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For those of us who aren't jet-setters, the road-trip family vacation is a part of our collective consciousness: piling in a car or van or station wagon and hitting the road to see dubious attractions whilst siblings bicker and parents try to hold it together. John Hughes' short story "Vacation '58," published in the National Lampoon, tapped into this archetypal vein, looking back not in anger but in wry fondness for family foibles. It proved to be lucrative fodder for the big screen (and later small screens), and though lacking in narrative and comic sophistication, National Lampoon's Vacation has something arguably more important: built-in, instant audience identification.
The first film in what turned out to be a franchise has the benefit of Harold Ramis behind the camera, and Vacation has some of the same shaggy appeal as his Caddyshack and Stripes: for better or worse, they're not meticulous pieces of work (they're certainly not over-thought), and yet, they're indelible for their confident, zany approach to a comic premise. Chevy Chase has never been my cup of tea, but it's hard to argue that he's at the top of his form here as goofy patriarch Clark Griswold, a workaholic food-additive developer who sees the family trip to Walley World (home of—ahem—Marty Moose) as a kind of penance for lost time. He's determined to make the trip perfect or—when that hope is dashed—at least to reach their detstination, consarnit! Things begin badly when Eugene Levy's unscrupulous car dealer pawns off on Clark the citrus-y Wagonqueen Family Truckster, a faux-wood-paneled station wagon destined to come apart in pieces. Even as he's being used, Clark insists, "I'm not your ordinary everyday fool." He may be right: in the escalating Murphy's Law scenarios that follow, he proves to be a prize fool.
Chase gets able support from Beverly D'Angelo as patient wife Ellen, Anthony Michael Hall as the scampish Rusty, and Dana Barron as the neglected Audrey. Clark all but steps over his daughter to bond with his son (prefiguring Homer Simpson, Clark forgets Audrey's name); Clark and Rusty's "good talk"s—including "sharing" a beer in Monument Valley—prove to be some of the film's best scenes, though they also reflect the phallo-centrism of the R-rated '80s comedy, with its gratuitous nudity (now, I'm not complaining, mind you) and casual sidelining of the female point-of-view. The film's most prominent running gag preserves Christie Brinkley, in her prime, as the object of male lust, as her character's Ferrari keeps cropping up to tempt Clark to infidelity. (The musical theme implicitly excusing these scenes is "Little Boy Sweet," while the constant repetition of Lindsay Buckingham's "Holiday Road" also helps to give the picture some artificial lift.)
Yet more troubling than the sexism is the scene—played for hilarity—of the white, square, Chicago suburbanites accidentally rolling through "the ghetto" and encountering scary black people. The idea of the Griswolds as tourists who get suckered, squeezed and plain ripped off at every turn could have done without this jive-talking passage. The satire of suburban attitudes remains mostly implicit, though it bubbles to the surface with another race-themed gag: when a Native American sizes up Clark with three little words: "What an asshole."
Lots of the gags in Vacation seem obvious now, though partly because they've been repeated ad nauseam over the years (a random Psycho spoof, defective "magic fingers"...). The best moments are on a realistic scale (an implosive family singalong); the stereotyping of the Griswolds' Kansas cousins as rednecks is more disconcertingly mean than it is funny, but it's there that the road-trippers pick up nasty old Aunt Edna (comedy legend Imogene Coca, cast against type), a font of comedic entanglements. Also among the Kansas cousins: Jane Krakowski's Vicki and Randy Quaid's Eddie, who would become a staple in the ongoing franchise. James Keach, Brian Doyle Murray, John Candy and Eddie Bracken (as conspicuously Disney-esque Roy Walley) turn in amusing cameos, but Chase does most of the comic heavy lifting, most effectively in the area of physical business. By the time his horny hero does what can only be described as a sandwich dance, you might as well give in.
Warner has done a lovely job in updating National Lampoon's Vacation for hi-def. What's immediately apparent is that the movie retains its film-like texture, with a palpable but never overwhelming veneer of grain. While that may worry some, the image is still boldly colorful and filled with detail and texture. Things get a tad grainier in low light, but that's par for the course; black level is generally strong. This is a handsome, steady, and faithful visual rendition of the film. The lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0 soundtrack won't exactly set home-theater buffs' hearts afire, but it is certainly faithful to the source and entirely serviceable.
"Introduction by Chevy Chase, Randy Quaid, & Matty Simmons" (:44, SD) comes from the 20th Anniversary Special Edition, as does the commentary by Harold Ramis, Chase, Quaid, Anthony Michael Hall, Dana Barron, and producer Simmons. Ramis is recorded separately in the commentary, which is well worth a listen. Ramis offers interesting recollections (and even a mea culpa for the ghetto scene), while the rest chat cheerily, if not very informatively: there's a tendency to just narrate the funny bits and say they're good; still, it's fun to hear the family gently rib each other. And because of the format of the track, the stream of talk seldom lets up.
The disc loses a few micro-featurettes from the DVD editions, but generally, this is a safe upgrade from DVD, especially for the superior image quality.
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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Hendrix, Keith | |
Sanders, Timothy |
Submitted to: Institute of Food Technology
Publication Type: Abstract Only Publication Acceptance Date: 6/24/2007 Publication Date: 6/28/2007 Citation: Rudolph, J.L., Hendrix, K., Sanders, T.H. 2007. Potential of Microwave Heating as a Pasteurization Method for Almonds. Institute of Food Technology. Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: Pasteurization of almonds to reduce the risk of Salmonella contamination is an objective of the almond industry. Microwave (MW) technology may generate almond surface temperatures effective in reduction of Salmonella. This study was conducted to examine almond surface and internal temperatures generated by various MW power protocols and evaluate the shelf-life of raw and roasted MW-treated almonds. Dry and wetted Carmel almonds were subjected to 2.8, 3.4, and 4.2 kW and 4.0, 4.5, and 5.0 kW of MW energy, respectively. Infrared thermometers and fiber optic probes were used to measure external and internal temperatures. Raw and roasted samples from all treatments were stored at 35ºC for 16 weeks and at 4 week intervals shelf-life indicators and moisture were evaluated. Almond surface and internal temperatures of the dry samples in all protocols ranged from 90-110º C and 105-130º C, respectively. External and internal temperatures of the wetted samples were 85-100º C and 100-125º C, respectively. Oxidative stability index (OSI) differences among treated and control samples were generally not meaningfully different although OSI for all samples gradually decreased during storage. Peroxide value of treated and control samples followed similar increasing trends during storage except that wetted samples exposed to 5.0 kW increased more rapidly than other raw wet treated stored samples. Free fatty acids (FFA) values among the raw dry treated and control samples were not different; however the raw wet control samples had higher FFA values than the corresponding wet treated samples. All treated and control samples gradually decreased in moisture content throughout the study. |

subset: commoncrawl


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James Hadley Billington was sworn in as the Librarian of Congress on September 14, 1987. He is the 13th person to hold the position since the Library was established in 1800.
Dr. Billington has championed the Library of Congress's National Digital Library program, which makes freely available online more than 31.4 million American historical and cultural documents from the vast collections of the Library and other research institutions on the Library's website at www.loc.gov. These one-of-a-kind American Memory materials and the Library's other Internet services, including THOMAS (a congressional database) and, information from the U.S. Copyright Office, are widely used in K-12 education.
The Library has placed online under Dr. Billington's leadership a major bilingual website with Russian libraries, and has launched smaller such joint projects with the national libraries of Brazil, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Egypt. His proposal in 2005 for the creation of a World Digital Library was endorsed by UNESCO in 2007 and launched online at www.wdl.org in April 2009. The site contains cultural materials from all 193 countries in UNESCO with expert commentary in seven languages.
Dr. Billington created the Library's first national private-sector advisory and support group, the James Madison Council. Its members have supported major exhibitions at teh Library as well as well as important new acquisitions for the Library's collections. In 2000, the Library's bicentennial year, Madison Council's Founding Chairman John W. Kluge donated $60 million to create a scholarly center within the Library and a million-dollar prize for lifetime achievement in the study of humanity. In 2007, David Woodley Packard and the Packard Humanities Institute made the largest philanthropic gift in the Library's history: a National Audio-Visual Conservation Center for the Library's unmatched collections of moving images and recorded sound.
Born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, on June 1, 1929, Dr. Billington was educated in the public schools of the Philadelphia area. He was class valedictorian at both Lower Merion High School and Princeton University, where he graduated with highest honors in 1950. Three years later he earned his doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College. Following service with the U.S. Army and in the Office of National Estimates, he taught history at Harvard University from 1957 to 1962 and subsequently at Princeton University, where he was professor of history from 1964 to 1973.
From 1973 to 1987, Dr. Billington was director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the nation's official memorial in Washington to America's 28th president. As director, he founded the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Center and seven other new programs as well as the Wilson Quarterly.
Dr. Billington is the author of "Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism" (1956), "The Icon and the Axe" (1966), "Fire in the Minds of Men" (1980), "Russia Transformed: Breakthrough to Hope, August 1991" (1992), "The Face of Russia" (1998)—a companion book to the three-part television series of the same name, which he wrote and narrated for the Public Broadcasting Service—and "Russia in Search of Itself" (2004). These books have been translated and published in a variety of languages. Dr. Billington has accompanied 10 congressional delegations to Russia and the former Soviet Union. In June 1988 he accompanied President and Mrs. Reagan to the Soviet Summit in Moscow. He is the founding chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Open World Leadership Center (1999-2011). The Open World Program is a nonpartisan initiative of the U.S. Congress that has brought more than 14,000 emerging young Russian political leaders to communities throughout America, and more than 3,000 others from Ukraine and seven other successor states of the former Soviet Union.
In October 2004, Dr. Billington headed a Library of Congress delegation to Tehran, Iran, that significantly expanded exchanges between the Library of Congress and the National Library of Iran. Dr. Billington was the most senior U.S. government official to openly visit Iran in 25 years.
Dr. Billington has received more than 40 honorary doctorates, including from the University of Tbilisi in Georgia (1999), the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow (2001), and the University of Oxford (2002). He also has been awarded the Woodrow Wilson Award from Princeton University (1992), the UCLA Medal (1999), the Pushkin Medal of the International Association of the Teachers of Russian Language and Culture (2000), the Karamzin Prize (2005) from the Foreign Literature Library in Moscow, and the Likhachev Prize (2006) from the Likhachev Foundation in St. Petersburg. In 2007, Dr. Billington was awarded the inaugural Lafayette Prize by the French-American Cultural Foundation and the EastWest Institute Outstanding Leadership Award. Dr. Billington was presented with the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bush in 2008.
Dr. Billington is a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has been decorated as Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters and as Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the President of France, as Commander of the National Order of the Southern Cross of Brazil. He has been awarded the Order of Merit of Italy, a Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany, the Gwanghwa Medal by the Republic of Korea, and the Chingiz Aitmatov Gold Medal by the Kyrgyz Republic. In 2008, Dr. Billington was awarded the Order of Friendship by the President of the Russian Federation; the highest state order that a foreign citizen may receive.
Dr. Billington was a longtime member of the editorial advisory boards of Foreign Affairs and Theology Today, and a member of the Board of Foreign Scholarships (1971-76)—as well as its chairman (1973-1975)—which has executive responsibility for academic exchanges worldwide under the Fulbright-Hays Act. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is on the Board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Dr. Billington is married to the former Marjorie Anne Brennan. They have four children: Dr. Susan Billington Harper, Anne Billington Fischer, the Rev. James Hadley Billington Jr. and Thomas Keator Billington, as well as 12 grandchildren.


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I doubt David Gregory intended to violate D.C.'s ban on the possession or transfer of high capacity ammunition magazines when he waved around such a magazine during his interview of Wayne LaPierre yesterday.
Prior to yesterday, I never would have thought that possession of an empty magazine, kept separate from ammunition or a weapon, would violate the law, so I sympathize with Gregory on that point.
But I'm less sympathetic than you might expect because fear of unintentionally violating gun laws is one of the things that has kept me from purchasing a handgun. As you know, I took the NRA safety course over a year ago. But I'm a legal resident of Rhode Island who lives much of the year in New York, so there's an issue of whether I could obtain a NY permit, which is needed even to keep a gun in the home. And then there's the issue of transportation back and forth, and complying with the requirements to avoid prosecution as I pass through Massachusetts.
It all became such a bureaucratic jungle that I just deferred for the time being.
That's where we are with many gun laws, the law-abiding responsible citizens who worry about compliance are scared away or risk prosecution for unknowing violations, while the lunatics and criminals don't care.
I still have not heard back from the three NBC News communications executives I e-mailed just after noon yesterday asking for the position of NBC News on whether the ammunition magazine was real and whether Gregory violated the law.
But assuming, as Gregory stated, that the magazine was for an AR-15, then why shouldn't Gregory and the staffers to and from whom the magazine was transferred, be prosecuted? Particularly in light of Gregory's aggressive demand for more guns laws.
Certainly, if LaPierre had shown up with that magazine, there would be howls of gotcha, and widespread media demands for prosecution. Why should NBC News and its star be above the law?
There's another lesson here.
Gregory's possible violation of the law was exposed by the conservative blogosphere, which also pointed out that Gregory sends his kids to a school with armed security at the same time he was mocking the NRA suggestion of armed security in schools.
We have to do more of this, investigating the investigators and inquiring of the inquisitors. It's one of the legal insurrections for 2013.
Update 12-26-2012 — D.C. Police — NBC requested and was denied permission to use high capacity magazine in news segment
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The UK Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has provocatively shortlisted Mozilla for the sort of award that, on the face of it at least, no tech company should be keen to win – '2019's Internet Villain'.
Mozilla's claim to infamy? From ISPA's point of view, it's Firefox's imminent inclusion of DNS over HTTPS (DoH) – a technology many experts endorse as the biggest jump for internet privacy since the expansion of HTTPS itself.
The problem, according to the ISPA press release, is that the arrival of this technology in the Firefox browser used by millions will make it possible to:
Bypass UK filtering obligations and parental controls, undermining internet safety standards in the UK.
The point of DoH (and the related DNS over TLS, or DoT) is to encrypt DNS requests, which makes it impossible, or at least very difficult, for entities such as ISPs or governments to monitor which websites people are visiting. And because the DNS requests are sent inside encrypted HTTPS requests they're also indistinguishable from other web traffic, so they can't be blocked without blocking all web traffic.
To privacy enthusiasts, this is good because neither ISPs nor governments have any business knowing which domains users happen to frequent.
For ISPs, by contrast, DoH hands them several headaches, including how to fulfil their legal obligation in the UK to store a year's worth of each subscriber's internet visits in case the government wants to study them later for evidence of criminal activity.
Years in the making, this is a collision foretold. One side (Mozilla and Cloudflare, the latter providing the DoH resolution that supports the whole endeavor) thinks that internet privacy is an immutable principle that demands a technical solution, the other (governments, police and at least one anti-child abuse campaign group) think that privacy carries risks that must always be qualified through intervention.
Privacy conundrum
The arguments against DoH are technically involved but focus on one central objection.
For ISPs to block undesirable websites (child abuse, terrorism, copyright infringement, etc) they must filter traffic using a domain blacklist. Anything that successfully hides the domains people are visiting makes that approach redundant.
However, as has been pointed out, this layer of filtering can already be bypassed by visiting domains ISPs haven't added to their blacklists, including ones hosted on the dark web that are only accessible using a browser like Tor.
Then there's the small problem of VPNs, which not only hide DNS from surveillance but can also hide the user's geolocation, with the result that they are also a simple way to beat the UK's forthcoming and contentious law requiring age verification for anyone visiting a porn site (which DoH itself has no effect on, despite claims to the contrary).
The direction of travel is unmistakable – the ways for web users to hide their web habits are growing in number and becoming more affordable, including by using simpler domain shielding tools such as Cloudflare's 188.8.131.52 app (which will soon be bundled into a full VPN called Warp) or Google's equivalent, Intra.
DoH inside Firefox, then, is simply a technology that turns this kind of privacy into something anyone can access without having to do anything.
The danger in the publicity-seeking approach chosen by ISPA is it ends up becoming a victim of the 'Streisand effect' – by complaining about it, ISPA may be encouraging the very thing it's setting out to deter.
The reverse effect applies to Mozilla, which, privately, may not be too upset at being called out for implementing DoH, a technology it has not only strongly advocated but which has powerful backing of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in the form of RFC 8484.
Arguably, spying on which domains people visit was always an easy fix to impress politicians that dodged a lot of messier but more effective ways to track bad people in a targeted way.
If the ISPA and its members want to find a way out of this hole, they could do worse than invest time explaining the new realities to disappointed, frustrated lawmakers.


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Since at least the 1890s, more often than not China and Japan have usually been at odds with each other. The two greatest powers in East Asia have each borrowed much from each other's culture and experience, but have also battled for predominance over each other and hegemony in Asia. From the 1894-1895 Sino-Japanese War until the end of World War II, Japan sought to dominate China. For much of the Cold War, the two powers were in hostile camps, seeking different paths to modernity and economic development. In recent years, with Chinese economic and military power increasing and Japan apparently in stasis, old disputes and memories have once more come to the fore, inflaming old wounds and promoting new tensions.
Odd Arne Westad, Visiting Research Professor at the University of Hong Kong, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics, and author of Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750 (2012), surveys the past history of relations between Japan and China and suggests how these two states might deal with each other in future. This is the third of a series of lectures by Prof. Westad on China's relations with other Asian powers.
Co-sponsored by the Department of History; the School of Humanities; the Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit of the Li Ka-Shing Faculty of Medicine; and the Centre of Journalism and Media Studies, University of Hong Kong
Date/Time: 01/04/2015 18:00-19:30
Venue: Convocation Room (Room 218), Main Building,
Language: English
All Interested Are Welcome.
This event is free of charge.
Registration is open from 10/03/2015 10:00(HKT) to 01/04/2015 12:00(HKT) on a first-come-first-served basis. The registration quota for this event is 100.
For further information, please visit: http://www.history.hku.hk/news/2015-westad.html


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Blast of sound that can give your love life a lift: From sponge pellets to pumps and even sound waves, what's best for impotence?
Because of the possibility of underlying health problems, erectile dysfunction should be investigated by your doctor
Though they may not want to talk about it, at any one time around one in ten British men suffers from erectile dysfunction (ED) — the inability to have and maintain an erection.
Sometimes known as impotence, the condition can be triggered by stress, depression and anxiety.
However, around 70 per cent of cases are caused by the damaging effects of vascular disease such as furring of the arteries, high blood pressure and diabetes, says Roland Donat, urological surgeon at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh.
This is because erections are caused by extra blood flow into the penis and a reduction of blood flow out of the penis.
The worry is that many men don't realise that problems in the bedroom are often a marker for an underlying health concern.
'Being overweight, excessive drinking and smoking are linked to impotence because they can cause vascular disease,' he says.
Obesity is also associated with low testosterone levels, which can lead to difficulties. A hormone problem can be treated with testosterone gels and patches.
Because of the possibility of underlying health problems, ED should be investigated by your doctor, no matter how embarrassing this might seem, says Robert Calvert, urologist at the Royal Liverpool Hospital.
'You should be given screening tests for blood pressure, cholesterol and sugar levels,' he says.
There are a variety of treatments available for the problem, depending on the severity and cause. Here, we asked the experts to explain the options, their pros and cons. . .
Known as phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors, drugs such as Viagra boost the blood supply to the penis by dilating blood vessels.
Viagra needs to be taken 30 to 45 minutes before lovemaking and lasts around four hours.
Another drug, Cialis, has a longer acting effect and works for around 30 to 48 hours, allowing for greater spontaneity. Neither drug can be used by angina sufferers as they interfere with the medication.
They should be taken on a relatively empty stomach as a heavy meal can reduce absorption by the stomach and so the effectiveness of the drug.
ADVANTAGES: Tablets are the least invasive way to deal with ED. If used correctly, the success rate is around 80 per cent, but the user has to be sufficiently aroused.
'You can't sit back and wait for it to work while watching Coronation Street,' says Vijay Sangar, a urological surgeon at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester.
In the 20 per cent of cases where the drugs don't work there is probably more extensive damage to the blood vessels.
DISADVANTAGES: The drugs can cause hot flushes and headaches because of increased blood flow to the skin and brain.
Rarely they can interfere with nerve receptors in the eye, causing vision to have a blue tint, which can be permanent.
Cialis sometimes causes temporary backache because of dilation of blood vessels in the back.
In rare cases, drugs can cause a sustained erection because of excessive blood flow to the penis — known as priapism. Go to A&E immediately if an erection lasts more than three hours, as it can cause irreversible damage.
AVAILABILITY: As with all erection treatments, NHS availability is limited to patients with recognised health problems such as diabetes or those who have had prostate surgery. Otherwise, they are available on private prescription or from some chemists for £8 per tablet.
Here the penis is placed in a plastic cylinder from which the air is sucked out to create a vacuum. This causes blood to rush to the penis, causing an erection.
Once the penis is engorged, a ring is placed around the base of the shaft to prevent blood leaking back out; this is removed after sex.
ADVANTAGES: Non-invasive.
DISADVANTAGES: Some people may find the penis does not feel sturdy. If the ring is left on for too long it can cause bruising.
AVAILABILITY: This is available on the NHS for those with recognised medical conditions such as diabetes or following prostate surgery.
Otherwise, it is advisable to buy only from a respected medical supplier such as mediwatch.co.uk. An Erectease vacuum pump costs around £112.
An intense form of soundwaves, similar to ultrasound, is used to trigger the regrowth of blood vessels and improve blood flow.
As with traditional ultrasound, a layer of jelly is applied to the area and then the device is pointed at five places along the shaft of the penis. The treatment is done twice a week for three weeks, followed by a break after which the treatment is repeated for another three weeks.
This is a new treatment and studies so far have only been able to show that the effects last for two years.
ADVANTAGES: Non-invasive and not painful.
DISADVANTAGES: It is used only on men who have already tried Viagra without success and whose ED is caused by vascular disease, says Mr Sangar.
AVAILABILITY: At present, the treatment is available only privately, at a cost of at least £2,000.
Inflatable devices or bendable rods are implanted in the penis under general anaesthetic to act as a 'prop'.
The simplest type consists of a pair of malleable rods, made from medical plastic or silicone, which are surgically implanted within the erection chambers (spaces within the penis that fill with blood).
The penis will always then be semi-rigid and only needs to be lifted into the erect position.
The alternative is a device that consists of three connected pieces: two small, deflated balloons, a fluid-filled reservoir and a pump.
The balloons are surgically inserted in the penis and the reservoir is placed under the groin muscle. The pump sits under the loose skin of the scrotal sac.
Pressing on the pump pushes the fluid into the balloons and the penis should become erect within 30 seconds. Pushing on a deflation valve at the base of the pump drains the fluid back into the reservoir.
ADVANTAGES: More spontaneity, says urologist Chris Eden at the Royal Guildford Hospital and the Hampshire Clinic, Basingstoke.
DISADVANTAGES: Patients must avoid sex for six weeks afterwards as the body heals, and take anti-biotics for a week — there is a risk of infection in 2 per cent of cases. It may be painful for around a week, too. Inflatable implants may require replacing after eight to ten years; the rods are permanent.
AVAILABILITY: Unlikely to be available on the NHS unless you're in an approved patient group and other treatments such as Viagra have failed. The cost privately is around £6,000.
ED is often linked to psychological issues. Counselling sessions, such as psychosexual therapy, can help with underlying relationship problems or depression.
ADVANTAGES: Doesn't use medication or invasive treatments.
DISADVANTAGES: 'It will work only with the right sort of patients,' says Mr Donat. 'Many men, even with psychological issues, simply want a quick fix. And even if there is a psychological component, it's still vital to see a GP first to rule out any underlying clinical reason.'
AVAILABILITY: A GP can organise a referral. Otherwise, private treatment costs £40 to £60 per session.
This treatment involves injecting a naturally occurring chemical called prostaglandin E1 into the penile tissues. This causes the blood vessels to widen by relaxing the thin layer of muscle in the blood vessel wall. Unlike Viagra, the medication can induce an erection without external stimuli. It has around a 60 per cent success rate.
ADVANTAGES: Injections work faster than pills — it can take as little as ten minutes and last up to four hours. A GP should show you how to use it the first time.
DISADVANTAGES: Every time it is used, a small amount of scar tissue forms and over the years this can lead to pain and prevent erections, says Majid Shabbir, a urologist at Guys Hospital in London.
AVAILABILITY: If not considered eligible on the NHS, the jabs are available through private prescription or from some pharmacies, costing £39 for one treatment.
Sponge-like pellets, around 3mm long and 1mm in diameter, containing the drug prostaglandin E1 are pushed into the end of the penis into the ureter (the tube that carries urine and semen) using a thin rod.
Though this is self-administered, a GP would usually demonstrate the first time. The medicine works by relaxing blood vessels to improve blood flow.
ADVANTAGES: Good for those who are needle phobic.
DISADVANTAGES: A lower success rate than other treatments, at 30 to 50 per cent. Some people experience a burning pain or some temporary discomfort in the ureter when they place the pellets. Needs to be applied about 40 minutes before sex.
AVAILABILITY: Rarely prescribed on the NHS. On private prescription, this treatment costs around £16 a dose.
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Walking tour operator Life's An Adventure is offering a free night's pre-tour accommodation in Hobart on select departures for bookings made by August 31.
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Pre-tour accommodation is the RACV Hobart Apartment Hotel, which offers modern, comfortable rooms with king or twin beds. Clients will be collected from here for the start of tours.
Life's An Adventure's Three Capes Track walk is pack-free so clients will simply need a day pack for water, lunch and a jacket.
Accommodation on the walk features two nights in deluxe spa chalets at Stewarts Bay Lodge, located near Port Arthur Historic Site, and including a la carte meals and local wines.
The Three Capes Track is Tasmania's fastest growing hiking destination. Highlights include the peninsula's spectacular sea cliffs and pretty eucalypt forests. Clients walk to Cape Raoul and Cape Hauy and see Cape Pillar from the air on a helicopter or from the sea on a cruise.
This column doesn't normally mention awards but felt compelled to in this case simply because there are too many classy historic digs along the Murray.
Corowa's boutique hotel and spa Circa 1936 has just taken out the gold award in the Riverina Murray Region Luxury Hotels category of Destination NSW Tourism Awards.
The award was announced as part of a gala event held in Deniliquin — home of the annual Ute Muster — with some 130 local tourism operators turning out to celebrate the region's achievements.
Lovingly refurbished from a former bank — and bank manager's house — and built in art-deco style in 1936, the three-suite hotel is a landmark in Corowa's main street, leading to the Murray River.
Owners Kevin and Ririn Yaxley purchased the building in 2013, and set about restoring the property's stylish architectural features while converting it to a luxury hotel and spa with the most contemporary comforts.
The Yaxley family has had more good news this week with the green light given to the development of a sister property in the nearby city of Albury.
The Circa collection also includes the popular spa Circa 1928 in Wagga.
Phone (02) 6033 5371 or visit www.bycirca.com.au
Situated in the heart of Australia's largest national park sits one of the world's most identifiable hotels, the Mercure Crocodile Hotel which this year is celebrating its 30th anniversary.
The Indigenously-owned four-star Northern Territory hotel is shaped like a saltwater crocodile and is one of the region's most famous inhabitants.
It's located in the township of Jabiru, and is a great base from which to explore the World-Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.
The opening of the 'Croc', as it is affectionately known, in 1988 followed the worldwide success of the cult movie classic, Crocodile Dundee, which was filmed in Kakadu.
Visit www.accorhotels.com
Over-tourism and responsible travel are the two big factors influencing World Expeditions' new active Asian program, with the expanded and enhanced range designed to get travellers away from the tourist hot spots and to deliver a positive environmental impact.
The just-released program includes new self-guided pilgrimage hikes and e-biking itineraries in Japan, new cycle itineraries in remote China, new adventures to lesser known destinations in Vietnam, Indonesia and Laos, and two new national park experiences in Mongolia.
Japan's ancient pilgrimage routes feature in the program, with new self-guided hikes on Japan's World-Heritage-listed Kumano Kodo pilgrimage routes and the Nakasendo Way, all of which are designed for more independent travellers seeking the flexibility to walk at their own pace, yet wanting accommodation organised and luggage transferred.
Two new adventure cruises are on offer — one amidst the 612 islands that make up the stunning Raja Ampat region of Indonesia aboard a purpose-built trimaran, and the other a journey down a remote stretch of the Mekong River between Chang Rai and Laos' cultural capital, Luang Prabang.
Phone 1300 720 000 or visit www.worldexpeditions.com
PIC: seadream.jpg — SeaDream I at Portofino, Italy … one of the most popular of its tiny ports of call in the Mediterranean.
The 112-passenger SeaDream I will undertake a nine-day Mediterranean voyage next May, spending three days on the French Riviera, including being there for the 2019 Monaco Grand Prix.
It will sail from Rome's port of Civitavecchia, visiting ports in Sardinia and Corsica and on the Italian and French Rivieras.
A yet-to-be-priced package covering will cover transfers and entry for those interested in the Grand Prix.
Fares for the cruise start at about $8580 per person twin-share, including SeaDream's award-winning cuisine, drinks with meals and from the bars, power and sail water-sports, use of the onboard golf simulator and fitness centre, port charges and taxes, and crew gratuities.
Visit www.seadream.com.
Silversea Cruises has announced its new Combination Cruises, which join two or more select voyages into the one experience, allowing guests to spend extended time unlocking deeper travel experiences.
Encompassing nine different regions, Silversea has chosen a limited number of balanced voyages, allowing guests to enjoy a lengthened stay, and discover each region in depth.
Fares for a 14-night sailing in the Mediterranean lead in from $7600 per person twin-share on Silver Shadow.
Classic combinations include Northern Europe and the British Isles, with seven voyages ranging from 17 to 35 days, and fares starting from $11,000 for a 17-day voyage on Silver Spirit.
Phone 1300 306 872 or visit www.silversea.com


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Let's start with a disclaimer: Remember Philadelphia's dream team. Vince Young's catchy nickname for the 2011 Eagles caught on in a way that the team's haul of free agents that year certainly never did. It still stands as a cautionary tale for those who invest too much hope in the giddy first-days-in-love promises that free agency inspires every year.
So while we won't label anybody a Super Bowl favorite after just three days of free agency -- with weeks more of signings and trades to come, followed by the draft, followed by camps, followed by the inevitable injuries -- it is not too early to identify those who did the best in the first wave and those who bungled it. These are the winners and losers who might look back at these very first offseason moves and recognize them as the beginning of something special -- or the beginning of the end.
Schein: Moves I love/hate
Oakland Raiders
Even by the generations-stretching standard of wackiness set by this franchise, Wednesday afternoon's developments were confounding. The Raiders first mystified the league by lavishing an outsized contract on Rodger Saffold with $21 million guaranteed. Then the team announced that Saffold, who played 12 games last year and passed the Rams' exit physical, had failed his physical with Oakland, voiding the deal. Was this a case of buyer's remorse? The Raiders have yet to address the matter, but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Jim Thomas has an account, from the perspective of Saffold's agents, that includes this nugget: Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie "apologized profusely" to Saffold's agents after the offensive tackle was failed. No matter. It wasn't long before Saffold was striking a deal with his old team, the Rams -- who presumably knew more about his health than anybody else.
Whatever happened during that examination has left egg on the face of McKenzie and his free agency plan in shambles, especially since he let left tackle Jared Veldheer, who might have been the Raiders' best player, sign with the Arizona Cardinals. The amount that the Raiders have to overpay to lure free agents just went up.
High-priced veterans
The NFL is no place for old men, and a painful series of cuts underscored the fact that even legends get no protection. Champ Bailey, DeMarcus Ware, Julius Peppers and Steve Smith were all sent packing by their teams, who could no longer afford their big contracts as they inched toward their final years. Free agent Jared Allen, another veteran whose old team was no longer interested in him -- and who was high on the Broncos' wish list until he hesitated and Ware came loose -- even floated the idea that he could walk away from the game if the price he wants is not met.
Running backs and wide receivers
The market for these players was excruciatingly slow to develop as the money flowed to offensive tackles and the secondary. A clear signal was sent: Running backs simply are not valued and wear down too quickly, while only the best receivers will set off a frenzy. This will not be a one-year aberration; it's a trend. The top receiver available in a shallow group was Eric Decker, and he had to wait until very late on Day 2 to get a deal with the New York Jets. Hakeem Nicks, among others, remains on the market. How expendable are running backs? Darren McFadden (Raiders) and Ahmad Bradshaw (Colts) signed one-year contracts. And Toby Gerhart is set to make less over his three-year contract ($10.5 million) with the Jaguars than the 31-year-old Ware will make this season alone.
Battista: Broncos charge ahead
Lovers of rivalries
Even if you're no fan of the Broncos or Patriots, you have to appreciate the arms race they are engaging in right now. With two aging quarterbacks and slowly closing championship windows, the Broncos and Patriots went about vacuuming up high-priced talent designed to get them the edge in the AFC. John Elway loaded up on defense in Denver, signing hard-hitting safety T.J. Ward, snagging Ware and swiping Aqib Talib from New England. How did the Patriots react? By getting a better (albeit only marginally so) cornerback for less money in Darrelle Revis. Yes, Revis might only be a one-year rental, and because he is a mercenary (something for which he should not apologize for at all), there is no guarantee he'll be with the Pats any longer than that. But for now, Bill Belichick has made his defense better even after losing one of its best players. The next round of this ongoing bit of hand-to-hand combat could center on receivers. Both teams need them, the Patriots much more so than the Broncos. Stay tuned.
Follow the money and you'll see that safeties got a lot of it this week, the surest sign yet of the soaring importance of the position. Ward, Donte Whitner, Antoine Bethea, Mike Mitchell and Malcolm Jenkins all scored, but the stunner was Jairus Byrd getting $28 million guaranteed from the cap-strapped Saints. I wouldn't want to be the front office person who has to make New Orleans' cap numbers work. Still, you can't fault their personnel thinking. Pairing Byrd with Kenny Vaccaro gives the Saints a safety tandem nearly as fearsome as Seattle's, and we saw what Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor did to receivers who tried to go over the middle against the Seahawks last season. As teams play more man-to-man defense with one deep safety, that free safety is more important than ever. The Saints had to gut their roster in many spots, but it's going to be awfully hard to complete passes against them.
Free-Agent Tracker
Follow all the developments on the NFL's open market with our up-to-the-minute tracking of 2014's free agents. **More...**
Offensive tackles
Even when you discount the Saffold fiasco, his fellow linemen did well. This was another bow to the reality of how the game is played. If you can't protect the quarterback, you're not going anywhere. Which is why Branden Albert got the biggest contract of the bunch to be the new cornerstone of a Dolphins line that allowed Ryan Tannehill to be sacked a league-high 58 times last season -- and which was further decimated by the Martin-Incognito bullying scandal. Speaking of ...
Jonathan Martin
Martin was a big winner, being traded by the Dolphins to the San Francisco 49ers, where he'll be reunited with his college coach, Jim Harbaugh. It was difficult to envision many teams that would have been open to taking Martin, given what the Ted Wells investigation revealed about his own personal struggles and his relationships with teammates. San Francisco was one of the places that might've worked, and the Dolphins did right by Martin to send him there. Can he play? We'll find out, because he will compete for backup jobs at both tackle spots. The Dolphins did well here, too. There was no way Martin could return. Trading him closes at least one chapter in an incident that rocked the franchise, costing people jobs and reputations. It's going to take a lot longer for the Dolphins to recover, but this was a start.
Chip Kelly
The Eagles coach gets a new toy in Darren Sproles. And while that toy might not be very shiny anymore -- Sproles' production has begun to decline -- it's still a powerful one in terms of Sproles' ability as a receiver, running back and returner. Kelly, who might be close to matching Sean Payton's reputation as an offensive designer, could deploy Sproles in a limited role as running back LeSean McCoy's best buddy on an offense that also includes DeSean Jackson, Jeremy Maclin, Riley Cooper and Brent Celek. Did you like the pinball offense on cleats that Kelly ran at Oregon? He might be getting closer to unleashing it with the dual-threat Sproles in the fold. This is not good news for the rest of the NFC East, which was already struggling to contain Philadelphia. And here is the best part: The fifth-round pick the Eagles used to acquire Sproles from New Orleans came to them last October when they shipped defensive tackle Isaac Sopoaga to the Patriots -- where he proved to be such a poor fit that he was inactive over New England's final four games (including playoffs).
Which brings us full circle. The organization that gave us the dreaded "Dream Team" just made a move that could give it an offense that is, well, dreamy.
Follow Judy Battista on Twitter @judybattista.


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pearl buck Quotes
Pearl Buck Quotes
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An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls - even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls - without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison cell.
There will be no real content among American women unless they are made and kept more ignorant or unless they are given equal opportunity with men to use what they have been taught. And American men will not be really happy until their women are.
A man is educated and turned out to work. But a woman is educated - and turned out to grass.
Profound as race prejudice is against the Negro American, it is not practically as far-reaching as the prejudice against women. For stripping away the sentimentality which makes Mother's Day and Best American Mother Contests, the truth is that women suffer all the effects of a minority.
Men and women should own the world as a mutual possession.
It is a shameful sign of our arrogance that our history departments have almost no Chinese history in them, our literature courses almost no Chinese literature, our philosophy departments almost none of the great Chinese systems of philosophy. And our religious schools have been the most arrogant of all. This ignorant arrogant mind has become fixed in its patterns. It is the pattern which considers anything not American to be inferior - unless it be English.
Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, and it conceals its danger as long, smooth words do, but the danger is there, nevertheless.
Because psychologists have been able to discover, exactly as in a slow-motion picture, the way the human creature acquires knowledge and habits, the normal child has been vastly helped by what the retarded have taught us.
I love people. I love my family, my children ... but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.
All things are possible until they are proved impossible - and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.
One does not live half a life in Asia without return. When it would be I did not know, nor even where it would be, or to what cause. In our changing world nothing changes more than geography. The friendly country of China, the home of my childhood and youth, is for the time being forbidden country. I refuse to call it enemy country. The people in my memory are too kind and the land too beautiful.
What is a neglected child? He is a child not planned for, not wanted. Neglect begins, therefore, before he is born.
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors. They are the oldest civilized people on earth. Their civilization passes through phases but its basic characteristics remain the same. They yield, they bend to the wind, but they never break.
Ah well, perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.
There was an old abbot in one temple and he said something of which I think often and it was this, that when men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.
The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.
The young do not know enough to be prudent, and so they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.
The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.
I grew up believing that the novel has nothing to do with pure literature. So I was taught by scholars. The art of literature, so I was taught, is something devised by men of learning. Out of the brains of scholars came rules to control the rush of genius, that wild fountain which has its source in deepest life. Genius, great or less, is the spring, and art is the sculptured shape, classical or modern, into which the waters must be forced, if scholars and critics were to be served. But the people of China did not so serve. The waters of the genius of story gushed out as they would, however the natural rocks allowed and the trees persuaded, and only common people came and drank and found rest and pleasure. For the novel in China was the peculiar product of the common people. And it was solely their property.
The Chinese novel was written primarily to amuse the common people. And when I say amuse I do not mean only to make them laugh, though laughter is also one of the aims of the Chinese novel. I mean amusement in the sense of absorbing and occupying the whole attention of the mind. I mean enlightening that mind by pictures of life and what that life means.
Did one man write Shui Hu Chuan, or did it grow to its present shape, added to, rearranged, deepened and developed by many minds and many a hand, in different centuries? Who can now tell? They are dead. They lived in their day and wrote what in their day they saw and heard, but of themselves they have told nothing.
Strangely enough, there were certain scholars who envied the freedom of obscurity, and who, burdened with certain private sorrows which they dared not tell anyone, or who perhaps wanting only a holiday from the weariness of the sort of art they had themselves created, wrote novels too, under assumed and humble names. And when they did so they put aside pedantry and wrote as simply and naturally as any common novelist. For the novelist believed that he should not be conscious of techniques. He should write as his material demanded.
A good novelist, or so I have been taught in China, should be above all else tse ran, that is, natural, unaffected, and so flexible and variable as to be wholly at the command of the material that flows through him. His whole duty is only to sort life as it flows through him, and in the vast fragmentariness of time and space and event to discover essential and inherent order and rhythm and shape. We should never be able, merely by reading pages, to know who wrote them, for when the style of a novelist becomes fixed, that style becomes his prison. The Chinese novelists varied their writing to accompany like music their chosen themes.
These Chinese novels are not perfect according to Western standards. They are not always planned from beginning to end, nor are they compact, any more than life is planned or compact. They are often too long, too full of incident, too crowded with character, a medley of fact and fiction as to material, and a medley of romance and realism as to method, so that an impossible event of magic or dream may be described with such exact semblance of detail that one is compelled to belief against all reason
Out of this folk mind, turned into stories and crowded with thousands of years of life, grew, literally, the Chinese novel. For these novels changed as they grew. If, as I have said, there are no single names attached beyond question to the great novels of China, it is because no one hand wrote them. From beginning as a mere tale, a story grew through succeeding versions, into a structure built by many hands.
The people of China forged their own literature apart from letters. And today this is what lives, to be part of what is to come, and all the formal literature, which was called art, is dead. The plots of these novels are often incomplete, the love interest is often not brought to solution, heroines are often not beautiful and heroes often are not brave. Nor has the story always an end; sometimes it merely stops, in the way life does, in the middle of it when death is not expected. In this tradition of the novel have I been born and reared as a writer.
The instinct which creates the arts is not the same as that which produces art. The creative instinct is, in its final analysis and in its simplest terms, an enormous extra vitality, a super-energy, born inexplicably in an individual, a vitality great beyond all the needs of his own living - an energy which no single life can consume. This energy consumes itself then in creating more life, in the form of music, painting, writing, or whatever is its most natural medium of expression. Nor can the individual keep himself from this process, because only by its full function is he relieved of the burden of this extra and peculiar energy - an energy at once physical and mental, so that all his senses are more alert and more profound than another man's, and all his brain more sensitive and quickened to that which his senses reveal to him in such abundance that actuality overflows into imagination. It is a process proceeding from within. It is the heightened activity of every cell of his being, which sweeps not only himself, but all human life about him, or in him, in his dreams, into the circle of its activity.
The street is noisy and the men and women are not perfect in the technique of their expression as the statues are. They are ugly and imperfect, incomplete even as human beings, and where they come from and where they go cannot be known. But they are people and therefore infinitely to be preferred to those who stand upon the pedestals of art.
Story belongs to the people. They are sounder judges of it than anyone else, for their senses are unspoiled and their emotions are free.
Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored - it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.
None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.
Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.
It may be that religion is dead, and if it is, we had better know it and set ourselves to try to discover other sources of moral strength before it is too late.
I enjoy life because I am endlessly interested in people and their growth. My interest leads me to widen my knowledge of people, and this in turn compels me to believe in the common goodness of mankind. I believe that the normal human heart is born good. That is, it's born sensitive and feeling, eager to be approved and to approve, hungry for simple happiness and the chance to live. It neither wishes to be killed, nor to kill. If through circumstances, it is overcome by evil, it never becomes entirely evil. There remain in it elements of good, however recessive, which continue to hold the possibility of restoration.
I believe in human beings, but my faith is without sentimentality. I know that in environments of uncertainty, fear, and hunger, the human being is dwarfed and shaped without his being aware of it, just as the plant struggling under a stone does not know its own condition. Only when the stone is removed can it spring up freely into the light. But the power to spring up is inherent, and only death puts an end to it. I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.
Like Confucius of old, I am absorbed in the wonder of earth, and the life upon it, and I cannot think of heaven and the angels. I have enough for this life. If there is no other life, than this one has been enough to make it worth being born, myself a human being. With so profound a faith in the human heart and its power to grow toward the light, I find here reason and cause enough for hope and confidence in the future of mankind.
The common sense of people will surely prove to them someday that mutual support and cooperation are only sensible for the security and happiness of all. Such faith keeps me continually ready and purposeful with energy to do what one person can towards shaping the environment in which the human being can grow with freedom.
In the midst of possible world war, of wholesale destruction, I find my only question this: are there enough people now who believe? Is there time enough left for the wise to act? It is a contest between ignorance and death, or wisdom and life. My faith in humanity stands firm.
I became mentally bifocal, and so I learned early to understand that there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety. The damage such perception did to me I have felt ever since, although damage may be too dark a word, for it merely meant that I could never belong entirely to one side of any question. To be a Communist would be absurd to me, as absurd as to be entirely anything and equally impossible. I straddled the globe too young.
Every event has had its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless. To understand what happens now one must find the cause, which may be very long ago in its beginning, but is surely there, and therefore a knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. Fate, Mr. Kung taught me, is not the blind superstition or helplessness that waits stupidly for what may happen. Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance.
In any war a victory means another war, and yet another, until some day inevitably the tides turn, and the victor is the vanquished, and the circle reverses itself, but remains nevertheless a circle. ... I came home more torn in heart than any child should be, for I saw that each side was right as well as wrong, and I yearned over both in a helpless fashion, unable to see how, history being what it was, anything now could be done.
Chinese are wise in comprehending without many words what is inevitable and inescapable and therefore only to be borne.
The wild winds had been sown and the whirlwinds were gathering... and I was reaping what I had not sown... None of us could escape the history of the centuries before any of us had been born, and with which we had nothing to do. We had not, I think, ever committed even a mild unkindness against a Chinese, and certainly we had devoted ourselves to justice for them, we had taken sides against our own race again and again for their sakes, sensitive always to injustices which others had committed and were still committing. But nothing mattered today, neither the kindness nor the cruelty. We were in hiding for our lives because we were white.
There is something to be said for losing one's possessions, after nothing can be done about it. I had loved my Nanking home and the little treasures it had contained, the lovely garden I had made, my life with friends and students. Well, that was over. I had nothing at all now except the old clothes I stood in. I should have felt sad, and I was quite shocked to realize that I did not feel sad at all. On the contrary, I had a lively sense of adventure merely at being alive and free, even of possessions. No one expected anything of me. I had no obligations, no duties, no tasks. I was nothing but a refugee, someone totally different from the busy young woman I had been. I did not even care that the manuscript of my novel was lost. Since everything else was gone, why not that?
I am an inveterate homemaker, it is at once my pleasure, my recreation, and my handicap. Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking.
Chinese were born, it seemed to me, with an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplanted too young, these qualities ripened in them. To talk even with a farmer and his family, none of whom could read or write, was often to hear a philosophy at once sane and humorous. If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.
Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members.
We are not empire builders. How important this fact is no American who has not lived in Asia can appreciate. It goes against our conscience, which is a very tender part of the American spirit. Therefore we are learning how to hold our allies, not by force of arms and government, but by mutual benefit and friendship. So much is already clear... I am therefore hopeful. In spite of dismaying contradictions in individuals in our national scene, I feel the controlling spirit or our people, generous, decent, and sane. In this mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.
Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.
The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.
The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.
To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.
You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.
Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.
Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.
A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.
Believing in gods always causes confusion.
Hunger makes a thief of any man.
I am comforted by life's stability, by earth's unchangeableness. What has seemed new and frightening assumes its place in the unfolding of knowledge. It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us.
I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.
Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds.
Once the 'what' is decided, the 'how' always follows. We must not make the 'how' an excuse for not facing and accepting the 'what.'
One faces the future with one's past.
Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.
Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.
The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between its men and its women.
The true wisdom of life consists in seeing the extraordinary in the common.
To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.
To serve is beautiful, but only if it done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.
We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country.
When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.
Write a novel if you must, but think of money as an unlikely accident. Get your reward out of writing it, and try to be content with that.
We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next.
A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent, without giving any sound.
You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come into contact with a new idea.
Buck's efforts on behalf of equality included tireless support for women's rights. She promoted modern birth control and called her friend Margaret Sanger 'one of the most courageous women of our times,' a person whose name 'would go down in history' as a modern crusader for justice. In the 1930s and 1940s, Buck also spoke out repeatedly in support of an Equal Rights Amendment for women, at a time when opposition to it included the majority of organized women's groups.
How does a woman of this magnitude and range slip away from our national consciousness? She has not exactly disappeared. Rather, as one reader of an earlier draft of this book shrewdly put it, she has been 'hidden in plain sight,' obscured beneath a caricature that belies her complexity and her achievement. ... In the years after World War II, Buck's literary reputation shrunk to the vanishing point. She stood on the wrong side of virtually every line drawn by those who constructed the lists of required reading in the 1950s and 1960s.
She was a spokesman on all sorts of issues: freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the adoptability of disadvantaged children, the future of China, especially the battle for women's rights, for education. If you followed in her trail, as I did, you were put in touch with almost every major movement in the United States - intellectual, social, and political.
The most influential Westerner to write about China since thirteenth-century Marco Polo.
pearl buck
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I have a preamble which defines lots of symbols and a LaTeX document for testing them. In particular, I have source like this:
\[\wlength{abc} = 3\]
\[\lang{A} = \lang{\varphi}\]
\[\kplus{L} \defeq \kstar{L} \setminus \emptyword\]
Which faithfully creates this:
Now I would like to use the same PDF also as a reference which requires the source code to show up. That is, I want something like that:
Ideally, what I did by hand here (copy source into a Verbatim
environment from fancvrb
) would be done automatically; why write the same thing down twice, blowing up everything?
Can this be done and if, how? I guess you would have to rewrite how math environments are translated, but that is beyond me.
Solutions using pdflatex
are preferred.


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Safe, secure and speedy: that's the internet of 2020. In a decade's time, the web will be a very different place.
There will be no crime, no malware and no fake online banking sites. Latency won't be a problem. High-definition video will be smooth, and buffering will be a distant, nightmarish memory. And that's not all.
The internet will have grown dramatically, making room for a new generation of connected devices: cars, phones, TVs, everything. Super-fast speeds are the rule, not the exception.
To borrow a phrase, it just works. At least, that's what we hope the web will be like.
To make it happen, engineers merely need to rethink the way the internet works and change pretty much everything. What could be simpler?
Some big changes are already in progress. The explosion of internet enabled devices means that we're running out of IP addresses even more quickly than expected: RIPE NCC's Managing Director Axel Pawlik noted in January that the pool of unassigned IPv4 addresses would run out as early as 2011. But the move to IPv6, which can handle around "a trillion trillion trillion" addresses – 3.4x1038 if you're feeling pedantic – is largely a software, not hardware, issue.
"In most cases it's very easy to reprogram connectivity software on a chip to ensure a device is IPv6 compatible," Pawlik says. But things aren't progressing as straightforwardly as you would think.
"Despite the simplicity of ensuring compatibility, widespread IPv6 take-up has so far been slow, and many of the best known digital devices available today, including the iPhone, do not yet support the next generation of IP addressing," warns Pawlik.
That lack of urgency is disappearing fast, with big names like Google implementing IPv6 support, router firms embracing the new system and new operating systems – including Windows and OS X – supporting it.
If we're late embracing IPv6, the internet won't grind to a halt – existing IP addresses will keep working – but as the European Commission reports, "the growth and also the capacity for innovation in IP-based networks would be hindered". The EU is pushing IPv6 hard, and it expects European ISPs and "the top 100 European sites" to be IPv6-enabled this year.
NOTHING ON TV?: Watch IPv4 addresses run out in real-time with the Hurricane Electric iPhone app
As a happy by-product of IPv6, widespread adoption will make the internet more secure too. The IPsec security protocol is a compulsory part of IPv6, which means all IPv6 communications can be encrypted and authenticated.
Route masters
We're using the internet in ways its creators couldn't possibly have imagined, from the rise of video to the sheer number of connected devices. We're constantly pushing the internet's capacity, stability and security, and inevitably cracks are beginning to show.
Aaron Falk is the Chair of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) and Engineering Lead with the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI). "There are many areas where the current architecture is straining to meet the needs of the users," he says.
"In particular, the areas of mobility, security, and network management were not well addressed in the original architecture, leading to a patchwork of mechanisms. The greatest concern is not so much that today's traffic is challenged but that the ad-hoc machinery being inserted into the network will inhibit future innovations. I worry about tomorrow's applications more than today's."
The IRTF is a technological trouble-shooter for internet architecture, as Falk explains: "The IRTF hosts research groups that work in areas 'adjacent' to the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). This can be pre-standards technologies, hard problems that emerge from the IETF or operations communities, technologies where the internet may be one of many possible communications strategies, or architectural issues."
He continues: "Sometimes research groups assist IETF working groups by bringing researcher expertise or otherwise 'pre-baking' technologies so they are ready for standardisation. For example, the Mobility Optimizations Research Group has been working on IP mobility solutions that feed into the MIPSHOP (Mobility for IP: Performance, Signalling and Handoff Optimization) working group for standardisation. Another example is the IRTF Research Group on Internet Congestion Control (ICCRG) which evaluates new congestion control proposals that arise in the IETF."
I dream of GENI
One of the problems with the current web is that it's too big and too important to muck around with. That's where GENI comes in. The Global Environment for Network Innovations is funded by the US National Science Foundation, and it's best described as a (serious) playground where new ideas can be tested out.
"GENI will support two major types of experiments," the organisation says. "Controlled and repeatable experiments, which will greatly help improve our scientific understanding of complex, large scale networks, and 'in the wild' trials of experimental services that ride atop or connect to today's internet and that engage large numbers of human participants.
"We're well underway on the second year of GENI prototyping, GENI Spiral 2," Falk says. "One of our more exciting activities is what we are calling 'meso-scale deployments' of virtualisable, programmable routers, switches, and WiMax base stations on 14 campuses and two national research backbone networks.
"Deployments like these are particularly exciting because they'll allow experimental applications and services built on GENI to directly reach real users on university campuses. Thus researchers will have the ability to build new services – perhaps incompatible with the current internet – and test them at-scale with real end-users."
One area of concern is routing tables, which the net's backbone routers use to direct online traffic. The BGP (border gateway protocol) routing table has grown hugely, doubling in size between 2003 and 2009, and there are concerns that if the level of growth continues, router hardware won't be able to cope.
UP AND UP: The BGP routing table doubled in size between 2003 and 2009, and it's still getting bigger
The IRTF's Routing Research Group (RRG) is investigating alternatives, and its goal is to produce solid recommendations that the IETF can implement.
Another related program is Rochester Institute of Technology's Floating Cloud initiative, which hopes to address the problem of routing table growth by moving the routing tables from inside routers to network clouds. Initial testing took place on a dozen Linux boxes, and the next step is to try it on GENI.
GENI isn't the only initiative that the NSF is helping to fund. Its Future Internet Architectures (FIA) program is offering $30million to fund projects that will transform the net. As the NSF puts it: "Proposals should not focus on making the existing internet better through incremental changes, but rather should focus on designing comprehensive architectures that can meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century."
FIA is a continuation of FIND, the NSF's Future Internet Design project. FIND asked researchers to redesign the internet from scratch, and FIA will narrow around 50 FIND projects down to two, three or four serious contenders.
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5232.0.55.001 - Assets and Liabilities of Australian Securitisers, Sep 2010
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 25/11/2010
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INQUIRIES For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070 or Steve Sykes on Canberra (02) 6252 6446. SUMMARY COMMENTARY KEY FIGURES
Assets of Securitisers As at 30 September 2010, total assets of Australian securitisers were $141.6b, down $5.2b (3.5%) on 30 June 2010. This is the thirteenth consecutive quarterly fall for the assets of Australian securitisers. Mortgage assets, which accounted for 79.3% of total assets, were $112.3b at 30 September 2010, a fall of $4.0b (3.5%) during the quarter. During the September quarter 2010, the fall in total assets was due primarily to falls in residential mortgages (down $3.3b, 3.0%), the holdings of long term securities, asset backed bonds (down $1.3b, 13.6%), and non-residential mortgages (down $0.7b, 17.6%), while other assets rose (up $1.0b, 30.3%). Liabilities of Securitisers The $5.2b decrease in total liabilities during the September quarter 2010 was due primarily to falls in asset backed securities issued overseas (down $3.7b, 10.4%) and short term asset backed securities issued in Australia (down $2.3b, 12.3%). Asset backed securities issued overseas as a proportion of total liabilities fell to 22.6% in the September quarter 2010, down 1.8 percentage points on the June quarter 2010. Asset backed securities issued domestically as a proportion of total liabilities rose to 68.8% in the September quarter 2010, up 0.4 percentage points on the June quarter 2010. Document Selection These documents will be presented in a new window. |


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Cultivating an Allergy-Free Garden
If you're one of the 50 million-plus Americans affected by seasonal allergies, your yard and garden may be sources of misery.
"Allergies are getting to be a bigger and bigger problem all the time," says master gardener Pam Geisel. "We plant more trees that produce pollen, and so the background count of allergies has gone up dramatically over the last 20 years."
Flowers that aren't showy are among the worst culprits. Microscopic pollen contains the male cells of flowering plants. Pollen can have a smooth surface, but the real nostril tweakers are the barbed ones that latch on to your sinus membranes and don't let go. These tend to come from flowers that are small and unattractive. "Flowers that are not really showy tend to be pollen producers," says Pam. Because they're not attractive to bee pollinators, they have had to evolve to the barbed form in order to be wind pollinated and carried off into the air.
Ornamental grasses are some of the most popular landscape plants because they're so versatile. But if you live on antihistamines during allergy season, you may want to steer clear of them. "Grasses are probably the worst pollen producers," says Pam. Their flowers bloom for a long period of time and are grown over a large area. Even lawn grasses like Bermuda and annual bluegrass can be terrible on allergies, unless you mow frequently to minimize flowering.
Many communities plant non-fruiting male trees so they don't have to deal with messy fruit-producing female trees. The olive tree is popular in many landscapes, and because of its beautiful structure, many homeowners plant one in their garden close to their house and windows. The olive tree's barbed pollen, however, makes it one of the worst pollen producers.
How to Maintain a Low-Allergen Garden
The closer you are to a pollen source, and the more frequently you're exposed to it, the more likely you are to develop an allergy. With that in mind, here are some steps you can take to minimize your exposure to allergenic plants.
- Consider a plant's proximity to doors and windows. If you're constantly coming into contact with plants loaded with pollen, the pollen can get on your clothes and follow you indoors. "As you re-landscape your garden, remove those plants that are pollen producers and replace them with low-allergen plants," says Pam. If you still want to enjoy high-pollen plants in the garden, plant them towards the back where you're less likely to come into contact with them.
- Incorporate bee-pollinated plants into your garden. So how do you know which plants don't produce a lot of pollen? Take a look at the flowers that bees tend to gravitate to; showy flowers tend not to be wind pollinated but rather bee pollinated. Most big, bright flowers are bee magnets. Their pollen is spread by hard-working insects moving it from flower to flower, rather than through the wind. Long tubular flowers are good for the landscapes of allergy-riddled gardeners. "They do have pollen, but usually because the pollen is down inside the flower, it's not released," says Pam. "It takes a bee or another insect to go down inside the flower and get the pollen, so it's not released into the atmosphere where you would be exposed to it."
- Be wary of fragrant plants. Another hidden culprit is the fragrance of some plants, including roses. Fragrance can spark your senses and cause an allergic reaction. Even herbs like rosemary can produce quite a bit of scent and can be just as irritating as pollen for some people.
- Diversify plantings. Check with your local nursery or extension office for a list of plants that aren't high-pollen producers. Bulbs are great because they tend to have showy flowers. They also bloom at a time when there's not a lot of background pollen in the air so your exposure level is a lot lower.
- Trim hedges. Keeping hedges pruned back can also keep pollen at bay. The fewer flowers the plant produces, the less pollen gets into the air.
When working outdoors, protect yourself personally by wearing gloves, coveralls, sunglasses and a hat. Then before you go in your house, take all that stuff off so you don't bring the pollen into the house.


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WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts with AI (addon included) 1.6.6
Latest version: 1.6.6$5 / year
The WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts Pro A.I. is a high functional and comprehensive pricing and discount plugin for WooCommerce stores. This all-purpose plugin is easy to install, understand and use on your online shopping website.
WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts with AI
The WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts Pro A.I. is a high functional and comprehensive pricing and discount plugin for WooCommerce stores. This all-purpose plugin is easy to install, understand and use on your online shopping website. This plugin comes with elaborate pricing and discount toolkit that helps to implement different types of discount-based prices, add coupons to any product or category.
It is quite simple to use this Discounts and Pricing toolkit. Just create the conditions and rules for applying different discounts from the settings. Once you are done, enable or disable any of the rules for the discount and the same will apply to the pricing of the chosen product or category that meets these preset rules and conditions.
This plugin comes with an elaborate pricing and discount toolkit that helps to implement different types of discount-based prices, add coupons to any product or category. You can customize pricing structure on your Woocommerce store using this platform to introduce a range of discounts including:
- Product Discounts
- Category Discounts
- BOGO Offers
- Cart-based discount
- Tier Discounts for product as well as category
- Product Attribute-based Discounts
- Product Tag-based Discounts
- Discounts for Specific Customer
- Shipping Method-based Discounts
- Payment Method-based Discounts
- Creating Upcoming Sale
How this plugin works on your Woocommerce Store?
It is quite simple to use this Discounts and Pricing toolkit. Just create the conditions and rules for applying different discounts from the settings. Once you are done, enable or disable any of the rules for the discount and the same will apply to the pricing of the chosen product or category that meets these preset rules and conditions.
Benefits of Using this Plugin
The WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts with A.I. with a range of exciting features help to add different discounts to attract customers to your online store for maximizing purchases. This automated pricing system saves your time in skipping the strenuous manual processes.
Maximize Sales
Boost sales on your store with attract festive and seasonal offers for returning customers based on their purchases history. You can take advantage of Black Fridays, set up end of the season clearance sales and much more. Customers are likely to return for more for saving more with this bonanza offers.
Save Time
Once you set the rules and conditions on this plugin, it is easy to implement any discount of choice for any customer, end of the season sale or launch any festive offer. You can enable or disable any offer at any point of time and allow the automated system do the rest.
Establish Long-Term Customer Loyalty for Your Store
Our integrated A.I. system powered plugin allows the Wocommerce store admin to instigate sales strategies to influence the purchase decisions of the customers and persuade them to return in search of more offers for long-term.
Key Features
Offer Plus Memberships to Long-Term Customers
Based on the purchase history, choose to add the customers to the Plus membership. You may also set rules on the WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts with A.I. plugin to measure the customers matching the criteria to be added to the membership.
Set Special Discounts Rules for Plus Members
On our automated system, you can set special discounted prices for plus members so that they get the discount offer when they buy anything in future. This rule applies to the buyers you add to the Plus membership club.
Announce Upcoming Sales/Offers
On this plugin, you can make announcements on the upcoming special offers well in advance allowing the customers to check the eligibility to get these offers. You can create offers on products as well as product categories.
Create Rules for Any Specific Customer
Apart from extending discounts to the plus members, you may also include a section of other buyers to qualify for special discounts after attaining a minimum purchase margin/ completing minimum orders/number of purchases in a month etc.
Add Conditions and Restrictions
When setting rules for the discounts, you may impose conditions for the buyers to qualify for these discounts. Our plugin allows the admin to define the conditions on multiple parameters including:
- Specific Product
- Specific Category
- Specific Product Tag
- Specific Product Attribute
- Specific Customer
- Specific User Role
- Product Quantity in Cart
- Product Weight in Cart
- Maximum Discounts
- Exclude Sale Item
- Cart Item Quantity
- Purchase Quantity History
- Purchased Value History
- Payment Gateway
- Shipping Method
Add Coupon Suggestions
Apart from implementing discounts directly to the prices, you can additionally set coupon suggestions on the shopping cart page. You can choose to show/hide the coupons on this page, select the number of coupons to display on the page etc.
Other Features
Pricing and Discountss Rules
Our plugin supports a range of discount rules you can choose to enable or disable to implement a suitable pricing structure on your store as per requirement.
Tier Discounts for Product
Give discounts to the customers upon reaching a tier on the cart. Set discount range for units, amount, etc. Increase the discount with increasing purchases as set in the rule.
Tier Discounts for Category
Set rules to give discount when the customer reaches a minimum threshold buying products within a category. Mention a rule to increase the discount with increasing orders.
Buy One Get One (BOGO) Rule for Product
This is the most popular offer for the customers. Receiving a free product is always a welcome bonanza for everyone. On our plugin, you can set BOGO discount rule on specific products, during seasonal sale, festivities etc.
BOGO Rule for Category
To widen the ambit of purchases with more choices, you can add the BOGO discount rule for any category of products.
Product Attribute-Based Discounts
You can set the rules for the discount based on the product attributes (size, colour etc).
Product Tag-Based Discounts
You may choose to set a separate discount on products with specific tags on the gallery.
Product Variation-Based Discounts
You can apply this discount rule on any product based on its variation at the "Edit Product" page at your Woocommerce store.
Product-Based Discounts
Choosing any particular product, you may set conditions-based rules to apply discount for regular price adjustments.
Product Combination-Based Discounts
Set a discount rule on a combination of products. This means a customer has to purchase all the products listed in the combination to get the discount.
Category-Based Discounts
Add a discount rule to any product category. When the item from this category is added to the cart, the discount automatically applied to the price and will be deducted from the total payable amount.
Category Combination-Based Discounts
The seller may create a discount rule on a combination of categories. The buyer has to purchase all products in the category combination to get a discount on the total payable amount on the cart.
Cart-Based Discounts
This is another choice for the seller to add a discount to the cart without adding a coupon. The admin can add the cart discount based on various parameters such as purchase history of the customer, subtotal, items, and others.
Payment Method Based Discounts
In order to encourage the buyers to use partner payment gateways, the store owners can introduce a discount rule applicable to the concerned payment method. For instance, you can set an additional 10% discount when a buyer pays with a credit card or any other digital wallet.
Shipping Method Based Discounts
Create discount rules for one or more chosen shipping methods.
Coupon Module Features
Adding a coupon to cart is definitely an advantage to attract the customers towards making more purchases. Today, most buyers search for coupons when placing an order. If the customers do not find a coupon code at the cart, they may cancel the order and try to place a new one in the hope to get a code for this order. To ensure that the customers do not cancel the order, you can place a coupon for them at the cart using the Woocommerce Order Coupon Pro plugin. This prevents the customer from cancelling the order besides an array of other benefits:
- Win the trust of the customers
- Attract more customer attention to your online store
- Boost sales
- Get the chance to start ahead of the competitors
Custom Coupon Type
You can customize your coupons based on various parameters including:
- Up to fixed cart discount
- Up to fixed product discount
- Up to percentage discount
Coupons Reporting
You can collect reports and insights on the coupon use for preparing future sales strategies. View the coupon reports based on:
- Most discounted coupons
- Top 5 most discounted coupons
- Top 5 most popular coupons
- Top 5 most discounted customers
- Discountsed coupon type with amount
- Most discounted states
- Most discounted country
- Used coupons details in respect of order & customers
Display Coupon Offer Popup
- Customize the offer using the template as you want the coupon to appear on the popup
- Select the page where you want to display the offer
- Choose who can see the coupon offer banners on your site
Apply Coupon on Placed Order Feature for Customers
This feature allows the store owners to place coupons on the cart for attracting the customer based on one or more conditions. Some of the most popularly set conditions include:
- Set maximum days for the coupon validity
- Select the order status on which the customer is eligible for applying the coupon code
- Set minimum number of orders to allow the coupon redemption
- Set a minimum order amount for redeeming the coupon
- Set an option for the customers to remove a certain coupon from their order Refund Coupons Amount to the Customers who already paid for the order
- Select the order status for paying the refund amount
- Set dedicated wallet gateways and systems for transferring the refund amount
- Use dedicated mailing system for sending notification on each step
- Send notifications via fully customizable email templates
- Compatible with different email customizer plugins
- The admin can allow the customers to request the apply coupon if they forgot to apply one previously
- The seller can accept/reject the coupon request
- Customer will get an email notification when his request is approved or rejected
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