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Consciousness evolves in many non-human creatures not from pond-skippers to a fully conscious humanoid. Nor did humans spring from protista to vertebrates to mammals to Homo sapiens in one easy leap. Time and generations of living cells evolved until humans sit beside a fire with a friendly dog and cat and birds singing in the trees and snakes coming in for a sip of milk or for warmth. Each evolved according to its own patterns, not by magically being called into existence. This process depends on changes over time in each part of the tree of life.
There is no pre-planned purpose to human consciousness. What is, is.
Views: 311
Some people assert that since the universe and the earth are so "perfectly tuned" for human life, they must have been designed for that ultimate goal. But as you said: What is, is. If it were different enough, we wouldn't be around to make these observations and speculations and questions; it's a form of selection bias.
Ah yes, "Selection bias".
People who say the universe and the earth are perfectly tuned for human life haven't survived any earthquakes.
Y que sera, sera?
Joan, thanx for the ring of fire map.
I had to grimace/chuckle at your:
"Being conscious of facts, paying attention to detail, understanding underlying causes helps to face challenges with courage and wisdom...."
If there weren't so many of us, our blunders would have driven us to extinction by now.
"If evolution is true, then why can't we see things evolve?"
Ever been confronted with this line of logic? It illustrates the main hurdle of this process called evolution - some people just can't grasp something that is impossible to witness in real time with their own eyes ... but oddly enough they are willing to accept the concept of creation. Quantifiable evolution takes so much time occur, that you almost need some degree of faith to accept it. Of course, the two things that it has going for it are the fact that there are entire fields of evidence based study to back it up, and that the earth has had plenty of time to allow for evolution to occur. Minute changes may take thousands of years to occur, but thousands of years are like the blink of an eye compared to how much time organisms have had to evolve. Consciousness is a by-product of the process.
Future, To not be able and willing to grasp evolution, and to be able and willing to believe creationism, reveals not only failure to think rationally, but lack of courage, and willingness to take the lazy explanation, no matter how misguided.
Some of my dearest relatives and most beloved friends of the past have absolutely no willingness to consider evidence, even that which can not be disputed. I find conversation with these people to be not only boring, but infantile and they have proved themselves to be hate-mongers. Bye, Bye family and friends; welcome reason linked with care and compassion.
For some reason, my "Reply" button worked this time.
It is easier to make certain all the correct words are chosen ... however, I think we have been mincing our words to the point that we just give religious a little itch. They need to feel stings. I do like to debate in person, however, I have been threatened physically when debating. I don't write anything differently than when I speak directly but when a person can't hold up an opposing view, some tend to get physical.
I read recently that HIV viri (plural of virus?) and closely-related forms (flu viri?) have life spans so short that people who work with them do see them evolving.
Has anyone else seen anything on this?
Hm-mm? Would their brains explode if we asked them if they have seen boulders being changed to sand by river water and wind?
We could deny that grass/hair/teeth/toenails/etc grow and challenge them to prove that they do.
Watch water evaporate? The possibilities are endless!
I used to regularly debate with an ardent theist in the medical field. He claims he used to be an atheist too. When I bring up the reality that viruses (I'm guessing that's the correct plural) evolve all the time, which is why they can be so difficult to treat, he adamantly refutes this and claims they don't evolve, they adapt. Personally, I'm not in the medical profession, but I don't really see the difference. The whole idea of evolution is that species either learned or physically changed to adapt to changing environments, or they became extinct. Seems like I just saw an article on AN that discussed whether or not a virus is actually alive, but I can't find it now.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
lm_cherry1 needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 134 designs submitted by 37 freelance designers.
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Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


text:
Megan keeps Dedrick family in the game
Up on Whidbey Island, down from the Deception Pass Bridge, it's a rare April afternoon with a sparkle, perfect for sailing out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca to watch gray whales frolic near the Washington shore. There's also a baseball game being played.
The Everett High School Seagulls have traveled past tulip farms, oyster beds and lakeside villages to take on the Oak Harbor Wildcats. It's the culmination of the longest road trip in the WESCO Conference's 3A North League, and it's another tough game in a rough season for an Everett roster stuffed with freshmen and sophomores. When the final strikeout smacks the catcher's mitt, it's an 8-4 loss and a two-hour bus ride back.
Up on Whidbey Island, down from the Deception Pass Bridge, it's a rare April afternoon with a sparkle, perfect for sailing out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca to watch gray whales frolic near the Washington shore. There's also a baseball game being played.
The Everett High School Seagulls have traveled past tulip farms, oyster beds and lakeside villages to take on the Oak Harbor Wildcats. It's the culmination of the longest road trip in the WESCO Conference's 3A North League, and it's another tough game in a rough season for an Everett roster stuffed with freshmen and sophomores. When the final strikeout smacks the catcher's mitt, it's an 8-4 loss and a two-hour bus ride back.
The sun starts sinking into the Douglas firs as the victorious Oak Harbor boys rush to the metal-roofed storage shed adjacent to the field. They pull out rakes to comb the diamond before heading home for their dinners.
Tall, curly haired Lucas Arnestad, Everett's senior first baseman, passes this motley grounds crew while leading his sullen comrades on a cleat-clicking walk down the concrete path to the parking lot. He hopes to play at Everett Community College next year and see if he can hit his way into a scholarship. But tonight, Arnestad is the educator, not the student. He's seizing a moment to steer his younger teammates' attention toward that elusive Eden otherwise known as the bright side.
"Dude," he says, looking over at freshman third baseman Michael Larson and pointing ahead of them at the second baseman with the long blonde ponytail.
"Megan went 2-for-3."
This baseball story begins in the Dominican Republic, in a tiny apartment a few stories above the bustle of Santo Domingo. It's December 2000, the middle of another winter ball season for Jim Dedrick, who's battling to make it back to the big leagues.
His wife, Annie, is helping see it through, learning the rhythms of this foreign city like she did in stays across the States and the globe so fleeting that it might take her a few minutes and include a few hasty self-corrections if she's going to name them all:
Wausau, Kane County, Frederick, Bowie, Rochester, Tulsa, Harrisburg, Ottawa, Richmond, no, wait, Oklahoma City, right? All the way out to Perth, Australia. A winter in Caracas. Don't forget Ottawa, Richmond, Akron, Buffalo, Trenton and Berkshire. Of course there were a few back-and-forths along the way, too. Maybe the order isn't exactly right. But that's more or less it.
The small, shining sliver in the middle of all these vagabond Minor League miles was Baltimore. Yes, Camden Yards. Fifty-two days with the Orioles in 1995 for a 27-year-old right-handed reliever with a fastball that crept up to 89 mph on a good day, the ability to throw it where he wanted to from time to time and the courage to take that stuff and go right at the best hitters on Earth.
Annie and Jim's 3-year-old daughter, Alee, is asleep in the closet-sized second bedroom. Her little sister, 5-month-old Megan, is gearing up for tummy time on the floor.
In these mornings before leaving for Estadio Quisqueya to pitch for the Licey Tigers, Jim doesn't have to think about how tough the climb back to The Show might end up being. He can reflect while unwinding with a putter, a balata and a plastic tumbler down a skinny hallway.
Sure, it was six games, but man, it was worth it for a kid who grew up in Inglewood, Calif., playing with his brother, Jeff, on a square patch of grass in front of a faded two-story apartment building on Beach Avenue.
Back then, the Dedrick boys would put on their gloves and take turns tossing a baseball up in the air. Each pop fly would represent another level of pro ball. Little League was the easy one, then on to high school, college, and with the ball rising higher, the Minors, the Majors and the seventh game of the World Series. The last one was always the toughest, and they'd alternate, trading verbal jabs all the while.
Jim could see it right away. The only thing he wanted was to play in the Major Leagues.
It all came from his dad, a baseball nut who devoured box scores, loved Vin Scully and made sure to drive his sons to Dodger Stadium on Aug. 9, 1973, for the last chance to see the great Willie Mays say hey in L.A. Mays, 42, pinch-hit for Jerry Koosman in the ninth inning and grounded out to third base. Jim never forgot it.
The love deepened with every pitch. Jim commanded the mounds of Huntington Beach High and Southern California College until the first dream was realized: a 33rd-round selection by the Orioles in the 1990 Draft.
And just imagine the buzzing in his chest on Aug. 11, 1995, when Jim, with a 4-0 record and a 1.77 ERA for the Triple-A Rochester team but no 40-man roster spot, was walking to baggage claim with his teammates and heard his manager, Marv Foley, being paged. Jim and a few other pitchers looked straight at righty Joe Borowski, a 24-year-old who had been up with the big club earlier in the season.
Borowski looked back. "Nope," he said. "It's James' turn."
The first-class flight booked by the team was canceled because of a sky choked with thunderheads. Annie found a quick replacement on another airline: a tiny prop job Jim dubbed "The Knuckleball Express" once it began fluttering and careening all the way to Boston.
"This plane ain't going down," Jim told Annie. "It can't. I'm going to the big leagues."
The immediate task at hand for a stunned, bedraggled man with no clothes: ponying up for a semi-serious suit at Brooks Brothers. The next: meeting his teammates in the archaic cave of a visiting clubhouse in Fenway Park, and making his spot in the Baltimore bullpen official in the only room big and quiet enough for general manager Roland Hemond to feel even marginally comfortable conducting important Orioles business.
"I apologize," Hemond told him. "I didn't think you would have to sign your contract in the john."
The next day, Jim Dedrick pitched a scoreless inning with two strikeouts. He got in games on Aug. 14 and 20. Still scoreless. On Aug. 21, Dedrick struck out four batters in 2 1/3 shutout innings in the Kingdome against the playoff-bound Mariners. On Aug. 30, he gave up his first run in one inning against Oakland.
Then he waited. Dedrick waited while watching September callups take his innings. He waited through manager Phil Regan's waning days as the skipper of a losing team. He waited through teammate Cal Ripken Jr.'s ethereal record-breaking 2,131st consecutive game on Sept. 6. Thirteen days after that, team veteran Harold Baines approached Jim in the clubhouse.
"I've got to commend you," Baines told him. "You've gone 21 days without saying a word. You're here early every day, you're doing your work. I'm going to get you in there today."
He got him in there. Jim pitched two-thirds of an inning at Tiger Stadium on Sept. 19, giving up a home run to Chad Curtis and getting the next two batters out. The groundout he induced off the bat of Travis Fryman was the last pitch he threw in the Majors.
Five years have passed since then and there's no reason to stop playing. Not when baseball permeates every facet of Jim's life, even when he's trying to drain 15-footers in his Dominican apartamento.
He gives one a good rap, and before it gets to the cup, little Megan Jo is rolling on the floor, getting her body in front of it, trapping it with her hands and smothering it with the gusto of some dirtbag shortstop. He calls Annie over.
"Check this out."
He hits another. She blocks another. She cackles with glee. She does it again and again.
They laugh until they realize it's serious. This is no longer coincidence. This is a discovery. This is a passion, something that will last. Here's a little girl sprawled out on cracking linoleum with a golf ball by her belly and a baby face stretched from wall to wall by a Major League smile.
Megan went from hoarding baseballs in her crib at 2 to being able to drop-kick a football at 3, prompting Jim's independent-ball teammates for Berkshire to marvel at her athletic prowess and hand her the nickname "Free College." At 5, she said she wanted to play baseball, just like Dad.
"Go for it," Annie and Jim told her, and they signed her up for T-ball. She played with the boys throughout Little League. She kept up. Sometimes she shined, pitching and playing all over the infield. Moms of boys on opposing teams gravitated to her after the games, congratulating her just for being out there -- or possibly for knocking their fresh-mouthed sons down a few pegs with a strikeout or two.
Megan started softball in middle school and found it ... well, uncompetitive. It had to be baseball. The speed of the ball off the bat, the vast outfields with the walls -- 300 feet, 400 feet -- she could always dream of reaching. She couldn't live without it. When Annie walked by Megan's bedroom, she found her daughter lying on the floor for hours, throwing a baseball toward the ceiling with one hand and catching it with the other. When the Pacific Northwest rain let up, Megan was out front, throwing into a bounce-back screen or playing catch with Annie or Alee or Jim. Whoever was up for it.
During the summer, when it stays light out late blocks from the Puget Sound, Megan was outside playing ball until 10 if Annie allowed it. In mid-winter, when the sky blackens before 5 o'clock and it's so dark you'd think it were midnight, she would grind on, no matter how cold it got. She would rather take grounders than hit. She wanted to dive, to feel that dirt and that grass, to wear it like a stripe as she imagined the game-saving play.
It's January 2013, and Pat Duffy is taking a timeout. It seems like every thought meandering into his head lately has to do with his next great adventure. But he's not into overarching philosophy while sweating over Boys Club hardwood. It's Friday afternoon basketball with his buddies, and the nerves of taking over the position of baseball coach at his alma mater, Everett High, are on hold, at least for the one blissful and draining hour of this pickup game.
Pat played baseball at Everett, graduated in 1988, manned third base and shortstop at Bellevue Community College in 1992 and served as assistant coach before getting this job. He's thrilled, but he knows there's a long rebuild on the way.
During a break in the action, his friend, Tim, pulls him aside and tells him that Tim's niece, Megan Dedrick, is an incoming freshman at Everett and wants to try out for the team. His baseball team.
Pat's first thought: "Do I really need this right now?" He's conjuring images of locker-room mutiny before the first fungo at the first practice.
But it doesn't last long. He knows Megan's dad, Jim, another Everett guy. Jim pitched in the big leagues and was a bulldog on the mound. Jim used to help out coaching Pat's Bellevue CC team before he had to leave for Spring Training. He knows Jim has been a pro scout for years, that he's working for the Pittsburgh Pirates these days, that he's well connected, that he's signed good players and that he and Megan's mom, Annie, wouldn't allow this to happen if it weren't legit.
"If she can play, she can play," he tells Uncle Tim, and those words are repeated to Annie by the athletic coordinator, Ian Freeman, when Annie assures him that the only reason her daughter is interested in playing is because she loves the game.
Megan knows there might be more of a "future," maybe even a college scholarship, if she goes the softball route. But she doesn't want to play softball.
So she's there at Coach Duffy's first voluntary workout at the Laces Baseball Academy indoor facility on a wet January afternoon, not saying a word, wondering what the eight or nine guys and the coach are thinking as they shoot curious looks her way, ready to judge every right-handed hack.
She walks into the cage for her first BP session, and Jim Dedrick smiles. He loves how she never wears batting gloves. It kills his scout buddies, too. He can't get enough of the little waggle at the plate that his good friend, former big leaguer and current Angels scout Jeff Cirillo, taught her.
She sprays line drive after line drive in her opening round as the boys look on. Some of them knew her from Little League, so it's not a total surprise to see her here. The level, compact swing with plenty of bat speed for varsity ball, though? That might be a bit of a surprise.
The workouts keep going, and Megan keeps showing up. The older guys on the team like her because she's all baseball all the time. She wins a roster spot and makes a diving play on a popup with the bases loaded in the first game of the season. She starts at second base the rest of her freshman year. Her teammates notice that she keeps quiet unless she's cheering on her teammates.
She wears No. 3 on her uniform because Jim wore it in high school and because it was the smallest jersey they had. She shrugs off the outside chatter, which Jim and Annie and Alee have noticed less as this season has worn on.
In late March, she slid into second on a close play, and Jim heard the Glacier Peak dugout chirping that she was only safe because she's a girl.
Arnestad says he's gotten a few quips like, "Is it really that bad at Everett these days?" He'll say, "She earned her spot, and she belongs on that field," and leave it at that, knowing she'll prove it over the next seven innings.
Megan giggles when she hears about all of this. She doesn't seem to have time to pay much attention to it when there's a game to play. She wants the ball hit to her in the field, and her hitting eye is improving.
Coach Duffy knows she'll do anything for the team, like the time a few weeks ago when he tried her out in left field, much to the surprise of Jim, who had driven up to the game straight from the airport, where he had landed after a scouting trip to Denver. Turns out Dad hadn't seen his little girl "Mojo" play outfield -- ever.
"She looks good out there, man," Jim said, chuckling.
"Of course she does, Jim," Duffy said. "She's got a great coach."
Would you look at this? Another sunny day in April in Western Washington. Imagine that. It's a good thing, too. Everett's already had more than a few rainouts this season, and that's the biggest bummer for Megan Dedrick. Thankfully, they're getting this one in at Shorecrest High just north of Seattle, a Friday evening affair, and a local TV news channel is waiting for it to end to fire up the camera and talk to the second baseman with the big league dad, the big league mom and the blonde ponytail.
Jim and Annie split up years ago, but they're still friends, and they're both here, sitting in the bleachers along the first-base line with Alee. Annie comes to every game. Jim's on the road a lot during baseball season, doing advance reports for Pittsburgh's Interleague opponents in addition to scouting the Rockies and Mariners. He just flew back after a Minor League swing through Tennessee. He's heading to Anaheim soon. But whenever he's home, he's around. He'll show up at Megan's basketball practices. He'll drive up from his downtown Seattle apartment just to play catch. When a fellow baseball dad in the stands asks Jim for his Major League statistics, it's nice to have Alee around to remind him that his ERA was 2.35, not 2.45.
Annie knows the game, too. Jim remembers when he spent about two weeks in Double-A not getting anyone out and not knowing why until his wife pointed out faulty hand positioning in his windup and he was fixed about 10 bullpen tosses later. Now she drives the girls around, enjoying the few months until Alee heads off to college at Azusa Pacific, and she chases the 5-year-old son, Tommy, from her second marriage as the little blond rugrat wanders behind the Shorecrest dugout to hug a friendly black Lab.
In the seventh inning, with Everett trailing by a run, two out and runners on first and second, Megan steps into the box, and Jim peers through the chain-link fence, right up against the backstop. She waggles. She grips the bat with her bare hands. She works the count full. The payoff pitch is six inches low, but the umpire rings her up.
Jim throws up both hands.
"No way," he says, "Come on. Did you call that on the bounce? Unbelievable."
But the rage, the pain, the disbelief, the helpless feeling that your child has been wronged ... it's gone by the time Megan jogs to the dugout in silence and grabs her glove to go back to her position.
Jim knows too well that this is the game: You swallow every bit of the tough stuff to go along with what you love. It still ends up being just about the best deal going.
Everett loses again, and the bus leaves without Megan, who squints in the sun while sitting on the steel of the stands, grinning through her big TV interview. Jim, Annie, Alee and Tommy wait for her to finish so they can all go to dinner nearby before Annie takes the brood 25 miles back up to Everett and Jim drives south.
They stand there in a gravel parking lot, waiting and talking. They look over at a girl they love, so proud of who she is, so eager to know the woman she'll become.
Doug Miller is a Senior Writer for MLB.com. Follow him on Twitter @DougMillerMLB.


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June 28, 2001
LOS ANGELES — Economists with the UCLA Anderson Forecast predict an 80 percent chance that a recession will hit the U.S. economy by the first quarter of 2002 — a slight improvement over last quarter's forecast due to the recent and unexpected aggressive rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.
In a report titled "It Takes a Locomotive," Dr. Edward E. Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast and economics professor at UCLA Anderson, explains that business investment is the locomotive that pulls the GDP forward. In the Internet Rush from 1996 to 2000, the locomotive was pulling at an unprecedented rate, but it ran out of fuel in the fourth quarter of 2000.
"We still expect sluggish growth through the rest of the year and two quarters of negative growth beginning no later than the first quarter of 2002," Leamer said. "Although the interest and tax-rate cuts may help the train move faster, there is no light at the end of the tunnel."
The national economic forecast, along with reports on the California economy and the energy crisis, will be presented during the UCLA Anderson Forecast conference on Thursday, June 28. The program, which runs from 1 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. includes a keynote address by former California Gov. Pete Wilson.
In terms of the national economy, Leamer expects the locomotive to start pulling again in 2002 — not with the vigor of the Internet Rush, but at "a more thoughtful, considered pace." Meanwhile, the UCLA economist expects sluggish growth including a strong possibility of a technology-sector recession with two consecutive quarters of slightly negative growth.
The June quarter prediction puts the decidedly independent and historically accurate UCLA Anderson Forecast at odds with a host of other forecasting entities and much of the national media, many of whom cite continued consumer spending as a reason the economy will avoid recession. During its annual conference last December, the forecast had predicted a 60 percent chance of recession, which was increased to 90 percent at the April quarterly forecast.
"Consumers cannot be expected to pull the economy very long or very fast, particularly given their negative savings rates and high debt loads," Leamer argues. UCLA Anderson Forecast is the only major forecast service to correctly forecast the recent slowdown in GDP, the direction — though not the speed — of recent rate cuts and the recent rise in unemployment.
Slowdown Seen in California
California can expect a serious slowdown, according to Tom Lieser, senior economist with the UCLA Anderson Forecast and author of the California report. Lieser said the state's impending slowdown will "come very close to negative territory" in growth of real personal income and gross state product for the remainder of 2001.
The state's economy is entering its "most troublesome period since the early 1990s," Lieser said.
The UCLA Anderson economist notes that California had the second-highest income growth among the states in 2000, based on a wealth effect which is now rapidly receding. He predicts that the gain in California taxable sales this year will be the weakest since 1993.
Lieser said the major downturn in information technology and an electric power crisis is particularly troublesome. He predicts a much weaker growth in jobs through 2002, including a substantial slowdown in the service sector of the California economy and a rising unemployment rate.
Energy Crisis Could "Short-Circuit" State Economy
Confronted with the harsh reality of energy demand that has exceeded generating capacity, California faces the short-term problem of how to ration the available supply, and the long term problem of how to assure that there is an appropriate level of generating capacity, according to a report released Thursday as part of the UCLA Anderson Forecast.
The report, entitled "Will the California Energy Crisis Derail the State's Economy," co-authored by the UCLA Anderson Forecast and Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), offers an alternative view of the future of the state's economy as a result of the energy crisis.
The study considers the implications for the California economy of two different solutions to the state's energy woes. In a "market-based scenario," retail rates are immediately increased to cover electricity wholesale costs. Alternatively, in a "state-takes-charge scenario," electricity users are insulated temporarily from the problem by low retail rates, but end up paying for today's electricity with higher rates in the future.
According to the lead authors, Christopher Thornberg of the UCLA Anderson Forecast and Michael Zenker of CERA, the choice is between paying now (the market-based scenario) or paying much more later (state-takes-charge scenario). If the state takes over, the energy crisis lowers the California rate of growth in 2001 by .7 percent, compared to 1.5 percent under market-based electricity prices.
"In 2002 and beyond, the state-takes-charge scenario has much higher retail electricity prices because of the debt that is passed to future ratepayers, and because capacity formation is weakened by a cloudy investment climate," the authors say. "These higher rates create a -1 percent drag on the California economy over the next three years, compared to a full restoration of normal growth under the market-based solution. In addition, by reducing current demand the market-based scenario lowers the predicted power interruptions in this summer from 112 hours to 12 hours."
The UCLA Anderson Forecast is the most widely followed and often-cited forecast for the state of California, and was unique in predicting both the seriousness of the early-1990s downturn in California and Southern California, and the strength of the state economy's rebound since 1993.
CERA is a leading advisor to major international companies, financial institutions and organizations, delivering strategic knowledge and independent analysis on energy markets, geopolitics, industry trends and strategy. CERA is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., and has offices in Bangkok, Beijing, Calgary, Houston, Mexico City, Moscow, Oakland, Oslo, Paris, Sao Paolo, Seoul and Washington, D.C. The report is included in the UCLA Anderson Forecast book and will be presented Thursday during the Forecast conference.
The UCLA Anderson Forecast conference is sponsored by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) and Payden & Rygel. Additional sponsors include: Sempra Energy, Spencer Stuart, Northrop Grumman and Sanwa Bank California (merging July 2 with Tokai Bank of California to form United California Bank).
For further information on the UCLA Anderson Forecast, please visit forecast.anderson.ucla.edu


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Deadpool 2
The whirling, noisy joke machine that is "Deadpool 2" will no doubt please the fans of this Marvel superhero, mostly because its meta-humor hits them in their sweet spot (whatever that is).
At the screening I attended they hooted and howled at every pop culture reference in this crude hodgepodge of a sequel as if getting the jokes is some kind of validation for it being made in the first place. Do endless comments on "Terminator," "X-Men," and "Wolverine" make for a good movie? Not so much.
What made the first film, which seemingly came out of nowhere to gross nearly $800 million dollars worldwide, is that it felt like an antidote to the more earnest films in the Marvel and its cousin D.C. Comics' universes. The victimized Deadpool, tricked and left disfigured, was an underdog fighting to be taken seriously, and he became an unlikely (and funny) hero. In this film, he's as snarky as ever, but never really connects emotionally as he did the first time around. This time he's just a bro with a death wish.
That death wish comes because of an event that happens early in this film that only shows how bad luck still haunts Deadpool, a.k.a. Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds, pulling out all the stops), the ex-Special Forces operative whose disfigurement in the first film led to him getting superhero powers. Now he wants to die, but can't, even as he attempts to by blowing himself to smithereens.
He finds distraction in helping a boy - a mutant with an itchy, flame-throwing superpower that he has difficulty controlling. The boy, Russell Collins (Julian Dennison), is being pursued by Cable, (a wasted Josh Brolin), a bounty hunter from the future who has traveled back to snuff the boy because he is somehow responsible for the death of his family in the future.
Deadpool and the motley crew of mutants he assembles (called the X-Force) set out to protect the boy with varying degrees of success. One of the film's few sequences that works occurs when the X-Forces fall from the sky in parachutes and are pretty much like sitting ducks in target practice. And the film's funniest joke is saved for the final credit sequence and it is so unexpected that it is almost worth sitting through what comes before it. Almost.
What proves most irksome about "Deadpool 2," directed with blunt efficiency by David Leitch ("Atomic Blonde") from a script by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Reynolds, is its smugness and sense of superiority. It is a bit like spending two hours with someone that constantly makes pop culture references that you wish would shut up. To be expected, given its R-rating, there is plenty of violence played for laughs, and some sly transgressions, such as Reynolds smoking a cigarette in a film world where smoking is pretty much verboten.
But the crucial elements the film needs to work - suspense and empathy for its characters - are missing. Without them, this sequel is just a flat extension to its predecessor without the novelty that made it fresh. It may be more fun to go and watch the fanboys yuck it up than the watching the movie itself. For me, "Deadpool 2" is dead on arrival.
Deadpool 2
InfoRuntime :: 120 mins
Release Date :: May 18, 2018
Language :: Silent
Country :: United States
CastWade Wilson/Deadpool :: Ryan Reynolds
Cable :: Josh Brolin
Domino :: Zazie Beetz
Vanessa :: Morena Baccarin
Negasonic Teenage Warhead :: Brianna Hildebrand
Firefist :: Julian Dennison
Voice of Colossus :: Stefan Kapicic
Weasel :: T.J. Miller
Bedlam :: Terry Crews
Zeitgeist :: Bill Skarsgård
Peter :: Rob Delaney
Yukio :: Shioli Kutsuna
Blind Al :: Leslie Uggams
Dopinder :: Karan Soni
Black Tom :: Jack Kesy
Shatterstar :: Lewis Tan
Headmaster :: Eddie Marsan
Vanisher :: Brad Pitt
Redneck No. 1 :: Dickie Greenleaf
CrewDirector :: David Leitch
Screenwriter :: Ryan Reynolds
Screenwriter :: Rhett Reese
Screenwriter :: Paul Wernick
Producer :: Ryan Reynolds
Producer :: Simon Kinberg
Producer :: Lauren Shuler Donner
Executive Producer :: Stan Lee
Executive Producer :: Jonathon Martin
Executive Producer :: Kelly McCormick
Executive Producer :: Ethan Smith
Executive Producer :: Aditya Sood
Executive Producer :: Paul Wernick
Cinematographer :: Jonathan Sela
Film Editor :: Craig Alpert
Film Editor :: Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir
Film Editor :: Dirk Westervelt
Original Music :: Tyler Bates
Production Design :: David Scheunemann
Costume Designer :: Kurt and Bart
Casting :: Marisol Roncali
Casting :: Mary Vernieu


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The Mini Theatre range brings enveloping, engaging home cinema performance to your home, even when space is an issue. It comprises two systems built around the compact M-1 loudspeaker and two very different, but very capable subwoofers.
The PV1D subwoofer offers much more than the average bass box. As well as the inherent stability derived from its bubble-like construction and opposed drive units, its digital platform makes it extremely flexible. Yes, it sits at the heart of the MT-60D system, but it can also be used with larger loudspeakers in a myriad of home theatre systems or partner a stereo pair in an audiophile 2.1 system. An OLED display and touch button array provide easy access to a number of pre-sets and tuning options, while a custom version of the SubApp™ PC software provides more advanced set-up options.
State-of-the-art Hi Fi technology and seamless wireless playability in one sleek package.Zeppelin Wireless
If you're serious about home theatre, you'll almost certainly want a subwoofer.Subwoofers
Bowers & Wilkins' Custom Theatre systems deliver the authentic private cinema experience, in your own home.Custom Theatre
Bring the excitement of cinema-like sound to your living room with Panorama - the best TV sound bar money can buy.Panorama 2


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The Grade 3 pipe band competition is @ 1:30 in the Wooden Match parking lot.
Pipe Bands
Check back after July 15th for a full list of competing bands
The Grade 4 (not finals) pipe band comp on Sunday @ 12:00 at Wooden Match.
Pipe Bands
Check back after July 15th for a full list of competing bands
BAGPIPES: Since the bagpipe is the only one of the pipe band instruments capable of producing distinct pitches, the pipers in a pipe band are responsible for providing all of the melodic and harmonic material in the music. Generally all of the pipers will play unison melody (often quite complex and demanding) on their chanters, with their drones.
THE DRUM CORPS AND MIDSECTION: The drum corps of a pipe band consists of a section f drummers playing Highland snare drums. The snare drums have very tight Kevlar heads, designed for maximum tension to create a very crisp and strident sound. The drum corps is responsible for supporting the piping with a solid rhythmic foundation and a sense of pulse; the score being played by the drum corps is usually based on rudimental patterns and can often be quite involved, with solo, unison and contrapuntal passages throughout. The drumming in pipe bands has been compared to that of big band or jazz drumming; both combine technique and rudimental drumming while striving for unity and a rhythmic feel.
In competition, bands compete against bands of similar ability levels and carefully perform required tunes. Competitions are held all around the world, and many bands travel great distances to compete. In North America, most competitions are held between May and September. Winners receive a trophy or award, in addition to prize money.
GRADING SYSTEM: Bands in the U.S. are graded from 5 to 1. The most serious, professional pipe bands with the largest number of experienced players are Grade 1 (highest ability level), and the beginner bands with the newer players are Grade 5 (lowest ability level). In solo competitions, the open level is added, to allow professional piper and snare drummers to compete against one another.
JUDGING: There are typically four judges that critique a competing band. These judges are usually seasoned professional players, and must pass an exam to be certified. In most games, there are two piping judges, one drumming judge and one overall ensemble judge.
Pipe and drum sections are judged on tuning, tone, tempo, unison (plying together across the sections), expression, phrasing, execution musicality, the balance/blend between the pipes and drums, attacks (starts) and cut-offs (stops).
532 Main Street
Bethlehem, PA
Tel.: ( +1 ) 610-868-9599
Fax: ( +1 ) 610-868-9730


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UB Neurosurgery Residents Achieve Among Highest Scores on National Board Exam
By Emily Faracca
Release Date: July 11, 2013
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Residents in the University at Buffalo's neurosurgery program achieved among the 10 highest scores on the American Board of Neurological Surgery (ABNS) primary examination five times over the past 21 years, according to data compiled and released by the ABNS.
UB's program was one of 14 resident programs nationwide cited by ABNS for achieving among the 10 highest scores on the exam, which is administered each March to residents in accredited neurosurgery residency programs.
"Our excellent ranking is a testament to the exceptional quality of residents that participate in our program," said Elad Levy, MD, MBA, chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery in UB's School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, "as well as the innovative research conducted by our faculty and hard work of our entire team at UB Neurosurgery."
Other programs cited for consistently high scores on the exam included those at the Mayo Clinic, Duke University, Washington University, Stanford University, University of Miami, University at California, San Francisco and others.
The primary examination is an important step for a resident to become a neurosurgeon. Overall, the residents spend seven years in training after medical school to become neurosurgeons. It is designed to evaluate knowledge and provide direction for continued learning. The exam covers information on basic sciences, critical care, fundamental clinical skills, neuroanatomy, neurosurgery and other topics. It is used by many training programs as a measure of their teaching skills.
"We are one of only 101 programs in the country and to rate in the top 10 on the exams is something for us to be proud of," said Mary Ann Kedron, MBA, PhD, the program's academic administrator.
The neurosurgery residency training program is one of UB's 60 residency programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).
Approximately 780 residents and fellows represent the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences throughout the hospitals of Western New York.
Media Contact Information
Media Relations (University Communications)
330 Crofts Hall (North Campus)
Buffalo, NY 14260-7015
Tel: 716-645-6969
Fax: 716-645-3765


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On the eve of the Missouri Restaurant Association Inaugural Ball, FreedomPay, a world leader in payments innovation, has joined the celebration with the introduction of VIBE. The new mobile platform represents a significant step forward in the evolution of mobile commerce.
"St. Louis is the perfect city to launch VIBE," says Tom Durovsik, CEO of FreedomPay. "It is a tight community with strong loyalty and a growing techno-savvy population. We are bringing VIBE to St. Louis with leading merchants, including Companion Bread, Chandler Hill Winery, and a broad array of merchants coming on board."
VIBE is offering merchants three reasons to get on board: a cloud-based application that offers merchants direct access to consumers' mobile phones; integration with existing merchant systems, absolutely no new hardware, or new steps for employees; and centralization of all gateway processing and security solutions with a single provider, while simplifying costly PCI DSS compliance.
Even more compelling, VIBE offers merchants the opportunity to join the fastest-growing consumer segment—in-store mobile payments and incentives, which is projected to grow 137 percent annually over the next five years, according to Forrester.
With VIBE, merchants can offer laser-targeted incentives with alerts based on a dizzying array of factors, including favorites, GPS location, weather, time of day, and more.
VIBE merchants can "launch" promotions instantly and track success in real time, fueling offers that are successful and ending or tweaking those that are not.
It also creates a way to offer short-lived promotions when business is slow. Restaurants with open tables at 5 p.m. can offer incentives to those within a five-mile radius, ending once the tables are full.
"Our entry to St. Louis is receiving strong merchant backing from a broad array of merchants, including quick-serve restaurants, table-service venues, and retail," says Julie Douglas, vice president of sales.
The five times weekly e-newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on the latest industry news and additions to this website.


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Luck seen running out at region's two casinos
Report: Fewer from New England gamble at Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun
New Englanders are making fewer trips to Connecticut's casinos than they once did, with Massachusetts residents, in particular, forsaking Foxwoods Resort Casino for Twin River in Rhode Island, a new report being released today shows.
The report finds that Bay Staters still make more visits to Foxwoods than do Connecticut residents and trail only Connecticut residents in patronizing Mohegan Sun.
But, the report concludes, "current trends do not bode well for the Nutmeg State's two behemoth casinos."
Twin River, the racetrack casino in Lincoln, R.I., which offers slot machines and wagering on simulcast racing, is now more dependent on Bay Staters' spending than on spending by Rhode Islanders, according to Clyde Barrow, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at UMass Dartmouth, whose School of Education, Public Policy and Civic Engagement funded the survey.
Twin River is expected to introduce table games in the next three to four months, likely diverting more business from Foxwoods and, to a lesser extent, Mohegan Sun. Rhode Island's gaming lineup also includes a slots-only facility in Newport.
"While neither Rhode Island slot parlor can compete with the Connecticut casinos' range of gaming and non-gaming amenities, Twin River's closer proximity to the population-rich centers of central and eastern Massachusetts, combined with aggressive advertising and marketing campaigns, has made Twin River a favored alternative for convenience gamblers," Barrow said in a news release.
The report, titled "Bring It On Home, An Overview of Gaming Behavior in New England," finds that residents in the five states surveyed - Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island - are generally gambling less and spending their remaining gambling dollars closer to home. Seventeen percent of the respondents indicated they had visited Foxwoods in 2012, down from 22 percent in 2008, while 14 percent had visited Mohegan Sun, down from 19 percent four years earlier.
Massachusetts residents account for two-thirds of the decline in visitors to Foxwoods and 28 percent of the drop-off among visitors to Mohegan Sun, according to the survey results.
The report also finds that the Connecticut casinos' New England patrons are, on average, younger than many believe, and are well educated and "comparatively affluent."
The average age of visitors to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun is 46.5 and 46.6 years of age, respectively. Twenty-eight percent of the casinos' visitors are 21 to 34; 29 percent are 35 to 49; 26 percent are 50 to 64; and 16 percent are 65 and older.
"The result dispels the argument among some that Foxwoods' and Mohegan Sun's primary customers are seniors," the report says.
Survey results show 37 percent of those who visited the Connecticut casinos in the past year held a bachelor's degree or higher while 33 percent had some college experience or an associate's degree or technical certification and 28 percent had a high school diploma.
Nearly half of the casino visitors surveyed had family incomes above $75,000.
Never forgive, never forget: Trump once again bashes John McCain over health-care vote
With cap on H-2B visas for foreign workers, businesses struggle to find summer employees


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by Alicia Altizio & Diana York
This guide begins by describing the problem of convenience store robbery and reviewing factors that increase its risk. It then identifies a series of questions to help you analyze your local convenience store robbery problem. Finally, it reviews responses to the problem and what is known about these from evaluative research and police practice.
Convenience store robbery is but one aspect of the larger set of problems related to robbery and to commercial establishments. Although all robbery types share some common features, convenience store robbery warrants special attention because convenience stores have special characteristics. Related problems not directly addressed in this guide, each requiring separate analysis, include
Some of these related problems are covered in other guides in this series, all of which are listed at the end of this guide. For the most up-to-date listing of current and future guides, see www.popcenter.org
Convenience stores are retail business[es] with primary emphasis placed on providing the public a convenient location to quickly purchase from a wide array of consumable products (predominantly food and gasoline) and services.1 There are over 135,000 convenience stores operating in the United States, and the number continues to grow. An estimated 100 million Americans visit a convenience store on any given day; each convenience store might serve hundreds, even thousands, of customers daily.2 Over 80 percent of all Americans, because of their busy schedules, prefer convenience stores to supermarkets.3
The Middle Atlantic States (New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania) led the increase in number of stores (9.8 percent from the previous year), although all U.S. regions experienced an increase within the past year (National Association of Convenience Stores 2005).
Convenience store robberies account for approximately 6 percent of all robberies known to the police.4 Although this comprises a relatively small percentage of total robberies, the problem is persistent. Over the last 30 years, there has been little change in the proportion of convenience store robberies. Nevertheless, convenience stores in particular locations can be vulnerable to repeat victimization, especially those types of retailers that have large amounts of cash, low security, and few staff and customers likely to resist.5
The numbers of U.S. convenience store robberies rose significantly in the 1980s and then declined just as significantly in the 1990s, a reduction that could be due in part to the development of better crime prevention measures in convenience stores,6 many of which are discussed in the Responses section below.
See Problem-Solving Tools Guide No. 4, Analyzing Repeat Victimization.
Some stores are repeatedly victimized, either by the same offender or different offenders. Reasons for repeat victimization vary. A successful robber might return to rob the same store again or might tell other robbers about the store. Alternatively, a wide range of robbers might see the store as particularly attractive or vulnerable. Media accounts may actually play up the vulnerability of the store by reporting successful robberies7 and may glamorize the crime, giving would-be offenders the notion that those that rob with style dont get caught.8
See the Problem-Solving Tools Guide on Understanding Risky Facilities for further discussion of why some places are more vulnerable to crime than other similar places.
Interviews with convicted robbers revealed that they often selected easy targets assuming that victims [businesses] will not install preventative measures to stop them.9 One study of convenience store robbery victims indicates that more than one-half of the respondents reported subsequent changes in store policy or practice after a robbery.10 It was also found that a store was most vulnerable to revictimization within the first few weeks after the first robbery.11
Convenience store robberies are classified according to the offenders method of operation:12
Another perhaps less common type is merchandise robbery, which involves the forcible taking of goods from a store. A higher number of employee injuries are reported in merchandise robberies, as active resistance and confrontation are more prevalent in these situations.13
One study by the Ontario Convenience Store Association found that an increase in merchandise robberies at convenience stores between 2001 and 2002 was related to higher cigarette prices, the existence of illicit markets, and the ease of disposal (Inkster Group 2004 [PDF]).
Convenience store employees suffer from high rates of workplace homicide, second only to taxicab drivers. , 14 Customers can also suffer injury from offender assaults. Injuries can result from an employees active resistance or from the offender s misreading the employees nervousness or hesitation as resistance.15 When faced with an employee who chooses to actively resist and is in a face-to-face confrontation, robbers may resort to injuring the worker to avoid apprehension. Higher injury rates are consistently found to be correlated with measures employees take during the robbery.16
See the Problem-Oriented Policing Guide, Robbery of Taxi Drivers.
Convenience store robberies are not only costly to the workers victimized but also to the store itself. Costs include loss of customers who may be deterred from shopping at a store that has been robbed, leading to a loss of income from reduced customer sales. Stores can also experience an increase in workers compensation costs and insurance premiums due to the robbery. Unfortunately, for those independently owned stores, losses may be unrecoverable, due to the inability of many small operations to afford insurance coverage.17 Stores that do not have insurance coverage may be forced to increase prices or potentially close. Other less direct costs include the various criminal justice activities of state and local governments, including police investigations, prosecutions, and incarceration and supervision of offenders.18
The average cost to employers of a single episode of workplace violence can amount to $250,000 in lost work time and legal expenses.19 Workplace victimizations reportedly contribute to a loss of 3.5 days per employee per crime. Victimization can further limit the ability of these stores to attract and maintain employees for the night shifts, particularly in stores that operate 24 hours a day20 and those with a high volume of cash transactions, a characteristic of such stores. The combination of operational expenses and security challenges can be financially burdensome.21
Victim employees can also suffer psychological harm.22 Secondary victimization can occur when employers, managers, employees, or those responding to the robbery fail to acknowledge the victims trauma.23 This may result from not believing the victims description of the attack, discounting the incident, and blaming or criticizing the victim. Psychological problems resulting from victimization may not only affect the employees subsequent workplace performance, but also can affect the stores daily operations.
Most victims organizations agree that immediate intervention and support after a victim endures a robbery is beneficial to the victims recovery, yet statistics show that of the 86,000 robbery victims (irrespective of location of victimization) in 1991, only 4 percent of the reported robbery victims were treated by mental health care providers (National Center for Victims of Crime 1997).
You may order free bound copies in any of three ways:
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Sean Maher, a web and multimedia instructor at Hagerstown Community College, recently competed in the 2011 Adobe Educators' Choice Awards, where he was a runner-up in the category of Higher Education Digital Arts and Media.
Held annually, the awards are open to all educators age 18 and older who are employed at a K-12 school or an accredited institution of higher education. According to Adobe's website, the contest is open to residents of Australia, New Zealand, Canada (excluding the Province of Quebec), the United Kingdom and the United States. Educators are asked to submit projects, lesson plans, curriculum, presentations, or tutorials for judging by the online Adobe Education Exchange community. This year's contest was held from Aug. 1 to Oct. 31.
Maher's submission, titled "Dreamweaver Templates: A six-page site in 10 minutes," was a tutorial for Web designers on how to create a multipage website using Dreamweaver's template system. Maher teaches the tutorial in his Web Design I courses, where students use it as a base for creating their final class projects. Maher created the tutorial using PowerPoint, Camtasia and Dreamweaver software.
To view the tutorial, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwvI-YT2s4U. To find out more about HCC's web and multimedia technology programs, go to www.hagerstowncc.edu/academics/divisions/technology-computer/web.


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Did you know you could download the entire 71-track score to Tomb Raider Underworld online for free via the Tomb Raider Chronicles website? Well you do now.
Apparently the massive, 198MB download has been sitting there for quite some time, but nobody bothered to let us know, so we were fully prepared to go into the new year without the stirring main theme from Troels Brun Folmann, or the bulk of the game's music from composer Colin O'Malley. Thankfully that isn't the case.
Well, assuming all of the folks who now know about the soundtrack finish up their downloads so we stop getting "Too many connections. Try again later" errors. Just give yourself a little time for the sharks to stop circling and the music shall be yours.
Tomb Raider Underworld Original Soundtrack Download [Tomb Raider Chronicles via Xbox 360 Fanboy]


text: « back to directory print William Hellerstein Professor of Law Emeritus 250 Joralemon Street Brooklyn, NY 11201 (718) 780-7954 | Email Areas of Expertise Constitutional LawCriminal LawPublic Interest Law Education B.A., Brooklyn College J.D., Harvard Law School Biography Publications Noteworthy All Articles Books Contributions to Books Other Articles "A Year to Remember: The Supreme Court's Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment Jurisprudence for the 2003 Term [Symposium: Sixteenth Annual Supreme Court Review Program]," 20 Touro L. Rev. 831 (2005) HeinOnline "Surprise Symphony: The Supreme Court's Major Criminal Law Rulings of the 2002 Term [Symposium: The Fifteenth Annual Supreme Court Review]," 20 Touro L. Rev. 279 (2004) HeinOnline "Book Review (reviewing J.T. Noonan, Jr., Narrowing the Nation's Power: The Supreme Court Sides with the States (2002))," N.Y.L.J., Oct. 24, 2002, at 2 "Book Review (reviewing A. Hutchinson & D. Garrow (eds.), The Forgotten Memoir of John Knox: a Year in the Life of a Supreme Court Clerk in FDR's Washington (2002))," N.Y.L.J., June 21, 2002, at 2 "Section 1983 Fourth Amendment Cases From the Current Term [The Practising Law Institute's 17th Annual Section 1983 Civil Rights Litigation Program]," 18 Touro L. Rev. 691 (2002) HeinOnline "The Line Holds, But Death May Matter: The Supreme Court's Criminal Procedure Decisions of the 2001 Term [Symposium: The Fourteen Annual Supreme Court Review]," 19 Touro L. Rev. 1 (2002) HeinOnline "Much Ado About Some Things: Fourth Amendment Rulings Dominate the Supreme Court's Criminal Law Decisions in the 2000 Term [Symposium: The Thirteenth Annual Supreme Court Review]," 18 Touro L. Rev. 75 (2001) HeinOnline "Shakin' & Bakin': The Supreme Court's Remarkable Criminal Law Rulings of the 1999 Term [Symposium: The Supreme Court and Local Government Law: The 1999-2000 Term]," 17 Touro L. Rev. 163 (2001) HeinOnline "Book Review (reviewing T.E. Yarbrough, The Rehnquist Court and the Constitution)," N.Y.L.J. May 9, 2000, at 2 "Filling in Some Pieces: The Supreme Court's Criminal Law Decisions in the 1998-1999 Term [Annual Issue on New York State Constitutional Law: Trends and Developments]," 16 Touro L. Rev. 305 (2000) HeinOnline "Secrecy and the Criminal Justice System [The David G. Trager Public Policy Symposium: Behind Closed Doors: Secret Justice in America]," 9 J.L. & Pol'y 5 (2000) (co-panelists: A. Liptak, G.L. Shargel, M.B. Mukasey, M.J. White) HeinOnline "Much Sound, Not Too Much Fury: The Supreme Court's Criminal Law Decisions During the 1997 Term [Symposium: The Supreme Court and State and Local Government Law: The 1997-98 Term]," 15 Touro L. Rev. 889 (1999) HeinOnline "Off Broadway: The Supreme Court's Criminal Law Decisions in the 1996 Term Take Second Stage in an Historic Term [Symposium: The Supreme Court and Local Government Law: The 1996-97 Term]," 14 Touro L. Rev. 337 (1998) HeinOnline "It Was a Very Good Year -- For the Government: The Supreme Court's Major Criminal Rulings of the 1995-1996 Term [Symposium: The Supreme Court and Local Government Law: The 1995-96 Term]," 13 Touro L. Rev. 395 (1997) HeinOnline "Book Review (reviewing The Prince of Darkness and the Shortness of Memory: Harold Rothwax's Guilty: The Collapse of Criminal Justice)," 62 Brook. L. Rev. 1137 (1996) HeinOnline "Tiptoeing Through the Tulips: The Supreme Court's Major, but Modest by Comparison, Criminal Law Rulings during the 1994-95 Term [Symposium: The Supreme Court and Local Government Law: The 1994-95 Term,]" 12 Touro L. Rev. 267 (1996) HeinOnline "Calmer Seas: The Supreme Court's Major Criminal Law Rulings of the 1993-94 Term [Symposium: The Supreme Court and Local Government Law: The 1993-94 Term]," 11 Touro L. Rev. 361 (1995) HeinOnline "Sotto Voce: The Supreme Court's Low Key But Not Insignificant Criminal Law Rulings during the 1992 Term [Symposium: The Supreme Court and Local Government Law: The 1992-93 Term," 10 Touro L. Rev. 355 (1994) HeinOnline "A Quiet Year: The Supreme Court's Criminal Law Decisions during the 1991 Term [Symposium: The Supreme Court and Local Government Law, 1991-92 Term]," 9 Touro L. Rev. 305 (1993) HeinOnline "Book Review (reviewing D. Savage, Turning Right: The Making of the Rehnquist Supreme Court)," 58 Brook. L. Rev. 913 (1992) HeinOnline "The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments: The Supreme Court's Major Search and Seizure, Interrogation, and Criminal Jury Selection Decisions during the 1990 Term," 9 Touro L. Rev. 39 (1992) HeinOnline "Local Governmental Interests and Individual Rights under the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments: How They Fared in the 1989 Term," 7 Touro L. Rev. 319 (1991) HeinOnline "A Tribute to Bernie Becker," 17 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 399 (1991) HeinOnline "The Fourth Amendment [Symposium on the Supreme Court and Local Government Law]," 6 Touro L. Rev. 31 (Fall 1989) HeinOnline "Capital Punishment in New York: Is it Worth the Human Price?," 58 The Justinian 10 (1989) "Criminal Justice and Human Rights in Northern Ireland," 43 R. A.B. City N.Y. 110 (1988) (co-authors: R. McKay & P. Schlam) "Reflections on Judge Irving Lang," N.Y.L.J., Oct. 1, 1987, at 2, col. 3 "Book Review (reviewing H. Schwartz (ed.), The Burger Years: Rights and Wrongs in the Supreme Court, 1969-1986)," N.Y.L.J., Aug. 14, 1987, at 2 col. 3 "Appellate Advocacy for the Defense," 9 Defender 39 (1987) "Closing Remarks [Symposium on the Sixth Amendment]," 14 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 271 (1986) HeinOnline "Adult Bookstores with Something Extra: Nuisance Abatement Statutes and Prior Restraint," Preview U.S. Sup. Ct. Cas. no. 440 (1986) "What about Legal Aid?," 35 Harv. L. Bull. 18 (1984) "The Challenge of Judicial Selection," 4 Just. Dep't Watch 1 (1981) "The Impact of Greenholtz on Parole Eligibility Requirements," 2 Prison L. Monitor 175 (1980) (co-author: D. Zuckerman) "Prison Crisis Litigation: Problems and Suggestions," 21 Buff. L. Rev. 643 (1972) (co-author: B. Shapiro) HeinOnline "The Importance of the Misdemeanor Case on Trial and Appeal," 28 Legal Aid Briefcase 151 (1970) "The Narcotic Control Act of 1966: A Time for Caution," 65 Legal Aid Rev. 5 (1967) "Book Review (reviewing T. Szasz, Psychiatric Justice)," N.Y.L.J., May 27, 1966, at 4 "The Benign Quota: Equal Protection and 'the Rule in Shelley's Case'," 17 Rutgers L. Rev. 531 (1963) HeinOnline Books Prison conditions in Jamaica (1990) (co-author: Lois Whitman) Contributions to Books "No Rights of Prisoners," in The Rehnquist Court: Judicial Activism on the Right (H. Schwartz ed., 2002) "The Supreme Court's Fourth Amendment Decisions of the 2000 Term," 17th Annual Section 1983 Civil Rights Litigation (E. Chemerinsky, G.C. Pratt, M. Schwartz eds., 2001) "United States of America," International Law of Export Control. (Karl M. Meessen ed., 1992) (co-author: Michael Reisman) Other "Final Report to the Chief Judge of the State of New York, Commission on the Future of Indigent Legal Services," (2006) "The Miranda Wars Reopen: Border Skirmish or Major Conflagration?," 4 BLS LawNotes 6 (Fall 1999) Related Links: Faculty News Curriculum


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Earlier this year we improved the uploader tool in Panoramio to make the process faster and more intuitive. Since then, members of the Panoramio photo-sharing community have been simply dragging and dropping their photos to the locations where they were taken, and working together to create a world map of beautiful images.
Today, we're announcing some improvements to help you even more easily geo-tag your photos in Panoramio. You can now snap your photos to a place on the map. When searching for your photo location, you'll see a list of suggested places where your photo may have been taken, and you can click "Snap to this place" to select the right location. We've also added the ability for users to indicate that a photo was taken indoors. These additional details about where a photo was taken provide all users with more useful information and context.
If you're not familiar with Panoramio and how it works, get a sense for this powerful user tool by checking out the brief video below. Panoramio is a community site for photos of various places, with the option to share and explore the photos in Google Maps and Google Earth.
Enjoy the improved features in Panoramio and we look forward to seeing more of your photos.
Posted by Gerard Sanz, Panoramio Community Manager


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Faux Leather Jackets Winter Plus Thick Single-breasted PU Business Casual Blazers for Men
- Sellermiamilimos.us
- List PriceUS$249.66piece
- Sale PriceUS$75.81piece
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Product Description
Attention: Please note that you should place your order in US size, however the tags inside the items will show in Asian size.
Product Item: Faux Leather Blazers
Surfice Material: PU Leather
Lining Material: Polyester
Collar Type: Turn-down Collar
Closure Type: Single-breasted
Thickness: Thick
Softness: Soft
Color: Black, Coffee
US Size: S, M, L, XL, 2XL
Tag Size: L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL
Occasion: Business, Casual
Season: Autumn, Winter
Gender: Men
Package includes:
1* Faux Leather Blazers
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About Size:Size may be 3cm/1.5 inch inaccuracy due to hand measure.These measurements are meant as a
guide to help you select the correct size. Please take your own measurements and choose your size
accordingly.we cannot accept responsibility for incorrect purchases.
About Color:The precise color of the clothing items may vary depending on the specific monitor,the settings
and the lighting conditions.The items colors depicted should only be used as an approximate guide


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The 3 Books I bought:
- PHP, My SQL and Apache 5th Edition By SAMS
I plane to study this book in sequence. Programs build on each other.
Comes with DVD and has: PHP 5.4, MySQL 5.5 and Apache 2.4 that I can install individually.
Or I can install XAMPP that will install everything and give me an interface, to my understanding.
- Beginning PHP and My SQL from Novice to Professional 4th Edition. By aPress
This book is more of a reference, the topics do not build on each other.
- Linux for Dummies 8 books in 1, 4th Edition.
Comes with DVD and has: openSUSE, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu and Xandros.
Plan A:
For my studies, I would like to run Linux as OS and install Apache, MySQL and PHP to run a Web Server and to learn everything as I go. I would like to keep Windows 7 on this new HP Pavilion p6 series AMD Quad-Core A6-3650 Accelerated Processor PC and partition the hard drive to have a dual boot system. Then on the new partition install Linux and so on. Then I can start to have a wonderful life with open source.
Plan B:
As I understand, there is a flash drive that will boot Linux. First of all, I don't know where to download it. Then if I did, will it change Windows 7 in anyway?
Now – if I can run Linux off a flash drive, can all of the other software be install on the same flash drive and run properly and not change Windows 7 box at all???
Plan C:
Format the drive and install Linux and so on.
Plan D:
Using the program XAMPP on the DVD from the book PHP, My SQL and Apache 5th Edition By SAMS and start learning PHP, MySQL and a little about Apache with Windows 7 as OS. But this will not give me Linux knowledge!!!!!!!!!
One Last Item:
What is the command to find out what type and version of Linux on work server?


text:
Friday, September 30, 2011
Just follow this link http://pictorialartsjournal.blogspot.com/2011/09/11-arcadian-art-of-larry-macdougall.html
Cheers !
10 comments:
- James Weatherhill said...
What a great and beautiful way to
express an interview and, especially,
a man of such grand talents.
Enjoyed it thoroughly! I can only hope your wife will be the next child of genius to be in the spotlight.
And it goes with out saying,
and I know it as truth ~
God Bless Finn eternal.
- September 30, 2011 at 5:00 PM
- Craig Phillips said...
Hi Larry, these are wonderful pages. I really found what you said interesting. When you were talking about practice being from life and reference but the art coming from your mind without reference etc. That struck a chord with me and on thinking about it I really couldn't agree more.
I wish I could create such wonderful drawings straight out of my head like you do here I think then I would feel the real complete creative freedom I am looking for. At the moment I am not there but you have inspired me to practice practice practice!
Great post.
- September 30, 2011 at 7:14 PM
- Larry MacDougall said...
James - your comments are truly appreciated on numerous levels - thanks so much.
- October 1, 2011 at 5:26 AM
- Larry MacDougall said...
Craig - whatever you are doing, in my opinion, it's working. The feeling of joy and spontaneous fun that I get from your work is very real. Of course a little extra practice never hurt anyone. :)
- October 1, 2011 at 5:48 AM
- Tammie said...
your sketches are gorgeous!
- October 1, 2011 at 9:36 PM
- Larry MacDougall said...
Thanks Tammie :)
- October 2, 2011 at 12:21 PM
- Ikka said...
I love your sketches :)))
- October 3, 2011 at 2:15 AM
- Larry MacDougall said...
Thanks so much Ikka. I'm glad you stopped by. :)
- October 3, 2011 at 5:09 AM
- The Art of Kim Kincaid said...
WOW! Awesome linework, tremendous expression and characterization. Personally Larry, I think you are drawing from life...that you have an actual portal that you go through to this wonderful, magical world. How else can you achieve such life in your work??
- October 9, 2011 at 8:40 AM
- Larry MacDougall said...
Thank-you very much Kim. That's very kind of you.
- October 10, 2011 at 5:38 AM


text:
By Jonnelle Marte
With Friday's Mega Millions jackpot now at $640 million, many coworkers may be piling their cash together to vie for a piece of the record jackpot. They might want to consult a lawyer first.
Before tossing money into an office pool, there are steps workers can take to ensure they get their fair share of any winnings, says New Jersey attorney Eric Kahn. He represented the five construction workers who sued a coworker for their cut of a $38.5 million payout. "People assume they're never going to win the jackpot," he says. " "Then when they win, there's a problem."
Kahn's clients sued coworker Americo Lopes, who they claim told them he was on leave for surgery in November 2009, when in fact he had won the big jackpot. When another person in the pool learned of his winnings a few months later, he discovered Lopes won on a date they played as a group. A jury awarded the former co-workers $4 million each. But most employees can avoid the courtroom with some simple steps, says Kahn.
For starters, make a list of the names and numbers of everyone in the pool, he says. A written contract isn't necessary, but there should be no question about who played. Everyone who puts in cash should have a copy of the ticket. And if the person responsible for buying the ticket also plays the lottery regularly on their own, tickets that are meant to be shared with co-workers should be clearly identified. "You really want to eliminate any possibility of someone saying 'I should have been included and was not,'" says Kahn.
There should also be a provision for vacations, since even loyal participants in an office pool might miss one particular drawing, Kahn says. Set up a system where people can put in their contribution before they take off on a trip or if they should just stay out of the ticket that week, he says. Last spring one worker in New York missed out on his share of a $319 million jackpot because he didn't have the two bucks to put into the pool.
Also See:


text:
Oct. 13, 2007
Lipscomb (3-6-2, 2-1-1) vs. Campbell (7-3-1, 3-1-1)The game: The Bisons are out for their third Atlantic Sun win in a row Saturday afternoon when Campbell visits the Lipscomb Soccer Complex.
The Bisons won 2-1 over Mercer Thursday night. Campbell beat Belmont 2-1 in overtime.
The Bisons have already doubled their A-Sun victory total from last season. They are in the thick of the race for one of the top six berths which would qualify them for their first ever conference tournament.
They have never won three A-Sun games in a season. They have twice won two conference games, with wins over Jacksonville and Florida Atlantic in 2003 and wins over Gardner-Webb and Jacksonville in 2005.
Team ratings: The Bisons lead the A-Sun in shots with 169, an average of 15.36 per game. They also lead in corners with 62, 5.64 per game.
Turn the Page: Senior forward Ben Page is second in the conference in both shots with 41 and in shots per game with 3.73.
He is also tied for second in assists with three.
Page is a preseason All-Conference selection by the coaches.
Welcome Miguel: Freshman forward Miguel DaSilva had to wait a year to get on the field and to get his favorite number, No. 10, but he is making the most of his opportunities this season.
DaSilva is tied for fifth in the A-Sun in shots per game with 2.64. He is also tied for ninth in points with eight, an average of .73 per game. He also tied for fifth in goals with four.
Goergen in goal:Senior goalkeeper Jake Goergen is tied for first in the conference in saves with 56. He is third in saves per game with 5.09. He is also tied for third in shutouts with two.
Let me hear you: The Bisons lead the conference in attendance with 2,512 in four home games. Placing a distant second is Stetson with 1,342 fans in five games.


text:
Meet Impala: Open Source Real-Time SQL Queries on Hadoop
Meet Impala: Open Source Real-Time SQL Queries on Hadoop
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This article by Kwon Donghun appears via Esen Sagynov.
In this article I would like to introduce you to Cloudera Impala, an open source system which provides real-time SQL querying functionality on top of Hadoop. I will quickly go over when and how Impala was created, then will explain in more details about Impala's architecture, its advantages and drawbacks, compare it to Pig and Hive. You will also learn how to install, configure and run Impala. At the end of this article I will show the performance test results I have obtained when comparing Impala with Hive, Infobright, infiniDB, and Vertica.
Analyzing results in real time through Hadoop
With the advent of Hadoop in 2006, big data analytics was no longer a task that could be performed by only a few companies or groups. This is because Hadoop was an open-source framework, and thus many companies and groups that needed big data analytics could use Hadoop easily at low cost. In other words, big data analytics became a universal technology.
The core of Hadoop is Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and MapReduce. Hadoop stores data in HDFS, a file system that can expand the capacity in the form of a distributed file system, conducts MapReduce operations based on the stored data, and consequently gets the required data.
There is no limit to one's needs. The Hadoop user group tried to overcome Hadoop's limits in terms of functionality and performance, and develop it more. Complaints were focused on the use of MapReduce. MapReduce has two main disadvantages.
- It is very inconvenient to use.
- Its processing is slow.
To resolve the inconveniences of using MapReduce, platforms such as Pig and Hive appeared in 2008. Pig and Hive are sub-projects of Hadoop (Hadoop is also an ecosystem of multiple platforms; a variety of products based on Hadoop have been created). Both Pig and Hive have a form of high-level language, but Pig has a procedural form and Hive has a declarative language form similar to SQL. With the advent of Pig and Hive, Hadoop users could conduct big data analytics easier.
However, as Hive and Pig are related to the data retrieval interface, they cannot contribute to accelerating big data analytics work. Internally, both Hive and Pig use MapReduce as well.
This is why HBase, a column-based NoSQL appeared. HBase, which enables faster input/output of key/value data, finally provided Hadoop-based systems with an environment in which data could be processed in real time.
This progress of Hadoop (Hadoop eco-System) was greatly influenced by Google. HDFS itself was implemented on the basis of papers on GFS published by Google, and Hbase appears to have been based on Google's papers on BigTable. Table 1 below shows this influential relationship.
Table 1: Google Gives Us A Map (source: Strata + Hadoop World 2012 Keynote: Beyond Batch - Doug Cutting)
Google Publication
GFS & MapReduce (2004)
HDFS & MapReduce (2006)
Batch Programs
Sawzall (2005)
Pig & Hive (2008)
Batch Queries
BigTable (2006)
HBase (2008)
Online key/value
Dremel (2010)
Impala (2012)
Online Queries
Spanner (2012)
Transactions, Etc.
Cloudera's Impala, introduced in this article, was also established under the influence of Google. It was created based on Google's Dremel paper, which was published back in 2010. Impala is an open-source system under an Apache license, which is an interactive/real-time SQL query system that runs on HDFS.
SQL is very familiar to many developers and is able to express data manipulation/retrieval briefly.
As Impala supports SQL and provides real-time big data processing functionality, it has the potential to be utilized as a business intelligence (BI) system. For this reason, some BI vendors are said to have already launched BI system development projects using Impala. The ability to get real-time analytics results by using SQL makes the prospect of big data brighter and also extends the application scope of Hadoop.
Cloudera Impala
Cloudera, which created Impala, said they had been technically inspired by Google's Dremel paper, which made them think that it would be possible to perform real-time, ad-hoc queries in Apache Hadoop.
In October 2012, when announcing Impala, Cloudera introduced it as follows:
"Real-Time Queries in Apache Hadoop, For Real"
Impala adopted Hive-SQL as an interface. As mentioned above, Hive-SQL is similar in terms of syntax to SQL, a popularly used query language. For this reason, users can access data stored in HDFS through a very familiar method.
As Hive-SQL uses Hive, you can access the same data through the same method. However, not all Hive-SQLs are supported by Impala. For this reason, you had better understand that Hive-SQLs that are used in Impala can also be used in Hive.
The difference between Impala and Hive is whether it is real-time or not. While Hive uses MapReduce for data access, Impala uses its unique distributed query engine to minimize response time. This distributed query engine is installed on all data nodes in the cluster.
This is why Impala and Hive show distinctively different performance in the response time to the same data. Cloudera mentions the following three reasons for Impala's good performance:
- Impala has reduced CPU load compared to Hive, and thus it can increase IO bandwidth to the extent that CPU load is reduced. This is why Impala shows 3-4 times better performance than Hive on purely IO bound queries.
- If a query becomes complex, Hive should conduct multi-stage MapReduce work or reduce side joins. For queries that cannot be efficiently processed through a MapReduce framework (a query that contains at least one join operation), Impala shows 7 to 45 times better performance than Hive.
- If the data block to analyze has been file-cached, Impala will show much faster performance, and in this case, it performs 20 to 90 times faster than Hive.
Real-time in Data Analytics
The term "real time" is emphasized with the introduction of Impala. But one may naturally ask, "How much time is real time?" On this question, Doug Cutting (the person who created Hadoop) and Cloudera's senior architect gave their opinions on what real time is.
- "When you sit and wait for it to finish, that is real time. When you go for a cup of coffee or even let it run overnight, that's not real time."
- "'real-time' in data analytics is better framed as 'waiting less.'
Although it would be difficult to clearly define the criteria for real time numerically, if you can wait for a result, watching your monitor, that may be called real time.
Impala Architecture
Impala is composed largely of impalad and impala state store.
Impalad is a process that functions as a distributed query engine. It designs a plan for queries and processes queries on data nodes in the Hadoop cluster. The impala state store process maintains metadata for the impalads executed on each data node. When the impalad process is added or deleted in the cluster, metadata is updated through the impala state store process.
Figure 1: Impala High-level Architectural View.
Data Locality Tracking and Direct Reads
In Impala, the impalad process processes queries on all data nodes in the cluster instead of MapReduce, which is Hadoop's traditional analytic framework. Some advantages of Impala with regard to this configuration include data locality and direct read. In other words, impalad processes only the data block within the data node to which it belongs, and reads the data directly from the local directory. Through this, Impala minimizes network load. Moreover, it can also benefit from the effect of file cache.
Scale Out
Impala provides a horizontal expansion like Hadoop cluster. In general, you can expand Impala when a cluster is horizontally expanded. All you have to do to expand the Impala that is running the impalad process on the server when a data node is added (metadata for the addition of impalad will be updated through impala state store).
This is very similar to databases based on massively parallel processing (MPP).
Impala analyzes data stored in Hive and HBase. And HDFS used by Hive and HBase provides a certain level of failover through replication. For this reason, Impala can perform queries if the replica of a data block and at least one impalad process exist.
Single Point of Failure (SPOF)
One of the huge concerns about all systems which use HDFS as a storage medium is that their name node is SPOF (we have discussed this in details when comparing HDFS with other distributed file systems in our previous articleOverview and Recommendations for Distributed File Systems). Some solutions to prevent this have recently been released, but resolving the problem fundamentally is still a distant goal.
In Impala, the namenode is SPOF as well. This is because you can't perform queries unless you know the location of a data block.
Query Execution Procedure
The following is a brief account of the query execution procedure in Impala:
- The user selects a certain impalad in the cluster, and registers a query by using impala shell and ODBC.
- The impalad that received a query from the user carries out the following pre-task:
- It brings Table Schema from the Hive metastore and judges the appropriateness of the query statement.
- It collects data blocks and location information required to execute the query from the HDFS namenode.
- Based on the latest update of Impala metadata, it sends the information required to perform the query to all impalads in the cluster.
- All the impalads that received the query and metadata read the data block they should process from the local directory and execute the query.
- If all the impalads complete the task, the impalad that received the query from the user collects the result and delivers it to the user.
Hive-SQL Supported by Impala
Not all Hive-SQLs are supported by Impala. As Impala supports only some Hive SQLs, you need to know which statements are supported.
Impala supports most of the SELECT-related statements of Hive SQL.
Data Definition Language
In Impala, you cannot create or modify a table. As shown below, you can only retrieve databases and table schemas. You can only create and modify a table through Hive.
Data Manipulation
Impala provides only the functionality of adding data to an already created table and partition.
Unsupported Language Elements
There are still many Hive SQLs not supported by Impala. Therefore, you are advised to see the Impala Language Reference before using Impala.
- Data Definition Language (DDL) such as CREATE, ALTER, DROP
- Non-scalar data types: maps, arrays, structs
- LOAD DATA to load raw files
- Extensibility mechanisms such as TRANSFORM, custom User Defined Functions (UDFs), custom file formats, custom SerDes
- XML and JSON functions
- User Defined Aggregate Functions (UDAFs)
- User Defined Table Generating Functions (UDTFs)
- Lateral Views
- etc.
Data Model
Since Impala 1.0 has dropped its beta label, Impala supports a variety of file formats: Hadoop native (Apache Avro, SequenceFile, RCFile with Snappy, GZIP, BZIP, or uncompressed); text (uncompressed or LZO-compressed); and Parquet (Snappy or uncompressed), the new state-of-the-art columnar storage format.
The highest interest, however, lies in whether Impala will support Trevni, a project currently led by Doug Cutting. Trevni is a file format that stores a table record comprising rows and columns in the column-major format instead of the existing row-major format. Why is support for Trevni a matter of keen interest? It is because Impala could provide better performance with Trevni.
As Trevni is still being developed, you will only see a brief account of the column file format mentioned in the Dremel paper.
Dremel highlights the column file format as one of the factors affecting performance. What benefits most from the column file format is Disk IO. As the column file format uses a single record by dividing it into columns, it is very effective when you retrieve only some of the columns from the record. In the existing row-unit storage method, the same disk IO occurs whether you see a single column or all columns, but in the column file format, you can use Disk IO more efficiently, as Disk IO only occurs when you access the specific required column.
Figure 2: Comparison of Row-unit Storage and Column-unit base (source: Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Datasets).
Looking at the result of the two tests conducted with regard to the column file format in Dremel, you can estimate the degree of contribution of the column file format to performance.
Figure 3: Comparison of the Performance of the Column-unit Storage and the Row-unit Storage (source: Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Datasets).
Figure 4: Comparison of the Performance of MapReduce and Dremel in the Column-unit Storage and the Row-unit Storage (300 nodes, 85 billion Records) (source: Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Datasets).
In Figure 3, (a), (b) and (c) show the execution time according to the number of columns randomly selected in the column file format, while (d) and (e) show the existing record reading time. According to the result of the test, the execution of the column file format is faster. In particular, the gap becomes bigger when it accesses a smaller number of columns. Reading records using the previous method, it took a very long time even when accessing a single column, as if it was reading all columns. However, the smaller the number of selected columns, the better performance the column file format (a, b and c) shows.
Figure 4 compares the execution time when MapReduce work is processed in the column file format data and when it is not (while this is a comparison test of MapReduce and Dremel, we will just check the result of application/non-application of the column file format to MR). In this way, the column file format improves performance significantly by reducing Disk IO.
Of course, as the above test result is about the column file format implemented in Dremel, the result of Trevni, which will apply to Impala, may be different from the result above. Nevertheless, Trevni is also being developed with the same goal as that of the column file format of Dremel. For this reason, it is expected to have a similar result to the test result above.
Installing, Configuring and Running Impala
To install Impala, you must install the following software (for detailed installation information, visit the Impala website):
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) / CentOS 6.2 (64 bit) or above.
- Hadoop 2.0
- Hive
- MySQL
- MySQL is indispensable for Hive metastore. Hive supports a variety of databases used as metastore. However, currently, you should use MySQL to make Impala and Hive interwork.
If interworking with HBase is required, you should install HBase as well. This article will not discuss the installation procedure for each software solution in detail.
If you have installed all required software, you should now install the Impala package to all the data nodes in the cluster. Then, you should install the impala shell in the client host.
For impalad to access HDFS file blocks directly from the local directory and for locality tracking, you should configure some settings for Hadoop core-site.xml and hdfs-site.xml. As this configuration is critical to the performance of Impala, you must add the settings. After changing the settings, HDFS should reboot.
Refer to Configuring Impala for Performance without Cloudera Manager for more information on configuration.
Before running Impala, you should carry out some pre-tasks, such as table creation and data loading through Hive Client, as Impala does not currently support these.
If you need to analyze an existing table in HBase or a new table, you can redefine it as an extern table through Hive. Refer to https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/HBaseIntegration.
To enter a query in Impala, you can enter it through Impala shell, Cloudera Beeswaw (an application that helps users to use Hive easily), or ODBC. Here you will see a query method by using the Impala shell.
–u impala impala-shell
Welcome to the Impala shell. Press TAB twice to see a list of available commands.
Copyright (c) 2012 Cloudera, Inc. All rights reserved.
(Build version: Impala v0.1 (1fafe67) built on Mon Oct 22 13:06:45 PDT 2012)
[Not connected] > connect impalad-host:21000
[impalad-host:21000] > show tables
[impalad-host:21000] >
(pv) from custom_url group by url limit 50
[impalad-host:21000] >
Before entering a query, you should select an impalad to be the main server from the impalads in the cluster. Once the connection is complete, enter a query and see the result.
Impala Functionality/Performance Test
In this article I want to share with you the test results I have obtained when I first tried Impala beta version. Though many things have been changes since the beta release, I want you to see the trend in Impala performance. I conducted a simple test to see how well it performs within an available scope.
Table 2 below shows the equipment and the version of the software used. The Hadoop cluster was composed of one Namenode/JobTracker, 3 to 5 Data/Task nodes, and one commander. And the HDFS replication was set to "2". The Map/Reduce capacities of node were also "2". Data for the test is approximately 1.3 billion records with 14 column data, totaling approximately 65 GB.
Table 2: Hardware and Software Versions.
Intel Xeon 2.00GHz
CentOS release 6.3(Final)
The table schema and query created for the test are as follows:
Code 1: Hive Table Schema.
hive> describe custom_url;
sd_uid bigint
freq int
locale int
os int
sr int
browser int
gender int
age int
url int
visitor int
visit int
pv int
dt int
Code 2: Test Query.
select sr, url, sum(pv) as sumvalue from custom_url
WHERE sr != -1 and url != -1 and (sd_uid=690291 or sd_uid=692758)
group by sr, url order by sumvalue desc limit 50
The query was simply composed of frequently used simple statements, including select, from, group by and order by.
Test Result
With cluster sizes of 3 and 5 nodes, the same query in the same table was performed through Impala and Hive, and the average response time was measured.
Table 3: Comparison of the Time to Execute the Same Query in Impala and Hive, by Cluster Size.
3 nodes
5 nodes
As mentioned above, Impala shows much better performance than the analytic work by using MapReduce. In addition, the bigger the cluster size is, the better response time Impala shows linearly. (After expanding the cluster, the test was conducted after evenly distributing data blocks through rebalancing.)
Figure 5: Impala's Response Time According to Cluster Size.
In addition, to compare the performance of Impala with that of other column-based commercial databases, such as Infobright, infiniDB and Vertica, which have MPP as a common denominator with Impala, a test was also conducted with the same data and query (the open source version of Infobright and infiniDB and the Community Edition version of Vertica were used for the test). The test of the three databases above was conducted on a single server.
Table 4: Execution Time of Commercial Column-based Databases.
Execution time
As the test result in Table 4 shows, Infobright, infiniDB and Vertica, which are commercial enterprise products, show much better results than Impala. This is because Impala is still in the initial development stage, and thus may have structural and technical shortcomings. For Vertica, which showed the best performance of the four, in a three-server environment, it showed 30% higher performance than the result specified in Table 4.
However, as Vertica is a commercial product, if you want to configure a cluster of two or more servers, there is a higher cost.
Less than a year has passed since Impala beta was released and two months since the production 1.0 version is released. Since Impala 1.0 a variety of file formats are now supported, a subset of ANSI-92 SQL is supported including
JOIN, and subqueries. In addition, it supports partitioned joins, fully distributed aggregations, and fully distributed top-n queries.
Apart from this, MapR, which does business by using Hadoop like Cloudera, suggested Drill, a system based on the Dremel paper, like Impala, which is being prepared mainly by its HQ developers, to the Apache incubator. It is still just a proposal, but Drill is expected to make fast progress once it is launched, as it is being promoted mainly by MapR developers.
By Kwon Donghun, Software Engineer at Data Infra Lab, NHN Corporation.
Managing data at scale doesn't have to be hard. Find out how the completely free, open source HPCC Systems platform makes it easier to update, easier to program, easier to integrate data, and easier to manage clusters. Download and get started today.
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