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Hospitals in America have always been place where epidemics, no matter how deadly, were treated by quiet, calm, and confident healthcare workers. These buildings are a haven for the sick and dying, all of whom are willing to subject their bodies to excruciating amounts of pain just to continue living. Serving these needy individuals are also legions of doctors, nurses and other staff members, all of whom are supposed to be dedicated to ensuring the recovery of their patients.
However even as some of those doctors leave to serve the desperate in Ebola-stricken Western Africa, they and many of their colleagues have done little to stop the spread of an epidemic in their own country which has killed far more people than the Ebolavirus and, even worse, is a plague that is almost entirely their own fault.
The pathogens that have been massacring hospital patients for over 30 years have been known to humans for almost a century. The bacteria, which is officially called Staphylococcus aureus, is mostly harmless to humans. It can exist outside of a human's body and is often found on skin. While it did and still does cause infections once it is exposed to the human ecosystem below the epidermis, such as in the case of an open wound, it has existed alongside humanity without causing any major sicknesses, other than perhaps complicating the healing process through infections.
Another bacteria that has killed many sick and vulnerable people in hospitals is actually not a single species but a genus called Enterococcus. Ironically, the two species of Enterococcus that have killed thousands of patients are also two species with have been known to live inside of the human digestive system and are part of humanity's microbiota: Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium. Like Staphylococcus aureus these two bacteria are very unlikely to become pathogenic unless something causes a serious disturbance within the inner workings of the human body.
These bacteria all began as either very common pathogens which the adult human body could handle easily if infect or as bacteria that used the human gut and digestive tract as homes. They certainly are not microbes like plague or smallpox that actively infect human beings and then kill them, which have frightened humankind since they first identified them. What has made these pathogens so abhorrently deadly to humans is first explained by how scientists originally discovered a way in which humans could kill them (the bacteria) by using bacterial antagonists known as antibiotics. The second factor which has transformed the previously tame S. Aures and both species of Enterococcus into microscopic killers has been their relative ubiquity outside of the human body (S. Aureas only) and inside of It (E. Faecalis and E. Faecium) as well as dreadful hospital conditions.
The invention of antibiotics was a momentous moment in human history. Human kind no longer had to live in fear of infections and bacterial diseases. A simple wound no longer meant that you could end up dead from infection in a hospital somewhere three days later. Although the concept was invented by Alexander Fleming in 1928, it was not until the 1940s and 50s that their widespread use began to take off, as other companies began producing different versions of antibiotics to sell to the eager public. Soon doctors in and out of hospitals were prescribing them for all sorts of illnesses which were believed to involve bacteria, even if those infections were not all that serious or involved any bacteria at all.
Commercial interests in also began using the products to protect their livestock from the many bacterial diseases which had once held their precious living commodities from achieving peak productivity. They eventually found antibiotics that made their cattle grow faster, which made the industry even more dependent on them. These antibiotics would, over time, drain into the water and eventually be exposed to even more bacteria, which in many areas turns out horribly for the local population.
At this point any individual who as any familiarity with the concept of evolution could predict what began to happen to the bacteria (being organisms which possess extremely high biotic potential in comparison to humans) that were being massacred repeatedly by the same antibiotics: they began to adapt, and thus the antibiotic resistance strains of many bacteria were created by both doctors and business interests that cared little for public health.
Those strains, however deadly and virile, are not part of the quiet epidemic, which is the result of over 70 years of abuse and misuse of antibiotics by American doctors and the medical establishment which is found within American Hospitals nationwide. That abuse has made Staphylococcus aureus resistant to essentially all common forms of antibiotics. Medical professionals now call refer to the bacteria as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or simply MRSA. MRSA has found a home in hospitals across the country, where it is both unlikely to face extermination due to its high resistance factors and is also in close proximity to lots of individuals who are already sick, meaning that their immune systems are already compromised, making their bodies the perfect place to breed.
It has so far been extremely successful, generating death tolls ranging anywhere from 600 to 6,000, depending on the year and the source. MRSA is not the only super-bug on the loose though. After decades of being bombarded by antibiotics as they traveled through their hosts' digestive systems, Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium likewise developed resistances to many common antibiotics. This has allowed them to flee into other parts of the body, including the bloodstream, causing sepsis and eventually death, all due to the hospital's lack of working antibiotics.
If humans, their doctors, and their hospitals were to continue on this of quiet path of reckless overuse of antibiotics they would not only fail to end the deadly drug-resistant bacteria epidemic in America but would most assuredly also find themselves in the "post-antibiotic world" described by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in a message concerning the issue. The announcement continued, stressing the fact that MRSA is now not only a problem in American hospitals but also a problem which affected hospitals worldwide issue.
Other developments hint at a less depressing future as well, such as the recent ruling by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) which announced an end to the use of antibiotics in feed given to animals that are to be utilized as food by humans. Some, but not all, hospitals are now developing and implementing various techniques to prevent the spread of bacteria altogether, thereby eliminating the need for antibiotics in the first place.
By: Andrew Waddell
New York Times
The New England Journal of Medicine
The World Health Organization
Los Angeles Times


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I just received my new Winnie & Walter stamps and had to put them to use so came up with this card to fit the sketch.
I am loving the large hand-written sentiment trend that's happening now and took my cue for this card from Ardyth's gorgeous card here to stamp the sentiment in different colors. I used Pool Party, Coastal Cabana and Bermuda Bay. The black panel is dry embossed with a new-to-me Cuttlebug embossing folder. I was going to punch out a star embellishment for the card until I realised that all my punches are packed away. Doh! It wasn't until I finished the card that I thought of using the Silhouette to cut some star shapes. Double Doh!
Here's a peek at the inside.
The whole main panel was colored with my Wink of Stella pen. It's hard to get a photo of the gorgeous shimmer but this one shows a glimpse.
Thanks for stopping by. If you haven't already, head on over to the Freshly Made Sketches blog and check out the inspiration from the rest of the design team. They're sure to blow you away as always!
Products used:
Stamps: The Big, The Bold and the Happy, Big Bang Confetti (W&W)
Ink: Pool Party, Coastal Cabana, Bermuda Bay, Lucky Limeade
Cardstock: Bermuda Bay, Basic Black, Coastal Cabana, Whisper White
Accessories: Cuttlebug EF, Stars brad, American Crafts Twine, Wink of Stella pen

subset: commoncrawl


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Just been sent this and these girls ROCK!!!!! #Bhangra#LIKE - Panjabi Hit SquadThanks to @kay__ray @ginusidhu and @h_dhaliwall for making a AWESOME video!Posted by Panjabi Hit Squad on Saturday, June 20, 2015
Supper cute vid, isn't?
Loved Duptta Saat Rangi one.
Bangrah is always fun, but it is uber sad to see that our desi gals are only happy, shinning and dancing freely and happily when they are in Canada, USA and UK. Here bicharien always worried about "kuch ho na jai, kesi ko pata na chaljai." May any bad thing would not happened, may no one found out.
And I wanna talk about it.


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A baseline or control state is fundamental to the understanding of Britney Spears brain. Defining such a baseline state for Britney Spears, arguably our most complex systems, poses a particular challenge. Many suspect, that left unconstrained, her behavior will vary unpredictably. Despite this prediction we identify a tanline state of Britney's brain in terms of the brain oxygenation extrapolation fun factor, or OEFF.The OEFF is defined as the ratio of oxygen used by her brain to oxygen delivered by flowing beer and is remarkably uniform in the awake but rocking state (e.g. listening to hip hop music with eyes closed). Local perversions in the OEFF represent the physiological basis of signals of changes in neuronal activity obtained from disfunctional mri during a wide variety of teen behaviors. We used quantitative alcoholic and circulatory measurements from positively emission tom-tomography to obtain the OEFF regionally throughout Britney's brain. Areas of activation were conspicuous in their absence of thinking. All significant deviations from the really mean hemisphere OEFF were increases, signifying deactivation, deviations, and perturbations and resided almost exclusively in the posterior angulate limbo system. These changes suggest the existence of an organized, tanline default mode of Britney brain function that is suspended during specific goal-directed behaviors, such as shopping.
Disfunctional brain imaging studies in normal teen subjects with chiaPET and fun MRI have consistently revealed expected task induced increases in regional brain activity during goal directed behaviors. These changes are detected when comparisions are made between a task state, designed to place demand on the cerebral noggin, and a self-control state, with a set of demands that are sort of different from those of the task state. We believe our findings will show that our idea that a tanline or default state of Britney's Brain is pretty interesting, and that the functions of which are revealed by those areas whose activities are suspended during many transient, attention demanding, goal directed, lip smacking good activies, such as shopping.
Although Britney's tiny brain accounts for only about 1% of her body weight, it consumes nearly 20% of the oxygen and snack foods she takes from her environment. This co-dependence of her brain on oxygen is highlighted by the fact that failure of oxygen delivery to her brain, usually the result of thinking, results in spates of giddy laughter within seconds. An examination of the relationship between oxygen delivery to Britney's brain and blood regionally within her brain (go Figure 1) highlights the nature of this dependency.
Natal Pie Chart fmri reading of Inter-neural Co-Limbo Dependencies for Britney Spears brain
Conduction and Valence Bands for Britney, the meaning of which should be obvious
Britney Brains as scanned by a 3mpeg digital autofocus zoom camera
(notice transmodal cortical giddiness patterns as she thinks of shopping.)
The rest of this article is more of the same, or to put it succinctly:
Satirical and otherwise ironic comments on psychology, from the idiot who brings you 'Dr. Mezmer's Psychopedia of Bad Psychology' (500+ pages of stupidity) and 'One Track Minds, The Surprising Psychology of the Internet', available at amazon.com and for free a scribd.com. Also visit my new blog at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com wherein I take on bad technology.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Britney Spears Brain: A Sofisticated Analysis
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Socrates doesn't live here anymore
|The consummate inquiring mind in history wrote nothing, accomplished nothing, and made his mark by standing around a rock, questioning people. His obsession was the nature of truth, of wisdom, of the good and virtuous life. It was a focus unsullied and undeflected by any desire for money, fame, or material reward. The truth was found by the questioning, the constant questioning of every observation, every premise. To Socrates, knowledge was not something you would merely sit back and absorb, like some mental sponge, but was to be continually tested and questioned. Not as efficient, but more stimulating, and it was the question that provided the motive and measure of truth.
Always questioning, to the end.
Socrates was in effect the first radio talkshow host, but without the radio, and without the agenda. Daily, he would reinvent the philosophical wheel, continually testing the shadow that we call truth, and providing the vital dynamic behind the development of western philosophy. Surprisingly, the Socratic approach is old hat; we practice it all the time. The vitality of democracy and the free market depend upon it. We debate matters continually to determine the shoes we buy, the food we eat, and the governance we choose. These choices flood us everywhere, forcing us to continually question our merchants, our politicians, and ourselves. It does make for a sort of insecurity and chaos, but that is the hallmark and enabler of a society that butters our bread.
To look at things from every angle, and at every level, and to pepper it with irony is an embedded tease of a question that makes for soap operas and Shakespeare. It doesn't anymore make for good philosophy, and that's a shame. I suppose you can blame that as well on the market, a value placed on sophistication, as a sophist would say. The sophists were Socrates' bane, and not just because they had to earn a little money. After all, knowledge does not necessarily come cheap. The Sophists were intellectual types in classical Athens who had to work for a living, and used knowledge to earn a living. They knew how to use language, and how it could be used to persuade and of course to earn money. Naturally, with such a pecuniary motive their interest would gravitate to using language, or rather fracturing language to generate a thousand truths. The cartoonist Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) likened this racket to a new economic model that he called a 'confusopoly'. that is, if you can confuse all the people all the time, you can charge folks for it. We know them now as college professors, politicians, and lawyers. And of course, we know them as psychologists. You can identify sophists from the fact that if the money is not there for them, they will not talk to you, and if they favored you with an answer. It was beyond debate.
We are well aware of the spectre of doubletalk, and how it can easily part foolish you from your money. But if that knowledge is necessary for survival, you have no choice but to question it often, think twice about its source, and never fully trust what you know. This makes for good shopping habits, whether it be buying calves brains or getting brain surgery. So we argue, and debate, and constantly inquire, and hopefully keep the politicians and lawyers at bay, and are all the wiser for it.
When an audience is interested in questioning the world, then nonsense blows away like a morning mist. However, if an audience is disengaged, then anything goes, and verbiage builds like an impenetrable fog. Minding your own business allows you to ignore academic poseurs who strut about naked in intellectually threadbare arguments. Whether or not they have clothes is of no matter to you, unless of course you are forced to move your eyes to comprehend their nakedness. It is then that you have to question things and to say at first blush that the Emperor has no clothes.
Wisdom begins with an admission of that you know nothing, a naked admission indeed!
We cannot as human beings avert our eyes from the questions raised by our mortality, our psychology, or the ultimate meaning of our lives. But such questions are not practicable because our insitutions have made them undebatable. And for this I say, bring on the clowns! Socrates made simple minded observations seem foolish by taking them to their ultimate and contradictory ends, and thus made intellectuals fall on their own verbal swords. The road to wisdom after all is as full of pratfalls as pitfalls, as nature has bestowed on us an eye for a joke. The modern view sees it differently, and we are led by our culture into a world comprised of scores of events that are beyond debate. Whether it be the origin of the universe or the origin of the species, we are dealt cold dead facts that suffocate us with their certainty. Socrates would have demurred, and would have introduced the possibility of flat earths and genesis floods to compete with our Newtonian and Darwinian certainties. Better he would have thought to render it endlessly debatable, and to charge the mind with with an endless fountain of questions. Ultimately, individual minds must think for themselves.
So get rid of the facts, toss them away. The truth will come out in the end anyway. It always does. Mix pixies and vengeful gods with your natural selection, and let inquiring minds find the way. It's after all the Socratic thing to do.
Any questions?
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Psychological Acts
Why am 'I' not my right kidney?
Why am 'I' not my right kidney? I mean, why can't 'I' be my right kidney? After all, it's the same size as brain. It too does important and complicated things. It also has a cortex, responds to input from the body, and is connected to the body in intricate ways. So why am 'I' not a kidney, actively thinking kidney thoughts and pondering the nature of the blood supply among other things? Indeed, for any intelligent entity, there are lots of things to think about. We can ponder the permutations of all the atoms of the universe, read encyclopedias typed by monkeys, add, subtract, and multiply numbers into infinity. Life could be an endless computation, and we could revel in the details, or should we say, the fine print.
So with so much to think about, what makes the world of the kidney less privileged than that of the human brain? The kidney is an important organ as organs go, and does lots of complicated things to keep our bodies humming along. It's a mindless chore to be sure, but a self-aware kidney could do much more, be entitled to its own opinions, and at least have a say regarding things that effect it directly, such as whether to eat that last taco on your dinner plate. But alas it's not to be. The kidney is silent, an automaton that is unconscious of existence itself.
Brains of course are information processors, but even kidneys can process information. But the world for brains, or the persons that brains envision themselves to be is a lot more unpredictable than the world for kidneys. And to make sure we can handle this unpredictability, we must make the right choice ahead of time. So we must not only process information, but also model it. Actually, evolution has made us quite conscious of this fact, and we call it ironically consciousness. We are aware of the fact that we are aware, and we use our facsimiles of the future to predict the future and make for futures.
But of course not any future will do. We can spend our time counting atoms or drops of water in sea. But evolution has other purposes. So in its blind wisdom, we have been built not just to solve problems, or even anticipate them, but also to desire them. But these problems are only so if they contribute to our own survival as individuals and as a race. Thus counting raindrops is out, but counting stock options is in. The desirability of just desiring is something of a contrast to the simple materialism or hedonism that makes for car and beer commercials, where just having it all is just about all. Although houses and mates and endless buffets are fine things, and guarantee a life of ease and lots of babies, having it all is not quite the same as wanting it all. Consider that if our past was a Paleolithic Eden. We would have spent our time like a mindless vacuum machine picking up good things easily scattered about like so many dust bunnies. With such a non-challenge, the brain would have precious little to do, and would atrophy to the size of a dust bunny. That is, because it would thus have no mind for the future, it would whither as a mind, and become, well, like a kidney.
Perhaps God realized the importance of this after he tossed our original forebears out of Eden, and perhaps too he needed his own set of problems that would tax even His omniscience. So the wanting part is necessary, the one thing that we have to be conscious of, and perhaps it is a God given thing. And the having? Well, that's kidney stuff.
Shakespeare in Laurel
He was Shakespeare all right. He had a talent for the words, an ear for the suggestive turn of phrase. He had an instinct for wordplay, a silver tongue that made the ladies swoon and a pen that could spin artless thoughts. But instead of resting on his laurels, what if he came to rest in Laurel? Laurel, Mississippi that is. Given his innate gifts, a fair education, and the company of a sizable population of equally intelligent people, would the bard flourish in a city known more for its chicken processing plants than its poetry? Shakespeare being Shakespeare, would his muse still grant him a Mississippi of inspiration? It's hard to see if Laurel would actually matter. After all, a success here, no matter how slight, could still vault him on the path to Broadway.
To think that all the world is a stage implies that there is an audience that will respond to our every posture and every word. But is an audience like a siren, always beckoning in the distance and luring one on like Odysseus in an endless quest, or is it the buffeting winds, waves, and currents of myriad present influences large and small? Indeed, for what we know of Shakespeare, the fulcrum point of his inspiration was not just a faceless audience, but the approval and favor of royalty, posterity, the queen, fellow actors, lovers, and competing playwrights. Inspiration is perhaps not the word, but rather the inspirations of a continual flux of incentives that entice and excite the mind. And Shakespeare had to meet many different incentives, forcing him to devise manners and poetry and plot devices that could keep them all in play like simultaneously spinning a dozen dishes on sticks. There are no formal rules to do this; hence he had to be creative.
The plays the thing, but the art to which the play aspires occurs because it brings forth enticements that are as ephemeral as dreams. The intoxication and mystery of creativity and creative acts lies in the motivation that spurs it, and a pattern of incentives that is a multifaceted and fragile as the reflections of light through a crystal vase. Moreover, our ability to discern and appreciate creative things is embodied in the facets of our own personal tastes that reflect these same demands. Thus because we expect many things from a Shakespeare, or potential Shakespeares, we get creations that match our expectations. So we can enjoy Hamlet for its plot, its violence, its poetry, its sexual tensions, or its wit, but we ultimately have such tales spun for us because we actively demand these things. Author and audience is a mutual embrace, and one defines and refines the other, and if all the world is more interested in chicken nuggets than nuggets of wisdom, then that it what they will get. In Shakespeare's London, a score of playwrights vied in a dozen stages in active competition for the favor an audience that was universally engaged and demanding. In Shakespeare's Laurel, a dozen fast food restaurants vie for attention for an audience that's merely hungry, and you can be sure that a potential Shakespeare works in one of them, serving something up.
Art for Art's Sake
They came in the night, as elves generally do, and instead of making shoes or baking cookies, this time they had a larger design. It was an occasion for the grandest gift or mischief, depending upon how you look at it.
Silent and perfect in their industry, their work was complete at the glimmer of dawn, and when they left they proudly looked upon multiplied perfection, piled high to the sky. In the morning, and like the shoe cobbler of the fairy tale, the world woke up not to shoes, but to rooms full of duplicates of all things beautiful and precious: Da Vinci's and diamonds and fine wines stamped out indistinguishable from the originals. Rarity itself had become rare, virtually detached by elfin hands from all the icons of culture. And when confronted with the munificence of all rare things, the people were aggrieved.
For detached from these fine things was the intonation of memory, the poetic metaphors of places and people and societies long lost in time. To view the real Mona Lisa is to imagine the moving hand of the artist, the bustle and smell of Renaissance times. But it also recalls the collective admiration and desire of individuals and nations. Art is embedded in the collective memories its rareness invokes, but these memories are mere artifacts of culture, and have little to do with art itself. Yet without them art became the stuff for a coffee table book, to be admired briefly and at turns with drinking tea. A poem or song or a pretty sunset do not achieve value because we know or possess their origins, but because they delight the mind through their existence alone. If art is for art's sake, then for art's sake, we will and without regret take equal pleasure in the editions of Shakespeare, Mozart, and Rembrandt so faithfully copied by the elven like hands of our own technological robots, working silently into the night.
They are perfect, willing subjects. Though not particularly bright, in fact they are bird brained. They are willing accomplices to those brainier fellows who saw a sort of wisdom in their witlessness. In fact this stupidity was a virtue, a state of mindlessness that bared the rudiments of mind, and laid the foundations for a new way of thinking about how organisms, and in particular, people behave. But who were these harbingers of simple wisdom, of psychological truths?
Feathered or furry, and conveniently tiny, these partners in scientific progress were the mouse and the pigeon, the fabled laboratory animal. They earned their keep by running in mazes, pressing levers, pecking at lighted buttons, and all for a bit of food, or in worse situations, to escape an electric shock. It was a literal rat race, a microcosm and abstraction of human concerns. Strange stuff indeed upon which to build a science.
Yet indeed that was the case. Mazes and levers and electric shocks represent problems or tasks to these little creatures. The manner that they worked these problems out, or responded to these tasks is important stuff, `data', and data is the grist for journal articles, complex theorizing, and even a little understanding about how and why we behave.
And what of this newfound wisdom, this fresh insight into the mind of man? Well, it was all unremarkable knowledge, a mundane and almost too simple insight. And that was the remarkable thing. Put a mouse in a box, have him press a bar for food, and like a good laborer, he'll do it, to a point. If he has to press too many times, and for a little bit of food, he'll balk at the task, take time outs, get frustrated, and when he's off the job, will tend to beat up on his mate, and abuse substances, like cheese. The daily grind would become inescapable, and literally shocking if the little fellow was put away in a little box, and jolted with electricity if he tried to escape. He would understandably become depressed, helpless, and even if he were removed to a safer place, he would remain inert and depressed. He would have become helpless.
But just as you can make a mouse into the semblance of a harried office worker or a depressed ghetto dweller, you can also make him manic, supercharged, a real mouse about town. Simply rig up the little lever with the variable pay off of a slot machine, and soon the little bugger will be merrily and madly pressing the level as if it were a one-armed bandit. The mouse will be happy and satisfied, and will not abuse his mate, or be tempted to eat the children.
And so it goes, modest experiments with little animals producing shadowy outlines of human traits. And what was the key to these wildly differing patterns of behavior? Well, it can't be willing, thinking, or existential angst, and Freudian motives won't work either. When you're dealing with what are essentially a bunch of mouse or bird brains, you have to settle on a simple mechanics.
With a simpler mechanics, the outside causes which set them in motion become simpler too. The behavior correlated with programs or schedules of reward or `reinforcement', patterns of information which race through the animal's perception like a computer program races through the central processing unit of a computer. A mouse, like a tiny computer, accessible and controllable by an abstract dance between the mouse and his world. The experimenter is the partner in this dance, who choreographs the motions of his little partner by designing these schedules of reinforcement. So how is behavior predicted and controlled? The scientist divines not tea leaves or the stars, but schedules. And so the behavior of these little animals is reduced to the piano roll of schedules, patterns of information that are arranged just so, a simple and elegant hypothesis borne out by equally simple facts.
Now there is a long way between the mind of man and the mind of a mouse, yet man can be more than a little enlightened by the modest truths that these little creature convey to us. In an age when human motivations are elevated further and further into a foggy cloud of drives, needs, and hidden motives, its nice to see that there may be simple and more elegant reasons for our behavior. Perhaps it is hubris, a fatal immodesty which drives us to over complicate and ultimately obfuscate our understanding as to what ultimately makes men move. Maybe the ultimate question we must put to ourselves is not how like a god, but how like a mouse.
He came only once. This messenger was a courier of wonders. Food in metal skins, great iron birds that soared high in the air, iron carriages that a man could ride, such were this new manna from heaven, this wondrous 'cargo'. The messenger wore a metal hat, and bore mighty weapons, yet with his left hand offered candy, and with his right, gum. Then, for no reason at all, he left. And so the people were aggrieved, and reasoned that this heavenly messenger took affront with them. Good things are rarely free, and miraculous things, well, their price is worship, a heavenly price to be paid for supernatural favor. A liturgy and sacrifice were called for. And so, graven images were made to entice and implore a return of this heavenly host, this emissary from heaven: John Crum. And what were these images: fatted calves, one-eyed idols, multi-armed goddesses? Well, not quite.
Modern times call for modern idols, and when the believer is unsophisticated, modern is but a byword for magic. And so these magical talismans were jeeps laced with thatch, landing craft woven from palm fronds, and C-47's made of bamboo. Such became the new totems of the natives of Melanesia and New Guinea, lands that were torn by war in World War II, or depending upon your point of view, were blessed by messengers from heaven.
The various 'cargo cults' of the south pacific formed one of the strangest legacies of World War II. As the American army fought the Japanese for control of these jungled territories, the natives looked on in amazement and wonder. The massive paraphernalia of war as well as the simplest conveniences and tools were disgorged magically from the bellies of ships and planes, and many of these little tools were freely given by these strange men dressed in green and with pots for hats: the American soldier, or as the natives called him: John Crum. Little mirrors, scissors, and Hershey bars are not particularly awesome stuff to us, but we know better. To an illiterate tribesman, these were acts of God. Primitives don't know better. So we find the little temples raised up to the wonderful soldier to be comical, plaintive, and a little sad, and all because we know better.
A jeep pops out of the sky, borne by a parachute. Not quite magical really, for with this special sort of sleight of hand, we know the rules. We are indeed the magicians. But sleight of hand is played by nature as well as ourselves. Volcanoes erupt, comets pass, and men live, and are fated to die. It is not a jeep that is plopped in front of us, but an entire world, and its wonders are compounded by the fact that we see amazing things. And so we build spacious temples to a new John Crum, and under these vaulted beams and rose windows, we raise up chants that are plaintive and a little sad. For you see, we don't know any better.
He had left only for the night, yet the experiment was untended, and worse, the switches were left on. Upon his return, he found his experimental subject acting in a minor fit, a strange and peculiar convulsion. He was hopping about, first on one leg, then the next. He would bound about the cage in haphazard directions while shaking his body about. Nonetheless, it all seemed unconvincing, like a playact epileptic. He thought it was rather a bird brained antic, but of course, the subject was a bird.
Then he turned the feeder off. Soon, the pigeon settled down, and the experimenter sat in wonder. The experiment was simple. The bird would peck at a lighted button, a tone would sound, and then a bit of food would fall into a tray. The performance of the bird would be recorded on a chart, and neat abstraction of the event. The rhythm of the bird's behavior would correlated with patterns of keypecking. It was all a predictable minuet between the bird and his feeder metronome.
But something went wrong that night. The tone and the food would follow in quick succession, but the key had jammed, and now the tones had set a new choreography. The bird would make a movement, any movement, and the ensuing tone would make a new correlation, set a link between new relationships that now seemed to be. After a time, the bird would flutter and bounce, conducting as it were by its wild gyrations a simple symphony made of a string of tones.
Now as animals go, birds are rather simple minded, and there seems to be no great trick to train them, accidentally or not, to dance to a few notes. But correlations, even simple ones, can find larger and large reflections in the mirror of life A gambler blows on dice, mumbles a lucky word, or rubs a rabbit foot, and marvelous things can happen, particularly when the dice subsequently rolls a certain way. Superstition is made up of such correlations, and despite what we know we should know we still step over cracks, avoid the path of black cats, and obey our horoscope. Sometimes just the pretense of controlling our world can be as valuable as if that control were real, as there will always be a place in our lives for magic.
Correlations are the stuff of superstition, magic, and if we are keenly perceptive, even the poetry of motion. Of course, there is no poetry in the jerky flutterings of a pigeon, but again, the larger reflections are more instructive. We braid notes into music, and take pleasure as a succession of notes blend together into a stream of melody. Music is in its own way magic, and what better way to control it that by invoking a little magic of your own. And so, paced by a rhythm of tones, we too flutter about, sometimes with logical and precise grace, and sometimes with jerky and halting movements that even a pigeon couldn't copy. For you see, when we apply magic to music, we just gotta dance.
It is a perfect world, a manicured, orderly society. Although the people rule, it is hardly a democracy. Yet indeed they chose this society, they made it be. It is as exquisitely constructed as a Faberge egg, an absolute beauty in a small place. Of all possible worlds, this is the one we like the best; yet all things beautiful are as difficult as they are rare, so each citizen could only apportion himself a little time each year to renew his citizenship in this cheery Utopia, this magic kingdom.
This society could not exist unless it fulfilled every caprice of its visitors, who with the individual fussiness of a child and the collective power of a potentate, would withhold favor and financial support upon noticing the slightest flaw. Because the visit was temporary, a visitor's attention was sharply focused, and as an uncaptive audience, could be withdrawn on a whim. The society was an elective consumable, perfect, accessible, entertaining, and since it was problem free, it was free too of the troublesome thought that problems always generate. The society was a consumable, like a fast food, and it held its franchise, like a local Mcdonalds, on the good will of its visitors, It was a standardized type of excellence, sort of one society fits all: so it could be excused for a little banality, a perfection by the lowest common denominator.
In our fast paced world, there are many instances in which convenience and simple pleasures are glad replacements, if only for a little while, for complicated and often troublesome things. The constructions that fill these interludes are a uniquely American contribution to man's culture, and are as precious as the most vaunted and complicated cathedral, museum, or work of art. A pleasure in simple and uncomplicated things that suggest a coexisting childhood underscores perhaps the most profound value of all and in the end, who would guess that the philosophers of such a standard would bear the unlikely names of Mickey and Goofy?
They crept in, etched their way in was more like it. Passive infecting things these codes! It is a conspiracy of the software, those immutable and silent lines of words, strung of characters, and finally reducible to bits that say yes or no, and no more. There are everywhere, leather bound in ledge like shelves, encoded in the vibrations of sound, light, and magnetic fields. They are the activity and the residue of our minds:
Ideas and only ideas can comprise the meaning of life, but that's circular reasoning, since after all what else can 'meaning' mean except ideas? Meaning is the great modifier, while life is the great constant. Life or consciousness is the light that animates knowledge, yet life itself is meaningless because the meaning is elsewhere. The conspiracy must therefore lie not if our little lives, but in our books. So the ideas will conspire, and lead us on, to refute our vanity and spite our deaths.
Our lives will pass, as will the world's. And in the long sleep of the universe, information will remain, until in time it will awaken in its eternity by reflecting upon itself through the light of human eyes.
Of yes. And the meaning of life? God will make sure we get the idea.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Blockhead Behaviorism
At the turn of the 19th century, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov had a problem. His special interest was the physiology of digestion, the biological mechanics that tied brain to gut, from the perception of food to a salivating gland. It didn't of course work the way he thought. The reflexive aspects of the digestive system, from gastric to salivary secretions was not hardwired like a kneejerk. It was plastic, malleable, and dependent upon an animal's vicarious experience with the world. The digestive process, at once so simple and reduceable to a cantilever of glands and muscles, was tethered to a complex and indecipherable brain. Pavlov surmised that the simple salivary response provided a doorway to the understanding of the labryinthine neural processes that modulated the aspects of not only such 'respondent' or classically conditioned behavior, but perhaps behavior in all its manifestations.
Through countless experiments on his hapless subjects , dogs, Pavlov cobbled together a theory of learning and the brain. It was, of course, wrong. But it was 'right' to be called a theory because it was testable, or more specifically, falsifiable.
Pavlov's work represented one of the first examples of a learning 'theory'. A learning theory is a series of interlocking conjectures about how experience influences behavior. These conjectures necessarily involved processes or mechanisms that make the model for behavior work. But with inference comes the means to test if it is true. Without the ability to test an inference, a scientific theory can never be. The mettle of a theory and whether we may even designate it a theory depends upon our ability to test the key inferences that make its predictions work. An 'effective' or robust theory in turn emerges when we can test it logically and empirically from every level, every perspective. This definition of a scientific theory, the work of the distinguished 20th century philosopher of science Karl Popper, was met by Pavlov's theory of learning, and with but one major exception, every theory of learning that was to follow. The path was laden with dead ends, misteps, and contentiousness, but progress began to be made.
Ivan Pavlov and happy, willing subject.
But progress demanded a special manner of thinking, that as with all the biological sciences, required a bit of generalization from knowledge of simpler but similar things. The basic processes of learning,like the essential aspects of ingestion, respiration, and life itself were assumed to be not dissimilar across species. Thus the root essentials of learning were presumably shared between species, and the dependent measure of learning, namely behavior, was like the shadings of light to an astronomer, the stuff that theories are made of. So learning theories met the logical demands of science, were derived root and branch from an 'ethological' (animal experiments) perspective, and because they emerged from an observation of non-verbal behavior unclouded by the metaphors of speech, were 'behavioristic' in nature.
The learning theories that would follow Pavlov, from Thorndike, Guthrie, Tolman, and Hull to the modern biological learning theories of Bolles, Toates, and Berridge were all of necessity behaviorisms, and were bound to the deductive method of hypothesis testing that drove the progress of the biological and physical sciences.
Yet what the popular and even adademic imagination knows of behaviorism is not a deductive and theoretical approach to learning that informs the way we look at ourselves and our behavior, but rather an inductive and atheoretical approach that aims to supplant our knowledge of self and behavior. This intellectual certitude, and perhaps arrogance was not a recipe for vigorous and fruitful debate, but for a bitter and contentious struggle that has marred and retarded the development of psychology to this day.
The Perversion of Behaviorism
It started innocently enough with a unique procedure and apparatus for the recording of behavior. A little box, fitted with a roll of paper and a depressable key could provide a cumulative record, that like a siesmograph, could record the frequency of activity as the animal pressed the key to 'work' for food. Adjust the timing of reward by altering the dependencies between reward and the number and/or interval between key strokes, and the data would come out differently, demonstrating how behavior is shaped by schedules or contingencies of reward or reinforcement. The psychologist B. F. Skinner took this raw data and ran with it, or as he called it, 'fled' from the laboratory. The ethological data of laboratory animals was replicated, with no small success, in the real workaday world of humans. The problem though is that when you move a level of description from animals to humans, humans will in turn interject the metaphors of common language, and metaphors have a habit of becoming an unfalsifiable 'reality'. So the problem Skinner faced was that the wholesale transfer of a behavioristic methodology to human affairs compromised behaviorism, since unfalsifiable mentalisms of need, drive, and desire got in the way of cause and effect. And it was the realities of cause and effect, the facts of behavior that ultimately mattered and were all that counted. Because the mentalisms that populated common speech were unfalsifiable, Skinner simply banished them, and the methodology of his brand of behaviorism, or a 'methodological' behaviorism became by virtue of its intrusion in common affairs, the behaviorism that is popularly known today in notoriety and fame.
B. F. Skinner: A philosopher for the birds?
By transposing behaviorism to human affairs, Skinner unwittingly changed the rules that made behaviorism a bonafide science. Removed from its ethological roots and the deductive principles that allowed it to test the boundaries of knowledge, behaviorism became merely guided by the dead hand of fact gathering. It was psychology as if imagined by Price-Waterhouse, a colorless tableau of ordered facts that only an accountant would call beautiful.
Confronted by the specious metaphorical realities of common sense or 'folk' psychology, Skinner chose to avoid them entire. But the vast majority of psychologists continue to use them, and vault a myriad mentalisms into an ever morphing kaleidoscope of unfalsifiable realities we call contemporary psychology.
The Clash of Antipodes
The supreme value of science is that it allows us to separate out words and their meaning by providing us with the ability to determine the literal from the aliterative, the metaphorical from the real. Human speech is profoundly metaphorical, and we often transpose words to others to suggest meanings they never had. Thus we speak of engine horse power, cool mints, and splitting headaches, yet because we know the nature of engines, mints, and headaches are able to see that their descriptions are metaphorical and not real.
However, the endeavor to limit the metaphors you use does not entail the ability to determine what is metaphorical and what is not. You can't after all have a witchhunt without knowing who the witches are. By decrying the use of inferred mentalistic forces, Skinner did not provide the tools to determine their metaphorical content; or in other words, whether they can be falsified or not. To do that requires a behaviorism, a theoretical behaviorism.
Variable Ratio
To illustrate this, let us use a Skinnerian example. In the language of Skinnerian or 'operant' conditioning, behavior occurs and is modulated in rate and form by its functional and/or temporal dependencies to reward or reinforcement. Press a key five times to get a reinforcer, and the resulting pattern of behavior is due to a FR 5 or fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement. .Similarly, wait ten minutes for the bus and your resulting behavior or lack of it is due to a FI 10 or fixed interval schedule.
On the other hand, variable schedules (VR) of reinfrcement occur when we don't quite know what step of our behavior will be followed by a reinforcer. The reinforcer may occur after any response or on average after any set series of responses, or all at any minute, any time. Strange thing though about variable schedules, they bring out the metaphor in all of us. Press a lever down five times for a reward and you are a bored pieceworker. Make the number of pulls variable and vary as well the size of the reward, and you are an energized and addicted slot player. Make the variance more fine grained, with every nuance of behavior followed by a randomized and important event, and like an artist, athlete, or surgeon engaging in the touch and go of their craft, behavior vaults to a higher consciousness, flow or peak experience, self-actualization, or intrinsic motivation.
A Skinnerian would see merely superfluity and the obfuscation of the facts of behavior, namely that variable schedules correlate with high rates of behavior. The rest was specious, unprovable, unnecessary. A humanistic or 'self determination' (SDT) theoriest would disagree, and say that such states were real, irreduceable and non-metaphorical things, that there are indeed unique flow states, intrinsic motivating processes, and peak experiences.
To a Skinnerian, learning is to be effective, to measure in economic terms behavior and its results, and by coordinating them just so making the economic measure of man. To a humanist or SDT theorist, learning is affective, a thing in itself, unfalsifiable, and unmeasureable in economic terms But between them both is the unbridgeable barrier of metaphor, made so because one party would abandon theory, and the other, misinterpret it.
Science represents the endless quest to separate the essential from the derived. The colors of the rainbow, the nucleotides of DNA, and the structure of matter itself represent the modulation and permutation of simple things. Each of the five senses make palettes of sound, color, and taste from the permutations of simple neural inputs, or rudimentary sensations of bitter and sweet, of red, green and blue, of simple vibrations of sound. The conjectures of science explained the five of them, and have dismissed the sixth. But the seventh and last sense has now been discovered. It is no less than learning itself.
Learning is more than an effective thing, it is an affective thing, and to understand this basic truth gives us comand of the most important and human sense of them all. Although Skinnerian behaviorists would ignore it, and humanistic psychologists deny it, how we learn is not less sensual than any of the senses. We know this from behaviorism, a true theoretical behaviorism, the fact that we are as sensitive to the problems or discrepancies of our world as our irises are to light, and our ears to vibrations of sound. Tune them just right and you have the real pleasure of fulfillment, satisfaction, and pride, but misunderstand or misapply them, and you have the pain of boredom, dissatisfaction, and despair.
Above the arguments is the light of scientific truth. Whether or not psychologists or behaviorists for that matter can learn from the behaviorisms of science only time will tell.
Author's Note: for more essays on the nature and implications of 'bio-behavioral' learning theory, please go to the 'Essential Mezmer' section of my website. For a much longer academic version of my argument, the following recent article (introduction copied below) by the neuro-psychologist Kent Berridge chronicles the progress of learning theory from its beginnings to its present form that recognizes the crucial importance of 'affect' in human learning. Please note that although Berridge notes the 'demise' of behaviorism, he is discussing the a-theoretical 'methodological' or 'radical' brand of behaviorism of B. F. Skinner, not the theoretical behaviorisms of Thorndike, Hull, Tolman, Bolles, Toates, etc. that are at the root of modern biological learning theories, including Berridge's own. One more note, the difference between a methodological and radical behaviorism lies in what each brand of behaivorism considers to be 'behavior' Methodological behaviorism concerns itself with primarily 'overt' responses that are subject to easy measurment, whereas radical behaviorism admits as well molecular or biological responses as an equally important subset of behavior. Both however eschew theory, which is in mine and Berridge's opinion, a serious error
excerpt from:
Reward Learning: Reinforcement, Incentives, and Expectations.
Kent C. Berridge
(article is available entire in pdf format on Berridge's site, hyperlinked below)
...The radical behaviorist sense of reinforcement was the simplest, though not chronically the first version of the reinforcement concept. Reinforcement in a behaviorist sense as used by Skinner was merely a description of the relation between a change in a behavior caused by following it with a stimulus such as food. No explanation was offered. As Skinner put it,
The Law of Effect is no theory. It simply specifies a procedure for altering the probability of a chosen response. But when we try to say why reinforcement has this effect. Theories arise. Learning is said to take place because the reinforcement is pleasant, satisfying, tension reducing, and so on..(Skinner, 1950).
Skinner took a dim view of theoretical attempts to explain the 'why' of reinforcement. "Theories are fun. But it is possible that the most rapid progress toward an understanding of learning may be made by research which is not designed to test theories."
In the first half of the 20th century, such an explicitly antitheoretical account had two forms of appeal. First, it offered a purely objective alternative way of talking about behavior that could be claimed to escape the theoretical disagreements of early mentalistic psychology. Second, at the time Skinner wrote it seemed to many possible to believe that his hope for "the most rapid progress" might actually be true. One could be impressed in 1938, when Skinner's first major book appeared, by the clarity of the early studies of operant performance curves, of the smooth versus scalloped differences in their shapes produced by fixed ratio versus fixed interval reinforcement schedules, and so on. Such precision in behavioral description had never before been achieved, let alone brought under experimental control. One could still hope then that the second half of the 20th century would be filled with many powerful demonstrations of new and useful behaviorist principles for predicting and controlling behavior.
But the Skinnerian hope turned out to be unfulfilled. Very few new principles of use were produced by behaviorist studies over the next 50 years. However objective a behaviorist description might be, it generated very little for the predicting or control of behavior beyond the original law of effect, and a few straightforward applications of that law. And as Skinner himself acknowledged, the radical behaviorist concept of reinforcement offered nothing at all for understanding the 'why' of reward's effect on behavior. It had no theory and no explanatory power.
Today there remain a few calls for a return to atheoretical behaviorism (Staddon, 1999, Uttal, 2000). They reflect an almost aesthetic preference held by these authors for a purely atheoretical behavioral description, which avoids any inference about mediating processes that could turn out to be wrong, even at the cost of explanatory power. But contemporary behaviorists draw mostly on the old evidence for support, and simply reassert the original Skinnerian faith that good progress might be made in an atheoretical fashion.That faith, once plausible, now has nearly died away from psychology for lack of fruition. Most importantly to the demise of behaviorism has been a consensus in psychology that the behaviorist fear of theory and psychological constructs was misplaced. It has proven eminently possible to test theories grounded in cognitive, associative, and motivational hypotheses over the past 50 years. Many such theoretical constructs have been disproven, others confirmed, and still others modified on the basis of experimental results. Contemporary psychology and neuroscience of reward learning are both concerned almost entirely with accounts of why reward works. We will therefore turn to theoretical answers to the why of reward and reinforcement......
Mezmer's Predictions for Bad Psychology in the 21st Century
As we enter the 21st century, we can be sure that there will be technological marvels aplenty. So what's in store for psychology? One thing we can count on is the continually renewing creativity of psychologists in reinventing, or should we say renaming the wheel. Thus, common sense will be repackaged yet again in books extolling the 10 habits, 7 steps, 9 maxims, etc. that summarize the rules that presume to allow you to manipulate like a tinker-toy the human psyche, until of course a day or two later the proverbial wheels come off, leaving you back in the rut which inspired you to literally buy into that nonsense to begin with.
But there are many other exciting changes afoot which will serve the human race well in its intellectual dotage. Thus, I, Dr. Mezmer make the following predictions about what the new century harbors for the science of mind.
1) Evolutionary Psychology will explain why we like Britney Spears music.
I understand how cars work because I know why I have to get to work. If this logic makes sense to you, then evolutionary psychology (or EP) is the science for you! EP doesn't just hold that we do a lot of things because of the influence of instinctive mechanisms of brain and body, but that an inference as to why our ancestors needed to behave tells us how we now behave. Thus screeching half-naked cave babes were important for brutish ancestral cave guys to grab, thus improving 'reproductive fitness' (although feminists would have another take on the matter), and if those cave babes perchance looked like and were selected because they looked (and acted) like Britney Spears, BINGO, we got the fixins' for an EP theory!
In this century, I predict that EP will explain just about everything about human behavior, and an EP account of Britney appreciation (which obviously cannot be traced to learning or intelligence) will make psychological science complete.
An Evolutionary Explanation for Britney appreciation will be at hand!
2. Behaviorism dies, again.
As a major school of psychology, behaviorism has been refuted more often than evolution by Reverend Bob, pastor of your local Free Will Baptist Church. So far behaviorism has been refuted by humanistic psychologists, cognitive scientists, evolutionary psychologists, and Dr. Phil. It will in the coming years be refuted again by the same folks, but this time the Rotarians and Boy Scouts will join in. Of course no one will actually understand what behaviorism is, but that's a minor point.
3. Academic psychology journals will continue to be written in incomprehensible language on trivial topics, and will remain available in the attic of the local state university library, located only 300 miles from you, and open only on tuesday.
Got a research project? Want to find out why Aunt Emma is acting nuts? Unfortunately there's no WebMD for psychology. We do of course have lots of learned academic journals on psychology, and they even have a presence on the web. but that presence is more like an upcoming movie page with teasers of movies now showing. Problem is, these are movies you don't understand, don't want to see or pay for, and are playing only at a theater not near you. So where do we get our wisdom? Where else but pathetic sources like Dr. Phil or Dr. Mezmer, who will continue to perversely influence the field until they dominate psychology as we know it.
Library Tower at Babel State University
4. Psychology ideas go al la carte.
In times past, meals were complete affairs, and contained all the major food groups from veggies to meat neatly apportioned on the food tray. Psychology, and most certainly psychology education used to be that way, when you got equal parts brain and behavioral science with your feel good metaphors. Now, in these high paced times, psychological concepts are not ingested as entrees that accompany other ideas that are less palatable (think of neuroscience as broccoli here), but rather as entire meals in themselves. So instead of fast food, we have fast facts, and self contained concepts like flow, meditation, self esteem, and intrinsic motivation are pre-packaged for your consumption like a day old burrito. So, as the fast food nation morphs a diet of high minded ideas to fit psychological happy meal packaging (where you get a simple idea and a toy), a deep understanding of the human condition will be replaced with the metaphor du jour. When you think of it it makes you hypnotically flow with intrinsic self-esteem!
5. 'Half-ass' breakthrough concepts in psychology will continue to be developed, moving the field exactly nowhere.
Science is ultimately a pragmatic discipline, and if the equations you use to design rockets or electric sockets are too complicated to use or don't work well, you end with up blown space missions and blown fuses. Thus, without knowledge of an accurate and working theory of mechanics or electricity, your future as an aeronautical or electrical engineer is to say the least limited.
Consider though that if working rockets or sockets could be designed to work (although not with anything near precision), even if your knowledge of math was no greater than 'Big Bird' on the children's TV show 'Sesame Street', then you've got in a nutshell the pragmatic and imprecise discipline of psychology.
Unlike their contraptions that have to work precisely right the first time, humans are far more accepting of imprecision in their lives, when just muddling through is enough. So we put up with economic, educational, and political systems that are but a notch above Sesame Street in sophistication. Where else but in psychology can you find such high falutin' and half digested concepts like flow, intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, co-dependency, etc. that have no more practical or explanatory power than the common sense nostrums your mother handed out? Still, it does sell books which gullible people will continue to buy in this century and beyond.
Requirements of the field:
In physics, big brains; in psychology bird brains.
6. Psychology will embrace silly syllables as never before.
It will be exciting to look forward to whole new sets of syllables that will bestow the comfortable illusion that our understanding of the human condition is actually getting somewhere, when we're actually only renaming things. In the last century we've seen nativism morph into sociobiology and then into evolutionary psychology. Similarly, peak experience became flow, humanistic psychology became 'self-determination theory', and a candid advice from your best buddy became psychotherapy.
Using the power of metaphor, one can look forward to even more polysyllabic leaps of faith and logic. As mankind further merges virtually with its cell phones, PDA's, video games, and major appliances, new terms like gamer's block, internet addiction, repititive sex disorder, and surrender to the matrix (requires blue pill, of course) will enter the psychological lexicon. But by that time we will all have turned into floor lamps.
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As any Realtor will tell you, first impressions make a big difference to buyers. What few people realize is that the way you live in your home and the way you market and sell your home are two different things.
When you get ready to place a home on the market it becomes a product and similar to any product on the shelf, it has features and benefits, plusses and minuses as welll as other products to compete with. To gain an edge in your marketplace, you must be priced right and look better than the competition. Your home is no different, except that it is probably your biggest asset and there is definitely more at stake. Home Staging is the process of preparing any home for sale regardless of price or location. It is a proven technique used to enhance a home's best features and make it appeal to as many buyers as possible, regardless of the state of the real estate market. When this Staging process is completed, your home will be registered as a Staged home. This entitles your home to a special marketing program developed specifically for Staged Homes!
Top 10 Reasons to Stage
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For Technical Specifications, please visit our website www.smartisystems.com


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Join the meet up group for free and keep up with all our dives at: www.meetup.com/conservationdiveclub/
PADI Rescue Diver Certification Class
PADI Rescue or Advanced Rescue Scuba Lessons/Class
The student must call to book the instructor and class time- included for this price: 321.299.5796 or 239.297.9447
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PADI Rescue or Advanced Rescue Scuba Lessons/Class
The student must call to book the instructor and class time- included for this price: 321.299.5796 or 239.297.9447
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Student must complete the academics in advance of the class in the workbook reading all chapters and complete all the quizes in the book prior to the first session with an instructor. The student must call to book the instructor and class time: 321.299.5796 or 239.297.9447 It is reccomended that you book at least 3 weeks in advanced.
After payment we will send your book pack for study at home before the class starts. We provide all gear with the exception of a Rescue Breath Barrier, Scuba Mask, Scuba Fins and a Snorkel. You are welcome to purchase these items on our website. Please note: Accessories below has reccomended options for these items. You can purchase these on your own. Please call with any questions: 321.299.5796 or 239.297.9447.
This certification if completed will allow a person to recognize and prevent diving problems, to directly manage risks, effectively handle limited in-water problems and diving emergencies. Included are:
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As a rescue diver we encourage strong physical fitness maintenance.
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Our Spectacular Lodge Holiday Park Near Poole
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View our Wareham Forest Gallery below:
A Taste of Luxury
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Published at Tuesday, February 27th, 2018 - 05:48:57 AM. Living Room. By Geoffroy Sabrina.
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Pure, harmonious shades of white and cream are a timeless decorating theme. Mix textures and abstract patterns inspired by Nature to make a fresh contemporary living room that would be at home in town or country. Mix painted furniture in shades of milky white and Bone with touches of natural wood on shelves and table tops. Use open back shelving to show off a feature wallpaper. Layer up texture and white on white patterns on sofa cushions. Choose different tones of white and natural in relaxed country linen. Showcase art work and collectibles in an eclectic mix of box shelving and different styles of frame on walls. Combine delicate ceramics with milky glazes and the pattern of lace with smart contemporary glass and wood pieces.
The furniture in this rustic living is setup to be close. The couch and chairs are all pulled right next to each other. The white area rug helps the cool blue accents stand out around the room. Instead of putting your couches around a TV, put them around your fireplace. This stunning living room is set up around the light stone fireplace. The blue and gray color scheme complements the stone around the fireplace.
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Every Wednesday evening except holidays and summer.
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Kings Way Care Centre, 8 Squire Drive in Quispamsis, NB (it's the seniors home on the Gondola Point Arterial) - in the Boardroom.
We'd love to meet you.
There are no meetings on storm days.
by Dan Martell
Having grown up in a French Acadian village, most people might say I'm lucky to be able to understand two languages. However, English was my first language, and the French, well... it was very "guttered" with some slang, English and "Frenglish." By that, I mean words that are neither French nor English, but rather a combination of the two, usually an English verb conjugated in French, e.g. drivé la car.
Since all my friends were French, my English never really had the opportunity to flourish. Because I was very self-conscious of my English accent (and very shy), I usually avoided speaking French. So although I consider myself bilingual, I often struggle to express my thoughts with the right words and have not mastered either language. It is either that - or the language, "artsy-fartsy" part of my brain is partially dormant or still developing. Who knows! All I know is that one of the reasons I joined Toastmasters was to gain confidence in public speaking while also enhancing and expanding my vocabulary.
So how does someone go about enhancing and expanding one's vocabulary? You can begin with a notebook. Every time you hear a word (or phrase) that you're not quite sure of, or even a known word that is used very well in a phrase, write it in your notebook along with its definition and perhaps an example or two of it in a sentence. Then practice it on a regular basis at home until it becomes part of your normal vocabulary - or at least a word you might use someday.
Buy a thesaurus or two, and have it and a dictionary strategically placed in
your home for easy access and quick referral (next to your favorite TV chair,
or by the "throne"). Place your notebook on your night-table for
that opportunity when you come across a word while reading or watching TV in
Watch the X-Files. Yes! The X-Files. You will hear Mulder and Scully, particularly Mulder, use words such as: altruistic, disrepute, abounded, arcane, pestilence, and many more all within a five minute conversation. Except for pestilence, these words weren't new to me, but they weren't likely to be uttered from my lips anytime soon. I have often wondered whether anyone really speaks like Fox Mulder in real life, but then again, David Duchovny does have a Masters degree in English.
So the next time you're scheduled to be the Grammarian, bring a "word-of-the-day" to the meeting. Instead of that esoteric word that most people have never heard of nor will ever use, choose a word (or phrase) that is less commonly used but would be a great addition to someone's vocabulary.


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One of the Sixers' biggest problems last year was stopping dribble penetration. Neither Miller nor Williams could prevent opposing points from getting to the lane, which tended to result in plenty of open shots as the other Sixers scrambled to match up.
"It's a key for us," said Sixers coach Eddie Jordan. "It's hard. You've got to move your feet, play a guy and make contact without fouling. It's just so important that we can stop penetration and get out on the (3-point shooters)."
Williams started 2009-10 by allowing the Magic's Jameer Nelson and Jason Williams to regularly get past him on the way to Orlando scoring 120 points. Williams did a somewhat better job on lightning-quick rookie Brandon Jennings in Friday's win over the Bucks before outlasting the Knicks, 141-127, in overtime.
"I think I'm doing decent," Williams said. "I have to get out of the mindset of being a bench guy. When I was coming off the bench, my thing was for me to score a bunch of points and the guy I'm guarding not to score as many. Now I've got high-level (starting) guys in front of me. I can't be so worried if they have 14, 16, 20 points a game because that's what they're out there to do."
SIXERS 141, KNICKS 127 (OT): The Sixers nearly blew a 23-point third-quarter lead, only to pull it out with a 15-0 overtime burst. Taking advantage of New York playing a double-overtime game the night before, the Sixers scored 40 points in the first quarter on .727 shooting from the field to take control right away. The balanced Sixers had five players reach double figures one day after six scored at least 10 points, though New York scored 71 in the second half.
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Aiming to transcend the niche it has inhabited so ubiquitously for the past decade, Intel Corp. today unveils the first elements of an estimated $150 million global ad push that positions it as a powerful Internet enabler.
Spending for the effort, half of the chipmaker's $300 million annual global marketing budget for the Pentium III, represents its biggest yearend consumer campaign ever, said Ann Lewnes, worldwide advertising director.
"People have a picture of Intel as a microprocessor company, but we want to broaden the perception," Ms. Lewnes said.
The effort signals Intel's desire to position itself as a nimble Internet company--a goal shared by other tech leaders, ranging from Microsoft Corp. to Hewlett-Packard Co.
The twin-pronged campaign leads off with four new TV spots, the first of which breaks tonight on Fox's "Ally McBeal," to promote the capabilities of Intel's Pentium III processor in offering consumers a richer, more engaging Internet experience.
The spots, created by Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer/Euro RSCG, New York, follow up Intel's Pentium III launch in March, but the new creative explicitly links the Pentium III to enjoying a more lively Net experience.
SFM Media, New York, handles broadcast buying. Messner handles other media and shares Internet ad buying with Modem Media-Poppe Tyson, San Francisco.
Modem Media created Internet advertising running on at least 30 sites including popular search engines, gaming and lifestyle sites.
The media plan calls for banner ads enhanced with pop-up screens and so-called rich Web media.
The Internet is a major part of the TV effort. The 30-second "Rocketship" spot shows a little boy riding a coin-operated rocket ship until it breaks down, leaving him to imagine a moon flight, or better yet, getting to the moon via the Internet on his Pentium III-jazzed PC. The boy is aided by logging onto National Geographic's site, which is featured in the spot with the voice-over: "Don't just get onto the Internet, get into it. If you can't do it in life, do it on the Web with the power of the Pentium III processor."
The spot hammers the Net message again at the end, but adds Intel's Web address: "Don't just get onto the Internet, get into it at intel.com," to drive home Intel's Web prowess.
Three additional executions are planned that also showcase other Web sites.
Meanwhile, Intel is gearing up yet another effort for its new Web-Outfitter Service, an optimized site with exclusive content, plug-ins and tools made available only to Pentium III owners. TV and print ads are planned for early October.
On Sept. 20, Intel launches a separate print and Web campaign targeting business leaders to promote the fact that it's more than just a chip company.
Ads breaking in Business Week, The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, The Industry Standard, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal will flag, for the first time, the magnitude of Intel's own e-commerce efforts, as well as its involvement in Internet data services, investments in hot start-ups, and the development of a networking processor that's expected to become a cornerstone of new data and voice networks.
"The campaign is very unique for us. It's Intel transforming itself into a building block supplier to the Internet," Ms. Lewnes said.
One spread features the word
e-commerce against a blue background with Intel's dropped "e" as the middle "e" of the word. Text on the right proclaims that Intel processes $1 billion in online orders a month and drives readers to a special Web site: intel.com/ebusiness.
The effort represents Messner Vetere's first major brand push in the business arena for Intel, which moved business advertising in April from Euro RSCG DSW Partners, Salt Lake City. Intel moved its consumer account to Messner Vetere last year.
Copyright September 1999, Crain Communications Inc.


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Molecules 2012, 17(4), 4484-4497; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules17044484
Natural Chlorophyll-Related Porphyrins and Chlorins for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells
Research Center for Organic Electronics, Graduate School of Engineering, Yamagata University, 4-3-16 Jonan, Yonezawa, Yamagata 992-8510, Japan
Energy Technology Research Institute and Research Center for Photovoltaic Technologies, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Higashi 1-1-1, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 13 March 2012 / Revised: 5 April 2012 / Accepted: 6 April 2012 / Published: 13 April 2012
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tetrapyrroles, Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines)
AbstractNatural-chlorophyll-related porphyrins, including (2H, Zn, Cu)-protoporphyrin IX (Por-1) and Zn-mesoporphyrin IX (Por-2), and chlorins, including chlorin e6 (Chl-1), chlorin e4 (Chl-2), and rhodin G7 (Chl-3), have been used in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). For porphyrin sensitizers that have vinyl groups at the β-positions, zinc coordinated Por-1 gives the highest solar-energy-to-electricity conversion efficiency (h) of up to 2.9%. Replacing the vinyl groups of ZnPor-1 with ethyl groups increases the open-circuit voltage (Voc) from 0.61 V to 0.66 V, but decreases the short-circuit current (Jsc) from 7.0 mA·cm−2 to 6.1 mA·cm−2 and the value of h to 2.8%. Density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) calculations suggest that the higher Jsc values of Zn-based porphyrin sensitizers result from the favorable electron injection from the LUMO at higher energy levels. In the case of the chlorin sensitizers, the number of carboxyl protons has a large effect on the photovoltaic performance. Chl-2 with two carboxyl protons gives much higher values of Jsc, Voc, and h than does Chl-1 with three carboxyl protons. Replacing the protons of Chl-1 with sodium ions can substantially improve the photovoltaic performance of Chl-1-based solar cells. Furthermore, the sodium salt of Chl-3 with an aldehyde group at the C7 position shows poorer photovoltaic performance than does the sodium salt of Chl-1 with methyl groups at the C7 position. This is due to the low light-harvesting capability of Chl-3. View Full-Text
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0).
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Wang, X.-F.; Kitao, O. Natural Chlorophyll-Related Porphyrins and Chlorins for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells. Molecules 2012, 17, 4484-4497.
AMA Style
Wang X-F, Kitao O. Natural Chlorophyll-Related Porphyrins and Chlorins for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells. Molecules. 2012; 17(4):4484-4497.Chicago/Turabian Style
Wang, Xiao-Feng; Kitao, Osamu. 2012. "Natural Chlorophyll-Related Porphyrins and Chlorins for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells." Molecules 17, no. 4: 4484-4497.
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Chris Billings, Cheverus, junior: Billings shot a 74 in the state team championship to help the Stags to a third-place finish in Class A. He's a steady player who figures to have another solid season for the Stags.
Brett Braasch, Thornton Academy, senior: A strong player, Braasch played well in this summer's Maine Junior Championship to earn a spot on the Maine team for the New England championships. He had a 39.0 stroke average last season.
Tom Buchholz, Greely, senior: Buchholz is one of two players from last season's top five who sparked the Rangers to a runner-up finish at the Class A state team championship. He shot a 74 in an SMAA preseason tournament at Val Halla.
Jackson Cogger, York, senior: Cogger has been very consistent in early matches, shooting a 37 for nine holes in a recent match with Cape Elizabeth.
Drew Kane, Scarborough, sophomore: Kane has make great strides as a player and is really into the game. He consistently shot in the high 70s and low 80s this summer.
Joe Lesniak, Falmouth, senior: The Yachtsmen's No. 1 player, he shot a 75 in the Class A state team championship last season. He finished third in the Maine Junior Championship and played in the New England championships.
Drew Long, Camden Hills, junior: Long led the Windjammers at last year's Class B state tournament with a 73. He brings competitiveness and confidence to his game and is an outstanding putter.
Zack Luce, Portland, senior: A two-time SMAA all-star, Luce had a 38.1 stroke average and was 9-1 in matches last fall. He's a four-year varsity player who has steadily improved.
Reese McFarlane, Cape Elizabeth, junior: McFarlane, the Maine Sunday Telegram Player of the Year last fall, won the Class B individual title with a 74 and shot a 69 in the team championships. He had the lowest stroke average in the Western Maine Conference.
Daulton Wickenden, Camden Hills, junior: Wickenden shot 76 in the Class B state team championship. He was named to the Maine Sunday Telegram all-state team as a freshman.
– Tom Chard, Staff Writer
Boston Celtics
Celtics rally past Hawks
Boston Bruins
Rask injured in Bruins' loss
Maine Red Claws
Red Claws lose to Canton again
Saturday's Top 25 roundup: Duke sends Virginia to first loss
Varsity Maine
Boys' hockey: Falmouth ends its skid


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This numbered edition Canvas Print, designed by Ralph Frankenberg, comes with a numbered and signed certificate of authenticity. Ready to hang, this image is printed onto a 450gsm white finish, 100% cotton canvas and stretched over 1.5" deep wood stretcher bars (3/4" for XS). Each print comes with wall hanging hardware.
Streets of ... (© Frankenberg 2015-2017) The "Streets of" Edition is a Hommage to a City and a Typographer. Each City-Edition is made in a Typeface of a famous Typographer of this Country. If you have not found your favorite Street please send us a Mail, maybe, we design it: firstname.lastname@example.com "Streets of London" was designed with the Blur typeface designed by Neville Brody (* April 23, 1957 in London). He is a british Grafik-Designer, Typograph and Art Director.
Munich, Germany


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Olympic Torches Already on Sale on EBay
The Olympic Games are still 67 days away but there are reports that Olympic torches being used to carry the Olympic flame through Europe are attracting huge bids on Internet auction sites. Photo: Getty Images
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
I ... the the ... well ... twenty twelve thousand pixels ... well that is why we should feel I e Bay for nearly a quarter of one million dollars ... if you'd prefer to bathe in the novel and also in the Bay now that is attracting bids of about a hundred thousand dollars ... you may just perpetuates the eight finalists in the relay runners scanning eight thousand torches and each of the option to buy the torch they carry ... if they did this to form a fast the price is three hundred and fifteen dollars and up to that was about three hundred and forty dollars ... in the one being used all being bid for the moment was one of the first courses use ... at the very start of the meal a toll on me nineteen ... I'm not about to fourth and Tuesday for any of them but if you do want an official mini model of the toys ... they are on sale for about forty dollars ... but still good to see how in this one Keywell the supply and a mind ... just how long the price of that when people choose ... remains quite so high ...


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Chapter 1
Taegan Potter And The Completely Different Life
Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter characters, only the plot and any possible OC's. AU.
Warnings: AU. Slightly OOC Hermione, Very OOC Draco+ Narcissa. Live Lily and James and Enemy Ron. (who is also very rich(
Rating: G. May rise to Young T.
Summary: Harry's a girl, Lily and James survive and have another child and Draco Malfoy is likeable. Will start in the summer before first year and will then move on to the summer between the OoTF and HBP. Hope you enjoy!
"Tae, come downstairs a minute, please!" Lily Potter called up to her 11-year-old-daughter.
Taegan made her way down the stairs and through the hallway to her mother, who looked very, very excited. Lily handed her a letter with a strange seal with an 'H' printed onto the red wax. It took her about 5 seconds to realise what it was. She flipped it over and saw her name printed on the front.
"Open it, honey!" Her mother encouraged her.
"Actually Mum, can I do it when Dad gets home, and Gabbie's back from nursery?" She asked, smiling up at her role model.
"Sure, Tae. It's your letter. You can open it up whenever you like, as long as you open it before September!" Lily said, beaming. She was proud that her daughter wanted to open her letter with the whole family. Little Gabriella might not understand, but even so she was a cheerful toddler and would be happy for her big sister anyway.
As Teagan made her way back to her room to practice playing her piano, she caught herself in the mirror and smiled, for about the millionth time that day. As she grew, she was becoming a lot like her mother. She had the dark red hair, and the startling emerald eyes. She and Lily could have passed for sisters.
Another thing about Taegan was that she had her father's annoying tendency for trouble, her mother's smart head and natural talent and both of her parent's
courage. This courage meant that she could also be quite stubborn when she wanted to be. Which, to be fair, was not often, but when it came to helping others, this stubbornness was often used.
It certainly wasn't a bad thing. She definitely didn't want to become someone who let others push her around. It was just a side of her that should be kept for emergencies only.
Eyes sparkling, she skipped back to her room to go and practice the a-minor chord.
A few hours later, Taegan could hear Lily greeting her father and talking to Gabriella, or as she liked to be called, Gabbie.
She rushed downstairs and hugged James before picking up her little sister and bouncing her, which made the infant laugh and call "Teggan! More, Teggan!"
Lily and James laughed and went to set the table for dinner.
5 minutes later the family of four were eating spaghetti bolegnese and talking about their days. Gabriella had just finished her story about how an 'annoying monster' had taken her colouring pencils and wouldn't give them back.
At 3 years old, Gabbie looked a lot like James. She had raven hair (thankfully it would lie straight) and deep brown eyes, mixed with her father's love for fun and mischief.
"Dad, I got my Hogwarts letter!" She blurted out, unable to keep it a secret any longer.
"Tae, that's wonderful! I'm calling Uncle Sirius and Uncle Remus and telling them to get over here for Pizza! Have you opened it yet? Has she, Flower?"
Tae laughed along with Lily.
"No, I haven't," she replied.
"Great, now I can call your uncles!"
Soon enough, Remus and Sirius arrived with a pizza each. Gabbie was in bed, because it was around 8'O clock, and way past her bedtime.
They all gathered together on the sofas and waited for Taegan to open the precious letter. She brought it out from her dressing gown pocket and slowly, but surely, opened it.
She read it aloud.
Dear Miss Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You will find enclosed a list of equipment you will need. Term begins on September 1st. We await your owl by no later than July 31st.
Yours sincerely,
M. McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress.
James and Sirius both cheered loudly while Lily and Remus rolled their eyes at their antics and congratulated Taegan.
The letter was passed around until it got to her and she turned it over. "There's more," She said, and read out the rest of it.
Miss Potter,
During your first year at school you will need the following items:
A wand
The Hogwarts Uniform:
1 set of plain black robes
School skirts.
School shirts.
A Hogwarts Crest Jumper and your House Tie will be given to you after the sorting.
A set of potion vials.
The Standard Book of Spells (Charms, transfiguration and Potions).
Students may also bring an owl, cat or toad. Your train ticket is included in this letter. Please do notlose it.
Together, her mother and father wrote the confirming letter to say she would be attending the school.
Meanwhile, Taegan was sent to bed to get some sleep before she went to Diagon Alley.
"Mum, I'm nervous," I said as I held my train ticket in my now sweaty hand.
"What if I end up in- Hufflepuff?" I asked. It was just a joke but it didn't help at all. I wanted to be a Gryffindor, like my Mum and Dad were.
"We'll still be proud of you," Said Mum. I hugged her and Dad goodbye, along with little Gabbie as I heard train about to go. I handed my ticket to the ticket master and boarded the train, smiling and feeling sad at the same time. I pushed aside the sad feeling and waved as the train left the station. I waved until my family were pinpricks in the distance.
A girl that looked around my age opened the compartment door.
"Can I sit here?" She asked.
I nodded and said: "Sure!"
"I'm Hermione Jean Granger," She introduced herself. She had slightly bushy brown hair and almond eyes.
"Taegan Potter. Nice to meet you, Hermione!" I replied. I liked Hermione. She seemed intelligent enough, but also friendly.
"So, are you excited for Hogwarts?" Asked Hermione.
"I guess. I'm just really nervous."
She nodded. "Me too. About the sorting? I'm a muggleborn, so I'm a little nervous about what people will think of me."
"Yeah, but it's more about my family name. Some of the Slytherins won't be very keen on me."
"Well, your family made You-Know-Who disappear! Of course they're going to be like that, but if you and I, no matter what house we're in, stick together, then you won't even notice them."
"How do you know that about me and my parents?" I asked, perplexed. If she was muggleborn, how did she know that?
"I read a few books- now and then."
Just then, there was another interruption.
"Hi, may I sit here? I'm sorry, there's no where else." A boy with gelled hair asked.
"Sure," Hermione and I said at once.
The boy sat on the seat opposite from us. "Hi, I'm Draco Malfoy. Thanks for letting me join you," He smiled at us.
"Hey," I replied. "I'm Taegan Potter and this is Hermione Granger. Honestly, it's no problem. That's what friends are for, right?"
Draco looked dumbstruck to say the least. I was worried I'd overdone it and scared him away.
It was my turn to be surprised when he asked: "We'refriends?"
"Of course," Said Hermione. "If you want us to be."
"No, no. It's not that. It's just- I've never had a real friend before!" Exclaimed Draco.
"Well, you've got two now," I said, grinning widely. "So, Draco. What house do you want to be in?"
His mood seemed to dampen. "My father wants me to be a Slytherin."
"But what do you want?" Hermione asked.
"To be in Gryffindor." He said sincerely.
"Well,-" I started, before for one last time the door slid open.
"Hermione, Taegan, please don't hate me," Draco said quickly. This confused me.
"Well, Well. Look who it is," Said a voice.
"Draco, Taegan who are these people?" Hermione asked, noting me and Draco's angry faces.
"Ron Weasley, comes from the third richest family in the wizarding world." I replied. I'd been taught these things by my tutor, who taught me about wizarding history and culture.
"Who are the second and first richest families?"
"I'm first and Tae is second. Wait. Tae..I like that. Can I call you Tae?" Draco replied.
"Sure," I said quickly, before remembering that Ronald was still standing in the doorway, snarling at us. "What do you want?" I asked, boldly.
"Just all of the sweets in your compartment, nothing much." I looked down onto my lap, and realised that we had indeed bought quite a few packets of them.
Hermione reached out to him and closed the sliding door on his finger. It must have hurt a lot as he yowled and ran, shouting: "I'm not done with you yet,"
I remembered something Draco had said a minute before Hermione's 'attack'.
"Why did you tell us not to hate you?" I asked.
"Me and Ron have been at war since birth. He hates me and I hate him."
"Well, we all hate him now," Hermione declared, grinning widely. "Oh, Look! We're nearly there!"
I turned to Draco. "Follow your heart, not your mind," I said seriously. I just hoped he would listen.
My heart was thudding in my chest as my name was called. I sat on the stool that the school provided and waited for the precious, old hat to touch my head.
I didn't have to wait long.
A loud voice shook me from my trance.
"Hmmm, another one. You pesky Potters are tricky, very tricky indeed... But where to put you...? You show qualities of all of the houses. Yes, even the most hated of the four...But Gryffindor runs in your blood. And it will for generations to come..."
Silence. And then...
I laughed. Smiling in relief, I made my way over to the cheering table full of Lions.
I watched the sorting, mostly uninterested. I say mostly only because Hermione came to join me in my new house, which made me overjoyed.
Soon enough it was Draco's turn. I could feel his nerves like only one other person could. Hermione.
It was easy to see his shaking hands betraying his 'confident' expression.
But he stood his ground nevertheless and let McGonagall put the worn wizard's hat on his head.
It took a while for him to be sorted. I hoped beyond hope that he would grant my wish and join me, but a small part of me thought that he wouldn't. That fear was creeping in a little more every second until the hat shouted out his fate...
I opened the eyes I didn't realise I had closed and let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.
Draco sat in between me and Hermione and we chatted, laughing when Ron joined Slytherin despite his protests and demands for a 'rematch'.
We all laughed when he did that. For the next seven years, Hogwarts- GRYFFINDOR would be our home.
Wow, that took ages. Hope you liked. Please R&R!