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Stack Overflow sites can give good answers blazingly fast, I have asked questions which have been answered in minutes which no amount of Google-fu could help me with. This is makes it a great resource.
However some questions could simply be answered if the question was typed into Google, with potentially good answers elsewhere. Is it yet considered bad etiquette to do this? Should it be?


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motto and coat of arms
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has chosen the motto "Miserando atque eligendo", meaning lowly but chosen; literally in Latin 'by having mercy, by choosing him'.
The motto is one the Pope had already chosen as Bishop. It is taken from the homilies of the Venerable Bede on Saint Matthew's Gospel relating to his vocation:"Jesus saw the tax collector and by having mercy chose him as an Apostle saying to him : Follow me."
This homily, which focuses on divine mercy and is reproduced in the Liturgy of the Hours on the Feast of Saint Matthew, has taken on special significance in the Pope's life and spiritual journey.
In fact it was on the Feast of Saint Matthew in 1953 that a young seventeen year-old Jorge Bergoglio was touched by the mercy of God and felt the call to religious life in the footsteps of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
Beyond the motto, the coat of arms has a blue field and is surmounted by the mitre and the papal keys. On the crest itself at the centre is the symbol of the Jesuits, a flaming sun with the three letters recalling the name and the salvific mission of Jesus. Underneath we have two more symbols: to the right the star representing Mary and to the left the nard flower representing Joseph.

subset: commoncrawl


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Help! Should I Brine My Turkey?
Generally, I stick to basting or butter rubs to ensure a moist bird, but many Thanksgiving cooks swear by brining.
The Culinary Institute of America certainly does: they recommend brining as the very best method to ensure bold flavor and moistness. Essentially a brine is a seasoned aromatic liquid in which the turkey bathes before roasting. This technique is often used in preparing all kinds of poultry to maximize juiciness in the finished product. The salt in the brine breaks down the turkey's proteins, making it more tender and keeping in moisture that would normally be squeezed out. Here are a few important brining tips:
- Plan ahead: turkeys generally should brine anywhere from 12-15 hours.
- Choose a container large enough to hold the brining liquid and the turkey. You don't want any spillage situations!
- The basic ratio for a brine is three gallons of water to two ounces of salt.
- Let the brine cool before adding the turkey, otherwise the bird will begin to cook.
- Choose aromatics that you like the taste of, like bay leaves, thyme, and parsley.
- Make sure you have enough space in your refrigerator ahead of time to hold the container. This will save you from a big headache and mess later.
- Be sure to pat your bird dry before roasting.
Check out a step-by-step brining video to see how it's done. What do you guys think? Is brining the best way to go, or is it more hassle than it's worth? What's your method for a moist, flavorful bird?


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Friday 2nd November 2012 |
Text too small? |
Tower, the insurance and wealth management company, agreed to sell Tower Medical Insurance to ASX-listed nib holdings for about $102 million and plans to return the capital to shareholders. The shares jumped 3.1 percent.
The decision to sell Tower Medical, which has a market share of about 13 percent, came after Tower reviewed all of its insurance businesses this year and concluded it wouldn't achieve "the necessary scale of return in this business in the immediate future."
Tower managing director Rob Flannagan also said net profit in the year ended Sept. 30 was in a range of $51 million to $56 million, exceeding the upper end of analyst estimates.
Nib said buying Tower Medical fitted with its strategy of expanding in international markets. Tower Medical has annual premium revenue of about $140 million and reported net profit of $6.8 million in the second half. The unit ranks second in New Zealand's health insurance market behind Southern Cross Healthcare with 60 percent.
"We've been looking at the New Zealand market for about three years now," managing director Mark Fitzgibbon told BusinessDesk. "We're a believer in big trends, world trends. There's more spending on healthcare and dismantling of international barriers."
He said the New Zealand market was like Australia's health insurance landscape early last decade - "one dominant player, no obvious competitive tension and the government knows budget constraints mean there must be more future private funding of healthcare."
"There is opportunity for a new player," he said. Nib brands would likely be rolled out in the New Zealand market early in the New Year.
The sale to nib is subject to Overseas Investment Office approval and is expected to settle before Dec. 31. Nib will fund the purchase through surplus capital and a $70 million senior debt facility. Nib won't own hospitals or health clinics and expects to contract with doctors and private health providers including Southern Cross.
Tower shares rose 6 cents to $1.99 on the NZX. Nib last traded at A$1.81 on the ASX and has gained 21 percent this year.
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Tower to return 'initial' $70M of capital from sale of life business
Tower shares fall to 2-month low as licensing requirements may weigh on capital returns
Tower's licensing talks with RBNZ may push up minimum solvency requirements
Tower names Hancock as new chief executive, replacing Flannagan
Tower posts first-half profit as asset sales reap gains of $51.4 mln
Fidelity Life acquires most of Tower's life insurance business
Flannagan to leave Tower after strategic review, asset sales
Tower FY profit jumps 67%, to return $120M to shareholders; shares jump
Stiassny joins Tower board as questions linger over strategy
Tower lifts premiums for house, contents and motor cover


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In the summer of 2007, thirty-four travellers left home with backpacks in tow to see the world. But these weren't human students, out to get drunk and pretentious find themselves in foreign lands - they were small songbirds, migrating to tropical climates for the winter.
Their backpacks were light-measuring devices called "geolocators", each about the size of a small coin. By measuring rising and falling light levels, these miniature contraptions revealed the timings of sunrise and sunset wherever the birds happened to be flying. Those, in turn, revealed where they were in the world, and allowed Bridget Stutchbury from York University, Toronto to achieve a world-first - track the entire voyage of a migrating songbird, from the start of the outbound trip to the end of the return journey.
The recordings show that tiny wood thrushes and purple martins are far more capable fliers than anyone had thought. They can cover 500 kilometres in a day, flying more than three times as fast as previously expected. Previous studies had credited these tiny fliers with top migration speeds of just 150 km/day. But these had major flaws.
Songbirds are so small that they can't be tracked by satellites, making their annual migrations difficult to track. Until now, what we knew about their journeys came from brief glimpses on radar or studies done at pit-stops along the way. One incredible study managed to track thrushes during a short part of their travels by injecting them with mildly radioactive isotopes and following them in a plane. All of these studies have provided mere glimpses of the overall migration, like piecing together a movie from still shots and trailer clips. Stutchbury's team from the University of York, Toronto have managed to record the entire film.
They captured 14 wood thrushes and 20 purple martins in northern Pennsylvania and fitted them with geolocators. One year later, in the summer of 2008, they managed to recapture five of the thrushes and two of the martins, and analysed the data stored in their mechanical backpacks. These recordings revealed an aeronautical skill that has been greatly underestimated.
Both purple martins flew from the eastern United States across the Gulf of Mexico to the Yucatan Peninsula. They covered the 2,500 km distance in just five days, travelling at a speed of just 500 km/day. There, they stopped for about 3-4 weeks before carrying on to Brazil. The thrushes took a similar route but had a short stopover in the southeastern United States before moving on to a very narrow region of Nicaragua and Honduras, where they spent the winter.
Both species flew faster on the return trip than the outbound one. One particularly speedy martin left the Amazon on the 12th of April and was home by the end of the month. It covered the 7,500 km trip home in just 13 days, nine of which in spent on the wing. That gave it an astonishing flight speed of just under 600 km per day. The wood thrushes also flew home in 13-15 days, but with less ground to cover, they did so more leisurely than the martins.
Charting the journeys of small birds is much more than a birdwatcher's fancy - it will be an increasingly important part of conserving these charismatic songsters. The populations of many songbird species are crashing in North American and Europe and their dependence on distant parts of the world for shelter and food makes them vulnerable to global shifts in climate.
These threats make it ever more urgent to work out exactly where they go when they migrate and the routes they take to get there. For example, we now know that wood thrushes, one of the species in decline, spend winter in a very narrow band of forest in Nicaragua and Honduras. This area will be a clear staging ground for any future efforts to conserve this species. Only with information like this can we hope to understand how habitat loss and climate change will affect them in the future and only then can we make sensible plans to ensure their survival.
Reference: Science 10.1126/science.1166664
More on birds:
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More like this
I read about this this morning in -- of all places -- Language Log. It seems that MSNBC gave this story a rather unfortunate headline. (Still up as of 12:30 EST.)
Thanks for giving us the story without distractions.
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Very interesting--thanks--and a university close to home.
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It's very interesting how technology is advancing science. We learn new information every day thanks to such devices as this "bird backpack".
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By measuring rising and falling light levels, these miniature contraptions revealed the timings of sunrise and sunset wherever the birds happened to be flying.
Um, sunrise and sunset timings will give you longitude provided latitude is known. How did they determine latitude? Also, what do the colors of the lines and dotted versus solid lines indicate in the figures you've shown?
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Stagyar: the length of the day tells you the latitude. Me, I'm astonished they were able to get enough precision out of such measurements.
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Length of day would tell you latitude if you were stationary.
Each time of sunrise or sunset puts you somewhere on a great circle, which is inclined to the equator at a (known) angle between 66.5 deg and 90 deg depending on time of year. I don't see how you can locate yourself on said circle. You could apply some heuristics (conservative estimates of distance traversed from last known location, etc.) and constrain your path to pass through known points but it would be very iffy.
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Afghan child bride's in-laws sentenced for torture
May 5, 2012, 4:38 PM
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – The in-laws of a child bride who became the bruised and bloodied face of women's rights in Afghanistan have been sentenced to 10 years in prison for torture, abuse and human rights violations, a judge said Saturday.
The plight of 15-year-old Sahar Gul captivated the nation and set off a storm of international condemnation when it came to light in late December. Officials said her husband's family kept her in a basement for six months after her arranged marriage, ripping out her fingernails, breaking her fingers and torturing her with hot irons in an attempt to force her into prostitution.
She was rescued by police in northeastern Baghlan province after an uncle alerted authorities.
Gul's husband's father, mother and sister were each sentenced to 10 years in prison by a court in Kabul on Tuesday, presiding judge Sibghatullah Razi said.
Also found guilty were Gul's husband, a member of the Afghan army, and her brother-in-law, both of whom have been on the run since her case became public, Razi said. He said the men will be sentenced when they are captured.
Gul was present for the decision, telling the court that she wanted her in-laws "severely punished" for what they had put her through, Razi said. She has filed an appeal for a longer sentence with the help of the Women for Afghan Women, a group that works for women's rights in the country and has been caring for the teenager since her rescue.
"Of course we are not happy with the court's decision," said Huma Safi, program manager for the group.
Gul's case has prompted calls for more efforts to strengthen women's rights and end underage marriage. The legal marriage age in Afghanistan is 16, but the United Nations agency UN Women estimates that half of all girls are forced to marry under age 15.
There has been progress in women's rights since the 2001 U.S.-led campaign that toppled the Taliban regime, which banned girls' schools and prevented women from leaving the house unless accompanied by a male relative.
But ending abuse remains a huge challenge in Afghanistan's patriarchal society, where traditional practices include child marriage, giving girls away to settle debts or pay for their relatives' crimes and so-called honor killings in which women seen as disgracing their families are murdered by their relatives.
Gul, who had been married for seven months when she was found in late December, is still seeing doctors for some problems with her hands and fingers, but is doing better both physically and emotionally, Safi said. She said the girl is now very interested in studying, very different from when she first arrived.
She also has made great progress in her efforts to become comfortable around other people again, Safi said.
"She was very brave. When she was brought to us after her rescue, she was unable to speak. But this week she was able to get up and speak in front of an entire courtroom asking for her rights," Safi said.
"These are all positive signs and of course we are very proud of her."
Associated Press writer Chris Blake in Kabul contributed to this report.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


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These views from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) portray the Lutzow-Holm Bay region of Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica, on September 5, 2002. Although Queen Maud Land remains one of the least studied regions of Antarctica, Lutzow-Holm Bay is an exception. Syowa (pronounced 'Showa') Station is the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition base situated on Ongul Island, just off the eastern coast of the Bay (in the top right-hand portion of these views). Scientists there have studied changes in the ice sheet and sea level for several decades. Large outlet glaciers, such as the fast-flowing Shirase Glacier in the lower right-hand corner of these images, are the primary drainage systems for the Antarctic ice sheet.
These two views provide information on both the spectral and angular reflectance properties of the region and can be used to understand the geophysical environment. The top panel shows the region from MISR's downward-looking (nadir) camera and is a false-color view in which the near-infrared, green and blue spectral bands have been displayed as red, green and blue. Because of the tendency of water to absorb near-infrared wavelengths, some ice types exhibit an especially bright blue hue in this display.
The lower panel is a multi-angular composite from three MISR cameras in which changes in reflection at different view angles, as well as in the near-infrared spectral region, assist with the identification of rough and smooth ice surfaces. In this display, red band data from MISR's 60-degree forward and backward-viewing cameras are displayed as red and blue, respectively, and near-infrared data from the nadir camera are displayed as green. Using this technique, surfaces that predominantly exhibit backward scattering (generally rough surfaces) appear red/orange, and surfaces that predominantly exhibit forward scattering (generally smooth surfaces) appear in blue hues. Clouds (and other surfaces that exhibit both forward and backward scattering) appear purple.
The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth continuouslyand every 9 days views the entire globe between 82 degrees north and 82 degrees south latitude. These data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 16454. The panels cover an area of about 335 kilometers x 257 kilometers, and utilize data from blocks 145 to 147 within World Reference System-2 path 151.


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On its release, Home on the Range carried the dubious distinction of signalling the death knell of 2D animation. Announced as the last primarily hand-drawn feature produced by Walt Disney feature animation (though 2009's The Princess and the Frog would buck the CGI system), Home on the Range balanced industry despair with good cheer--despite signs to the contrary, Disney still believed in happy endings.
This bouncy Western musical-comedy adventure is long enough on charm, but wisely short and sweet at 76 minutes. It's also totally bereft of innovation, retelling the old chestnut about a farm facing foreclosure by pumping it full of tried-and-true elements (hey! a mine-car track is a lot like a roller coaster!). The farm in question, called the "Patch of Heaven," can only be saved by its plucky barnyard denizens, rallied by new arrival Maggie; heading a familiar voices cast, Roseanne Barr gives the heifer her customary sass and a surprising amount of warmth.
Joined by spacy Grace (Jennifer Tilly) and harrumphing Mrs. Calloway (Judi Dench), Maggie heads into town and gets the threesome lassooed to a cattle drive in an attempt to bait a cattle rustler. If the cows can nab the bad guy, you see, they can collect enough reward money to save the Patch of Heaven. Complicating matters is a bounty hunter already on the trail and the karate-kicking stallion (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) who idolizes him and inexplicably spouts self-motivational James Brown grunts. Randy Quaid plays the baddie, Alameda Slim, who resembles a gigantic Yosemite Sam. A lowlife human voiced by Steve Buscemi and a Walter Huston-esque unlucky jackrabbit also join the fun.
One fundamental problem with the picture is its flirtation with older filmgoers; though parents will always find the tactic understandably welcome, the film is in danger of pleasing the adults more than the children, with its anachronistic, adult-minded quips (Maggie refers to her udder as "real--quit starin'!") and moody longueurs, one accompanied by a sad Bonnie Raitt vocal. Often enough, writer-directors Will Finn and John Sanford please both masters, as in a jokey reverie for Buck which finds him kicking ass in a sudden, spaghetti-western shift to Cinemascope.
The most distinctive element of an otherwise forgettable picture are the lovely songs by composer Alan Menken (Little Shop of Horrors, Beauty and the Beast) and lyricist Glenn Slater, abetted by country stars. Besides Raitt's ballad ("Will The Sun Ever Shine Again?"), Menken and Slater serve up the title theme, K.D. Lang sings the cheery "Little Patch Of Heaven," and Tim McGraw warbles "Wherever The Trail May Lead." Randy Quaid's Alameda Slim gets the splashiest number: "Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo," a yodelling roundup number with psychedelic visuals reminiscent of Dumbo's "Pink Elephants on Parade."
Naturally, the picture studiously sidesteps the not-so-nice realities of livestock (exceptions: Maggie says, "Don't everybody talk at once--what is this, the frozen foods section?" and a grumpy goat sputters, "They're stew meat" as the cows head into town). Gleefully, the filmmakers get in a dig at DreamWorks, when Maggie calls Buck "Stallion of the Cim-Moron," but Home on the Range is a good-natured, pleasant outing that looks like a pretty good option next to the overkill of Scooby Doo and its noisy live-action ilk. The prospect of a future of solely computer-generated creations had animation fans crying "Shane! Come back!" before long. With its colorful imagery, Home on the Range made a decent-enough short-term elegy.
Disney provides Home on the Range with a Blu-ray + DVD special edition for its hi-def debut. The blu-ray's A/V specs mark an improvement over standard-def, though the image does have a few noticeable digital artifacts, including aliasing, edge enhancement, and mild banding. Probably due to the film's vintage, the distinction between computer-generated elements and relatively soft hand-drawn elements can sometimes be glaring, with the latter occasionally taking on even something of a blurry aspect in some parts of the frame, though that's definitely a rare occurence. Despite such quibbles, the picture excels in color, black level and contrast, and detail, and the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix doesn't disappoint, nicely maximizing the material with some LFE oomph and full-bodied treatment of the music.
The significant bonus features from earlier editions return here, including a pretty informative (though probably not very frank) audio commentary by producer Alice Dewey Goldstone and writers/directors Will Finn and John Sanford (to be found in the audio menu).
Four "Deleted Scenes" (14:57, SD) come with directors' introductions, and we get the "Music Video 'Anytime You Need a Friend'" (3:21, SD) by the Beu Sisters.
"Art Review" (10:15, SD) is a video gallery of research reference and concept and design art, with voice-over by art director David Cutler and background department head Cristy Maltese.
"Trailblazers: The Making of Home on the Range" (16:40, SD) is a surprisingly lengthy making-of featurette providing the project's history, concept art, and glimpses of the voice cast and musicians at work.
"A Dairy Tale: The Three Little Pigs" (3:29, SD) is an animated short with the film's voice cast (featuring Judi Dench as narrator).
"YodelMentary" (2:43, SD) doesn't last long, but scratches the surface of the subject of yodelling.
Last up is the montage "Joke Corral: Herd of Jokes" (4:34, SD).
Review gear: |
Panasonic Viera TC-P55VT30 55" Plasma 1080p 3D HDTV
Oppo BDP-93 Universal Network 3D Blu-ray Disc Player
Denon AVR2112CI Integrated Network A/V Surround Receiver
Pioneer SP-BS41-LR Bookshelf Speaker (2)
Pioneer SP-C21 Center Speaker
Pioneer SW-8 Subwoofer


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All for our dresses are made to order, so please allow 2 -3 weeks for production. Guaranteed hand made by our talented tailors.We are glad to make this dress for you by custom orders, so we prefer to make this dress according on your measurements and desired length.Measurements, which should be taken strictly according to the above instruction by professional, not by yourself.
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10. If you are from Brazil, please kind tell us CPF number =
It's really so necessary, without CPF number, the dress can't be shipped;
Things you need to know before place us the order:
1. Accessories: The bidding is only for the dress, not including any accessories such as gloves, jacket, wedding veil, or petticoat and so on, please tell us if you also want to order the accessories, we will give you good price;
2. Extra charges: Please be noted that we will need to charge you USD 30 extra if you are plus size, which is bigger than US size 18W;
3. Changes: We usually don't accept changes on the original design, but if you really want to change, we can do our best to do it for you, but if the final effect is not as nice as you expected, we don't accept return and refund, please be noted;
4. Processing time: We already displayed in the product page that we will need around 18-30 days to finish your dress, and another days for shipment, if you need the dress very urgent, please do remember to ask us whether we can do it or not before you placed the order; We don't accept the cancellation which is still in the processing time;
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2. We work with DHL, UPS, EMS, Aramex, China Post Air Mail, you can choose right one you want; We also use other post office depend on different countries and safety, and we will inform you the tracking number after post;
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4. Once your order has been shipped, it can no longer be cancelled;
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1. If you are returning dresses or accessories, please make sure they are in their original condition unworn, unwashed, unaltered, undamaged, clean, free of lint and hair and with tags intact and attached.
2. The shipping fee when you sent the dress back will be on your account, please be noted;
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1. If you like it, please kindly give us 5 stars feedback and nice reviews, we will appreciate it so much;
2. If you don't like it, please contact right away, we will do our best to help you to solve the problem;
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Cook Inlet commercial fishing groups are concerned about a potential lack of funding for studying the smolt out-migration on the Kenai River, a basic tool used to help determine future run strength.
There is funding for this year, but it is not currently included in the budget for Fiscal Year 2014, which is what the Legislature is currently working on.
While rumors that the Soldotna office of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game were given the choice to either get funding for the Kenai smolt-out or the Susitna River weir project are not accurate, ADF&G biologist Mark Willette in Soldotna said that the Kenai smolt-out funds were removed from the department's funding request given to the governor's office.
He said the Soldotna office submitted requests for both projects, but that people either at the Anchorage or Juneau level decided to include only the Susitna weir project in the governor's request prepared by the department.
"They didn't include the Kenai smolt," he said, "but we weren't given the option. It wasn't like they said 'which one do you want?'"
However, Willette said he agrees with the prioritization.
"The Susitna weirs, we have escapement goals for them, but we're no longer using the sonar to estimate escapement into the Susitna River, so we really need to have those weirs to manage the Susitna sockeye," he said.
Willette said it is too early to know whether the Legislature might still include the Kenai smolt-out funding.
"That's not clear, the Legislature is nowhere near being finished," he said. "All I can say is that the Susitna weirs were put into the department's budget that went to the Legislature, the Kenai smolt was not."
The lack of Kenai smolt-out numbers may hinder forecasting future run strength as over-escapements have stressed the system, causing some Kenai sockeye salmon to extend their stay in the fresh-water system.
"We found, particularly in the past two years, that we've had a particularly high number of six-year-olds coming back to the Kenai, which have really been the driver of the relatively good returns we've had," said Willette.
Those fish are ones that have spent two years in fresh water before out-migrating to the ocean, instead of the usual one year, and have spent three years in saltwater before returning, and are referred to as 2-3's.
Smolt data for the parent years of those fish have shown an unusually high number of age two smolt going out.
"The smolt data has been very useful for forecasting, particularly the past two years," Willette said.
He said that another forecasting tool ADF&G uses, called the sibling model, where they try to predict the number of six-year-olds that will be coming back based on the number of five-year-olds that came back the previous year, does not seem to work very well to predict the number of 2-3's that are coming back to the Kenai River.
Willette said that the lack of Kenai River smolt data could make predicting the run difficult, particularly if they continue to have high numbers of 2-3's.
He said that the effect of large over-escapements in 2003 through 2006 produced the shift in age composition of the smolt, because the density of fry in the lake increased competition for food, and the fry were not able to reach their threshold for out-migration in a single year. The department thought that effect would diminish in the period of smaller escapements in 2007-2009, but that did not happen.
The situation may not improve in light of the escapements of the past three years being above the upper end of the goal.
"Those higher spawner abundances may cause this shift in the age composition (of smolt) to continue," Willette said. "We'll have to wait and see."
United Cook Inlet Drift Association President Dave Martin said that will be pretty hard to "see" without funding for the smolt-out studies.
"Without the smolt-outs, they're flying blind," he said. "They have no idea what's coming back, not even a best guess."
State Rep. Bill Stoltze, R-Chugiak, is taking another run at trying to get the Legislature into the fisheries allocation battle with HB 18, "An act providing priority to personal use fisheries when fishing restrictions are implemented to achieve a management goal."
Stoltze tried a similar bill last year, HB 20, which failed.
While many see it as targeted at the popular Kenai River dipnet fishery, others think it may be a way for a Mat-Su Valley legislator to put limits over and above what the Board of Fisheries and ADF&G dictate on the Upper Cook Inlet commercial salmon fishery to allow more fish into Valley river systems open to personal-use fishing, such as Fish Creek.
However, the bill also is causing concern for the Kenai City Council and other city officials, according to the Peninsula Clarion.
Kenai council members Ryan Marquis and Bob Molloy are afraid the bill would lead to another 24-hour dipnet fishery opening. If commercial and sport fisheries are closed and the personal-use dipnet fishery remains open, Fish and Game may move to open it for 24 hours during the month it is open to ensure enough fish are caught, Molloy said.
Molloy said the council has traditionally supported equal harvest opportunities for all user groups, and the bill would be a drastic departure from that. He does not support the bill, he said.
"Allocations should be based on science," he said. They should not be based on politics, he said.
Stoltze acknowledged that his bill may be unpopular in other districts where commercial and sport fishing are more prominent season-long than personal-use, but he is putting Alaska residents first by making personal-use fisheries a priority during times of fishing restrictions.
"I'm representing the point of view of a pretty broad group of users," Stoltze said, adding that people use the resource for food.
But the fisheries are more than a source of food for many families in Kenai — they are a source of income, Molloy said. He said there would be an outcry in Kenai if the bill passed as is written.
Cristy Fry has commercial fished out of Homer and King Cove since 1978. She can be reached at email@example.com.


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Georgie Tapps
(Mortimer Ambrose Becker)
tap dancer
Born: 11/6/1911
Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
A tap dancer and choreographer, Tapps performed in films of the 1930s and 1940s, including 52nd Street (1937) and Vogues (1937). On stage he appeared with George M. Cohan in I'd Rather Be Right (1937) and replaced Gene Kelly in the title role of Pal Joey (1942). Tapps did solo work, tapping to classical pieces such as Ravel's Bolero. His troupe toured Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, appearing in cabarets. He came out of retirement to perform in the show Whatever Happened to Georgie Tapps? (1979).
Died: 11/1/1997 See also:


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As anyone who's ever seen it will testify, cracked.com is one of the very best sites that the internet has, but I thought this article was brilliant even by their standards. It's a pretty jaded article, sure, but damn if I don't agree with every single word. I mean, I love movies, I went to film school, I have hundreds and hundreds of them on DVD from all periods of cinema history - and yet maybe seven or eight of those were released in the last six years or so.
I've come to the conclusion that we don't really need Hollywood and the star system anymore. A lot of my favourite films ever have next to nothing in the way of special effects, and since it's been proven time and again that you can make a great film on a shoestring budget, why the hell are people still paying $20,000,000 for one actor to be in their film?


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Fifty million years ago, India slammed into Eurasia, a collision that gave rise to the tallest landforms on the planet, the Himalaya Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau.
India and Eurasia continue to converge today, though at an ever-slowing pace. University of Michigan geomorphologist and geophysicist Marin Clark wanted to know when this motion will end and why. She conducted a study that led to surprising findings that could add a new wrinkle to the well-established theory of plate tectonics -- the dominant, unifying theory of geology.
"The exciting thing here is that it's not easy to make progress in a field (plate tectonics) that's 50 years old and is the major tenet that we operate under," said Clark, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.
"The Himalaya and Tibet are the highest mountains today on Earth, and we think they're probably the highest mountains in the last 500 million years," she said. "And my paper is about how this is going to end and what's slowing down the Indian plate."
Clark's paper is scheduled for online publication Feb. 29 in the journal Nature.
In it, she suggests that the strength of the underlying mantle, not the height of the mountains, is the critical factor that will determine when the Himalayan-Tibetan mountain-building episode ends. Earth's mantle is the thick shell of rock that separates the crust above from the core below.
According to the theory of plate tectonics, the outer part of Earth is broken into several large plates, like pieces of cracked shell on a boiled egg. The continents ride on the plates, which move relative to one another and occasionally collide. The tectonic plates move about as fast as your fingernails grow, and intense geological activity -- volcanoes, earthquakes and mountain-building, for example -- occurs at the plate boundaries.
The rate at which the Indian sub-continent creeps toward Eurasia is slowing exponentially, according to Clark, who reviewed published positions of northern India over the last 67 million years to evaluate convergence rates. The convergence will halt -- putting an end to one of the longest periods of mountain-building in recent geological history -- in about 20 million years, she estimates.
And what will cause it to stop?
Until now, conventional wisdom among geologists has been that the slowing of convergence at mountainous plate boundaries was related to changes in the height of the mountains. As the mountains grew taller, they exerted an increasing amount of force on the plate boundary, which slowed the convergence.
But in her Nature paper, Clark posits that a different model, one based on the strength of the uppermost mantle directly beneath the mountains, best explains the observed post-collisional motions of the Indian plate.
By "strength" Clark means the uppermost mantle's ability to withstand deformation, a property called viscous resistance. Clark suggests that the relatively strong mantle directly beneath Tibet and the Himalayas acts as a brake that slows -- and will eventually halt -- the convergence of the two continents.
"My paper is arguing that it's not the height of the mountains, it's the strength of the mantle that's controlling this slowing," Clark said. "This is something that hasn't been considered before and basically grew out of field observations in northern Tibet."
But viscous resistance doesn't tell the whole story. Other factors may also contribute to the slowing of the Indian plate, Clark said.
"For me, critical field observations showed that the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau hasn't moved since the collision 50 million years ago," she said. "Therefore, the Tibetan Plateau is getting smaller in width. It's like squeezing a box and making it narrower while squeezing it up."
The rate at which the box is being squeezed is the average rate of mountain-building, and it provides important clues about the factors controlling plate motion. Clark analyzed how the convergence is slowing as compared to the shrinking of the plateau.
"If the height of the mountains were important in slowing India's convergence, then the rate of mountain-building should also slow down as the Himalaya and Tibet grew to high elevation," Clark said. "But when I analyzed how the mountain-building rate changed over the past 50 million years, I was surprised to find that it didn't change at all.
"From this I conclude that the strength of the uppermost mantle is keeping this mountain- building constant. But as the box is shrinking, the plate motion must slow down to keep the shrinking rate the same," she said.
Support for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation's Continental Dynamics Program.
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D. Bradley Leech
We at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics want to tell you and everyone at Child's Play Charity how much we appreciate all you do for our children and their families. Thank you so much for providing hours of entertainment to our kids during their hospital stay and treatments.
Nintendo, games for PS-2 and other game systems for our playrooms work with kids of all ages and developmental abilities. There are a variety of activities that if one does not interest our patient we just move on until we find one that does. A familiar phrase that is repeated by Children's Mercy's staff is there are a million reasons why children should be treated at our hospital. And, we also understand that smiles are as important as medicine. That is a reality that Child's Play Charity is doing for our kids - adding a smile to their faces at a time when it is needed the most.
On behalf of all of us at Children's Mercy and especially our children, we extend our heartfelt thanks for your continued friendship and sincerely appreciate your passion for children in the Kansas City community. Our special thanks for helping us invest in the future of our most precious treasure - the children.
With gratitude,
D. Bradley Leech - Children's Mercy Hospital


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The Bracelets
Each computer cable bracelet is salvaged from a computer or other electronics. This makes each one of the bracelets different and unique from each other. All text, patterns, or images on the computer cables are original to the cable and is not added to the cable. All computer cable is cleaned and tested to ensure there is no lead in the plastic coating and wires.
This bracelet is 8 inches long. The bracelet has a 1 inch chain to help adjust the size of the bracelet to fit your wrist.
What Are Computer Cables?
Are all the cables and wires that connect all the components inside of computers and other electronics. The cable that connected LED light, power supplies, USB ports, buttons to circuit boards, etc.


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Kruger Park Safari Travel Advice
For general information on travelling to South Africa and the Kruger National Park, visit our South Africa travel advice page.
Top Travel Tips for the Kruger National Park
Keep it Safe: not only will you encounter large and potentially dangerous animals either when you are in a 4X4 vehicle or when on a walking safari, but accommodation in the Kruger National Park and its private reserves tends to be unfenced and it's not unusual for wild animals to wander through camp. Listen carefully to the safety briefings given by your ranger and lodge manager, and feel free to request an escort to and from your tent at night.
Mind the Mosquitoes: the Kruger National Park lies within the malaria belt but the chances of contracting the disease are low, even during the rainy summer months (December to April) when mosquito numbers are at their highest. Nevertheless, you're strongly advised to consult a medical practitioner before you visit the Kruger (especially if you are taking children) and to take necessary precautions to avoid being bitten while you're there.
Wrap Up in Winter: with early morning temperatures barely above freezing in June and July, it'll be colder than you think during Kruger's mid-winter season. Bring a warm top and hat for morning and evening game drives – many lodges will also supply blankets your personal use during these activities.
Avoid School Holidays: the main public-access park can get very busy during South Africa's long December and January summer holidays. We'd advise staying at one of Kruger's private reserves or concessions to ensure a private and more intimate safari experience.
Do a Self-drive Safari: a mix of easy accessibility, excellent infrastructure and do-it-yourself game viewing makes self-drive safaris to the Kruger National Park and Panorama Route both a simple and rewarding option. Choose your itinerary from our suggestions or tailor-make your own – either way it'll be a safari at your pace and set to your requirements.
Flights & Getting Around
Did you know you can book your flights through Go2Africa? For more information and frequently asked questions, please see our Flights section.
Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport: located in Nelspruit, Kruger's major airport is served by flights from Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban while a flight from Vilanculos on the Mozambique coast means easy safari and beach holidays.
Hoedspruit Airport: fly into the Kruger's second airport from Johannesburg or Cape Town for easy access to the park's private reserves like the Sabi Sands, Timbavati and Thornybush.
Phalaborwa Airport: serving the wilder northern Kruger destinations, this small airport is accessed from Johannesburg only.
Private airstrips: it's also possible to take charter flights straight from Johannesburg to bush airstrips in the Sabi Sands and several of the Kruger's other private reserves.
Game drives and transfers to and from Kruger's airports and airstrips are conducted in open-sided 4X4s. Guided walking safaris – ranging from a few hours with your guide to multi-day camping hikes – are permitted in the private reserves and certain sections of the Kruger National Park.


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The two albums originally belonged to Sir Thomas Aiskew Larcom (1801-1879), the permanent Under Secretary for Ireland from 1853 to 1869, which includes the period covered by the albums. Harriet Fyffe Richardson (b.1872), author of Pioneer Quakers (1940), provided the albums to Stanford University at an unknown date; the Library acquired them in 1953.
The 1857 volume measures about about 9 x 7 inches, and contains 64 uncaptioned oval portraits about 4 x 3 inches, mounted one per page; the photographs appear to be lightly albumenized prints, seemingly from wax paper negatives. A later hand has added identifications of some sitters in pencil on the album leaves; these identifications have been transcribed into the titles-corrections and further identifications will be welcome. The 1866 volume is slightly larger than 10 x 8 inches, and contains rectangular albumen prints, also about 4 x 3 inches, mounted four to a page with individual captions. Laid inside the second volume is a letter from the photographer (whose signature is illegible) to Larcom: "You asked me some months ago to get you the photographs of the convicted and untried political prisoners who have been confined in Mountjoy. // I now send you a most unique 'Book of Beauty' . . . The camera is bad, but I am about to get a better, a really good one."
Identified as felons and Fenian political prisoners, the subjects of the photographs in these two albums include some of the leaders of the Fenian Brotherhood and its Irish wing, the Irish Republican Brotherhood. One of these, the early activist Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa (1831-1915), recounted sitting for his portrait:
After being shaven I was led to have my picture taken. The photographer had a large black-painted pasteboard prepared, with my name across it in white, and, pinning it across my breast, he sat me in position. I remained sitting and looking according to instructions until he had done, and he never had the manners to tell-what artists never fail to tell me-that I made an exceedingly good picture. [O'Donovan Rossa's prison life: six years in six English prisons (1874) p.73]
Larcom admired and studied Irish culture which he discovered while participating in the great survey of Ireland. According to the Dictionary of National Biography (1922), the president of the Royal Irish Academy credited Larcom with preserving "folklore which the famine [in 1848] swept away with the aged sennachies, who were its sole depository." When Larcom's close associate, the noted Irish scholar and linguist John Donovan (1809-1861), died, Larcom became guardian of his three sons, John, Edmund and William, who all participated in varying degrees in the movement for Irish independence.
Carey, Tim. Mountjoy: The Story of a Prison. (2000).
Jordan, Thomas E. An Imaginative Empiricist--Thomas Aiskew Larcom (1801-1879), and Victorian Ireland. (2002)
Ó Broin, León. Revolutionary Underground: The Story of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, 1858-1924. (1976)
This collection is also available in Archives & Manuscripts
View In Archives »


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Here is where I can learn.
~Andy Goldsworthy
I've decided to start posting a picture and a favorite quote every Friday (kind of like I did yesterday but on Fridays) to carry me through the weekend. If you'd like to join me please do - call me sappy but I love reading quotes and would like to see some of your favorites too! Just tell me in the comments if you'll be participating and I'll be sure to stop by :)
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Ripped off from here: https://www.humoretc.com/mhcontent/e4.php
The Creed of the Specialist Courtesy of Suzie S. No one gets away with more than I. I am a non Non-Commissioned Officer, a beast of burden. As a junior enlisted soldier I realize that I am a member of an under appreciated, much chastised group of soldiers which is known as the ribcage, or perhaps pancreas, of the Army. I am proud of myself and my fellow Specialists and will continue to bitch, whine and sham until the absolute last second regardless of the mission at hand. I will use my grade and position to avoid responsibility, accountability and any sense of presence of mind. Ignorance is my watchword. My two best excuses will always be on the tip of my tongue "I didn't know," and "It wasn't me." I will strive to remain invisible and unavailable for details. Never ever volunteer for anything is my rallying cry. I am aware of my role as a SPC and if you need me for anything, I'll be on appointment. I know the other soldiers, and I will always refer to them by their first name or in some cases derogatory nickname. On weekends, or days off I will consistently drink myself into oblivion, and I will never answer my phone. I understand that for a person in my hierarchal position, rewards are going to be few and far between, and punishment will always be swift and severe. Officers of my unit will have maximum time to accomplish their duties, because I will be accomplishing them for them. I will kiss up to their face and badmouth them behind their back, just like everyone else. I will be loyal to those with home I serve, provided there's something in it for me. I am the last bastion of common sense that stands between me and the Army philosophy of "Work Harder, Not Smarter." My voice is a tool and my complaints are a weapon that I wield with unmatched skill and finesse. I will not forget, nor will I allow my comrades to forget, Specialist is the greatest rank in the Army and rank has its privileges


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JGU Media Convergence Research Unit publishes a pioneer study on reading devices vs. paper
A book or a screen – which of these two offers more reading comfort? There are no disadvantages to reading from electronic reading devices compared with reading printed texts. This is one of the results of the world's first reading study of its kind undertaken by the Research Unit Media Convergence of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in cooperation with MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels GmbH. "E-books and e-readers are playing an increasingly important role on the worldwide book market. However, readers in Germany are particularly skeptical when it comes to e-books and electronic reading devices. The objective of the study was to investigate whether there are reasons for this skepticism," says the initiator of the study, Professor Dr. Stephan Füssel, chair of the Institute of Book Studies and spokesperson for the Media Convergence Research Unit at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. "This study provides us with a scientific basis for dispelling the widespread misconception that reading from a screen has negative effects," explains Füssel. "There is no (reading) culture clash – whether it is analog or digital, reading remains the most important cultural technology."
However, the result of the study stands in stark contrast with the participants' subjective reaction. "Almost all of the participants stated that they liked reading a printed book best. This was the dominant subjective response, but it does not match the data obtained from the study," specifies Professor Dr. Matthias Schlesewsky, Head of the Research Group Neurocognition of Language Universals of the Department of English and Linguistics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, who designed and conducted the study together with Professor Füssel. In fact, tablet PCs actually provide an advantage over e-ink readers and the printed page that is not consciously perceivable: the information is processed more easily when a tablet PC is employed. Furthermore, while there were no differences between the three media employed in terms of rates of reading by the younger participants, the older participants exhibited faster reading times when using the tablet PC.
Similarly, the participants' subjective perceptions did not match the results of a comparison of e-ink readers and printed paper texts. Almost all participants stated that reading from paper was more comfortable than from an e-ink reader despite the fact that the study actually showed that there was no difference in terms of reading performance between reading from paper and from an e-ink reader. "We have thus demonstrated that the subjective preference for the printed book is not an indicator of how fast and how well the information is processed," concludes Professor Schlesewsky.
The co-initiator and cooperating partner institution of the study is MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels GmbH, operator of the e-book platform libreka!. "We are pleased to have had the opportunity to work with and support Mainz University in this one-of-a-kind study. As a subsidiary of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels e.V.), we have established the prerequisites for publishing companies and bookstores to adapt to the digital age by setting up the libreka! platform. Shaping the market is important to us, and that also includes understanding the readers' needs," states Ronald Schild, CEO of MVB, explaining the reasons for the organization's participation in the study.
The study analyzed the differences in reading from various kinds of media (e-book, tablet PC, paper) in two sample groups, young and elderly adults. Each participant read various texts with different levels of complexity on an e-book reader (Kindle 3), on a tablet PC (iPad), and on paper. The reading behavior and the participants' corresponding neural processes were assessed by means of concurrent measures of eye movements (eye tracking) and electrophysiological brain activity (EEG). The criteria that were taken into account and analyzed were changes in the theta frequency band power, reading behavior, text comprehension, and information recall as well as the participants' preferences for the respective medium.


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The trillions of bacteria living in our gut (called the gut microbiota) can help determine our risk of cancer, as well as how we might respond to cancer treatment.
Each person's unique gut microbiota is in constant communication with their immune system. This ensures good bacteria can thrive in the body, while bad bacteria and foreign material are eradicated.
The gut microbiota is therefore critical to making sure the immune system is in the best possible state to fight diseases – from the flu, to serious ones like cancer.
Researchers are now exploring how your unique gut bacteria determine your cancer risk, and whether modifying its composition can control cancer progression and predict response to treatment.
Everyone's gut microbiota is unique, much like a fingerprint. In the first few years of life, it is at its most malleable, reflecting factors that occur during birth.
For instance, babies born through caesarean section have been reported to have lower numbers of good bacteria and higher numbers of pathogenic (bad) bacteria, compared with babies born vaginally.
Similar patterns have been reported in formula-fed infants, compared to those who have been breastfed. This suggests exposure to bacteria through diet shapes the composition of the gut microbiota in early life.
We don't exactly know what these differences mean as a child grows. But it is understood infants delivered through caesarean section not only have different gut bacteria, but are also more likely to develop allergies and immune-related diseases like asthma.
The gut and immune system are closely linked. Just as our gut bacteria control our immune system, our immune system controls our gut bacteria. Research now suggests this interaction plays a significant role in determining cancer risk.
Mice lacking certain immune molecules that slow the immune response, called anti-inflammatory cytokines, have more bad bacteria in their gut. This means a strong immune response ensures bad bacteria do not overpopulate our guts.
These mice are also more susceptible to bowel cancer than those with sufficient numbers of anti-inflammatory cytokines. The heightened cancer risk can be transferred to normal mice through their faeces (poo). This involves collecting the poo from a donor mouse, in this case mice lacking anti-inflammatory cytokines, and feeding it to a recipient mouse.
Poo from the donor mouse is rich in bacteria that reflects their gut microbiota. The high-risk mice have a lot of bad bacteria in their poo. Once transferred to the recipient mouse, these new bacteria flourish in the gut changing the composition of the microbiota.
Research has shown when the new gut microbiota is established in the recipient mice, their risk of developing bowel cancer increases.
A recent study conducted in humans paralleled these results. It showed long-term antibiotic use increased the risk of bowel cancer.
Antibiotics are well known to disrupt the composition of the gut microbiota, just like the mice lacking anti-inflammatory cytokines, leading to more bad bacteria in the gut and an increased risk of bowel cancer.
A review of research published in the journal Nature also points to the gut microbiota playing a role in how patients respond to chemotherapy. The review suggests the gut microbiota determines the effectiveness of chemotherapy in two ways: through activating chemotherapy drugs, and through its interaction with the immune system.
These mechanisms have been best described in mice that lack a gut microbiota. Such mice, termed "germ-free" mice, are bred in completely sterile conditions. They are exposed to no external sources of bacteria and have no bacteria in any part of their body.
Research has shown that chemotherapy in germ-free mice is less effective than in normal mice, and their tumours grow at higher rates.
This may be because many chemotherapy drugs initiate an immune response that kills tumour cells through a process called inflammation. In this study, germ-free mice had lower levels of inflammatory markers in their tumours following chemotherapy, compared to normal mice.
This indicates that the communication between the gut bacteria and immune system is critical for cancer treatment.
Many chemotherapy drugs are delivered to the patient in an inactive form, which is then activated by special enzymes in the liver and directly by gut bacteria. Different levels of these liver enzymes determine how effective chemotherapy will be at killing tumour cells.
Germ-free mice have more liver enzymes responsible for detoxifying chemotherapy drugs compared to normal mice. They are therefore able to eliminate the chemotherapy from their system very quickly. This leaves less time for the chemotherapy to kill tumour cells and therefore regulates the efficacy of treatment.
Once again, these effects were reversed by faecal transfer from mice with a normal gut microbiota.
In contrast, mice that have high levels of bad bacteria in their gut have also been shown to over-activate some chemotherapy drugs. Although this is thought to increase the ability of chemotherapy drugs to kill tumour cells, it can also cause unnecessary side effects as many chemotherapy drugs are unable to differentiate between healthy and tumour cells.
The most common side effect of chemotherapy is diarrhoea. Chemotherapy-induced diarrhoea is acutely life threatening as it starves people of vital nutrients, making them susceptible to serious infection and death.
Like cancer development and treatment, diarrhoea is associated with changes in the gut microbiota. Our yet-to-be published research found high levels of Proteobacteria in the gut before chemotherapy resulted in worsened diarrhoea and exacerbated weight loss in mice.
This research supports growing evidence in human trials showing that the levels of gut bacteria in the poo of patients before they start cancer treatment predicts their likelihood of developing diarrhoea. Similar findings have also been shown in patients treated with radiotherapy.
This research provides an opportunity to modify gut bacteria to optimise cancer treatment outcomes. This could be in the form of poo transfer, probiotics or even something as simple as changing someone's diet.
And the ability to understand someone's risk, and modify it before chemotherapy starts, can ensure the perfect balance between chemotherapy response and toxicity is achieved.
Work is currently being performed in Adelaide to identify the specific bacteria that are critical in determining chemotherapy response. Once this has been achieved, methods of mitigating risk can be evaluated and translated to patients.
Source: https://theconversation.com/how-our-gut-bacteria-affect-cancer-risk-and-response-to-treatment-75699


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Green gangsters rip us off while enriching the 0.1% and trashing the environment
Mary Kay Barton
"America is being auctioned off to the highest bidder." – Donald J. Trump
A recent Joe Mahoney article, NY looks to the wind to replace its fossil fuel diet, was full of half-truths and misinformation.
There is nothing "free," "clean" or "green" about industrial wind. Quite the contrary: the true costs of industrial wind development are astronomical. Yet, the wishful thinking of Governor Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, "green" ideologues, and "renewable" energy hustlers and subsidy seekers who benefit from this massive taxpayer and ratepayer rip-off has been repeated by countless "journalists" without question for years now.
Mahoney's article highlighted Cuomo's approval of the proposed wind factory off Montauk, NY. It claimed: "The offshore 'wind farm' could be a symbol of how the state can meet Cuomo's ambitious goal of getting half of New York's energy from carbon-free sources by 2030. Now those sources represent about 23 percent of the state's energy draw."
The statement is grossly misleading and inaccurate.
New York State's emissions-free hydro power (including what it imports from Canada) already supplies approximately 23% of New York State electricity generation all by itself. New York State's emissions-free nuclear power supplies approximately another 30% of the state's electricity generation. "Other Renewables" (wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal) now provide a measly 3% (US Energy Information Administration orEIA).
Clearly, current hydro and nuclear power supplies in New York State alone already exceed Cuomo's emissions-free target of 50 percent. But for some reason emissions-free nuclear is not counted toward NY's "emissions-free" goal.
Most infuriating for New York State taxpayers and ratepayers is the fact that New York State was already getting approximately 50% of its electricity from emissions-free sources (19% from hydro + 29% from nuclear + 1% from "Other Renewables") way back in 2000 – before Governor Cuomo & Co. began throwing billions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars into the wind, plastering rural NY with these bird-slaughtering lemons, as reported by MasterResource.org.
Scientific proof MIA
As our government officials continue to throw billions of dollars into the wind, the key question that needs to be asked by everyone is this:
Where is the Scientific PROOF that wind energy is a net societal benefit?
The answer is that there is no such scientific proof. Zero. Zip. Nada. None.
However, there is much proof that development of sprawling, unreliable, subsidized, mandated industrial wind factories has been vastly detrimental across the nation and the world. So much so that President Obama and his Fish & Wildlife Service had to approve 30-Year EAGLE-KILL permits specifically to accommodate the bird-slaughtering wind industry – letting it off scot free for butchering our wildlife.
Governor Cuomo's pie-in-the-sky 'green' energy policy is bereft of any realistic assessment of the expensive lessons already learned in Europe and elsewhere as a result of pushing these 'renewable' energy policies.
Results include, but are not limited to: "skyrocketing" electricity rates, industries fleeing, 2 – 4 jobs lost for every 'green' job created, destroyed habitats and countryside, birds and bats slaughtered, lost property values, health issues, utter civil discord among people forced to live with these behemoths, and increasing numbers of people being thrust into 'energy poverty.'
All this as a result of the same 'green' mess that Governor Cuomo, President Obama, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party continue to push.
While they demonize fossil fuel use and promise to rid us of this vital energy, the truth is that the availability of reliable, affordable power thanks to fossil fuels is directly correlated with greatly improved health and longevity here in the USA, as Alex Epstein explains in his book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
It's all about the money!
WHY do they continue to push such an obvious failure as industrial wind, you ask? Simple: "It's all about the money!'
Manhattan Institute scholar Robert Bryce recently reported that the wind industry has garnered $176 BILLION of crony-capitalist cash here in the United States. It's no wonder the American Wind Energy Association spends over $20 million per year lobbying for more of the same!
Big Wind and the Big Banks who back them are playing the system to tap into taxpayers' and ratepayers' wallets, while the crony-politicians who enable the whole dastardly deal get hefty 'campaign donations' in return. The greatest Ponzi schemes of all time pale in comparison to the eco-heist these Green Gangsters are pulling off.
Industrial wind was initiated in the United States by ENRON as a tax shelter generating scheme. Nothing about that has changed. Big Wind enriches the 0.1% at taxpayers' and ratepayers' expense.
Just ask Warren Buffett, who said: "We get tax credits if we build 'wind farms.' That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credits."
Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump was absolutely correct when he underscored the critical need to address our nation's economic demise, saying: "America is being auctioned off to the highest bidder." The Industrial Wind Blight across America exemplifies this sad reality!
Contact your Congressional Representatives. Tell them to stop wasting our money on the environmentally destructive consumer fraud that is industrial wind energy. If they won't, vote the bums out!
Mary Kay Barton is a retired New York State-certified Health Educator, Cornell-certified Master Gardener, and a tireless advocate for scientifically sound, affordable, reliable electricity for all Americans. She has served over the past decade in local water quality organizations and enjoys gardening and birding in her National Wildlife Federation-certified "Backyard Wildlife Habitat."


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April 25, 2012
Center for Engagement and Community Development's 2012 Engagement Symposium Thursday
The Center for Engagement and Community Development's 2012 Engagement Symposium, "A Day of Learning: Communities Engaging Landscape," will be from 12-5 p.m., Thursday in the K-State Student Union.
The event will begin with open viewing of posters at 12 p.m. followed by a welcome by David Procter, the center's director, and the keynote address by Robin Moore. Moore's address is titled "Natural Learning Initiative." Both Procter's welcome and Moore's address will be hosted in the Flint Hills Room.
Moore has worked in the field of landscape architecture as an educator, researcher and consultant. He is an international authority on the design of children's play and learning environments, user needs research and participatory public open space design.
The remaining symposium agenda appears below:
2:15 p.m.
Room 212 – "Engaging Communities through Gardens"
Alan Stevens
"Our Community…A More Colorful Place"
Linda Teener
"Planting Manhattan's Garden Together"
Cheryl Boyer
"A Fruitful Partnership: The Kansas Health Foundation and K-State Research and Extension Community Gardening Grants"
Flint Hills Room – "Learning Gardens"
Lee Skabelund
"Learning from Demonstration Rain-Gardens and Living Roofs"
Katie Kingery-Page
"Landscape of Learning: Design Action Research in Manhattan, KS"
Jon Hunt and Anna Wiehe
"Growing Art and Design in Northview's Learning Garden"
3:30 p.m.
Flint Hills Room – "Community Gardens and Well-Being"
Candice Shoemaker
"School Gardens for Health and Well-Being"
Judy Burch
"Beneath the Surface: The Schowalter Community Builds a Therapeutic Garden"
Room 212 – "Growing Food and Social Systems"
Rhonda Janke
"What We Know About Local Food"
Spencer Wood
"Poverty, Place and Food: An overview of Findings from a Recent Survey of Residents in Kansas City, Kan."
Catherine Bylinowski
"New Roots for Refugees and Other Urban Farmers"
4:30 p.m.
Flint Hills Room
Closing – Stephanie Rolley, department head of landscape architecture/regional and community planning


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While these eye-catching icon sets are distinctly Mac-centric, many of them are filled with stunning pieces that could be easily co-opted for another operating system.
Over at AppStorm, a blog focused on Mac applications, they've compiled 50 great Mac icon sets. The eye candy factor is off the chart, and non-Mac readers will be tempted to snag some of the pickings. Previously reviewed LiteIcons is a great freeware solution for installing and managing your Mac's icons, but if you want to use them in Windows or Linux, you'll need to do a little tweaking. Check out web based iConvert to covert a wide variety of icon formats and IcoFX if you're working in Windows.
50 Unusually Awesome Icon Sets for Mac [AppStorm]


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The unlikely nexus of The Skeptical Zone, Mung, noted the oddness, in the code that I provided in my last post, of using apparent constants not as constants, but instead as default values for parameters in functions. It was a reasonable remark, though what I was doing was not as odd as it seemed. There's no denying that I should have explained myself in a comment. Looking things over, I decided to give non-programmers a shot at using the program by editing the values of those inconstant constants.
Two caveats. If Joe Felsenstein's lovely post "Wright, Fisher, and the Weasel" makes little sense to you, running my program is unlikely to help. If you read ahead in this post, and feel that it's too much for you, then it is. Give up. Honestly, it's not worth the bother. If you remain interested, peruse the comments on Joe's post, and ask questions of your own.
On with the instructions. First make sure that you have Python installed. The easiest approach I know is to open a command shell, and enter
at the prompt (which usually is something other than a dollar sign). On my Unix-like system, that puts me in the Python interpreter. It's no place for non-programmers to be. To get out, enter$ python
(Your Python prompt will not necessarily be three greater-than signs.)>>> quit()
Now copy-and-paste the code from the big, black box below to a plain text file. (Your best bet is to use a simple text editor, not a word-processing application like MS Word.) Here's your first taste of non-programming: go to the line
N_GENERATIONS=100000 # Number of generationsand delete one of the 0's from the number. You'll end up with this:
N_GENERATIONS=10000 # Number of generationsThis reduces the running time of the program by a factor of 10, which is a pretty good idea when you're trying to determine whether it works. The leftward shift in the hash sign (#) is fine. In fact, it serves as a reminder that you changed something. You can extend the comment (text following # is ignored when the program runs) with a note to yourself.
N_GENERATIONS=10000 # Number of generations WAS 100000Now save the modified file. A
extension would be a good idea. I'll assume that you went with the name evolve.py
If you submit the file to Python from a command prompt, with an incantation like
then the program will execute with parameter settings defined at the top of the file. You should see textual output similar to this in the command interpreter window.$ python < evolve.py
If you get an error message instead, and you're not interested in Python programming, then give up. There are two main sources of problems. With an outdated version of the Numeric Python (************************************************************************ Number of sites L : 28 Number of possible alleles A : 27 Number of offspring : 1000 Mutation rate u : 0.0357142857143 Selection parameter s : 5.0 p = u * (1 + s) / (A-1 + u * s) : 0.00818553888131 q = u / (1 + s * (1 - u)) : 0.00613496932515 Assume equilibrium at generation: 5000 W-F probability of fit allele at site p/(p+q) : 0.571595558153 Expected num. of fit alleles in parent Lp/(p+q): 16.0046756283 Mean observed num. of fit alleles in parent : 15.7896420716 Std. dev. of observed numbers of fit alleles : 2.78893977254 ************************************************************************
) module, you might see an error message ending with
or withAttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'choice'
Another possibility is that your Python is not configured to do graphics. I cannot help you with either problem. But, if you're willing to Google for instructions, you can fix them. What I hope is that you'll see a graphical display pop open, looking something like this. If the display does not appear, check to see if it's hidden behind other windows. No joy? Then there's one last thing to try. EnterValueError: n <= 0
The$ python -i evolve.py
stands for interactive, which is to say, you're about to land back where non-programmers do not belong. But you've seen already what is most import to know — how to make the blasted thing quit()
. Then again, it wouldn't hurt simply to double-click the icon for the file evolve.py
. If you've gotten this far, don't give up. You can Google for instructions on how to configure the Python graphics backend. It might help to add the name of your operating system to the search term. If you learn something that stands to help other folks, please take a moment to post a comment here.
Your squiggly line will squiggle differently than mine, because there's randomness (or unpredictability that passes for randomness) involved. The solid line is the average value of the plotted quantity over the last 5000 generations. The dotted line is the prediction of the Wright-Fisher model, which does not apply strictly to the program. Much of the discrepancy is due, probably, to the shortness of the run. If you had not reduced N_GENERATIONS
by a factor of 10, the solid line would have indicated the average of observations for 95 thousand generations, and probably would have been closer to the dotted line. The more generations in the run, the less variable the mean value of the observations (which determines the placement of the solid line).
Now, the point of all of this is to see how changing the parameters changes the behavior of the evolutionary process. You can learn quite a bit by repeatedly (1) editing the values of the inconstant constants (at the top of the file, with all-caps names), (2) saving the change, and (3) submitting the revised file to Python. And why do you have to do it this way? Because I have not learned how to do graphical user interfaces in Python. It doesn't seem to be a priority at the moment. Then again, if I were any good at prioritizing, you wouldn't have gotten this much out of me.
import numpy as np import numpy.random as rand import matplotlib.pyplot as plt # Implement a model that is somewhat like Wright-Fisher, with Dawkins's Weasel # as a special case. # See Felsenstein (2016), "Wright, Fisher, and the Weasel," The Skeptical # Zone, http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/wright-fisher-and-the-weasel/. # # Copyright Tom English, 2016. # Permission for personal use granted. You may not redistribute this code, # irrespective of whether you have modified or augmented it. # The following are default values of model parameters. # You can use a text editor to change the values between runs of the program. # The all-caps notation tells programmers to change the values ONLY by editing. # N_SITES=28 # "Sentence length" (at least 1) N_ALLELES=27 # "Alphabet size" (at least 2) MUTATE_RATE=1.0/N_SITES # Denoted u by Felsenstein (0.0 < u < 1.0) N_OFFSPRING=1000 # Number of offspring per generation (at least 1) SELECTION=5.0 # Denoted s by Felsenstein N_GENERATIONS=100000 # Number of generations EQUILIBRIUM_BEGIN=5000 # Evolution assumed stable after this many generations assert(N_SITES >= 1) assert(N_ALLELES >= 2) assert(MUTATE_RATE > 0.0 and MUTATE_RATE < 1.0) assert(N_OFFSPRING >= 1) class Evolve(object): """ Model somewhat like Wright-Fisher, with Dawkins's Weasel as a special case. """ def __init__(self, n_sites=int(N_SITES), n_alleles=int(N_ALLELES), n_offspring=int(N_OFFSPRING), mutate_rate=MUTATE_RATE, selection=float(SELECTION)): """ Initialize evolutionary run. """ self.n_sites = n_sites self.n_alleles = n_alleles self.n_offspring = n_offspring self.mutate_rate = mutate_rate self.selection = selection self.probability = np.empty(n_offspring, dtype=float) self.offspring = np.empty(n_offspring, dtype=int) self.n_fit = rand.binomial(N_SITES, 1.0 / n_alleles) self.history = [self.n_fit] def generation(self): """ Extend evolutionary run by one generation. At each site, the allele is either fit or unfit. The probability of selecting an offspring as parent of the next generation is proportional to its fitness `(1+selection)**n_fit`, where `n_fit` is the number of fit alleles. """ n = len(self.offspring) loss_rate = self.mutate_rate gain_rate = self.mutate_rate / (self.n_alleles - 1.0) self.offspring[:] = self.n_fit self.offspring += rand.binomial(self.n_sites - self.n_fit, gain_rate, n) self.offspring -= rand.binomial(self.n_fit, loss_rate, n) np.power(self.selection + 1.0, self.offspring, self.probability) self.probability /= np.sum(self.probability) self.n_fit = rand.choice(self.offspring, size=1, p=self.probability) self.history.append(self.n_fit) def extend(self, n_generations=N_GENERATIONS): """ Extend evolutionary run by `n_generations` generations. """ for _ in xrange(n_generations): self.generation() def get_history(self, begin=0, end=None): """ Return list of nums. of fit alleles in parents for range of generations. """ return self.history[begin:end] def report(self, begin=EQUILIBRIUM_BEGIN): """ Report on some quantities addressed by Felsenstein (2016). """ u = self.mutate_rate s = self.selection q = u / (1 + s * (1 - u)) p = u * (1 + s) / (self.n_alleles - 1 + u * s) h = self.history[begin:] print '*'*72 print 'Number of sites L :', N_SITES print 'Number of possible alleles A :', self.n_alleles print 'Number of offspring :', len(self.offspring) print 'Mutation rate u :', u print 'Selection parameter s :', s print 'p = u * (1 + s) / (A-1 + u * s) :', p print 'q = u / (1 + s * (1 - u)) :', q print 'Assume equilibrium at generation:', begin print 'W-F probability of fit allele at site p/(p+q) :', p/(p+q) print 'Expected num. of fit alleles in parent Lp/(p+q):', N_SITES*p/(p+q) print 'Mean observed num. of fit alleles in parent :', np.mean(h) print 'Std. dev. of observed numbers of fit alleles :', np.std(h) print '*'*72 plt.plot(self.history) m = np.mean(h) plt.plot((0, len(self.history)-1), (m, m), 'k-') m = N_SITES * p/(p+q) plt.plot((0, len(self.history)-1), (m, m), 'k--') plt.ylabel('Number of Fit Alleles in Parent') plt.xlabel('Generation') plt.title('Sites {0}, Alleles {1}, u={2:.6f}, s={3}, Offspring {4}'. \ format(self.n_sites, self.n_alleles, self.mutate_rate, self.selection, self.n_offspring)) plt.show() def example(): """ Plot numbers of fit alleles for runs varying in just one parameter. """ plt.figure() n_generations = 100000 # Override the default N_GENERATIONS here equilibrium_begin = 5000 # Override the default EQUILIBRIUM_BEGIN here results = [] for s in [0, 2, 5, 15]: # Put other numbers in this list... e = Evolve(selection=s) # ... change `selection` to another parameter e.extend(n_generations) print 'Selection parameter s:', s e.report(begin=equilibrium_begin) results.append(e) plt.title('Weasel-ish Runs with Selection Parameter s in {0, 2, 5, 15}') plt.show() return results # Run with default parameter settings plt.figure() e=Evolve() e.extend() e.report() plt.show() # To run my example, intended primarily for programmers: # results=example() # Use plt.close('all') to close plots when interacting with Python.