 2011
Further to my last observation about conjunctions, I had the following scenario in mind.
First determine the 3D inertial position of Neptune at the time of its discovery and mark it with an imaginary flag. Neptune then continues on its merry way around the solar system and we would like to know when it passes by the flag again. As one way of doing this we can find the time when the angular separation between the flag and the returning Neptune is at a minimum from whichever vantage point we choose, in our case either the SSB or the SUN.
The results are shown below. I've done the calculations using DE405 and DE423, as before, but I've also included IMCCE's INPOP10a as a modern independent source of planetary ephemerides which is comparable to JPL's latest data for accuracy.
Times are given in UT this time (properly taking account of CT-UT) and I also show the minimum angular separation attained in each case.
DE405 (UT, arcseconds)
From SSB: 2011 Jul 11 21:46:31 1.491
From SUN: 2011 Jul 11 21:46:26 1.491
DE423 (UT, arcseconds)
From SSB: 2011 Jul 11 20:19:22 1.491
From SUN: 2011 Jul 11 20:19:17 1.493
INPOP10a (UT, arcseconds)
From SSB: 2011 Jul 11 20:03:41 1.492
From SUN: 2011 Jul 11 20:03:37 1.491
The obvious thing to note is that the time of conjunction is virtually the same whether we use the SSB or SUN as the centre of motion.
You can also see that the times determined from DE423 and INPOP10a agree quite well with each other compared to those from DE405. Again, this can be viewed as an improvement in the accuracy of the more up-to-date ephemerides.
- 1:23 pm, July 24, 2011
Also, in all cases the angular separation is such that we could call the conjunction "overlapping", as shown for example in the image at the top of this post. In fact the view from the SUN is pretty much the same as seen from the SSB (though not exactly in the same part of the sky, relative to background stars).
[A clarification about using words like "view" and "seen" is appropriate here. I do not mean what the event will actually look like if I could stand at the SSB or the centre of the SUN and peer through a telescope at the distant planet. Such a view would be light-time retarded, giving us a look at Neptune (and flag) as it would have appeared some hours before. However, here we are mostly interested in the physical geometric motion of Neptune in the gravitational field of the solar system, in which light-time effects are not considered. That is, where Neptune actually is rather than where it appears to be by a distant observer. Alternatively, pretend the speed of light is infinite!]
But of course the most important observation, considering that what we really want to know is when Neptune's "birthday" will be, is that the conjunction occurs on the same day whichever centre or ephemeris we use.
So using the results from DE423 and INPOP10a I would estimate that Neptune will have completed one orbit on 2011 June 11 at 20:12 UT +/- 16m.
Clearly, and probably, not the final word on the matter. As someone said, it's a matter of definition. But a definition, like the one I have used here, that can give a return time from the itinerant SUN consistent with one from the rock-steady SSB is worthy of consideration.
- 1:25 pm, July 24, 2011
- Bob said...
Fabulous stuff, John!
I want to have a good look through the data you've presented before I say anything else, but it looks sound and it seems to be a step ahead of what I presented in the post. I'll add edits into the main post to draw attention to the updates or corrections that you've highlighted in your comments.
Thanks for your input. I agree with you - we have all this understanding and precision data on the motion of the planets: why not delight in making use of it to explore the subtleties of their orbits, to weigh up different interpretations and to get results that are as accurate as we're able to.
I'll come back to look at this properly when I get the chance :)
- 2:07 pm, July 24, 2011
Of course, what I should have written is:
"...Neptune will have completed one orbit on 2011 JULY 11 at 20:12 UT +/- 16m."
Time for a break!
- 6:14 pm, July 24, 2011
- Maarten said...
I know it is a bit late, but in this period Neptune is still in the same spot in the sky as it was in 1846. I am making a documentary about the topic of the discovery and here is an edit I did for the anniversity in July, with a small part of the material: Searching for Neptune, to be found on http://vimeo.com/channels/planetaryscience
- 9:52 pm, November 05, 2011
- Bob said...
That looks like a great little film, Maarten - thanks for posting it.
Good luck with your project.
- 1:30 am, November 06, 2011
Post a comment
If you have questions not relating to this post, you can email me.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Over the course of about a month we have received multiple reports of a rogue access point attempting to intercept traffic. I suspect an attacker is using a wifi pineapple, or similar hardware device. They seem to be enabling it for short periods of time and then disappearing before we have time to react. When this attack pops up again I want to be able to react quickly and have them arrested.
What is the best way to confront this threat?


text:
Canada's Autumn Phillips delivers Queen's second great-grandchild
Peter Phillips, son of Princess Anne, and his wife Autumn have welcomed a new member to their family. Isla Elizabeth Phillips was born Thursday night, a second great-grandchild for Queen Elizabeth.
The Royal Family is never very far from its own history, steeped in it own traditions as the torch is passed to each generation.
On Friday, they stopped to remember two members of the family who died 10 years ago, just months apart -- the Queen Mother and Elizabeth's younger sister, Princess Margaret.
And, as it turned out, it was also a celebration of the arrival of a new generation as Queen Elizabeth's daughter, Princess Anne, announced that her son Peter Phillips and his wife, Montreal-born Autumn, have a new addition with the birth of a baby girl Thursday night.
Isla Elizabeth Phillips weighed in at 7 pounds, 4 ounces and is the Queen's second great-grandchild. Her first name has Scottish origins, derived from Islay, an island off Scotland's coast.
Isla is a sister for Savannah, who is 15 months old. Just by being born, Isla jumps to 13th in line for the throne, behind her sister.
Peter, who was present at the birth, met Autumn -- a McGill University grad and management consultant -- in 2003 at the Canadian Grand Prix. They were married in 2008.
On Friday, led by Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, many members of the Royal Family attended the memorial service for the Queen Mum and Margaret at St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle. Both women are interred there. (Photo: Margaret and Elizabeth with their mother, marking her 80th birthday in 1980.)
The Right Rev. David Conner presided over the service, noting how the two women -- mother and daughter -- "significantly enriched" the family.
Princess Margaret, who died Feb. 9, 2002 at the age of 71, was a controversial figure in royal circles, having been linked to -- for their time -- scandals around her love life and, ultimately, divorce. Her colourful life, always the source of tabloid fever, gave way to a series of strokes in her later years. Less than two months after her death, the Queen Mother died on March 30 at age 101.
Both of Margaret's children -- Vicount Linley and Lady Sarah Chatto -- attended the memorial service along with their families, as did the majority of Elizabeth's clan. Notably missing were Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, who were vacationing in at a French ski resort with Kate's parents. Also absent were Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall, and Prince Edward.
Members of the Royal Family arrive for a thanksgiving service for the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret at St George's Chapel on Friday in Windsor. From left, Princess Beatrice, Timothy Laurence, Sophie, Countess of Wessex, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Princess Eugenie, Prince Harry, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Princess Anne. (Getty Images)
Prince Harry arrives for the thanksgiving service in memory of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. Welcoming him are the grandchildren of Princess Margaret -- Charles and Margarita Armstrong-Jones, and Samuel and Arthur Chatto. (Getty Images)
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip exchange pleasantries with Dean of Windsor David Conner following the thanksgiving service at St. George's Chapel. Right: Princess Beatrice, daughter of Prince Andrew, arrives at the service. (Getty Images)
Prince Harry shares a joke with Sophie, Countess of Wessex as they arrive at St. George's Chapel. (Getty Images)


text:
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Fast, Flexible Rigging
This rapid modular rigging system, which at the base level is a complete rigging development kit (RDK) can be used to quickly rig characters for animation without the need to setup complex rigs from scratch. Genoma 2 gives everyone the ability to create expert rigs and makes it possible to generate custom presets that perfectly fit into any character animation pipeline at any degree of complexity, including the use of Math Expressions and Scripts. It also features new and improved Human, Feline and Arthropod preset rigs.
http://rg.to/file/804708ee1a6778aa9c1beadc33affdfe/NewTek.LightWave.3D.v2015.2.part1.rar.html http://rg.to/file/759c1c18a4f3fbf4209fae97b8882ccf/NewTek.LightWave.3D.v2015.2.part2.rar.html http://rg.to/file/d9e0ad351503fd34416e72d23547343c/NewTek.LightWave.3D.v2015.2.part3.rar.html http://rg.to/file/2ca65e5b3177d8108b039478d7dcf584/NewTek.LightWave.3D.v2015.2.part4.rar.html http://rg.to/file/81847613e8bda9f762eb2064c450c5d3/NewTek.LightWave.3D.v2015.2.part5.rar.html
http://ul.to/2ctdhcz3 http://ul.to/eolvnlsr http://ul.to/l7m4obw6 http://ul.to/nfuu6isw http://ul.to/e4k0ma8r
http://www.nitroflare.com/view/06E6DB983E42771 http://www.nitroflare.com/view/F309FDC7D712639 http://www.nitroflare.com/view/534BF97357AF598 http://www.nitroflare.com/view/68071FE9ED46C9E http://www.nitroflare.com/view/B3292B7DB71AED0
http://www.uploadable.ch/file/SdsFmSbDJ9eh/NewTek.LightWave.3D.v2015.2.part5.rar http://www.uploadable.ch/file/NFXZeUf2PZ6X/NewTek.LightWave.3D.v2015.2.part4.rar http://www.uploadable.ch/file/d3BNdZWscDDy/NewTek.LightWave.3D.v2015.2.part3.rar http://www.uploadable.ch/file/HUgtJVE9DpCw/NewTek.LightWave.3D.v2015.2.part2.rar http://www.uploadable.ch/file/mE8NHwBApgq2/NewTek.LightWave.3D.v2015.2.part1.rar


text: All, I have updated my theme that I did for 3.0.4.* to work with 3.0.5.*. I have also made some changes to make it cleaner. It is heavily based on the ISPConfig website, and I have pushed it out to GitHub. GitHub Repo I personally feel that it is a huge improvement over the current default theme. Here are some pics of it.


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Brown-skinned, blue-eyed, Y-haplogroup C-bearing European hunter-gatherer from Spain (Olalde et al. 2014) – @dienekes'. – also: European Hunter-Gatherers, Blue Eyes and Dark Skin? – from razib. – also: Hunter-gatherer European had blue eyes and dark skin – "Genetic tests reveal that a hunter-gatherer who lived 7,000 years ago had the unusual combination of dark skin and hair and blue eyes." – h/t ed west! – also: Tar-Zan* and Korak and Shades of Pale from greg cochran.
Y-chromosome "Adam" was not necessarily human – "From the point of view of population genetics, there is absolutely no reason that the common ancestor of all human Y chromosomes must have existed in an individual that we would identify as 'human'."
Genomic variation in sharing between siblings – "Visscher et al make really nice use of this slight variability in how much of the genome sibs share to learn about how much variation in height within a population is due to genetic variation. They use the fact that sibs who share slightly more of their genome (>0.5) should have more similar heights, than sibs who share less of their genomes (<0.5). This allows them to partition out how much of the resemblance between siblings is due to a shared environment, as opposed to shared genomes…. It also makes me wonder if sibs are actually unconsciously, weakly aware of these subtle genomic differences (through their similarity in a range of traits, including height etc). I could imagine doing a study where siblings (or others) are asked to assess how similar they are/feel, and then assessing whether this is weakly correlated with the fraction of the genome shared. I keep meaning to followup on this idea with some popgen theory to assess how this might play out in modifying kin-selection and altruism between sibs and other relatives." – from graham coop [this guy].
New genes spring, spread from non-coding DNA – "A new study shows that new genes can spring from non-coding DNA more rapidly than expected." – h/t hbd bibliography!
HBD Chick Lays it Down on HBD – "I say can't we just stick to seeking out the truth, whatever that is…." – hear, hear! – from jayman.
Diet rapidly and reproducibly alters the human gut microbiome – "[T]he gut microbiome can rapidly respond to altered diet, potentially facilitating the diversity of human dietary lifestyles."
300,000-year-old hearth found: Microscopic evidence shows repeated fire use in one spot over time – "Scientists discovered in the Qesem Cave, an archaeological site near present-day Rosh Ha'ayin, the earliest evidence — dating to around 300,000 years ago — of unequivocal repeated fire building over a continuous period. These findings help answer the question and hint that those prehistoric humans already had a highly advanced social structure and intellectual capacity." – h/t razib!
The new European phenotype: expansion into the Middle East – from peter frost.
Chimpocentrism and reconstructions of human evolution (a timely reminder) – h/t neuroskeptic! who said: "Beware 'chimpocentrism' in studies of human evolution." – see also: Chimps have undergone more positive selection than humans – from adam benton.
Genius in the genes – from dr. james thompson.
On Dolphins, Big Brains, Shared Genes and Logical Leaps – "'It looks like ASPM evolved adaptively in all mammals…. It could be that ASPM is a general target of selection in episodes of brain evolution and isn't specific to large brains.'"
Rates of atheism/agnosticism by ethnicity – from the awesome epigone.
Why Are Women More Liberal Than Men? – @the chateau.
Comparing Warfare Deaths per Capita in 18th vs. 20th Centuries – "[T]he 20th century was only a bit more violent than the 18th century." – from mike anissimov.
Why is polygamy declining? – from matt ridley, who tweeted: "The decline of human polygamy coincides with democracy."
The Dark Enlightenment Hits Stage Two
La ciencia estúpida – "La mayoría de los grandes científicos y filósofos no eran lo que diríamos tipos agradables. Tampoco eran políticamente correctos según el canon normal. Prácticamente ningún filósofo o científico anterior a la escuela de Frankfurt podría dar hoy una clase pública sin la amenaza de ser molestado por una turba emancipatoria. Hume, Darwin, Voltaire, Locke, Kant (no digamos ya Platón o Aristóteles) hoy no podrían ser contratados en la universidad de un país occidental." – from eduardo zugasti.
Genome of longest-living cancer: 11,000-year-old living dog cancer reveals its origin, evolution – "A cancer normally lives and dies with a person, however this is not the case with a sexually transmitted cancer in dogs. In a new study, researchers have described the genome and evolution of this cancer that has continued living within the dog population for the past 11,000 years."
Why the masculine face? Genetic evidence reveals drawbacks of hyper-masculine features – "[A]round half the variation in both male and female facial masculinity could be attributed to additive genetic variation…. The extensive genetic variation in masculinity makes more plausible the idea that choosing to mate with a masculine man can result in more attractive offspring. But the genes that made a male face more masculine did not make it more attractive. Worse, these same genes made female faces more masculine and thus less attractive. Families that make manly-looking sons tend also to make masculine-looking daughters."
Casting Out The Devil – "[C]onservatives generally think that liberals are misguided, and live in deep denial of obvious truths about human nature and the way the world actually works (as opposed to the way they think it *ought* to work), liberals view conservatives not just as misguided, but as *morally evil*." – from malcolm pollack.
Joshua Greene's "Moral Tribes": The Minting of a New Morality – from helian.
Bones from human sacrifice at Tenochtitlan ceremonial complex – "Fragments of human bones that exhibit cut marks and prolonged exposure to fire have been discovered through various excavations in the Sacred Precinct of Tenochtitlan (located in Mexico City). These skeletal remains are from individuals, such as children, slaves and captured warriors, who were sacrificed during religious festivals. – cannibalism! – h/t charles mann!
It's not just ancient Roman propaganda: Carthaginians really did sacrifice children – "'We like to think that we're quite close to the ancient world, that they were really just like us – the truth is, I'm afraid, that they really weren't.'"
Data Mining Proves Darwin's Finches Weren't Really His – h/t jason moore!
Marry Your Like: Assortative Mating and Income Inequality – "Does assortative mating contribute to household income inequality? Data from the United States Census Bureau suggests there has been a rise in assortative mating. Additionally, assortative mating affects household income inequality." – h/t chuck ross!
Social status influences Democrats' — but not Republicans' — support for reducing inequality – "Low wealth Democrats supported legislation to reduce economic inequality significantly more than both high wealth Democrats and Republicans. 'Whereas Republicans tended to sponsor legislation that supports economic inequality regardless of their wealth, wealth predicted sponsoring behavior for Democrats," the researchers explained.' Specifically, high wealth Democrats tended to sponsor fewer pieces of legislation that reduce economic inequality than did their lower wealth counterparts."
Dark lands: the grim truth behind the 'Scandinavian miracle' – "Take the Danes, for instance. True, they claim to be the happiest people in the world, but why no mention of the fact they are second only to Iceland when it comes to consuming anti-depressants?" – h/t claire lehmann!
Islam's Baby Problem – @28 sherman.
Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath – "Neuroscientist James Fallon discovered through his work that he has the brain of a psychopath, and subsequently learned a lot about the role of genes in personality and how his brain affects his life." – this guy again. h/t ray sawhill!
A Sexual-Decision Flowchart That Makes Everything Simpler for Medieval Men – h/t jayman! (who's prolly very glad he doesn't live in the middle ages. (~_^) )
bonus: US Army considers replacing thousands of troops with robots – "The US Army is studying whether robots could take the place of thousands of soldiers"
bonus bonus: Scotland had a glacier up to 1700s, say scientists
(note: comments do not require an email. glen coe – glacial valley.)


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Marion Benton "M. B." Pleasant, Jr.Wednesday, July 12th, 2006
M. B. quietly passed away at home yesterday morning. The viewing will be at Bryan-Lee Funeral Home in Angier, NC tonight. The funeral will be at 1:00 tomorrow at Angier Baptist Church with burial at Montlawn Memorial Park.
Please keep the family in your prayers.


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On any given Sunday, an analyst on an NFL broadcast will discuss injuries a team has had on its offensive line and how players have found themselves playing different positions than they're accustomed to, and how difficult the transition can be.
Ask Michigan sophomore Graham Glasgow about making the transition from starting guard to starting center in the middle of this season and mostly what you get is a shrug.
"I just want to play whatever helps the team," the Marmion graduate says, noting that he played a lot of center on the scout team when he arrived in Ann Arbor two years ago. "In a way, it actually helps me being able to play both of those [positions]."
Glasgow (6-6, 303) started the first four games of the season for the Wolverines at left guard, but has started the last six games at center. The left guard spot has been filled by a very familiar face to Glasgow, true freshman Kyle Bosch of St. Charles, a St. Francis graduate.
"It's kind of cool," Glasgow says, adding that he never went head-to-head against Bosch in high school. "He gets the job done. That's fine with me."
Glasgow gets to see an even more familiar face every day – his younger brother, Ryan, a Michigan defensive lineman.
"It's great," Glasgow says. "It's like it was at Marmion in a way. I go up against him all the time in practice."
Ryan, a redshirt freshman, has appeared in eight games this season for the Wolverines.
"When I see Ryan out there on defense doing his thing, it's great," Glasgow says. "I like it a lot."
Glasgow downplays the role he's played in helping Ryan achieve gridiron success.
"I think I was able to help him adjust to college in every way except the ability to play his position," Glasgow says. "I can't tell him how he's doing. That's up to the coaches."
Glasgow says he does encourage his brother to keep a positive attitude, something the elder Glasgow had to work on a lot as a walk-on freshman, when his primary duty was to mimic the offensive linemen Michigan's first-team defense would be going up against each week.
"You're going to get beat up on the scout team," he says. "It's all about just getting better. That's what happens the first year."
Last year, Glasgow saw action in five games for the Wolverines.
"When you get an opportunity like that, you've still got to go out there and play your hardest," he says, noting the importance of showing coaches and teammates alike that he was improving.
Glasgow says he spent the off-season working on getting stronger and preparing for spring practice.
"Having a good spring ball was instrumental" to his current success, he says. "As a walk-on, I would say you literally have to play as good as you can on every play. You just have to be consistently good."
His spring play was strong enough that he began to get media attention in Michigan as a possible candidate for a starting position this fall, despite the fact more heralded scholarship athletes were available to fill the O-line spots. When the season finally arrived, Glasgow's hard work was rewarded with both a spot in the starting lineup and a scholarship.
The season started well for Glasgow and the Wolverines. They won their first five games, including a 41-30 victory over then 14th-ranked Notre Dame. Michigan averaged 39 points per game on offense in those contests. Since then, they've lost three of five.
"We've definitely not completed our primary goal, which was to win the Big Ten championship, which was upsetting at first," Glasgow says. "We still have another goal of winning 10 games. … Not a lot of people believe in us, but we believe in us, and that's all that matters."
The Wolverines (7-3, 3-3 Big Ten Legends) kept that goal of winning 10 games alive with a triple-overtime victory Saturday at Northwestern.
"When we had that field goal at the end of regulation, I had a very good feeling about overtime," Glasgow says. "We moved the ball at times during the game, we just couldn't put it together completely, but in overtime, we put it together."
On the play prior to the field goal that sent the game into overtime, Glasgow completely stoned Northwestern defensive lineman Tyler Scott at the line of scrimmage, giving quarterback Devin Gardner ample time to make a crucial pass completion. On Gardner's game-winning five-yard TD run in the third overtime, Glasgow held his block on Will Hampton until after Gardner crossed the goal line.
After a tense game like that, players want to kick back and relax a little bit. They don't get much free time during the season. When they do, Glasgow and his brother and some of their teammates enjoy a classic video game.
"We'll play Super Smash Bros. for N64," he says. "We can play that for hours at a time. … It's amazing. The console doesn't break. It's been like 20 years."
• Dennis D. Jacobs writes the weekly On Campus column for the Kane County Chronicle. If you have a column idea, contact him at email@example.com.


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Over 50,000 lights turn the facade of Disneyland's beloved "It's a Small World" ride into a sparkling wonderland every evening through January 6. When the switch gets flicked, over 300,000 watts of light in six brilliant colors takes away the breath of the children and their parents gathered. Seeing this light spectacle is just one of the many things to do at Disneyland during the holidays and here are nine more.
Photo: Anthony Falzone
Disclosure: Disney hosted a media event to show writers the holiday decorations. SFGate participated.


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If the former, you don't get the sort of emergence you claim, because then, the emergent facts follow from the base facts---and for every emergent fact, you can state the precise way it follows from the base facts. Thus, that's the story you need to at least provide some plausibility argument for in order to have your claim of the emergence of consciousness be contentful.
If the latter, then the base facts don't determine the emergent facts. Then, of course, consciousness just might come 'round at some point. Somehow, for basically no reason. But also, it's no longer the case that fixing the physical facts ('particles, fields, and their arrangement') fixes all the facts, and physicalism is wrong.
It's not a matter of believing Chalmers or not. He's not stating this out of the blue; he's just clearly articulating what the options are. There's no middle ground. You either eat the cake, or keep it.
And really, you shouldn't start accusing others of avoiding things.
Nobody can be in any doubt about that. There's no mystery about how chess-playing emerges in computers, and that's precisely because we understand how the lower-level properties lead to the chess-playing behavior. Getting a computer to play chess means we understand how that sort of behavior comes about, whereas even if a computer were conscious, we still wouldn't have the faintest clue about how consciousness comes about. We have no idea how consciousness reduces to some Boolean formula, some program, some algorithm. Blithely positing that 'it emerges' simply sweeps our ignorance under the rug, where the only thing we can do that has any hope of getting us ahead on the problem is meeting it head-on.
That's where we need to re-evaluate our beliefs and assumptions.
And seriously, the fact that you have repeatedly refrained from responding to the fact that your argument disproves your own mind seems telling to me - specifically it's telling me that you have no refutation for the fact your argument is disproven but you're carrying on anyway because you'd rather keep arguing it because arguing is fun.
Last edited by begbert2; 05-22-2019 at 01:04 PM. Reason: dammit what is with the typos today? I'm going to lunch.
It is more analogous to involuntary bodily functions like the beating heart, filtering liver and rippling GI tract that keep the biological creature operative. Self-awareness seems to be some sort of instinct-based adjunct to the simple or complex neurological function of the beast, and it is not even clear whether it enhances that functionality in any way other than to supply impetus to continue.
So fine, one last time:
There. I hope that makes things clear. It should, in particular, be obvious now that nothing about the impossible of minds in general is implied; merely, that minds, which clearly do exist, are not computational in nature, that is, are not produced by the brain implementing a certain computation.
Now, I believe you won't give up on the 'but CM just interprets itself'-issue so easily. In that case, I have good news for you, because you can prove the existence of god!
For, god is an omnipotent being. Omnipotence entails the possibility to create gods. Consequently, god may just create him/hir/herself. And that's it!
Logically, this is perfectly analogous to CM interpreting B as computing CM.
Last edited by Half Man Half Wit; 05-22-2019 at 01:31 PM.
It doesn't appear possible with the technology we currently have. We have really kick-ass computers, but they are not self-aware. So, there is no reason to assume that your "consciousness" would survive death. Even if we had the technology necessary to convert RNA based memory into 1's and 0's, it would just be data. It wouldn't be a person.
"Ghost in a Shell" had science approaching it in a different way. They perfected something they called a "Cerebral Salvage", which was implanting a human brain in a completely artificial body and integrating them so that they worked together just like our brains and organic bodies work together.
What the hell is RNA based memory?
It really comes down to what is actually meant by self-awareness - I generally think of it as that the entity in question is continuously aware of its ongoing calculative processes, and has the capability to interpret and make decisions based on them. The sticking point, of course, is the "aware" part; we humans have a 'in the driver's seat' perspective on the world that we're hard-pressed to explain or even describe. I find myself wondering whether even a simple computer program that assesses inputs, outputs, and its own data storage might, from its own perspective, have a 'drivers's seat view'. I mean, we do program them to - they have a main execution loop that is constantly running back and forth through its event handlers and dealing with inputs as they come. The only think lacking is that the main loop doesn't have access to the data handled by the event handlers - but at what level would the 'driver's seat' manifest? One could theorize that the self-contained execution loop gives rise to the 'drivers's seat view' but that the 'view' included the data handlers as well.
This is, of course, all frivolous theorizing, but one thing that stands out to me is that I've never heard any other explanation for where or how that 'drivers's seat view' originates. I mean sure, there's bullshit about souls, but that just kicks the can down the street - how do souls do it, mechanically speaking? Whether material or spiritual the process is being carried out somehow.
And now, on to attempting to see if HMHW's explanation makes some sense to poor old simple me, and to see if it accomplished the literally impossible and draws a distinction between the function of a physical brain and its functionally exact copy.
I think that both you and wolfpup should take a look at Integrated Information Theory, which posits that consciousness is either due to or constituted by the information distributed among the parts of a system in a certain way. In a simplified sense, integrated information can be thought of as the amount of information the whole of a system has over and above that which is locked in its parts. IIT then postulates that this is what consciousness either correlates with or comes down to.
Now, I think in doing so, IIT is massively begging the question. But that doesn't matter right now. What's important is that IIT gives a scientifically respectable reductive account of consciousness---it shows us exactly how (what it purports to amount to) consciousness emerges from the simpler parts, and gives us objective criteria for its presence. So, IIT provides the sort of story that's needed to make wolfpup's emergence reasonable.
Furthermore, on IIT, consciousness isn't a functional property of the brain. It's a property relating to the correlations between the brain's parts, or regions. So functionalism isn't really the sort of obvious truth begbert2 seems to take it to be, either.
More interestingly, perhaps, is that on IIT, computationalism comes out straightforwardly false. While a brain has a high degree of integrated information, the typical computer, due to its modular architecture, has very little to none of it. So a computer implementing the simulation of a brain won't lead to conscious experience, even if the brain it simulates does.
This suffices to falsify many of the seemingly 'obvious' claims in this thread and shows that other options are possible.
Or to put it in terms of computational processess, if you have two physically identical machines, one of which is running Quicksort and one of which is running Stoogesort, then the only thing that is making the Quicksort one the Quicksort one is the fact it's running the Quicksort one. It is distinct from the Stoogesort one (among other things it's a lot faster), but the difference in what it is is indeed a result of it being what it is.
None of this is self-contradictory.
And honestly, even if you were right about computationalism being impossible (which you're not), that doesn't mean that brains can't be copied to computers - it would just mean that it's equally impossible for existing computers to be computational! Which would mean that existing computers are still exactly as capable as brains are to support minds, because none of them are the thing that's impossible. Which makes sense, because existing computers aren't impossible and thus if you prove that something is impossible to do, they're not doing it.
None of this is analogous to nothing creating something from nothing, none of it is circular, and none of it is self-contradictory.
There are other studies that don't specifically say anything about RNA, but have shown the ability for isolated individual purkinje cells to learn temporal sequences, which means our biology is using multiple methods for learning.
Don't try to impune upon me any particular cognitive model. All my position requires are the following three facts:
1) Brains produce minds in the real world.
2) Brains are entirely physical (and thus, mechanical) in their operation*.
3) Computers with sufficient memory and processing ability can accurately simulate physical objects and thier mechanical behaviors.
That's it. That's all I need to prove that it's theoretically possible to emulate minds - you may have to emulate everything in the world with even a tangential physical effect on the brain (which could include the entire universe!), but that's still theoretically possible, and thus you provably can theoretically emulate minds on a computer.
Proven, that is, unless you can disprove one of the three premises. And note that I don't care how the brains create minds. It doesn't matter. I don't care. It's utterly irrelevant. All that matters to me is that brains produce minds at all.
* Actually I don't even require the minds to exist entirely in the physical realm - they just have to exist in some realm that has reasonably consistent mechanistic rules. Which isn't really much to ask, because nothing can possibly work or even consistently exist in a realm without reasonably consistent rules.
Obviously, P1 cannot interpret P1 as implementing C1, as to do so, it would have to already be implementing C1 to do the interpreting.
Last edited by Half Man Half Wit; 05-22-2019 at 03:43 PM.
Does your argument rely on something impossible?
Seriously, when we talk about calculations being a 'black box' where you can't tell what's going on inside it, it doesn't mean that the internal calculations are experiencing multiple different program states simultaneously like schroedinger's cat. That's bizarre.
Yeah, kind of not feeling that.
When the word "mind" or "cognition" is used, is it assumed that consciousness is always included within those terms, or is "mind" and "cognition" ever assumed to be just the processing less conscious experience?
Or you could note that the thread(s) of execution do run through all those parts each time, constantly, moving in and out of all the layers and back again. It's really a question of how (and where) the 'seat of consciousness' manifests, and how it ''feels like' from the inside - and whether the actual implementation being partitioned interferes with that at all. (Assuming it manifests in the first place, of course.)
Survival is just a goal. A goal that is conducive to there being future generations, yes, but the thing that has the goal is what I'm curious about. The thing that has the awareness of the situation to see threats and avoid them. How does it work?
Between "magic" and "program execution loop", I'm thinking "program execution loop".
Once you've got your Matrix for the minds to live in, the minds ought to be able to get all the inputs they're accustomed to just fine, presuming you designed the Matrix properly and with sufficient detail. Though of course you'd eventually want to tweak a few things - the whole goal here was to let the minds live forever after all. So once you have things all properly uploaded into a simulation you'll probably want to tweak a few things rather than accurately simulating the ravages of time and all. This would of course cause the minds in the simulation to diverge in thought and action from the originals, but really, wasn't that the point all along?
I never liked the whole zombie argument before, but I think I see what that argument is getting at.
But what I was picturing in my mind was that the operational attributes of the brain (e.g. modeling the environment, making decisions towards a goal, etc.) can be independent of the conscious experience, if the conscious experience is just a layer above that maybe only influences deciding on the goal (for example).
Responding to your post:
There are examples where people seem to operate correctly in their environment but don't have awareness (e.g. sleep walking).
Brains be complicated, yo.
Even though it does seem like we can react to our environment and make choices, it sure seems like that choice process is much more of a formula highly constrained by the machinery (due to nature+nurture), as opposed to an open ended consciousness based selection process.
The only reason I would make a different decision (than the ones I typically make) is if there was an explicit input identifying the fact that a non-standard decision is being targeted/tested and therefore I should choose that path to prove it can be done (based on my internal motivation that would push me towards even evaluating that condition).
Though, to say on-topic, complicated doesn't mean uncopyable. It just means that when we replicate all the neuron-states and chemical soups, we might not know what they're doing even as we move them over.
One fun (though debatably ethical) thing we could do once we were emulating the brains would be to sick an AI on them and have it make multiple copies of the emulated brains and selectively tweak/remove physical elements and compare ongoing behavior afterward. We could find out which aspects of our brain's physicality are necessary for proper mind function real quick. (Hmm, removing all the blood had an adverse effect. Guess we needed that. Next test!)
Given enough whittling we might be able to emulate a mind without emulating the whole brain - just the parts and processes that actually matter. (With the brain matter's physical weight or the skull enclosing it being possible superfluous factors that could be removed, for example.) In this way we might be able to emulate minds more efficiently than fully emulating all the physical matter in the vicinity.
It would be fair to ask, for course, what the developers saw in it, and why they built it that way. The answer is that they saw only a general-purpose learning mechanism, not something that bore any of the specific primordial traits of what they hoped to achieve. Just the same way as they built a massively parallel general-purpose computer system to run it on. What actually came together was something qualitatively new, and something that many had believed was at least another decade away.
But if minds then have the capacity to interpret things (as they seem to), they have a capacity that can't be realized via computation, and thus are, on the whole, not computational entities.Ignoring the incorrect assertions about Putnam that I dispelled earlier, waffling over "category errors" is disingenuous and meaningless here. The position of CTM isn't that computational theories help us understand the mind in some vague abstract sense; the position of CTM is that the brain performs computations, period, full stop -- as in the basic premise that intentional cognitive processes are literally syntactic operations on symbols. This is unambiguously clear, and you unambiguously rejected it. The cite I quoted in #143 says very explicitly that "the paradigm of machine computation" became, over a thirty-year period, a "deep and far-reaching" theory in cognitive science, supporting Fodor's statement that it's hard to imagine any kind of meaningful cognitive science without it, and that denial of this fact -- such as what you appear to be doing -- is not worth a serious discussion.
I suspect self-awareness/the survival instinct are analogous to something like hair: it is there, many of us are rather fond of it, it has its uses, but it does not actually do anything. It is an interesting feature.
But a feature of what? Hair is a simple thing that is a result of follicular activity. Self-awareness seems to be a rather complex feature that probably arises from disparate sources (some most likely chemical), and may not be localized (just like hair).
The point is, it is not evident that it actually does anything. Kind of like data tables which, in and of themselves are not active (in the way that program code is active), but our mental processes take note of it and adjust their results to account for it.
So, would self-awareness be a valuable feature for intelligent machines? Perhaps. Then again, maybe not. If we just want them to do what we need them to do, strict functionality might be the preferable design strategy. Unless uncovering the underlying nature of self-awareness is the research goal, in which case, they are probably best confined to a laboratory setting.
Will it be held against me if I don't have time right this moment to read the whole thread but want to ask a question that might have been answered already? Here goes: define exactly what you mean by downloading my consciousness, or I simply have no way to reply.
Regardless, this is not my interpretation of IIT, but one of its core points. Take it from Christoph Koch:
You can exactly prove what sort of tasks a neural network is capable of learning (arbitrary functions, basically), you can, at every instant, tell exactly what happens at the fundamental level in order for that learning to happen, and you can tell exactly how it performs at a given task solely by considering its low-level functioning. This is an exact counter-example to the claims you're making. For a good explanation of the process, you might be interested in the 'Deep Learning'-series on 3Blue1Brown.
The people who built AlphaGo didn't just do it for fun, to see how it would do. They knew exactly what was going to happen---qualitatively, although I'd guess they weren't exactly sure how good it was going to get---and the fact that they could have this confidence stands in direct opposition to your claims. Nobody just builds a machine to see what's going to happen; they build one precisely because their understanding of the components allows them to say so with pretty good confidence. Sure, there's no absolute guarantee---but as you said, surprise isn't a sufficient criterion for emergence. Sometimes a bridge breaks down to the surprise of everybody; that doesn't entail that bridges have any novel qualitative features over and above those of bricks, cement, and steel.
You've missed it at least two times now, and you'll probably miss it a third time, but again: an orrery is a helpful instrument to model the solar system, and one might get it into one's head that the solar system itself must be some giant world-machine run on springs and gears; but the usefulness of the orrery is completely independent of the falsity of that assertion.
Which is a separate issue from the fact that such emergence, obviously, doesn't occur in computers, which are the poster children of reducibility.
I'm still waiting for you to tell me what my example system computes, by the way. I mean, this is usually a question with a simple answer, or so I'm told: a calculator computes arithmetical functions; a chess computer chess moves. So why's it so hard in this case? Because, of course, using the same standard you use in everyday computations will force you to admit that it's just as right to say that the device computes f as that it computes f'. And there, to any reasonable degree, the story ends.
Or like any animal.
Last edited by Voyager; 05-23-2019 at 12:06 AM.
So in that sense, the integrated information is a physical quantity that's present in a system, but not, in general, in a system that's simulating that system---just like the mass of a black hole isn't present in a simulation of said black hole (which I gather is rather a good thing).
In an effort to keep it brief, I'm omitting those points where I would simply be repeating myself.
This can ONLY be interpreted as "no cognitive processes at all can be computational", since ANY such computation would, according to your claim, require an external interpretive agent. If true, that would invalidate CTM in its entirety. Could you possibly have meant that? Why, yes, you totally could: "The CTM is one of those rare ideas that were both founded an dismantled by the same person (Hilary Putnam). Both were visionary acts, it's just that the rest of the world is a bit slower to catch up with the second one."
Only when challenged on it are you now offering creative re-interpretations. But perhaps you'd like to take on the creative challenge of re-interpreting what you meant by CTM having been "dismantled".
My answer is that it's one that transforms 0110011 into 0100010, which is objectively a computation by definition, since it is, after all, a Turing machine exhibiting the determinacy condition -- even if I don't know what the algorithm is.
Your answer would appear to be that it's not a computation at all until it's been subjectively understood by you and assigned a name. I think Turing would disagree.
I think the core of the problem here is that you're confusing "computation" with "algorithm". But as Turing so astutely showed, the question of what a "computation" is, in the most fundamental sense, is quite a different question from asking what class of problem is being solved by the computation.
That does in no way imply that no process that goes on in the brain is computational. I've been careful (to no avail, it seems) to point out that my argument threatens solely the interpretational abilities of minds: they can't be computational. Using these interpretational powers, it becomes possible to assign definite computations to systems---after all, I use the device from my example to compute, say, sums.
Furthermore, even systems that aren't computational themselves may be amenable to computational modeling---just as well as systems that aren't made of springs and gears may be modeled by systems that are, like an orrery, but I suspect where these words are, you just see a blank space.
Also, I have been clear that my arguments don't invalidate the utility of computational modeling:
But of course, I know what you mean to argue. So let's specify a computation in full: say, the Turing machine has an input set consisting of all seven bit strings, and, to provide an output, traverses them right to left, replacing each block '11' it encounters with '10'. Thus, if produces '0100010' from '0110011', or '1000000' from '1111111', or '0001000' from '0001100'.
This is indeed a fully formally specified, completely determinate computation. You'll note it's of exactly the same kind of thing as my functions f and f'. So why does a Turing machine execute a definite computation?
Simple: a Turing machine is a formally specified, abstract object; its vehicles are themselves abstract objects, like '1' and '0' (the binary digits themselves, rather than the numerals).
But that's no longer true for a physical system. A physical system doesn't manipulate '1' and '0', it manipulates physical properties (say, voltage levels) that we take to stand for or represent '1' or '0'. It's here that the ambiguity comes in.
If you were to build the Turing machine from your example, then all it could do would be to write 1 or 0 (now, the numerals, not the binary digits) onto its tape. Anybody familiar with the Arabic numbers could then grasp that these ink-blots-on-paper are supposed to mean '1' and '0' (the binary digits, again). But, somebody grown up on Twin Earth that's identical to ours except for the fact that 1 means '0' and 0 means '1' would, with equal claim to being correct, take the Turing machine to implement a wholly different computation; namely, one where every '00' string is replaced by a '01'-string.
That's why I keep asking (and also, why you keep neglecting to answer): what computation is implemented by my example device? You're backed into a corner where you'd either have to answer that it's a computation taking switch-states to lamp-states, in which case the notion of computation collapses to that of physical evolution, or agree with me that it can be equally well taken to implement f and f'.
Although I note that you seem to have shifted your stance here somewhat---or perhaps, it hasn't been entirely clear from the beginning: you've both argued that the two computations are the same (which amounts to accepting they're both valid descriptions of the system, just equivalent ones, which starkly conflicts with you singling out a function of the same class as individuated computation in this post), and that multiple interpretations become, for reasons vaguely tied to 'emergence', less likely with increasing complexity. So which is it, now?
Perhaps for one last time, let me try and make my main point clear in a different way. Symbols don't intimate their meanings on their own. Just being given a symbol, or even a set of symbols with their relations, doesn't suffice to figure out what they mean. This is what the Chinese Room actually establishes (it fails to establish that the mind isn't computational): given a set of symbols (in Chinese), and rules for manipulating these, it's in principle possible to hold a competent conversation; but it's not possible to get at what the symbols mean, in any way, shape, or form.
Why is that the case? Because there's not just one thing they could mean. That must be the case, otherwise, we could just search through meanings until we find the right one. But it just isn't the case that symbols and rules to manipulate them, and relationships they stand in, determine what the symbols mean.
But it's in what their physical properties mean that physical systems connect to abstract computation. Nothing else can be right; computations aren't physical objects, and the only relation between the physical and the abstract is one of reference. So just the way you can't learn Chinese from manipulating Chinese letters according to rules, you can't fix what computation a system performs by merely having it manipulate physical properties, or objects, according to rules. An interpretation of what those properties or objects mean, what abstracta they refer to, is indispensable.
But this reference will always introduce ambiguity. And hence, there is no unambiguous, objective computation associated with a physical system absent it being interpreted as implementing said computation.
Last edited by Half Man Half Wit; 05-23-2019 at 07:20 AM.
Is that transformation always a computation regardless of the nature of the machinery that performed it?
If you have a closed calculation machine, a so-called "black box", the black box has internal workings that in fact have an unambiguous process they follow and an unambiguous internal state, whether or not you know what it is. We know this to be the case because that's how things in the real world work. And your knowledge of the internal processes is irrelevant to their existence. Or put another incredibly obvious way, brains worked long before you thought to wonder how they did.
So. Now. Consider this unambiguous process and unambiguous internal state. Because these things actually exist, once you have a black box process in a specific state, it will proceed to its conclusion in a specific way, based on the deterministic processes inside advancing it from one ambiguous internal state to the next. The dominos will fall in a specific order, each caused by the previous domino hitting them. And if you rewound time and ran it again, or made an exact copy and ran it simultaneously from the same starting state, it will proceed in exactly the same way following the same steps to the same result.
(Unless the system is designed to introduce randomity into the result, that is, but that's a distracting side case that's irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The process is still the same unambiguous process even if randomity perturbs it in a different direction with a different result. And I'm quite certain based on observation that randomity has a negligible effect on cognition anyway.)
So. While you think that your example includes a heisenberg uncertainty machine that has schroedinger's internals which simultaneously implement f and f' and thus hold varying internal states at the same time, in actual, non-delusional fact if you have a specific deterministic machine that has a specific internal state that means that it *must* be in the middle of implementing either f or f', and not both. This remains true regardless of the fact that you can't tell which it's doing from eyeballing the output. Obviously.
Your argument is entirely reliant on the counterfactual and extremely silly idea that things can't exist without you knowing about them. Sorry, no. The black box is entirely capable of having a specified internal process (be it f, f', or something else) without consulting you for your approval.
Or at least that's what you've been repeatedly saying your argument is. I can only work with what you give me.
He then goes on to insist that he's not saying that consciousness is a magic soul, before clarifying that he's saying that physical matter has a magic soul that's called 'consciousness'.
I'm sure he's a very smart fellow, but loads and loads of smart fellows believe in magic and souls and gods. Smart doesn't mean you can't have ideological beliefs that color and distort your thinking.
So yeah. To the degree that IIT claims that physical matter has magical soul-inducing magic when arranged in the correct pattern to invoke the incantation, I understand it better than it does, because I recognize silliness when I see it. You think I'm misstating his position? First you have to "build the computer in the appropriate way, like a neuromorphic computer"... and then consciousness is magically summoned from within the physical matter as a result! But if you build the neuromorphic computer inside a simulation "it will be black inside", specifically because it doesn't have physical matter causing the magic.
So take heart! You're not the only person making stupid nonsensical arguments. You're not alone in this world!
P2: If an emulation is sufficiently detailed and complete, that emulation can exactly duplicate properties and behaviors of what it's emulating.
P3: It's possible to create a sufficiently detailed and complete emulation of the real world.
C1: It's possible to create an emulation that can exactly duplicate properties and behaviors of the real world. (P2 and P3)
C2: It's possible to create an emulation that can exactly duplicate cognition. (C1 and P1)
So there's my proof. It's logically sound, so the way to refute it is to attack the premises. Here's how that goes:
Refutation of P3: "Emulation can't simulate reality, and never will!"
Refutation of P2: "Emulation is impossible!"
Refutation of P1: "Cognition is magic! WOOO!"
Choose whichever you like. (Christoph Koch chooses P1.)
Last edited by begbert2; 05-23-2019 at 01:27 PM. Reason: typo
What it's not, is the digitizing of the whole physical person a la Tron. I mean you could do that, but it really just amounts to destroying the original person as part of the process of scanning them for the information to make the digital copy. (And putting that copy in a fancy sci-fi outfit in the process.) Of course the Tron scenario allows for some confusion/obfuscation of whether some kind of immortal soul left over from the now-disintegrated person somehow locates and attaches itself to the simulated digital avatar, which honestly just seems rife with implementation problems. (Especially since they were just trying to copy an apple.)
Information, unlike mass, must be present in a simulation of something with that information. If you simulate telephone traffic, say, you don't need switch hardware but you do need the contents of the calls. This is simulation, not modeling, where you can describe the traffic mathematically without the information in them.
That's information, not integrated information of course. I did read at your link but found it less than interesting.
I see a "blank space" where you provide your ruminations about CTM being somehow related to "computational modeling" because it's so egregiously wrong. Please note the following commentary from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. They refer to the family of views I'm talking about here as classical CTM, or CCTM, to distinguish them from things like connectionist descriptions. CCTM is precisely what Putnam initially proposed and was then further developed into a mainstream theory at the forefront of cognitive science by Fodor (bolding mine):
According to CCTM, the mind is a computational system similar in important respects to a Turing machine ... CCTM is not intended metaphorically. CCTM does not simply hold that the mind is like a computing system. CCTM holds that the mind literally is a computing system.It then goes on to describe Fodor's particular variant of CCTM:
Fodor (1975, 1981, 1987, 1990, 1994, 2008) advocates a version of CCTM that accommodates systematicity and productivity much more satisfactorily [than Putnam's original formulation]. He shifts attention to the symbols manipulated during Turing-style computation.This is of course exactly correct. The prevalent view of CTM that was first advanced by Fodor and then became mainstream is that many cognitive processes consist of syntactic operations on symbols in just the manner of a Turing machine or a digital computer, and he further advanced the idea that these operations are a kind of "language of thought", sometimes called "mentalese". The proposition is that there is a literal correspondence with the operation of a computer program, and it has no relationship to your suggestions of "modeling" or of doing arithmetic in your head.
Let me re-iterate one of my previous comments. Our disagreement seems to arise from your conflation of "computation" with "algorithm". The question of what a "computation" is, in the most fundamental sense, is quite a different question from what problem is being solved by the computation. Your obsession with the difference between your f and f' functions is, at its core, not a computational issue, but a class-of-problem issue.
Of course you have to agree on the input and output symbols, and they must be consistent across computational systems. This doesn't seem to be a requirement for HMHW's view of interpretation.
In other words, Lincoln was wrong - a horse does have five legs if you interpret the tail as a leg.
It sounds like you are saying that if HMHW's box performs the transformation you listed (0110011 into 0100010) then that is considered a computation, right?
Meaning that HMWH's box may not be a Turing machine, it may just be a circuit that performs that transformation, but regardless of how it arrives at the correct answer, the transformation is considered a computation, right?
The internal wiring is wholly inconsequential; all it needs to fulfill is to make the right lights light up if the switches are flipped. There are various ways to do so, if you feel it's important, just choose any one of them.
You'll probably want to argue that 'inside the simulation', objects are attracted by the black hole, thus, it has mass. For one, that's a quite strange thing to believe: it would entail that you could create some sort of pocket-dimension, with its own physics removed from ours, merely by virtue of shuffling around a few voltages; that it would be the case, even though the black hole's mass has no effects in our dimension, there suddenly now exists a separate realm where mass exists that has no connection to ours save for your computer screen. In any other situation, you'd call that 'magic'.
Holding that the black hole in the simulation has mass is exactly the same thing as holding that the black hole I'm writing about has mass. The claim that computation creates consciousness is the claim that, whenever I'm writing 'john felt a pain in his hip', there is actually a felt pain somewhere, merely by virtue of me describing it. Because that's what a simulation is: an automated description. A computation is a chain of logical steps, equivalent to an argument, performed mechanically; there's no difference to writing down the same argument in text. The next step in the computation follows from the previous one in just the same way as the next line in an argument follows from the prior one.
Fodor indeed had heterodox views on the matter; but, while he's an important figure, computationalism isn't just what Fodor says it is. After all, it's the 'computational theory of the mind', not 'of some aspects of the mind'. Or, as your own cite from the SEP says,
Because that's computation in the actual, real-world sense of the term, absent any half-digested SEP articles. My claim is nothing but: because I can use the system to compute f (or f'), the system computes f (or f'). There is nothing difficult about this, and it needs loops of motivated reasoning in order to make it into anything terribly complex or contentious.
So no, the algorithm has no bearing on whether the system implements f or f'. The reinterpretation of the symbolic vehicles it uses entails that any algorithm for computing one will be transformed into one for computing the other. Where it says 'If S12 = '1' Then ...' in one, it'll say 'If S12 = '0' Then ...' in the other, with both referring to the switch being in the 'up' position, say.
You made it very explicit that your argument depends on a blatantly false assumption, and it's not misconstruing things to point out that the realities of the function of black boxes and internal processes are what show that your assumption is blatantly false.
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Well....wow. Just wow. I can't tell everyone how humbled and...another word for humbled...and yet another, different word for humbled but with a slightly different meaning...I am. (I'm sorry, but the thesaurus on my computer isn't working. So, you'll have to bare with me. Or bear with me. Sorry but the spell check thingy and the grammar gizmo is also busted.)
Ever since I annoonced that my book on Writing Animation is in the works, I've been ininundilatedated with emails from people who are excited and...another word for excited...and yet another, different word for excited but with a slightly different meaning. I'm super gravilgakin. Really.
Leonard Krelms of Baywater wrote:
"Mr. Rugg! I've often hoped and prayed that someone would write a book on writing animation. And now, you are! Now people will know how to do that! I feel your book will be the most important thing to come out this year. You have not paid me to say that. I have never met you. I have the documents to prove it and will repudiate with all force at my disposal anyone who asserts otherwise. They are liars and probably jealous. Can't wait!"
Thanks, Leonard! I can also say that I never heard of you before I received your email and can back up that claim with various documents and affidavits. Nor have I exchange any goods or services to solicit...another word for solicit...and yet another, different word for solicit but with a stronger meaning...a fake email by you which endorses my book. I further assert and another word for assert and another word for assert that I have no financial interest whatsoever in the Baywater Development Company, and, as of last week, divested all shares in said company...etc. etc. etc...to whit, all monies do me...etc. etc. etc...have been nuanced and applied to various holding companies to which I am sole shareholder. My attorney, Arnold Buxzum, has directed me to assert my rights through these holding companies to legally deny that we ever had any direct contact.
So, anyway! Keep those emails cooming!


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Five familiar faces will take over top jobs with Gaston County Schools effective July 1.
Five familiar faces will take over top jobs with Gaston County Schools effective July 1.
They join six new principals announced last month by Gaston County Schools.
Glynis Brooks will be the new principal at South Point High School in Belmont. She�s been the principal at Southwest Middle School in Gastonia for the past five years.
Brooks replaces Gary Ford, who will work as executive director of middle school instruction with the school system.
He joined Gaston schools two decades ago as a teacher at Holbrook Middle and worked his way up the ranks to school administration, said Gaston County Schools� spokeswoman Bonnie Reidy.
Ford worked as East Gaston High School�s assistant principal from 1998 to 2001, then was named principal of W.C. Friday Middle School in Dallas. He�s also worked as principal at Holbrook Middle School in Lowell, she said.
�He is an excellent choice to lead our middle school instructional program,� Reidy said.
Lorinda Brusie will begin her tenure as principal at York Chester Middle School. She�s been principal at Hawks Nest Intermediate School for the past two years, helping educate Gastonia fourth and fifth graders.
Brusie said she enjoyed being assistant principal at W.C. Friday Middle and Holbrook Middle in the past, and it�s a joy to help prepare students for high school.
�My goal is to get to know the staff and the students and build those relationships,� she said.
School officials say Mike Grimmer, principal at York Chester Middle, will replace Brusie at Hawks Nest.
He has 15 years experience as a teacher and administrator with Gaston County Schools, including stints as principal at both Webb Street School and Forest Heights Elementary in Gastonia.
Rhyne Elementary School Principal Rebecca Huffstetler is also taking a new job.
She�s set to begin work as principal at Southwest Middle.
In 15 years with Gaston County Schools, Huffstetler has also worked as a teacher and assistant principal.
Linda Neely will replace Huffstetler at Rhyne. She�s worked as assistant principal at York Chester Middle for the past eight years.
Neely was also a teacher at Hunter Huss High School and Ashbrook High.
Same position, different school
Four local assistant principals will begin work at other schools on July 1.
Chelsea Barnes of Bessemer City Central will work as assistant principal at East Gaston High.
Jessica Mellon, currently at Grier Middle School in Gastonia, will begin work at North Gaston High School.
North Gaston High School Assistant Principal Loretta Reed will begin work as assistant principal at York Chester Middle School.
New administrators
School board members also appointed several teachers to work as assistant principals.
Caroline Black will begin work at South Point High. She�s currently a teacher at Hawks Nest Intermediate.
Tryon Elementary School principal fellow Shawn Hubers will work as assistant principal at Cherryville Elementary.
Ashbrook High School in Gastonia will get a new assistant principal in Pam Huffstetler, who currently works as a career development coordinator at Cherryville High School.
Two teachers at Costner Elementary School in Dallas are appointed to assistant principal posts.
Allison Rhyne will work at John Chavis Middle School in Cherryville, and Lisa Pennington will work at East Gaston High School.
School Board appoints trustee
The Gaston County Board of Education appointed May Gray Robinson to serve on the Gaston College Board of Trustees.
Reidy said Robinson is a Gastonia resident who works as a Realtor. She is also a former school board member.
Kenny Lutz, school board chairman, said she will be in a position to help the school system prepare students for attending college.
�She would be a great liaison person between us and the college, knowing what we need as a school system and what the college could provide, and mesh those together,� he said.
You can reach Wade Allen at 704-869-1828 or twitter.com/GazetteWade.
New jobs for Gaston County Schools� employees, beginning July 1:
Gary Ford- Executive director of middle school instruction at Gaston County Schools� central office
Glynis Brooks- Principal at South Point High School
Lorinda Brusie � Principal at York Chester Middle School
Mike Grimmer � Principal at Hawks Nest Intermediate
Rebecca Huffstetler � Principal at Southwest Middle School
Linda Neely � Principal at Rhyne Elementary School
Chelsea Barnes � Assistant principal at Bessemer City Central Elementary School
Glen Cook � Assistant principal at Stuart W. Cramer High School
Jessica Mellon � Assistant Principal at North Gaston High School
Loretta Reed � Assistant principal at York Chester Middle School
Caroline Black � Assistant principal at South Point High School
Shawn Hubers � Assistant Principal at Cherryville Elementary School
Pam Huffstetler � Assistant principal at Ashbrook High School
Lisa Pennington � Assistant principal at East Gaston High School
Allison Rhyne � Assistant principal at John Chavis Middle School