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yes, I'm alive, just that life has been taken over by work. I'm following 4 dramas concurrently *pls refer to sidebar* and all are decently entertaining but none has made me want to write about it. Even the highly anticipated sequel to On Call 36 Hours took a while for me to warm up to, with the bunch of new characters and screechy patients running about but golly, Yat Kin and Yu Zai continue to be the heart and soul of this drama. Ep 1 was busy explaining missing characters and introducing new ones, but once Yat Kin and Yu Zai showed up, my anchor to this show was back. I love the Love Actually thing Yat Kin did for Yu Zai to cheer her up while she was under quarantine and how in tune they were in wishing for the same thing (that both mother and child are fine). But there wouldn't be much to watch if their lives were henceforth smooth-sailing so poor Yu Zai suffers a cancer relapse in ep 4 and has to abort her baby before she can start her treatment. Continue reading
On Call 36 Hours II2 Apr
All these recent talk of 'On Call 36 Hours' is making want to re-watch the show and it's also getting me real excited for the sequel which is in the works. I've translated a recent interview of Kenneth Ma and Tavia Yeung where they talk about the sequel.
Sequel's teaser from TVB's sales presentation.
– On the sequel's story
T: In this sequel, it's impossible that we (Yat Kin Tau and Yu Zai) separate or have a 3rd party come between us. We got married and in the show we will have a kid but because my illness recurred, we had to abort the baby and this caused some problems between us. He doesn't want the baby because it would endanger my health but I really want the baby because he is the only son in the family and I wanted to give him a child so that's the cause of conflicts. Family, career and his own personal career will also encounter problems because of me.
K: I will need this wife to support me and give me strength to get back on my feet.
T: He will have major problems with his career – his job, his confidence, family will all have problems. And in order to encourage him, I gave up my favourite cardiothoracic surgery and switched to the pathology department where I will work with Lawrence Ng.
Interviewer: And there may be some relationship complications?
T & K: Oh nononono, no 3rd party can get between us. ❤
K: An interesting thing about this script is, if you've watched 'On Call 1', you will know that she was the more pro-active one but in the sequel, when we are apart I will be the one taking the initiative to woo her back again. I find that interesting.
Both of them says that about 1/3 of the sequel has been filmed.
– Talking about each other
T: He's a great guy, fantastic! He likes to stay at home. Not the kind who stays at home glued to the computer but to accompany his mom. He takes good care of his family is and very filial (Kenneth interjects to say 'so are you' and Tavia agrees. lol) His usual activies – though I don't stay with him – he leaves work late and wakes up early. There's lots of time but he doesn't sleep, don't know what he's doing. Reading the newspaper at home, ask his friends out for soccer, go for tea with his mom, pick his mom up after she is done with mahjong. Haaa~ am I right? (K: Yes) I don't stay with him but I know all his daily activities (K: Why do you know so much) I don't know~
K: I know her very well too. Usually when she's not filming, she also stays at home with her mom. (T: And what else?) oh yes, her dog.
They then talk about how they wish to take on happier or comedic roles in the future so they won't have to keep crying or dying. Haaa.
Drama status: a mixed bag17 Feb
~ On Call 36 Hours [25][HK drama]
It doesn't bring anything new to the plate as far as plot points are concerned – if you're a tvb regular you'd have seen them one time or another – but'On Call' brings it all together seamlessly with the briskness and humour I have come to expect of hk dramas. It also has lots of heart and I was moved to tears at quite a few scenes from the beautiful relationships between family members, friends, lovers.
Unlike previous hk police procedurals which hurt my brain with some less than logical cases, this one's a medical one and I gladly bought into all the foreign medical jargon and cases thrown at me. Plus there were many meaningful lessons taught through the life and death situations encountered by the doctors at the hospital and gives the viewers food for thought on life and hope. The slow burning romance between Yat Kin Tau and Yu Zai was also the highlight of the drama and I love how their relationship is based on their mutual admiration and understanding of each other's strengths and flaws. Once I start writing on 'On Call', I feel like there's so many things I want to say about the individual characters but I'll leave that for another post. For now, I highly recommend everyone check it out here with english subs
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Watching now13 Nov
Besides 'Qi Pao', I'm also following two other dramas which are as different as night and day.
First we have 'Tur Gub Kao Lae Ruk Kong Rao (You and him, and our love)' starring Pancake, Pae and Pete in a melodramatic love triangle where everyone seems to be mopey/angsty most of the time. I have no interest in the cast or another Ch7 lakorn and wouldn't even be aware of this lakorn's existence if not for me stumbling upon a MV by Clash who sang the theme song (which I love and can I say the lead singer of Clash is quite manly man hot). Just so happen I'm in the mood for something cheesy and dramatic so there, I went and downloaded a few episodes on my iphone to pass time while commuting to work. I'm only halfway into ep1 and am getting a bit concerned that I prefer sugar daddy Pete over our emo p'ek Pae (I've watched a few clips of him in later episodes) and like the secondary charaters (Pete's siblings) more than n'ek Pancake. We'll see how many episodes I can last for this and if it will join the collection of lakorns where I liked the OST more than the drama itself.
Next is TVB Anniversary drama 'The Confidant' which chronicles the rise of the infamous eunuch Li Lianying in the courts of the even more infamous Empress Cixi during the late Qing dynasty. Unlike past media representations of Li Lianying as an evil power/money hungry official, Wayne Lai's version starts off as lowly, humble eunuch with no ambitions and plenty of heart unlike his glib buddy An Dehai (another eunuch well known for the wrong reasons) who's already well versed in currying favour with Empress Cixi. The eunuchs in 'The Confidant' have also been called the most 'manly' eununchs by netizens because they aren't the sterotypical eunuchs who speak in high pitched voices with feminine mannerisms and they even have their own love lines!
While Li Lianying's story is interesting, I want to see more of Shuang Xi and his encounters with an odd palace maid Yi Lan who may or may not be a ghost – ok, I'm pretty sure she's not a ghost and is really a princess but I'm avoiding spoilers to see if my prediction is correct. I'm appreciative of how Yi Lan's appearance was neatly weaved into the current plot line of the young prince's ghost haunting the medical quarters where he died and I look forward to more masterful storytelling in 'The Confidant'.
Drama status12 Apr
Rak Ok Arkad [ep watched 2/total ep 14][lakorn]: This sounds like a reverse 'Poo Yai Lee Gab Nang Mah' which I enjoyed tremendously and I wanted to like this for Cherry but the laughs were too slapstick and Om's acting too stiff for me to carry on.
Forensic Heroes III [6/30][HK drama]: This one went for the CSI route but didn't match up and it didn't pull me in on the character front either so bye bye it was. Random observation: Age is really catching up with Maggie Cheung Ho-yee!
Too Late to Say I Love You [15/36][Cdrama]: Wallace Chung as Murong Feng charmed my socks in this one and I also loved the strong-willed heroine Jing Wan but after skimming through the novel on which the drama is based on, I couldn't bear to watch the betrayal that I knew Jing Wan was going to suffer later. I did catch the last two episodes and the drama version white-washed Murong Feng to give him and Jing Wan a happy ending when in the novel, Murong Feng engineered an accident to kill Jing Wan's husband and daughter and to revenge him, Jing Wan carried her dead daughter to Murong Feng and lied that she was his biological daughter, then proceeded to kill herself with the gun that Murong Feng gave her years ago. How fun. I might finish this one day when I'm in the mood for angst.
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Looking back on 2011 – Chinese dramas25 Dec
Sealed With A Kiss: The premise of a man blackmailing a girl into becoming his mistress in order to exact revenge for her father's sins might not sit well with many but if you're a lakorn veteran, this would not faze you a bit. It has all the elements of a typical slap-kiss – Greed! Betrayal! Revenge! Abuse! Manipulation! – and I was expecting a standard lakorn with the only difference being the characters speaking Chinese but I was pleasantly surprised by nuanced characterization and tight plot. lengthier than I thought
真相 The Other Truth22 Nov
I had this written a while back but my work avalanche happened and I forgot about it. XD
Synopsis and cast information
Eng sub Download links / Watch online
Ahh, good to be back in the fast paced world of HK dramas where the only thing I fastfoward is the opening credits. The Other Truth is labelled as a legal drama and in the initial episodes, I thought it would be one that explored the limitations of the judicial system in meting out 'true justice' (going with the title of The Other Truth) but as the series progress, it became more like standard TVB case-based drama with lead characters who happen to be lawyers. The cases featured were definitely a marked improvement from those in Mysteries of Love but loopholes still abound in the last couple of cases. It's best not to have too high expectations of the cases in HK procedurals because they deal better with character relationships than with logic but overall pacing is brisk and light-hearted moments are nicely balanced with intense ones.
I love watching the characters interact and their sharp, witty lines make even the most casual conversations fun to watch. I've been watching mostly foreign language dramas of late so it was a nice change to be able to understand the dialogue and puns, with help from Chinese subtitles of course since my grasp of Cantonese is only mah mah dei (so-so).
The Keith-Mavis-Wallace love triangle was a tad unsatisfying because I felt Keith-Mavis had a lot of potential but the scriptwriters chose not to play out the romance part. Still, I'd rather they do it this way than have it all drawn out and melodramatic as HK dramas are wont to do with their love triangles/rectangles/pentagons. I appreciate that though falling for the same woman added a dash of competiveness between the boys, it never affected their friendship and they would always have each other's back. Friendship takes centre-stage instead of romance and I really enjoyed the bromance between the guys in the two offices. They like taking jibes at each other but when it comes down to the crunch, they'll be there for you.
I rate this: 3.5/5
Could've been a 4 if the ending cases were better written.
A Rose Without Thorns29 Jun
Too much has been going on in RL and I'm back to seeking emotional refuge in the make-believe world of dramas where everything gets tied up nicely by the last episode.
The only lakorn I'm looking forward to is Ken/Ann's "365 Days of Love" but it's not airing so soon and I've been trying unsuccessfully to find a lakorn to entertain me in the meantime. The story for Rome's new lakorn "Kulap Rai Nam (A Rose without Thorns)" is just typical beyond typical, what with the sweet nang'ek getting bullied by her conniving elder sister but she'll end up winning over the handsome pra'ek with her pure heart. The only reason I will give this a shot is not for Rome, but for Ploy who is playing the evil nang'rai yet again. Heeh, I don't know why, but I just enjoy watching Ploy on screen even though she often ends up as the villian.
I'm also done with TVB's "The Mysteries of Love" which was initially criticised for ripping off the plot of J-drama "Galileo" but the two dramas are actually very different. Kings (Raymond Lam) is a genius physics professor who gets roped in by his police inspector pal Gordon (Kenneth Ma) to help solve cases and that's really where the similarities end. "Galileo", as with many J-dramas, is not romance centric and concentrates on solving the cases in a systemetic manner. For all the cases in "Galileo", physics played a central role in uncovering the truth and the eccentric Yukawa is the main star of the drama (I ignore the female side-kick Kaoru 'cos she's too annoying. Anyway I'm still pissed that the scriptwriters pretty much replaced the role that Shunpei had in the novel with Kaoru just so that a female character gets more screen time with Yukawa.)
"Mysteries of Love" on the other hand, honestly … the cases are so lame. The audience easily picks up the clues before the police gets them and the cases are always so conveniently resolved. Some physics theories get thrown in here and there but it's more like an afterthought rather than the key to solving the cases. Actually, they don't even use that much physics 'cos Kings was always calling up his professor friends in other faculties to help.
So, what kept me watching for all 24 episodes and even made me cry on a few occassions? The star of MoL isn't any one character but the various kinds of relationships potrayed. The love and support 犀利妹's (Tavia Yeung … I'll just refer to her character as SLM!) family have for each other, the camaraderie in Gordon's unit, the friendship between Gordon and Kings, the love that SLM has for Kings. A quick poll among my friends indicate that Kings and SLM's relationship got a few tears out of all of them and I must say Tavia did a very good job with SLM. Kings on the other hand… hmm, I think Raymond Lam did alright as Kings but it was the scriptwriters' fault for not doing enough to shape the character. Oooh yes, Kenneth Ma didn't leave much of an impression on me when I saw him in a couple other dramas but he's definitely got my attention with his potrayal of Gordon. Erm, but I didn't quite get his relationship with Nickole (Bernice Liu) so I ended up fastforwarding all their scenes in the later part of the drama! And even though I said the cases are lame, they can be entertaining if you don't bother too much with logic. XD


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Today in our continuing series of interviews with Shades of Fear authors, we welcome Maria Sauerbrei, contributor of the story The House in the Woods.
- Tell us a little bit about yourself, Maria.
I was born and raised in Jersey City, NJ. When I was 22 I moved to Arizona and lived there for eight years. While I was there I met and married my husband, and we had three daughters (Ages 6, 4, and 2). I have a B.A. in English Literature and am currently working on my M.A. in English Literature. I've also had my own photography business since 2010 in which I photograph babies and families.
- How did you get involved with Shades of Fear?
Like most of the authors in Shades of Fear it started with Nanowrimo 2013. It was my first time participating and the little group we started to encourage and cheer each other on turned into such a huge support for my writing beyond Nano.
- Who are your favorite authors?
Stephen King has always been one of my favorites. V.C. Andrews is one of the first authors I started following with any regularity and as a teenager read every single one of her series. I recently discovered John Green and am working my way through his books. My tastes in book varies greatly, I don't typically stick to one genre so picking favorite authors is tough for me.
- Tell us a bit about your story The House in the Woods?
I have always loved horror films, stories, and movies. The supernatural genre is one I lean toward as well, however I was sick of vampire stories where the human and vampire fall madly in love. I wanted to create a story where the vampire is a vampire. Being in love wasn't an option for him because his primary needs came first. From that desire was born my story.
- Why do you think that vampires are so enduring in literature and film?
The aspect of immortality is appealing to many people. The idea of being so primal and living based on what you want and need at that moment in time appeals to people. One common thread that runs through all vampire stories is wealth. All vampires are wealthy because of how long they've been around so the daily worries of how to enjoy life and survive are gone. It's all about satisfying the primal urges in us all.
- Do you have a favorite literary vampire?
Who doesn't love Eric Northman from True Blood, especially as he's portrayed by Alexander Skarsgaard. ::laugh:: I don't have a favorite to be perfectly honest. They're all pretty interesting in their own way.
- What are your own greatest fears and how do you deal with them?
Being a mom my greatest fears all relate to my children. I fear about not being able to teach them everything they need to know about the world. I want them to follow their dreams so I try my best to follow mine and hope they'll follow my lead.
- If you could have a super power what would it be?
Mind control…because how cool would that be!
- What do you like to do to relax?
Reading, writing, and photography.
- What are you currently working on?
Another horror story for an anthology and a fairy tale therapy flash fiction piece which has been a lot of fun to work on.
- How can readers connect with you?
Through my photography Facebook page www.facebook.com/msauerbreiphotography, my twitter @mariasauerbrei, and my instagram @msauerbreiphoto

subset: commoncrawl


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Listen to this track by legendary back-up vocalist phenomenon and vital solo artist in her own right Merry Clayton. It's "Southern Man", a song written by Neil Young and recorded by Clayton on her 1971 solo record Merry Clayton. The sessions were overseen by Lou Adler, and the material was sourced from some of the best writers of the era besides Young; Carole King, James Taylor, Leon Russell, and others.
A few years after this tune was laid down for her self-titled record, Clayton had been called on to sing on the answer song to this tune, that being Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" which chided Young by name on his criticism of southern life. But, the Skynyrd song fails to acknowledge in any distinguishable way that southern life for one is not the same life for another, depending on one's background. The cultural weight and matters of historical record behind all of that is impossible to ignore. For Clayton, participation on that song rankled. But, as she said about the Skynyrd session in the excellent documentary Twenty Feet From Stardom, part of her calling when it came to civil rights was singing. So, she sang on the Skynyrd tune anyway, and "sang the shit out of it" with the boo-boo-boo backing vocal lines when governer George Wallace is alluded to in the song being among the stand out elements.
But, that session would be after she covered this Neil Young tune. In retrospect now that we've got both songs to listen to, Clayton twisted that dialogue back in on itself by doing a full on interpretation of "Southern Man" and transformed it while she was at it. Read more


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Two for the blogroll
Being a new inhabitant of this corner of the inelegantly named blogosphere, I am not yet fully acquainted with its geography. So far, I have encountered few sites whose primary interest is the Renaissance; the ever-useful Society for Renaissance Studies website provides a useful list.
In the absence of a large encampment of Renaissance cogniscenti, we are left flick-switching, so to speak and as so often, between 'medieval' and 'early modern.' In the latter category, I note that I have received an honourable mention on Early Modern Notes, which has its own very instructive resource of 'blogsetc'. Moving in the other direction, the Digital Medievalist is the nom-de-plume — should that be nom-de-écran? — for an American Celtic scholar who also helpfully provides information not only on conferences and events in the real world but also of other medieval characters with a virtual existence.
If you know of any other sites which should be added to this 'blogography' for their assistance in providing access to a wider Renaissance universe, do enlighten me.


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Adventure Into Life
Get access to everything we publish when you sign up for Outside+.
Colleen Cannon is a long-time endurance athlete who has journeyed through the ranks of professional triathlon to her current role as founder of Women's Quest, an organization providing women with active adventures for the body, mind and spirit. As the company's website proclaims, a Women's Quest retreat "is no ordinary fitness or travel vacation. It is a reawakening to yourself and your one wild and precious life!"
Women's Quest retreats are offered in a variety of stunning and soul-stirring locales, including Italy, Colorado, Hawaii, Costa Rica and Northern California's wine country. Activities run the gamut from cycling, trail running, yoga, ocean swimming, hiking, horseback riding, wine tasting, journal writing and much more. Each Quest emphasizes a combination of physical, mental and spiritual fitness and exploration, tailored to the needs and desires of the individual participants. Women of all experience levels are encouraged to give themselves the gift of focused time and energy geared toward re-invigorating the many aspects of their lives and personal well being. Take a look at the upcoming 2011/2012 Women's Quest retreats – you're sure to find at least one that inspires you!


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2022 Herb of the Year
Updated: Jun 9
The Viola species are the January 2022 Herb of the Month for The Herb Society of America and also the International Herb Association's Herb of the Year™ for 2022. Heartsease (Viola tricolor) is one of the species in this group of herbal plants. This little unassuming flower has symbolized love, death, and rebirth since Roman and Greek times. During those early days, it was believed to be an aphrodisiac and was also used to treat heart conditions. Hence, one of its many names was heartsease.


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Some website had this list of words that you "never see in a blog post." That was practically a throwdown.
The word erinaceous means "pertaining to a hedgehog." Appropriate because, as we ALL know, the scientific name for hedgehog is Erinaceinae.
I have this hairbrush, and it looks a bit like the back of the creature. It feels really nice on my scalp.
There is an animated creature called Sonic the Hedgehog that only mildly looks like a hedgehog.
Conversely, the protein sonic hedgehog, which "functions as a chemical signal that is essential for embryonic development, through cell growth, cell specialization, and the normal shaping (patterning) of the body," sort of DOES look like a hedgehog, if you look at it in a microscope. "This protein is important for development of the brain and spinal cord (central nervous system), eyes, limbs, and many other parts of the body."
Saving the hedgehog from the McFlurry, an ice cream product from McDonald's.
LISTEN to a hedgehog snoring.


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Hybrid 160T3700 CNC Press Brake Dies For Sale is a type of bending machine that uses a servo motor as an actuating device, and the numerical control system combines the feedback data of the grating ruler to control the flow rate of the two main oil cylinders to achieve synchronous movement of the slider.
In addition, the main oil cylinders on both sides of Hybrid 160T3700 Hydraulic Press Brake adopt German imported electro-hydraulic servo valves and Italy GIVI Linear encoder to form a closed-loop control.
The feedback is accurate and the slider runs accurately so that the bending accuracy and the repeated positioning accuracy of the slider are high.
1. Direct angle programming, with angle compensation function.
2. Grating ruler real-time detection feedback correction, full closed-loop control, positioning accuracy of back gauge and slider dead gauge is ±0.02mm.
3. The upper die adopts a quick clamping device, and the lower die adopts an oblique wedge deformation compensation mechanism.
4. With a multi-step programming function, it can realize multi-automatic operation, complete one-step processing of multi-step parts, and improve production efficiency.
5. According to the user's needs, the imported hydraulic system with stable performance, compact structure, ball screw, and synchronous belt drive can be selected for the back gauge.
Hybrid 160T3700 CNC Press Brake Dies For Sale safety standard
Front protection device to protect fingers (safety light curtain)
South Korea KACON footswitch (level 4 safety level)
Rear metal protection and CE standards
Safety relay monitor completes pedal switch, safety protection
Safety standard (2006/42/EC)
Performance characteristics of Hybrid 160T/3700 Hydraulic Press Brake
1. Hybrid 160T3700 Hydraulic Press Brake adopts a hydraulic convex automatic compensation system to solve the influence of the deformation of the slider during the bending process on the quality of the workpiece. The amount of compensation is automatically adjusted by the CNC system, which is convenient and accurate.
2. The CNC bending machine adopts a full-function back gauge mechanism, which can choose to control multiple back gauge shafts. Functional parts in the back gauge. Imported originals such as guide rails, screws, and bearings are used to ensure the accuracy of the back gauge.
3. The body of the electro-hydraulic servo CNC Press Brake Dies For Sale adopts an integral welding structure, which is convenient for transportation and processing and can ensure the accuracy of the machine.
4. The machine body, slider, and other important components are analyzed using ANSYS finite element analysis software to ensure the reliability of the machine tool.
5. The hydraulic bending machine adopts the integrated control system imported from Germany, which reduces the installation of pipelines, improves the working stability of the machine tool, and has a beautiful and concise appearance.
Hybrid 160T3700 Machine controller DA66T
2D graphical touch screen programming mode
3D visualization in simulation and production
Crowning system control
17″ high-resolution color TFT
Date backup/ restore via USB
Bending tool/material/product library
Full Windows application suite
Open system architecture
Among them, the DA66T controller is popular among the customer. Its advantage as below
1 The electro-hydraulic servo system controls the double-cylinder synchronization and cooperates with the international standard grating ruler to form a fully closed-loop control. The synchronization control has high precision, and the bending accuracy and repeated bending accuracy also reach a high level.
2 According to user needs, it can have a hydraulic upper mold automatic clamp or a quick clamp, a slot type lower mold, which can reduce the labor intensity of workers and improve production efficiency.
3 The fully functional back gauge mechanism can have six axes. The compensation adjust automatically by the CNC system, which is convenient for compensation
4 There are segmented upper dies of different lengths, which can assemble into a certain width according to the requirements of the workpiece to meet the processing needs of special workpieces.
5 The CNC oil cylinder deflection automatic compensation system overcomes the influence of the deformation of the slider on the quality of the workpiece during the work process and ensures good straightness and bending angle of the processed workpiece.
6 The flexible operation mode can be used, which can link the two machines to solve the processing of ultra-long plates and process the short pieces in a single machine, improve the utilization rate of the machine tool, and reduce energy consumption.
7 Intelligent module structure, built-in PLC function, automatic programming and bending simulation, collision detection function, can realize remote diagnosis, high-resolution true color TFT display.
Machine CNC Axis Explanation
Y1 Left cylinder electro-hydraulic synchronous closed-loop control axis
Y2 Right cylinder electro-hydraulic synchronous closed-loop control axis
X (X1, X2) Back gauge moving axis (back and front)
R(R1, R2) Back gauge moving axis (up and down)
Z1, Z2 Two stop fingers moving axis (left and right)
V CNC crowning axis


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Improved and effective communication with parents leads a Parent Teacher Group in the direction of more involved parents and an organized Parent Teacher Group. Communication increases productivity and keeps the Parent Teacher Group functional and effective.
A PTO Member must grab each and every opportunity to communicate with parents and inform them about the plans for the welfare of school and students, ask them to get involved to make a difference, and appreciate them for the smallest of their efforts.
Sometimes you might not know how to improve your communication skills and how to inform them about the Parent Teacher Group, but don't be overwhelmed. Parent Communication can be broken into two major categories- Message and Medium. Understand these two important pieces and improve parent communication:
- Positive: The messages sent out by the Parent Teacher Group depicts the working environment and friendliness of the group. Keep the messages welcoming, encouraging and comforting, so that parents wish to join the group. If your messages sound negative, scolding and demeaning, try to change the tone and see the results.
- Loud and Clear: A message motivating parent involvement will have a lesser impact than a clear call for volunteers for a particular event. This is because parents can understand the requirements and fit themselves wherever their skills match. This can help you in improving involvement.
Keeping a message loud means that mention it everywhere- on all platforms- lobby of the school, social media, website, and all other platforms.
- Consistent: For a relation to be built, Consistency in communication is the key. Try to come up with a weekly plan of sending out emails or messages to all the parents. Sometimes just images showing the fun Parent Teacher Group Members had in the previous events. Engage with them and understand the possibilities of their involvement. Even if personal communication isn't possible, update your website and social media pages regularly and be actively engaging.
- Reminders and Follow Ups: Reminders are a must. Suppose you want parents to join the Parent Teacher Group, you can display a message in the lobby which reminds them everyday, that they need to join the Parent Teacher Group. And once they have joined, follow-up regarding their attendance in the meetings, presence in the events, etc. This can help you organize the group better and make school a better place not just for students, but also for parents.
- Variety of Messages: Do you send out just text messages?
Keep a variety in your messages and attract parents with the content. Weekly emails, monthly newsletters, blogs, images, videos, infographics, and any other form of message can be included in your plan and sent out to parents for their views and opinions. Make them see the life of a Parent Teacher Group Member from outside through your attractive messages and emails.
- Be reachable: Parent Teacher Group Leaders must be reachable for the parents and students for any discussions. Questions from how to be involved in the Parent Teacher Group to what can I do if my child does not feel safe at school, must be answered by the Parent Teacher Group Members.
It should never be difficult to reach out to the leaders, their contact numbers and email addresses must be well spread in every flyer and message, making communication easier and better.
- Social Media: Most of the Parent Teacher Group have started using their social media pages for communicating with parents and sharing details of meetings and other events. This helps parents to stay updated and keep up with the activities of their groups. If you are a Parent Teacher Group and have not began using social media, try it- it is fun.
- Website: Keeping a website all updated and fresh might need some extra efforts but it is a must. Not just in the beginning of the academic year, but throughout the year. Make it a habit of updating your Parent Teacher Group Website after every event or a fundraiser.
- Emails: Plan your emails. Will you be sending a weekly email or a monthly, and what would be the content. Make sure you mind your tone and use images/texts carefully keeping privacy at a priority. Send emails with a goal to communicate, and not just for the sake of sending an email.
- Person-to-Person: Technology has given hundreds of communication options but person to person communication cannot be replaced. Plan some coffee mornings with parents and discuss the problems and their solutions. You can select days of the months to make it convenient for everyone to attend such informal meetings and share their views.
- Flyers: Send out flyers in the backpacks for any events to which parents are invited. Some parents are not as active on social media and would be left out if flyers are not sent. For fundraisers, or any events that need parent attention, send out multiple flyers with reminders.
- Indirect Communication: When the intention of a message is stated clearly, it is called indirect communication. Suppose you send out a picture of Parent Teacher Group members having fun at the Fun-Run, you actually imply to attract parents to get involved in the Parent Teacher Group so that even they can have fun.
You can use such indirect messages in many creative ways.
Add comments and share with us your Pro Communication Tips and get featured on our upcoming blogs.
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TODAY'S SIGNATURE VERSE ••• For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16 ESV)
PRAISE & PRAYER PROMPT ••• For the last six weeks, I've been having online movie night with some of the hair stylists from the Great Clips franchise I work with (no, I can't cut hair… everyone asks me that. Trust me… I can't even cut a straight line on paper. No one wants me to have scissors near their hair).
Online movie night began as a morale booster during quarantine. And since this isn't a work-function and I'm a contractor, we've been watching faith-based movies. There are only a few of us watching together, but it's been a fun thing to look forward to every week. We talked last night about continuing movie night on at least a monthly basis once they return to work.
Last night, we watched "God's Not Dead 2." It's the first movie we've watched that none of us had seen and actually, I think I liked it even better than the first one.
Melissa Joan Hart played the main character, Grace Wesley, and in the movie, she's a teacher who answered a student's question and then found herself in a legal battle, accused of proselytizing in the classroom. The poignant line from the movie was, "I am not going to be afraid to say the name Jesus."
It's a line that hit me hard. And not-so-coincidentally, it hit me hard during the movie (I don't believe in coincidences—that's another topic). I had a phone call while we were watching from someone who constantly challenges me about my faith. The subject is a bit of a landmine between us and since I didn't want to spark a debate at that moment, I didn't tell him the title.
I took the easy way out. The truth is that I honestly couldn't get into a debate at that point because I had people waiting on me, but I also didn't WANT the debate at all. However, it's something I will be addressing later today. And I'm praying that it will be a non-contentious conversation.
Putting my failure from last night aside for now, the name of Jesus is a landmine for many. We hesitate to bring Him up for fear of offending… or being asked a question we can't answer… We go on social media and we talk about any and everything… from recipes to political opinions to gardening projects to the latest antics of the kids. But how often do we take the opportunity to say Jesus' name and praise Him for the world to hear? How often do we talk about Him? Share about Him?
Paul wrote, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16). Our salvation and the eternity we will enjoy is because of Jesus! His name is power (Philippians 2:9-11)! We cannot be ashamed, scared, or even hesitant to speak it!
It's no secret that it's getting harder and harder to be a Christian in this country, despite the fact that our Constitution states that we have freedom of religion. People will go to extraordinary lengths to criticize Christians and even try to bring them down with lawsuits and accusations. But we can't worry about what others will think about us (or even do to us) because of our faith. As David wrote in Psalm 56:11, "In God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?" The answer is nothing! Nothing that God won't allow! And if He allows you to be persecuted for your faith, then you have to trust His plan and purpose. Whether your defense of your faith is a private matter or on public trial, God will always equip us for whatever journey He asks us to take.
We need to value the holiness of Jesus and remember who He is—the Son of God! The light of the world! Our Savior and Redeemer! And when I ponder all that He's done for us, it breaks my heart that I've ever hesitated to speak of Him and praise Him.
With that said, the other line from the movie that spoke to me was also spoken by the character, Grace: "I would rather stand with God and be judged by the world, than stand with the world and be judged by God."
Me too, Grace. Me too.
Today, as you pray, praise the name of Jesus! Ask the Holy Spirit to embolden your heart that you won't be ashamed, embarrassed, or hesitant to let anyone know that He is your Lord and Savior!
SHARING ••• Please share with others! Visit www.MyGraceFullLife.com to read past blogs. ***Unless noted otherwise, all Scripture references are from the ESV translation.


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Coach inducted into National Semi-Pro Baseball Hall of Fame
November 16, 2015
Boys basketball and baseball coach Jason Ollison has only just started his coaching career at WHS, but has earned recognition at a national level for his baseball playing abilities.
Coach Ollison had been inducted into the National Semi-Pro Baseball Hall of Fame by playing with the Mid-Missouri Crawdads Semi-Pro Baseball Team for four years, with whom he placed second in the USBC World Series in 2006, won the Missouri Show-Me Games in 2006, along with a second place finish in 2007, and a third place finish in 2005.
"Being selected is an incredible honor for me and my family," Ollison said. "I was lucky enough to play with some very good players, and without them, I wouldn't have had the success I have had as a player or a coach."
Coach Ollison began his coaching career in 2001 at Lincoln University, and has since coached for Green Ridge and Lincoln University.
"I really enjoy teaching the game, especially to kids, but nothing takes the place of getting on the field and playing," Ollison said.
Assistant principal Billy Daleske is very proud of Ollison's accomplishment.
"I think it's awesome he's been recognized, and I've very proud," Daleske said. "I am glad he chose to be at Warsaw."


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Technology and Investment
Vol.09 No.01(2018), Article ID:82654,12 pages
The Weighting Factors to Improve Predictability on Twitter
Jorge Arroba Rimassa1, Rafael Muñoz Guillena2, Fernando Llopis2
1Facultad de Ingeniería Ciencias Físicas y Matemáticas, Universidad Central del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador
2Departamento de Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos, Universidad de Alicante, Alicante, España
Copyright © 2018 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0).
Received: December 12, 2017; Accepted: February 24, 2018; Published: February 27, 2018
The result of the analysis of a thematic in a social network is to find a measure that allows the principal actors to know their performance, that is, they can define or maintain strategies and courses of action in order to optimize their communication. It is necessary to formally define the principles of analysis in Social Networks in order to use their characteristics better and to be able to contextualize the concept and use of weighting factors to improve their predictability. When Social Networks are going to be used as a mechanism to predict social behavior, for example, to predict the outcome of a political election, weighting factors must be introduced to try to match the data collected from the Social Network with those of a sample. In this article we have defined the methodology to incorporate the geographic weighting factors and several formulas have been created that allow reprocessing the data downloaded from Twitter in which its polarity has been determined by classical NLP methods to increase the predictive power.
Twitter, Weighting Factors, Formalization of Social Networks
1. Introduction
Today, all with 280 characters we can say about everything; these opinions are added in a massive way to build a thematic analysis that is a theoretical construct on various aspects.
In this context, opinion leaders, product brands, thematic positions, official or private organizations, entities, etc. are considered as principal actors that interact with the different users who in turn express their opinion and take some position with respect to these actors.
The realization of an analysis of this information that flows in a bidirectional way, between principal and active actors, the users, is what gives more power to the Social Networks; because these are becoming a tool to "influence" the user. Then the analysis of a topic in a social network becomes a measure that allows in many cases to the principal actors to know their performance; if what they express is well positioned, their measure of acceptance; that is, we have the measure to define or maintain strategies and courses of action in order to optimize communication and performance.
All people have access to a social network, think, criticize, warn and they make value judgments on any topic and from social networks. One of those that has more followers and allows the download for further analysis is Twitter to use the messages as a tool to evaluate the performance of the principal actors. A conversion process must be carried out so that the opinion given in the twitters is equivalent to those of the general population, since Twitter users are a subset of these.
Before beginning the analysis of Social Networks, we must begin to contextualize their concept; we must formally define their principles in order to better exploit their characteristics.
We must also formalize the conversion process so that its use is more widespread and that the a-posteriori results are closer to reality and reflect the true feelings of the users.
2. Methods and Procedures for Processing Information
Performing analysis in order to predict certain behaviors using social networks has positions. From the most extreme ones that state that it definitely does not make sense to make any attempt to analyze the information of social networks to those that tend to use and abuse to try to predict the different behaviors of the actors.
Different authors have used different techniques of polarity analysis and even more in electoral processes, which become a thermometer to the extent that their results can be contrasted with those issued by the predictions that are made, besides the simple counting of the mentions. Table 1 shows a taxonomy of antinomic positions in terms of whether social networks can be used or not to
Table 1. Positions on the use of twitters for predictive analysis.
predict results and the use or not of methods to determine the polarity of messages; in which the main authors have been annotated in relation to political prediction.
In the first quadrant, those who state that the analysis of the twitters serves to predict results but without using methods to detect the polarity, that is, working with the total number of mentions that one or another principal actor can have. The works of [1] in the elections of Germany, [2] in the general elections of Spain and [3] in several legislative elections in the United States in the political field are iconic.
In the second quadrant, there are those that use and perform the analysis of the twitter to predict, but incorporate the procedures for determining the polarity of the messages. They then count the mentions of those who have positive polarity or acceptance to a certain principal actor. The analyzes published by tweet minster for elections in the United Kingdom, [4] in primary elections in Chile, [5] in the elections in Jakarta and [6] in various elections in Europe also in the political field, they are referents as much by the results as by the diverse in the geographic regions that apply them.
In the third quadrant, however, we mention [7] as an advocate of those who state that the twitter analysis cannot predict any result by the erratic results and values of the average absolute error, MAE, which are obtained high.
3. Contextualization of the Analysis of Social Networks
We can consider that a message is a dimensional p + 1 vector:
where I saw them vi are variables that identify the user and also determine the context in which the message is made, x is the content that can be: text, photo, image, video, audio, etc.
Clearly an x can contain a text plus an image or the meeting of all them.
If we define the set:
how the whole Social Network.
We affirm that a Social Network contains all the messages transmitted to the present.
The set A of all the users who send, receive or visualize messages in RS is called the set of Actors. The actors are those entities that emit any message, either to publicize a particular event, an opinion or simply wish to retransmit the content x of a message t$; there are also those who only observe in the social network. We must distinguish some types of actors: those we want to analyze will be the principal actors, here are the candidates, the brands, etc.; those who send and receive messages will be the active actors, in this group are all the users or the general public and those who only observe the activity in the social network, without participating will be the passive actors; since they do not interact with anyone, they cannot be followed or analyzed, so we will exclude them from the analysis. The active actors of the principal actor a ε A will be all the u that "interact with" a.
We can define in the Social Network, the relationship "interact with" as:
The set of all the active actors of the principal actor a will be noted by .
The set of all the messages of the set of actors A in the temporality where ti and tf represent the time or the start and end date of reception of the messages; it will be noted by: RSA,T and we will call it the Thematic of actors A in temporality T in the social network RS.
The messages of the active actor uj,a Î Ua will be: since an active actor can send nj messages to the principal actor a, the matrix representation of the messages for the principal actor a will be:
Be the matrix Mt$a and Mt$b:
The matrix operation is defined as:
And we will have the matrix representation of the Thematic RSA,T:
Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Linkedin, etc. they are examples of Social Networks, which contain messages from actors, and a theme is for example "an advertising campaign" launched a month ago; where the principal actors are those who want to "sell" the product and also those who want us not to "buy" it, surely their competitors, the active actors would be all the users who receive the messages from these principal actors that show us the virtues and defects of the product. Temporality will be the period from one month ago to the present.
Without loss of generality, to the extent that one knows and has perfectly defined which are the principal actors to be analyzed, while the active actors are rather unknown and that is sometimes one of the objectives of performing the analysis in a Social Network, is that the set of actors A, will be defined based on the principal actors.
And then what does it mean to perform an analysis of RSA,T?
It is to answer a series of questions that can be asked, basically, is to know certain performance measures. In the preceding example it can be: the percentage of users that will accept the "product".
The present investigation wants to give a contribution so that the measures of performance are more reliable making use only of the RSA,T and we will be restricted in the social network Twitter treating only those textual contents of the messages.
The processes to be followed in the analysis procedures of an RSA,T theme are basically the same: defining the actors and temporality, extracting the data, debugging the data, measuring the polarity of the messages and obtaining the performance measures.
Be the principal actors , the determination of the active actors u of each principal actor a, that is to say Ua, as mentioned is not fundamental. What we should observe in data cleansing is that some active actor are not "bots", which today have become the biggest problem that social networks have since they distort the performance measures of any actor; often increasing its presence and temporality T = [ti, tf] where ti and tf represent the start and end date of reception of the messages. This is how the Thematic RSA,T of a certain determined investigation is defined.
Then we define a mechanism to download RSA,T, for twitter there are several free and commercial applications to obtain the matrices Mt$a for all the principal actors to which they were defined. The debugging of the data has to do basically to avoid the "bots" mentioned, being an elementary procedure to eliminate those messages t$j,i,a and t$j,k,a from an active actor that contain the same content x.
We also eliminate the spaces, external links and only keep the text that represents the topic of twitter.
The next step is to define the polarity of the content x of the messages t$. The goal of polarity is to define a measure of acceptance, rejection or neutrality of each content x made by the active actor u on the principal actor a. That is, we have to find a function f such that:
This problem can be addressed by several methods, the most used:
3.1. Supervised Methods
It is required to "train" through an "agent", depending on the subject of the analysis, the agent can be a function of discrimination, in other cases the agent must be a person.
The number of elements to train can be calculated by the size of a simple random sampling, SRS, predefining α and e (reliability and error). For small sizes, one third of the population of the x can be trained.
Independent of the algorithm, the values of the Confusion Matrix must be checked, specifically the CM trace will be added and divided by the trained size. The technique will be accepted if this value is greater than the value that the researcher has set as the admissible limit of acceptability; otherwise, you should look for another method to find the function f.
3.2. Unsupervised Methods
Through, for example, the use of dictionaries. For which the x must be prepared. Each content x can be decomposed in a sequence in which each element of the sequence is a "debugged" word, which is the one in which special reference characters, stopwords, lemmatizations, etc. have been eliminated.
Thus: if and we are using the dictionaries DP = {p/p is a positive word} and DN = {n/n is a negative word} using the counting method we would have the following polarity function:
(The symbol represents the cardinal of set C).
For applications where you want to have only two types of polarity, 1 if you are in favor and 0 otherwise we will use the following function that is evaluated by the Equation (1):
The following procedure, subject of the present investigation, is as follows.
4. The Weighting Factors and Their Application in the Analysis of Social Network
The weighting factors is the mechanism by which a conversion process should be carried out so that the opinion given in the twitters equals those of the general population, given that Twitter users are a subset of these.
As the processes of analysis of a thematic is carried out in a specific geographical location, it will be necessary to determine the administrative divisions of a lower level.
In view of the fact that the only "geographical" data available are those of the geo-coordinates, which is generally not available because most users prefer not to enable it, and the other is the locality from which the messages are made twitter, we will try to identify the location and parameterize it with the province of origin where the message was issued and for those that do not have a location in any of these categories will be defined as others.
Define the set of provinces and their locations as follows:
First we must determine, for each observation j the number of mentions (with positive polarity) in total that exist in the province of observation j. The only data we have is that of the locj locality and it may be the case that it is not defined or is simply expressed through some colloquialism. In this case this locality will pass to the group of others or those not located. According to [8] getting a real place from these data is a very complex problem.
That is why in the Pi set of localities of the province i, it should be the most extensive, in the sense of putting with the highest level of detail the localities or administrative areas of lower level. The number of mentions of province Pi in the matrix will be determined by Equation (2):
where the variable NOBS is the total number of rows of the matrix Mt$, polk is a polarity the message k, lock is a location of each observation k.
Next we determine the total of localities that belong to any province of the considered ones. This value is calculated using the Equation (3):
Then the sample proportion for observation j will be calculated using the Equation (4):
Similar process must be done to obtain the proportion of the universe, for each observation j, as for each Pi we have the data of the Population (electoral) proportion pPi, but this percentage is not valid for those other category locations, so a reconversion must be carried out, by the Equation (5):
Then the weighting factor that will be applied to each observation j, both for those that have localities located, and other type localities will be estimated by the Equation (6):
In order to obtain the final assessment for each of the actors, we will evaluate their mentions with positive polarity, affecting it with the weighting factor.
Through the following example we will test the indicated methodology.
Let be a geographical entity with N = 3 provinces, where each of these have the following localities (municipalities, cantons, town, etc.):
And the principal actors are: .
Table 2 shows the Mt$ matrix representation of RSA,T (we assume that the temporality has been collected on the scheduled dates). As we mentioned, it does not matter to meet the principal actors.
The number of messages to be analyzed is NOBS = 16.
Let us also suppose that these messages are already debugged.
For the determination of polarity we will use the dictionary of positive and negative terms, being:
For purposes of the analysis that is required, we will use Equation (1) so that the polarity takes only two values: 1 if it is positive and 0 otherwise.
In this example, we determine the polarity determination, ceteris paribus, because what we want to demonstrate is the use of the weighting factors that should be used to improve predictability. The count of positive words in each content, as well as that of negative words has been evaluated for the contents x of each one of the observations considered in the matrix Mt$, in order to calculate the polarity, which we will notice by polj is shown in Table 3.
Table 2. Matrix representation of RSA,T.
Table 3. Polarity evaluation.
The next step is to evaluate the weighting factors for each of the messages. The population proportions of each province are shown in Table 4, with province P3 being the one that concentrates the greatest amount of population, this concentrates 40% of the total population of the geographic entity considered.
Using the Equations (2)-(3) to evaluate the terms of Nj and D, with these values we calculate, using the Equation (4) the sample proportion given by Mj. The proportion of the terms of the population universe is evaluated using the Equation (5) and finally we have that the weighting fpj given by the Equation (6), for each observation are shown in Table 5.
Finally, it is necessary to calculate the valuation for each one of the actors, use the Equation (7).
. (7)
In Table 6, the second column shows the assessment made for each the actors
Table 4. Population proportion of the provinces.
Table 5. Determination of the weighting factors.
Table 6. Comparison of the valuation by three calculation methods.
Table 7. Order of location for each one of the calculation methods.
using the Equation (7), this is the assessment using the procedure described in this article, in the third column is the percentage evaluation with the aim of normalizing this data; next, we have the assessment, as traditionally done, using only the polarity and without using weighting factors, which would correspond to the procedures described in quadrant two given in the state of the art and six column the valuation calculated only with the mentions of each actor, in which neither the calculation of the polarities or the calculation of the weighting factors, this method corresponds instead to the first quadrant described in the state of the art; for each of these, the percentage value is incorporated with respect to the total, for comparative purposes.
The results are contradictory. The best valued by our method, actor 3, a3 with 34.3% is the worst rated with the other two methods. It must be noted that the messages issued from province 3, P3, which concentrates the largest number of habitants, must be resized because we have to give this province its true proportion in the population universe of study.
Table 7 shows the order of assessment and the location of each actor according to each of the methods used. In this it is observed that the methods of polarity and the mentions almost give similar results.
5. Conclusions
In the present article the aspects referring to the analysis of the Social Networks have been formalized and the formulas for the incorporation of the weighting factors have been developed in order to increase the efficiency in the assessment of the actors.
Through the comparative analysis, using an idealized data set, the variation of the results in the final assessment is demonstrated.
This methodology has already been put to the test in the presidential election of February 19, 2017 in the Republic of Ecuador; an MAE = 1.1 was obtained that demonstrated the effectiveness of this incorporation of the weighting factors in the analysis of a Thematic in a Social Network.
The authors declare that no conflict of interest exists with the results and conclusions presented in this paper. Publication ethics have been observed.
Cite this paper
Arroba Rimassa, J., Muñoz Guillena, R. and Llopis, F. (2018) The Weighting Factors to Improve Predictability on Twitter. Technology and Investment, 9, 68-79. https://doi.org/10.4236/ti.2018.91005
- 1. Tumasjan, A., Sprenger, T., Sandner, P. and Welpe, I. (2010) Predicting Elections with Twitter: What 140 Characters Reveal about Political Sentiment. Proceedings of the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, Washington DC, 23-26 May 2010, 178-185.
- 2. Fernández Crespo, M. (2013) Predicción electoral mediante análisis de redes sociales. Ph.D. Dissertation, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid.
- 3. Zarrela, D. (2009) ReTweets Change Everything. https://www.asgroupinc.com/new-data-can-twitter-predict-elections/
- 4. Montesinos García, L. (2014) Análisis de sentimientos y predicción de eventos en twitter. Ing. Dissertation, Universidad de Chile, Santiago.
- 5. Ramadhan, D., Nurhadryani, Y. and Hermadi, I. (2014) Campaign 2.0: Analysis of Social Media Utilization in 2014 Jakarta Legislative Election. ICACSIS 2014, Jakarta, 18-19 October 2014, 102-107. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICACSIS.2014.7065881
- 6. Tsakalidis, A., Papadopoulos, S., Cristea, A. and Kompatsiaris, Y. (2015) Predicting Elections for Multiple Countries Using Twitter and Polls. Predictive Analytics. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 30, 10-17. https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2015.17
- 7. Gayo-Avello, D., Metaxas, P. and Mustafaraj, E. (2011) Limits of Electoral Predictions Using Twitter. Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social, Barcelona, Catalonia, 17-21 July 2011, 490-493.
- 8. Peregrino, F.S., Tomás, D. and Llopis, F. (2013) Every Move You Make I'll Be Watching You: Geographical Focus Detection on Twitter. Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Geographic Information Retrieval ACM, Orlando, 5 November 2013, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1145/2533888.2533928


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A Vancouver Island-based group is bringing a Women's Premier Soccer League (WPSL) team to Victoria.
WPSL is the largest women's soccer league in the world with more than 100 clubs in North America, and teams are made up of collegiate post-collegiate, international and top high school soccer players. The Victoria-based team will be the second Canadian club to join the league.
Corey and Stacy Volk, of EPIC Sport Management that promotes the development of soccer, launched the club and will serve as managing directors.
Neil Sedgwick, EPIC's director of youth development and head coach of the University of Northern British Colubmia women's soccer team, is head coach. Wes Barrett, EPIC's sports academy director, will be the associate head coach.
"EPIC is very excited to be part of bringing the WPSL to Vancouver Island," Sedgwick said in a statement. "It has been a few years since the Island has had this level of women's soccer. By Vancouver Island having a team in the WPSL, youth, current university and former university female players are given the opportunity to compete and develop outside of their current playing environments."
The club will play in the West Region in the Northwest Conference, and will have rivals across the water in the Vancouver-based TSS Rovers that just finished its first season in the WPSL.
Victoria's club joins CAFC Ospreys, EGA Omaha, Alamo City SC, Chatham FC, Wake FC, and ASC San Diego as the 2019 expansion clubs.
EPIC seeks name suggestions for the new club. A stadium location is being finalized and will be revealed in the coming months.
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter


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First outdoor preschool in Louisville area is expanding
The first outdoor preschool program in the Louisville area is expanding.
The Thrive Forest School at Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve in Goshen says it is adding a second class.
The first opened up last year. The addition of another will allow for 30 more students.
Not familiar with nature-based classrooms? Those with the program say it benefits health, and encourages creative thinking and exploratory learning through time spent outdoors year-round.
"There's no gender-coded objects, so when you're playing outside, a stick could be a truck or doll or magic wand. We're really using our imaginations out here in ways you wouldn't normally get when you're surrounded by a lot of things inside," Program director Ryan Devlin told us last year.
Organizers told WLKY it has become so popular that they have raised money for scholarships for additional students.


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From the Chief: Happy New Year
Guest columnist
Things were relatively quiet over the New Year holiday here in the Village.
There were a lot of visitors this weekend that is for sure. I hope that everyone has a safe and prosperous 2017 and that you remember if you need us for non-emergency assistance to call 575-258-7365. If it is an emergency, don't hesitate to call 911.


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Due to a recent breast cancer diagnosis, I am having to severely limit my ultrasounds through the end of this year, due to treatments and surgery. I apologize for the inconvenience and ask for prayers for myself and my family. Please like and follow our FACEBOOK PAGE for updates on possible availability and progress. Thank you for your support!
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Large Scale Art for Impact
There is nothing more impactful and memorable than large scale art pieces. On trend for 2018, creative mega pieces can add interest to otherwise bland rooms and draw guests in for great conversation. Art pieces can be expensive or they can be creatively done on a budget. I thought I would share this art I created for our last house after purchasing one VERY large vintage frame at an auction. I had no issues with the bidding process since no one else there wanted it (covered


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Unsure how to load this is VR. Worked on monitor, nothing in vive though.
Viewing post in HMS Unicorn Virtual Museum comments
It has been tested on the Rift and is capable of both the Oculus and the SteamVR runtimes. It should pick up that you have VR attached, so once started you can go into the settings (escape) and check the Enable VR box. The UI controls for VR are still off a bit so try not to judge us too harshly on them, lol.


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Life Coaching Online Course
with Online live video training/assessment accredited by ABT / IPHMPay by credit/debit card
Date (for ABT accredited live video option ONLY):
Online live masterclass lesson (via zoom))
Tuesday 25th October '22
Spaces available:
3 out of 4 spaces left
This course will teach you to create an on-going partnership between your clients & yourself to produce positive results & changes in their lives. You will work with them to overcome obstacles and setbacks which have prevented them from reaching their full potential and achieving their goals in the past. You will learn how to encourage the clients willingness to work through their issues to improve their self-confidence and work towards a happier, more productive life.
This course will provide you with an invaluable tool when working with clients whether in reflexology, massage or beauty related treatments. Subjects included in the Course: What is Life Coaching, Basic Coaching Principles, The GROW model & other systems of Life coaching, Relationships, Time Management, Stress Management, Contra-indications, SWOT Analysis, Mission Statements, client care, consultation, health & safety, hygiene, business practices. This course is carried out as a home study course and can be started at anytime. Beginners Level
Qualification Option:
Life Coaching Accredited Diploma
Course format :
Online learning (incl pre course reading, & an audio/video slide presentation) + case studies. + live video assessment option (to gain accredited qualification from ABT Insurance)
Training material is accessed through our online portal
No attendance required.
This course is completed via online learning, with live video lesson/assessment option.
A date is booked with your assessor for your lesson/assessment.
Course content:
Life Coaching: What is Life Coaching, Basic Coaching Principles, The GROW model & other systems of Life coaching, Relationships, Time Management, Stress Management, Contra-indications, SWOT Analysis, Mission Statements, Treatment suggestions: Treatment plans, Consultation sheets, Session worksheets and notes.
This course is carried out as a home study course and can be started at anytime. This course is approx. 40 hours study (this does vary from student to student.)
Model required?:
Case studies = Yes, you will be required to work on models for your case studies.
This course is carried out as a home study course and can be started at anytime. This course is approx. 40 hours study (this does vary from student to student.)
All training material is accessed via our online portal. You will have your own account to log in and progress through the course modules.
Case studies:
You are required to complete 5 treatments as case studies.
* ABT - Associated Beauty Therapists ( If live video assessment option is booked)
* The CMA - The Complementary Medical Association,
* IICT - International Institute for Complementary Therapists,
* IPHM - International Practitioners of Holistic Medicine
Career Opportunities:
Self-Employed life coach working from home, salon, mobile.
CPD points:
9 Points
Additional Costs:
You will need to purchase your own products, equipment (ie table and chairs for consultation) in order to carry out your case studies.We recommend you purchase a text book to support your learning, See our reading list by signing up to our FREE student and therapists resources section - https://holistic-therapies-training.teachable.com/p/student-resources-free
Qualification gained:
Life Coaching Practitioner Diploma
Please check your insurance companies requirements before enrolling on this course? (It is the students responsibility to check coverage with their insurers BEFORE enrolling on this course)
Here are some insurance companies, some with introductory discounts - https://holistic-therapies-training.teachable.com/p/accreditation
Sadly, due to insurance, we are unable to accept any learners residing in USA or Canada at this time.
Payment Options
If you prefer to pay by bank transfer, PayPal or PayPal credit, here are the details
Please note, if you choose either of these methods, your booking will be processed manually, and can take up to 24 hours to receive access to your training pack.
Your Instructor
Karen has more than 19 years experience in the industry, she is the founder of Holistic Therapies Training, which was launched in 2007. Karen is a course writer and author of 'The Essential Oils Guide'. Writing is her passion and she has a wealth of knowledge in beauty, massage and complementary therapies.
Course Curriculum
PreviewModule 1 - Introduction
StartModule 2 - About Life Coaching
StartModule 3 - Holistic & stress
StartModule 4 - Preparation for treatment
StartModule 5 - Contra-actions & Influencing factors
StartModule 6 - Life coaching consultation
StartModule 7 - Life coaching models and systems
StartModule 8 - Life coaching worksheets
StartModule 9 - Video Powerpoint Presentation Lesson (17:15)
StartModule 10 - Case studies


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I call to you great spirit of water
summon the serpent and make his power mine
I bow to the winds and the power of fire
Bring to me, my hearts desire!
Abracadabra, I will create as I speak!
Hey fab gang!
A little bit of magic for your Valentine's day. Did you know the word abracadabra is a very powerful word, even though it gets tossed around frivolously (there's a word I don't get to use often enough!). Yup. It is Arabic for "I will create as I speak". This cute outfit from Ewa Boutique made me feel very tribal and magical, so I thought it was time for a wee bit of spell casting! What keeps popping into my head though are Ursula's (the sea witch from The Little Mermaid) spell…. "come winds of the Caspian sea!" Not sure why! lol
This outfit is a Fab Free gift so wear your tag and head to Ewa's to scoop it up! It fits:
- Hourglass
- Maitreya
- Physique
That goes for the whole outfit, top, skirt and shoes! It also comes with a HUD that has five sets of colors to choose from. Of course you can always be a rebel and mix and match! I love the colors and combinations!
Time to whip up a new spell to find more inspiring goodies! Until next time!
Incense & peppermints!
❤ Arielle
Arielle is Stylin' in…
Outfit– Ewa Boutique – Havaiana – (Fab Free Group Gift/Group is Free to Join)
Hair – No.Match– No Hush– Blondes
Necklace– Chop Zuey– Sweetheart Choker
Mesh Body – Maitreya – Lara
Mesh Head –Lelutka – Nova
Head Applier – Amara Beauty– Holly – (Free group gift/ Group is free to join)
Eyes– Lelutka – Sasha
Props – Ali & Ego – River Dragon #4
Photo taken at Backdrop Central


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In a prestigious location, near Kosmonautów Street in Wrocław and in close proximity to recreational areas, a development project is being implemented – ATAL Nowe Żerniki. The planned development will be part of a large model housing estate which will offer much more facilities than typical residential construction. Numerous service outlets and educational, cultural and artistic institutions will be located here. The residents will also appreciate the common space of the housing estate, where there will be a bazaar, impressive greenery and playgrounds for children. Many buildings are planned in this spacious housing estate in Wrocław, eleven of them will be built by ATAL S.A.
The first stage of the ATAL Nowe Żerniki development covered 4 buildings which included a total of 109 apartments with a layout of 1 to 4 rooms and a floor area from 28.96 to 94.12 sq. m. The second stage which will be built nearby will include 7 buildings and 218 apartments in them. The architects have planned them as well laid out studios and 2-, 3- and 4-room apartments. Future residents can choose from premises ranging from 27.43 to 99.90 sq. m. The buildings have space for 140 storage rooms and parking lots for 282 parking spaces. All segments will be equipped with noiseless lifts which facilitate communication between floors. The estate is adapted to the needs of people with disabilities. The stage II buildings will also be characterized by impressive and modern architecture that refers to the concept of a model housing estate and is consistent with both existing and planned buildings. Aesthetic surfaces, bright elevations and well thought-out plant compositions will increase the prestige of the project and blend well with the rest of the model housing estate.
ATAL Nowe Żerniki offers convenient housing conditions in a great location. The housing estate itself is able to satisfy the residents' numerous everyday needs. Shops, a family doctor's office, a school, a kindergarten and a community centre will be located here. In the vicinity, there are numerous recreational areas: Park Pilczycki and Park Kuźnicki and the Glinianki Bathing Centre. Close to the estate, there are tram and bus stops, the nearby Kosmonautów Street facilitates access to all parts of the city. Also suburban and interurban travel will not be difficult. In about 10 minutes, you can get from the estate to the Wrocław Mikołajów railway station, from which you can comfortably travel to Poznań or Warsaw, and only a quarter of a hour is enough to be at the airport.


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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐/5
Synopsis: The novel is in the voice of Zack Lightman, a teenage boy who dreams there is more to the world than what he sees and lives every day. He lost his father when he was a baby and grew up with his mom – and video games. He plays them quite a bit, one in particular – Armada – where he is ranked 6th in the world.
One day while sitting in class looking out the window he spots a flying saucer – one identical to those in the Armada video game. He convinces himself he's crazy, until he finds out he's not..
Review: Okay, so I thoroughly enjoyed Ready Player One and really wanted to read Armada based on this fact. To be frank, it fell short.
Although, as I write this review, I do admit – it was an exciting novel at parts. I was interested in what was going to happen and what was going on. I think if you enjoy Alien invasions and 80's pop culture, you may enjoy this book if you take it for what it is. A quick, easy, entertaining – but not as entertaining as Ready Player One – read!


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Trick or Treat Pumpkins Halloween Tee
How adorable are these triple stacked pumpkins with the jack o lantern on top! This black tee with different designed pumpkins is perfect for Halloween. The bottom pumpkin has yummy candy corn, the middle pumpkin has leopard, and the top has the cutest face ever on it!
This cute and spooky tee would be great for serving up candy for the trick or treaters. You could pair it with cat ears or a witches hat for a simple "costume" or you can wear it to trunk or treat at your nearest event and make a fun day out of it with the kids!
Our clothing boutique is based in Abilene, Texas and we are open Mon - Fri, 9am - 5:30pm, and for online shopping 24/7 for all of our shopping addicted friends! Be sure to follow us on Instagram @lilcattilac to stay up to date on all of our new affordable products and sales!
- Shown on a Deep Heather Soft Bella+Canvas Tee
- Ink Colors: Orange, Neon Orange, Neon Lime, Purple, Black & White
- 4.2 oz., 52% airlume combed and ring-spun cotton, 48% polyester, 32 singles
- unisex sizing; retail fit
- fitted at bicep; shoulder taping
- sideseamed


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BITCOINSV.IO Overview
Reliable open source software, providing the fundamental requirements for mining enterprises, to mine efficiently and at their peak.
BitcoinSV Infrastructure
BitcoinSV's infrastructure allows for unbounded scaling, exceptional performance, and immense interoperability, all while being easily implementable and manageable.
Node Software
Reliable open source software that provides the fundamental requirements for transaction processing enterprises to mine efficiently and effectively for greater profitability.
"Only people trying to create new coins would need to run network nodes."
Lite Client
Bitcoin SV's LiteClient makes Simplified Payment Verification communications faster and more secure, allowing for services to deal only with transactions deemed relevant for their own activities, without the need to retain records for the entire network.
Teranode is Bitcoin SV's solution to the challenges of vertical scaling by instead spreading the workload across multiple machines. This horizontal scaling approach enables network capacity to grow with increasing demand through the addition of cluster nodes, allowing for Bitcoin scaling to be truly unbounded.


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Martina Olbertova, Meaning.Global
Martina is a leading expert on brand meaning and cultural relevance. She is a global brand consultant, cultural strategist, semiotician and social scientist on a mission to redefine the role of meaning in business. As the Founder and CEO of Meaning.Global, she helps brands adapt to the quickly changing context of the 21st century to profit from culture change. Martina helps brand leaders create authentic meaning, value and relevance to connect with their customers around moments that matter. She's a contributor to Branding Strategy Insider, Forbes, WARC, Luxury Daily and author of The Luxury Report 2019. She holds a doctorate in Media Studies from Charles University in Prague.


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Hard Chrome Plated Rod
Price And Quantity
- Piece/Pieces
- 1
- Piece/Pieces
Product Specifications
- Iron
Product Description
Driven by technical excellence, we are counted as the topmost manufacturer and supplier of excellent quality Hard Chrome Plated. The offered plated rod is manufactured using quality approved raw material and advanced technology by our professionals. Provided rod finds its usage in industrial machines for textile, chemical, paint formulating, food processing, pharmaceutical, and automobile industries. Moreover, it goes through a series of testing procedures under the strict vigilance of our quality controllers. Apart from this, our provided Hard Chrome Plated is available in varied specifications at affordable price.
Trade Information
- 300 Per Month
- 2 Week
Contact Us
No. 52, Victoria Industrial Park, Behind Kathwada G. I. D. C. Road No. 5, S. P. Ring Road Ahmedabad Gujarat India +918045478125
Phone :+918045478125


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I liked St Mawr even though there is so much philosophising and repetition (why use a word just once when you can repeat it three times) that the story is rather swamped. It's a short novel (147 pages in my copy), first published in 1925, set in the English countryside and then in America, on a ranch in the Rocky Mountains.
This is the story of Mrs Witt, an American, Lou her daughter and Rico, her daughter's artist husband and the influence of the stallion St Mawr on their lives. Initially desperately in love with each other Lou and Rico react badly on each other and being together makes them ill – they sap each other's vitality.
As soon as Lou sees St Mawr she knows she just has to buy him:
She laid her hand on his side and gently stroked him. Then she stroked his shoulder, and then the hard, tense arch of his neck. And she was startled to feel the vivid heat of his life come through to her, through the lacquer of red-gold gloss. So slippery with vivid hot life.
In St Mawr Lou finds the vitality that is lacking in Rico. St Mawr represents to her freedom, and wildness as well as masculinity. He cannot be tamed. Bored with life Lou goes to America with her mother, Phoenix, her mother's Mexican-Indian servant, St Mawr and his groom Lewis. There too she is bored; she leaves St Mawr and Lewis behind and travels to the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico with her mother and Phoenix. Here she comes across a tumbledown ranch, Las Chivas, that she immediately loves, aligning herself to the wild spirit that she says wants her. (The ranch is based on Lawrence' s Lobo Ranch (later called Kiowa) at Questa, seventeen miles fro Taos, where Lawrence wrote the novel.)
This a richly written story, with beautiful descriptions of the landscape and the characters, full of symbolism and Lawrence's views on male/female relationships, life and death, and the power of nature. I think I may need to re-read it to understand it better.


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WPIAL girls basketball playoff clinchings through Feb. 8
Thursday, February 8, 2018 | 11:02 PM
The WPIAL girls basketball regular season has come to a close with a couple of exceptions, and the final playoff field is nearly set. Seventy-seven girls basketball teams have clinched a berth in the district playoffs with one more team hoping to join the Class 2A field.
If Riverview loses to Springdale on Friday, Northgate will be the 13th team to qualify in 2A. The top four teams in each section qualified for the postseason, which tips off Feb. 16. The exclusive home of the WPIAL girls' basketball playoffs, the TribLive High School Sports Network keeps you updated as the postseason field is now set in five of the six classifications.
Here are the teams that have clinched a spot in the girls Path to the Pete through Feb. 8.
Class 6A: SET WITH 13 PLAYOFF TEAMS
North Allegheny Tigers
Butler Golden Tornado
Seneca Valley Raiders
Shaler Titans
Pine-Richland Rams
Norwin Knights
Latrobe Wildcats
Hempfield Spartans
Penn Hills Indians
Peters Township Indians
Bethel Park Black Hawks
Mt. Lebanon Blue Devils
Upper St. Clair Panthers
Class 5A: SET WITH 16 PLAYOFF TEAMS
West Allegheny Indians
Chartiers Valley Colts
South Fayette Lions
Montour Spartans
Thomas Jefferson Jaguars
Gateway Gators
Oakland Catholic Eagles
Woodland Hills Wolverines
Trinity Hillers
Ringgold Rams
Connellsville Falcons
Uniontown Red Raiders
Hampton Talbots
Mars Fightin' Planets
Armstrong River Hawks
Plum Mustangs
Class 4A: SET WITH 12 PLAYOFF TEAMS
Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic Trojans
Freeport Yellow Jackets
Knoch Knights
Deer Lakes Lancers
Blackhawk Cougars
Beaver Bobcats
Central Valley Warriors
Ambridge Bridgers
Keystone Oaks Golden Eagles
Belle Vernon Leopards
South Park Eagles
Elizabeth Forward Warriors
Class 3A: SET WITH 12 PLAYOFF TEAMS
Neshannock Lancers
Mohawk Warriors
Riverside Panthers
Laurel Spartans
East Allegheny Wildcats
Charleroi Cougars
South Side Beaver Rams
South Allegheny Gladiators
Bishop Canevin Crusaders
Avonworth Antelopes
Seton LaSalle Rebels
Apollo-Ridge Vikings
Class 2A: 12 of a possible 13 teams have clinched
Chartiers-Houston Buccaneers
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Chargers
Washington Little Prexies
Fort Cherry Rangers
Vincentian Academy Royals
Leechburg Blue Devils
Brentwood Spartans
Riverview Raiders
Serra Catholic Eagles
Greensburg Central Catholic Centurions
California Trojans
Frazier Commodores
Class A: SET WITH 12 PLAYOFF TEAMS
Quigley Catholic Spartans
Sewickley Academy Panthers
Rochester Rams
Cornell Raiders
West Greene Pioneers
Avella Eagles
Geibel Catholic Gators
Mapletown Maples
Winchester Thurston Bears
Aquinas Academy Crusaders
St. Joseph Spartans
Eden Christian Academy Warriors
Don Rebel is a TribLive High School Sports Network broadcaster and staff writer. Reach him at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Tags: Roundup
More High School Basketball• Imani Christian transfers eligible for basketball season after PIAA overturns WPIAL decisions
• Valley boys have clean slate as rebuilding process continues
• Yough girls basketball program continues to gain steam as new section awaits
• With new drop in classification and 4 starters back, Yough boys have look of contender
• Trib HSSN 2022-23 WPIAL Class 5A boys basketball preseason breakdown


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You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'death' tag.
All she could do was sit by his bedside and hold his hand, the doctors said it wouldn't be long. Her gentle friend defied the odds and waited, he waited to give loved ones a chance to be there, he waited… A few squandered the opportunity to say goodbye while others gathered around to let him know they cared.
She spent days and nights at his hospital bedside and never let him wake to be alone. He knew that he could always rely on her friendship, he could see her generous soul and he took comfort in that. He held her hand and through pain filled lips he let her know what her friendship meant to him, he spoke of the joy she brought him.
And it was while his hand was in hers that he gave a smile and drew his last breath. Once again this woman was his friend as she made sure that his final wishes were followed. She shouldered the responsibility because he knew he could count on her.
It was just a shovelful of dirt she dropped onto his coffin, the final act of what she could do for him, something he could never repay. Then she went home to begin her mourning taking with her sweet memories of a very special friendship and knowing that life goes on even through the tears.
A man's first death is inevitable —
the second, being forgotten, should never come to be.
I know that she will never let that happen.
We are all reeling from the loss of comedic great Joan Rivers – she was a lady who used humor as a natural part of life. She even left her funeral wishes with strict instructions that there was to be laughter and fanfare!
She provided us with a lot of laughs and now she is leaving us with another important lesson – to let our loved ones know of our funeral wishes while we still have our say.
It was a long time ago that I decided the most important thing I wanted done on my day when I am "laid to rest", as a matter of fact it was during my own mother's funeral in 1979 that the thought first occurred to me.
Here's the story how I made up my mind… Can we Talk?
R.I.P. Joan Rivers


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Re: EZ Pass and the fast lane ....
On Sat, 10 Jul 2004, Perry E. Metzger wrote: another purpose -- preserving the privacy of drivers by using more complicated protocols. However, as the benefit of such systems is to people who are unlikely to have much voice in the construction of the system, and who are also unlikely to be
FasTrak information
Back in Fall 2003, David Wagner and I were looking at the FasTrak transponders used in the San Francisco Bay Area. We were more interested in the privacy aspects than in security, but we found some basic information that may be of interest given the current discussion about EZPass issues. *
Re: [fc-discuss] Financial Cryptography Update: On Digital Cash-like Payment Systems
On Thu, 20 Oct 2005, cyphrpunk wrote: system without excessive complications. Only the fifth point, the ability for outsiders to monitor the amount of cash in circulation, is not satisfied. But even then, the ecash mint software, and procedures and controls followed by the issuer, could be


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An opera by Rob Kapilow and Darrell Kipp A re-blog from prairiemary.blogspot.com Sunday, July 13, 2008
It's North American Indian Days in Browning and stuff is happening all over the place. They tell me the parade had fewer horses but the campground had more lodges. At Cuts Wood School, the Piegan Institute was celebrating the premier of a video/DVD about the creation of a symphony and libretto relating to Lewis & Clark. It was an open house event with local and out-of-town people wandering around eating Indian tacos and fresh strawberries. It was low-key but not a minor event.
I figure it all started with the high school English teachers: Darrell's English teacher in Browning, Mrs. Holloway, had to leave and to lighten the moving load gave a box of classics from her personal library to Darrell. Already a leader among his classmates because of high energy and a kind of inner authenticity, Darrell sat down that summer and read all the books. Somehow he felt he was entitled to their world. Later at Harvard in a sociology program for Indians, he had a black professor who was a profound influence. The man said to go ahead and deal with white people, but to set his own terms of engagement, right down to the placement of the chairs in the room. If they put him in an uncomfortable chair with the light in his eyes, he should not make a fuss, but simply stand up, claim a better chair and move it where it ought to be. Eventually, when Darrell was asked to teach at a local college that was not keeping up with its own agenda, he was assigned a classroom full of broken desks. He simply carried them to the nearest exit and threw them out of the building.
At Goddard College they taught him that poetry was what he said it was and that language was precious because that's where one's world really lives. When Piegan Institute started a Blackfeet Immersion School (now doing business as "Cuts Wood" — a reference to an old story about a "least-of-these" boy with a secret helper he had acquired through kindness), these things came together. When Darrell was asked to participate in the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial — after raising hell about Indians being left out — he did it on his own terms: a play presented by Cuts Wood Blackfeet kids in their own language about Lewis & Co. shooting Blackfeet kids in a dawn scramble over weapons — the only Indians killed on the expedition.
Rob Kapilow comes from the opposite end of the spectrum: the rarefied levels of symphonic composers on the East Coast: Jewish, super-gifted, part of the tradition of sticking up for underdogs, and well-subsidized. Part of his gift is a constantly seeking curiosity, so when he was commissioned to write a symphony about L&C, he went looking for a "way in" that wouldn't be like all the other buckskin and black powder cliches. He was in Missoula for the L&C commotion, attended the Cuts Wood School production, and knew he had his pigeon. His only problem was convincing Darrell he, Kapilow, really COULD compose a symphony if Darrell would write the libretto.
From Darrell's end, people from back East or even Europe are constantly visiting Browning, fawning on the beautiful kids, insisting on how much they LOOOOOve Blackfeet, and declaring they will drop by to learn to speak Blackfeet themselves some afternoon when it's convenient. They are tolerated because many of them are rich and smart enough to write checks. Anyway, Kapilow swept all that aside and simply arrived and talked and bombarded Darrell with ideas and lived at his house and ate all the cold breakfast cereal in the middle of the night for energy while he continued to develop the music. Pretty soon Darrell caught fire.
The massive Blackfeet and the compact composer found their common ground in stories: if something interesting happens, says Kapilow, no matter how slight, three days later Darrell would have embroidered it into a meaningful tale full of jokes and drama. And Kapilow is also just like that. Hugo Perez, a Cuban who lives in Brooklyn, adds his own droll sense of irony in this movie about the creation of a symphony, exploding all the pomposity about Indians and L&C with goofy old movie gags. Like, a greenhorn standing in a clearing wearing a tall silk opera hat which Indians are using as a target, solemnly removes one arrow after another, wondering where they're coming from. When Darrell says he refuses to write "Tonto-speak", we get a clip of corny sign language from an Italian Hollywood Indian and then a Kapilow-type orchestra playing the William Tell Overture.
The symphony originally premiered in St. Louis, anchor-point for the L&C festivities, and — as Darrell was quick to note — he was probably the only Indian there, as either musician or audience. At a second event in Helena, at least the audience included lots of Indians. Maybe someday there will be an NA classical symphony and choir to present this performance. (The Browning school orchestra was once QUITE capable of presenting such music.)
Yesterday was cool, breezy, and bright. A changing crew of kids moved the furniture, set the tables, signed in late-comers, pointed out the restrooms and kept them supplied. Bill Grant, architect, beamed as his building embraced everyone in just the way he designed it to do. Sun shone through the "dream moth" window on the west side of the big room that often hosts Blackfeet ceremonies. And here we all sat, Kipp and Kapilow, Perez and his crew, little kids and big kids, grannies and professors, renegades and chiefs, on the other side of town from the Pow-Wow, talking about the dark side of L&C — turning it inside out. No longer men going into the unknown. Now "men are coming, men are coming" into a known and beloved world about to be destroyed by that discovering team. Every hardship Jefferson's party endured was a step closer to confinement on reservations for the Indians.
But this premiere was not a grim event. Larry Reevis came rushing through in pursuit of his latest brainstorm: a map of the traditional camping spots in the Great Circle over at the Pow-wow, which he was handing out on paper as well as selling t-shirts with the map on the back. ("I'm lookin' for the Makes Cold Weather family! Lemme check yer t-shirt!") A puppy invited himself in to survey the floor for scraps. A Canadian old-timer, named Heavy Head and wearing rancher's garb, sang "The Lord's Prayer" in Blackfeet while accompanying himself on the drum. (He got the idea from a Navajo.) Cyn Kipp, who has been fighting for good health, came in an eye-dazzling Kee-pi-tah-ki outfit with rhinestone bracelets and cinched her bright red calico Mother Hubbard with the traditional wide leather belt.
I have no idea what the Easterners thought. But the locals thought it was a good feed and an impressive movie about something they didn't quite understand, not being really "up" on classical symphony. But that's kind of how it usually is. Anyway, this is only a beginning. The movie will be on PBS in the fall, then on DVD. The CD of the symphony will soon be on the market. In the meantime — Google around and see what you can find. You might be surprised. Kapilow is drawn to every computer keyboard he passes. The tall aristocratic woman who is the producer of all this carries her own elegant white MAC laptop. (Cuts Wood is a wireless hotspot.) Perez and his photographers, inconspicuous alert young men with pockets full of tiny communication devices, were living parallel lives, partly with us and partly with the huge electronic, satellite-supported, webwork around the planet. A solid Southerner from North Carolina, a school principal, took careful notes. I think he understood that we were going back to the future.