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Melodie Edwards
Melodie Edwards graduated with an MFA from the University of Michigan on Colby Fellowship where she received two Hopwood Awards in fiction and nonfiction. Glimmer Trainpublished "Si-Si-Gwa-D" in 2002 where it was one of the winners of their New Writers fiction contest. She has published stories in S outh Dakota Quarterly, North Dakota Review, Michigan Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Crazyhorseand others. She is the recipient of the Doubleday Wyoming Arts Council Award for Women. "The Bird Lady" aired on NPR's Selected Shorts and Prairie Schoonernominated the story for a Pushcart Prize. She has a story upcoming in an anthology of animal stories, published by Ashland Creek Press. She is the author of "Hikes Around Fort Collins," now in its third printing. She is circulating Outlawry,a novel about archeology theft in the 1930's with publishing houses. She is currently working on a young adult trilogy about a secret society of crows and ravens.
Melodie Edwards lives in Laramie, Wyoming with her husband and twin daughters. She and her husband own Night Heron Books and Coffeehouse. When she's not working or writing, she's love to putz in the garden, play guitar, hike and make pilgrimages to hot springs.
Wildlife Biologists Disagree On The Most Effective Way To Control Coyotes
The federal government kills thousands of coyotes every year to keep them from preying on livestock and big game. But some wildlife biologists say killing coyotes isn't the best way to control them.
Hundreds Of Endangered Toads Released Into Southeast Wyoming
More than 900 endangered toads recently hopped onto the arid plains of southeast Wyoming. It's the only place in the world this species — the Wyoming toad — exists. The release is an effort by wildlife officials to bring back one of the most endangered amphibians in North America.
Colorado, Wyoming Plan For River Water Share
The Colorado River is arguably the most allocated river in the world. Drought and climate change have left less water to go around, and that has every state that relies on the river scrambling.
Native Americans Turn To 'Safe Stars' For Help With Sexual Assaults
One in three Native American women will be sexually assaulted during her life, and even fewer will actually report the crime, per the Justice Department. Female elders in Wyoming want to change that.
Adequate Housing Hard To Find In Boom Towns For Oil, Gas
When you think of oil and gas towns, most people visualize transient workers and RV parks. But plenty of oilfield workers move to towns with their families. The challenge is finding a place to stay.
Oil Field Work Pays Well But The Conditions Aren't For Everyone
Some of the best paying jobs in the American West are in the oil and gas industry. But only 18 percent are held by women, and many of those are office jobs which pay considerably less. | {
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13 reasons why we need to end violence in schools
No child should be afraid to get an education.
by Leah Selim
UNICEF/UN018669/Zehbrauskas
Schools should be a safe space for children to learn and grow. But for half of the world's teens, this isn't the case.
Millions of children experience violence, bullying and threats in and around the classroom, which can have lifelong effects on their physical and emotional health.
To protect this and future generations of children, we need to come together to demand change to end violence in schools. Here are 13 reasons why:
Half of world's teens experience violence in schools. Around 150 million students between the ages of 13 and 15 have reported experiencing peer-to-peer violence in and around school.
Nearly 720 million school-age children live in countries where they are not fully protected by law from corporal punishment in schools. These children are unprotected from physical punishment by teachers and other authority figures.
Globally, more than 1/3 of students aged 13–15 have experienced bullying. Based on available data, bullying is one of the most common types of violence reported in schools.
Children who are already marginalized are especially vulnerable to bullying. Factors that increase a young person's vulnerability to violence include disability, extreme poverty, ethnicity and sexual orientation or gender identity.
In 39 countries in Europe and North America, 17 million young adolescents admitted to bullying peers at school.
One in three students aged 13–15 is involved in physical fights in schools. Physical attacks by fellow students are most common among boys, while girls are more likely to become victims of psychological or relational forms of bullying.
There have been at least 70 fatal school shootings over the past 27 years.
Cyberbullying allows perpetrators to remain anonymous, but has tangible repercussions. Victims of cyberbullying are more likely than other students to use alcohol and drugs, skip school, get poor grades and have low self-esteem and health problems.
An estimated 158 million children aged 6–17 live in conflict-affected areas where classrooms are often no safer than communities. Children going to school in conflict zones are forced to risk their lives to get an education.
Globally, the cost of violence against children adds up to US$7 trillion a year. This cost undermines investments in health, early childhood development and education.
Violence perpetuates violence. Children who grow up around violence are more likely to re-enact violence as young adults.
Violence has lifelong consequences. Toxic stress associated with repeated exposure to violence in early childhood can interfere with healthy brain development, and can lead to aggressive and anti-social behaviours, substance abuse, risky sexual behaviour and criminal activity.
Violence in schools is preventable. Students around the world are stepping up to demand the safety and education they deserve. It's time to follow their lead.
Don't let violence be an everyday lesson. Find out how you can demand change to #ENDviolence in schools.
UN agencies warn economic impact of COVID-19 and worsening inequalities will fuel malnutrition for billions in Asia and the Pacific — FAO-UNICEF-WFP-WHO
Visit the page
Routine vaccinations during COVID-19
How to safely get routine vaccinations for your child during the COVID-19 pandemic
Children cannot afford another year of school disruption
UNICEF, WHO, IFRC and MSF announce the establishment of a global Ebola vaccine stockpile
Stories and features
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ЮНИСЕФ на Русском | {
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WESTERN SUBURBS CHAMPIONSHIPS.
Moss Christie, the former Olympic representative swimmer, has held the amateur championships of the Western Suburbs for many years past. He will be called upon to defend them at the Abbotsford
Wed 11 Jan 1933 - The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954)
Page 18 - WESTERN SUBURBS CHAMPIONSHIPS.
WESTERN SUBURBS CHAM-
PIONSHIPS.
Moss Christie, the former Olympic representative
swimmer, has held the amateur championships of
the Western Suburbs for many years past. He will
be called upon to defend them at the Abbotsford
carnival on January 21 when both the 100 yards
and 440 yards events will be decided Christie
will meet stern opposition in the 100 yards as C
Phillips who holds the Australian junior record
for 100 yards 58 4-5s, will be a competitor, as well
as W French (Drummoyne), D Roberts and other
first-class men The 100 yards Junior champion-
ship of the Western Suburbs and the 50 yards for
schoolboys attending schools In that district, will
also be decided
WESTERN SUBURBS CHAMPIONSHIPS. (1933, January 11). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), p. 18. Retrieved January 20, 2021, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16944396
"WESTERN SUBURBS CHAMPIONSHIPS." The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954) 11 January 1933: 18. Web. 20 Jan 2021 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16944396>.
1933 'WESTERN SUBURBS CHAMPIONSHIPS.', The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), 11 January, p. 18. , viewed 20 Jan 2021, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16944396
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16944396 |title=WESTERN SUBURBS CHAMPIONSHIPS. |newspaper=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]] |issue=29,648 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=11 January 1933 |accessdate=20 January 2021 |page=18 |via=National Library of Australia}}
The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Wed 11 Jan 1933, Page 18 - WESTERN SUBURBS CHAMPIONSHIPS. | {
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Science fiction has promised us a whole lot of technology that it's rudely failed to deliver—jetpacks, flying cars, teleportation. The most useful one might be the robot companion, à la Rosie from The Jetsons, a machine that watches over the home.
It seemed like 2018 was going to be the year when robots made a big leap in that direction. Two machines in particular surfaced to much fanfare: Kuri, an adorable R2D2 analog that can follow you around and take pictures of your dinner parties, and Jibo, a desktop robot with a screen for a face that works a bit like Alexa, only it can dance.
But then, as quickly as the home robots came, they disappeared. In July, the maker of Kuri, Mayfield Robotics, said it was ceasing production of the robot, and a month later it announced it was ceasing its existence as a company altogether. In November, Jibo shuttered as well. In the spring, yet another company that was exploring home robots, TickTock, called it quits.
What, then, happened to the Year of the Home Robot?
For one, it was a victim of utility—or lack thereof. Kuri and Jibo didn't do much. Kuri was cute, sure, but it really just rolled around and engaged in a few simple interactions. Jibo could tell you the weather and set alarms, but it was stuck on a countertop, essentially making it a $900 personal assistant with nowhere near the smarts of Alexa.
Figuring out what people actually want brings us to the second problem of social home robots: expectations. I can pretty much guarantee that what you expect of a robot isn't realistic, through no fault of your own. Science fiction has warped our ideas of how much the machines can actually do. "People are imagining Rosie from The Jetsons, whereas we are really at a primitive point where the only really useful robots that don't disappoint people's expectations are things like the Roomba, which just does one thing and does it really well," says MIT roboticist Kate Darling.
This is a matter of some contention in the robotics community. It's hard to blame a manufacturer that's trying to sell a home robot for producing glitzy and perhaps overly optimistic videos showing the machine in action. But even if a company isn't trying to sell a robot, they run the risk of influencing the public's understanding of what robots are capable of at this time.
Kuri never pretended to be able to do backflips like Atlas, but the danger is that people are now expecting too much of robots in general. The challenge for robotics companies, then, is to either explicitly say what their robots are capable of, or more subtly telegraph abilities with design cues. Mayfield Robotics, for example, made Kuri speak in beeps and boops instead of human language to suggest to the user that they're not dealing with an advanced intelligence that can carry out a whole conversation.
No robot—much less Kuri and Jibo, which don't have arms—can both be your friend and grab you a beer from the fridge. Object manipulation remains a massive problem in robotics. Not only do robots have nowhere near the dexterity of the human hand, they have to be 100 percent accurate if they're expected to do the dishes, because an error rate of just 1 percent means one dropped glass out of 100. That's unacceptable.
That someone will likely be not a small startup like Jibo or Mayfield but a massive tech company like Amazon, Apple, or Google. They already have smart personal assistants sitting in our pockets or on our countertops. Their sprawling businesses have netted them massive amounts of data and the AI needed to apply that knowledge to a robot (think using Alexa to order more diapers from Amazon). It all amounts to a formidable lead over smaller companies.
Indeed, Amazon is rumored to be developing a home robot. Theoretically, it wouldn't be an eyeless device sitting on a countertop, but a robot that can watch and listen around the house. It won't be able to grab you a beer, but it will be the first step toward that kind of advanced robot.
No one ever said realizing the dream of The Jetsons would be easy, after all. | {
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This comprehensive DISC profile tool is used to determine personality styles for use in training, coaching, counseling (marriage, family, pastoral and individual), human resource management and professional consulting. Perfect as an aid in hiring, developing an effective and cohesive team, leadership training, and many other areas.
This workbook identifies an individual's personality style, D, I, S, or C by using a simple 24-question profile (takes only 7-minutes!) and helps provide understanding to the differences in people, providing a personal review of each individual's strengths and limitations, and gives an action plan to improve relationships. | {
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Motor trader fined after car loses ill-fitted wheel at 60mph on A11 a day after sale
Car Shop Norwich, which was taken to court by Norfolk Trading Standards over a car it sold with an incorrectly fitted wheel. Picture: Google
A national motor trader has been fined thousands of pounds, after a car sold from its Norwich branch lost a wheel on the A11 - just a day after its sale.
On Wednesday, November 14, Car Shop on Boundary Lane in Hellesdon sold a pre-owned 2016 Renault Clio to a female customer.
The next day, the driver experienced a lucky escape after one of the car's front wheels came tumbling off - as it was driven at 60mph along the A11.
While the motorist was left unharmed by the incident, she was shocked and shaken by her near miss - which saw a quick-thinking lorry driver reposition and slow on the road to shield her vehicle from fellow road users.
Police investigations into the incident led to the discovery that the vehicle's wheel nuts were not correctly tightened. Officers found that two wheel nuts on one wheel were only tightened to two thirds of the level they should have been.
After Norfolk County Council's trading standards was alerted, a full investigation was launched, and on Thursday the national car supermarket appeared before magistrates in Norwich to face prosecution.
The incident left the company with a court bill of £8,713.08, with magistrates in Norwich slapping it with a £6,667 fine, also ordering it to pay the £1,308.08 cost of bringing the case to court and a £666 victim charge.
After the hearing, Sophie Leney, head of the council's trading standards, said the car could have had "fatal consequences".
Following the hearing, James Dunkley, commercial director of Car Shop - which opened in Norwich in July 2012 - said the matter was "brought to a mutually satisfactory conclusion" with the customer - and that the technician responsible had been placed on a final warning.
He said: "We would like to reassure all our customers this was an isolated case caused by genuine human error.
"We apologised to the affected customer immediately and have worked with them to address their concerns and make things right.
"Following a review of this case we have added extra checks on every vehicle at the point of repair and quality control to a level that exceeds industry standards.
"We have also partnered with the RAC to conduct daily independent inspections of select vehicles."
The firm said the car had been bought through its preparation facility in Leighton Buzzard, which is where the error would have happened. | {
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P. Danielle Cortez
Jason B. Sims
Dinsmore & Shohl LLP
Boilerplate Contract Language Coming to the Forefront: Force Majeure Clauses and COVID-19
The rapid spread of COVID-19 and the swift and sweeping action from government agencies at all levels are having a ripple effect on markets. These events are causing significant disruption in most industries, including the cancellation/postponement of major conferences and events like South by Southwest, March Madness, and Facebook's F8, and Mobile World Congress.
One impact is that many companies are struggling to meet their obligations under their contracts. If your company is in this situation, you may find potential relief within a "boilerplate" provision in your contracts: the Force Majeure Clause.
What is a Force Majeure Clause
A Force Majeure Clause is a contract provision present in most commercial contracts that excuses a party's performance of its obligations under the contract when certain circumstances arise beyond the party's control making performance inadvisable, commercially impracticable, illegal, or impossible. Force Majeure Clauses provide a list of extreme events (generally called force majeure events) that, if they occur, can excuse a party's performance under the contract. Force Majeure Clauses can vary greatly in language and length; however, many include events like epidemics or pandemics, along with war, terrorist attacks, "acts of God," famine, strikes, and fire in the list of events excusing overall performance or delay in performance.
When Can a Party Obtain Relief under a Force Majeure Clause
If your contract has a Force Majeure Clause, you should review it to determine if it can provide relief if your company is struggling to perform its contractual obligations. To obtain relief under a Force Majeure Clause you must show:
Your particular event (in this situation the COVID-19 pandemic or the related governmental action) falls within the list of events the Force Majeure clause includes; and
Your particular event is a direct cause of your company's inability to perform its contractual obligations.
For a company to obtain relief from its obligations under a contract through a Force Majeure Clause, the force majeure event must be a legal or physical restraint and not just an economic restraint. Even though many Force Majeure Clauses will have "catch-all" language in the list of force majeure events (e.g., "any event that is beyond the reasonable control" of the affected party), courts have generally interpreted the Force Majeure Clauses narrowly so only an event actually listed in the Force Majeure Clause will be deemed a force majeure event.[1] If the Force Majeure Clause includes pandemic (or something similar like disease or epidemic or even, potentially, "acts of God" ) or "governmental action," then it is likely the COVID-19 pandemic and related sweeping action to combat the pandemic is a force majeure event under the Force Majeure Clause.
Practical Tips When Considering Invoking a Force Majeure Clause
Give timely notice to your counterparty if using COVID-19 as a basis for suspending performance or for non-performance under a Force Majeure Clause. Failure to give timely notice may result in a waiver of any ability to obtain relief for non-performance or delayed performance.
Many Force Majeure Clauses have a "carve-out" for payment obligations, meaning the Force Majeure Clause cannot be used to excuse a party's breach of its payment obligations under the contract. If your company only has a payment obligation under a contract (such as a tenant in a lease or a purchaser of goods), it may need to look elsewhere in the contract for relief.
Many Force Majeure Clauses allow the non-affected party to terminate the contract if your non-performance extends for a long period of time (usually 30-75 days). Before invoking a Force Majeure Clause, consider the risk it could provide the other party to the contract a right to terminate that contract.
Force Majeure Clauses vary in scope, and the language must be carefully scrutinized to determine if your company can rely on it to excuse nonperformance or to delay performance. Seek out legal advice before invoking a Force Majeure Clause.
Communicate often and early with the counterparty to your contract and look for business solutions to resolve the issue – such as delays in shipment, reductions in supply (without cutting supply completely off), etc. This is particularly important if you have a weak case for invoking a Force Majeure Clause.
It will likely be governmental actions taken to combat COVID-19 and supply chain disruption that will provide the strongest position for your company to claim a force majeure event has occurred (e.g.,, limitations on public gatherings; closures of facilities; lack of certain materials, services, or goods due to shutdowns within the supply chain).
Some key contracts may include requirements for Business Contingency Plans (BCP). If you are dealing with a contract requiring a BCP, you should review and consider whether your BCP should be implemented to mitigate the risk from COVID-19.
Force majeure is temporary and only applies for the period of time the force majeure event restrains a party's performance under the contract.
[1] Some Force Majeure Clauses include language like "and other similar events". Courts, when interpreting those Force Majeure Clauses, have allowed events that are similar to the events listed in the Force Majeure Clause to be considered a force majeure event.
© 2020 Dinsmore & Shohl LLP. All rights reserved.National Law Review, Volume X, Number 79
Danielle is a corporate attorney and has experience serving start-ups and small businesses in need of transactional assistance. She has represented entrepreneurs and their businesses by providing legal advice on initial organization and formation, capital structure and equity issuances, tax exemption, and other corporate matters.
She earned her J.D. from The Ohio State University, Moritz College of Law.
[email protected]
www.dinsmore.com
Taking a practical, business-like approach to meeting clients' needs, Jason has extensive experience working with a wide range of companies, spanning from Fortune 500 multi-nationals to entrepreneurial ventures. He leverages his knowledge of private securities issues and mergers & acquisitions with a thorough knowledge of a wide range of industries to find efficient and cost-effective solutions for clients.
Jason handles all aspects of private securities and offerings, including venture capital transactions and private debt securities, utilizing his extensive...
[email protected] | {
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Public housing was established to provide decent and safe rental housing for eligible families, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. Public housing comes in all sizes and types, from scattered single family houses to apartments for elderly families. There are approximately 1.3 million households living in public housing units, managed by some 3,300 HAs. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) administers Federal aid to local housing agencies (HAs) that manage the housing for residents at rents they can afford. HUD furnishes technical and professional assistance in planning, developing and managing these developments.
Security deposit may be lower than open market rates and based upon unit size. Income and housing quality are reviewed annually, or as circumstances change, and rent adjustments are made as appropriate. Units are located at scattered sites in Chico, Oroville, Gridley, and Biggs and are well maintained by HACB in compliance with HUD Standards.
Public housing is limited to income qualified families and individuals. An HA determines your eligibility based on: 1) annual gross income; 2) whether you qualify as elderly, a person with a disability, or as a family; and 3) U.S. citizenship or eligible immigration status. If you are eligible, the HA will check your references to make sure you and your family will be good tenants. The Housing Authority will deny admission to any applicant whose habits and practices may be expected to have a detrimental effect on other tenants or on the project's environment.
Typical occupants in this program will not only qualify by income, but also by responsible rental history or other evidence of acceptable behavior. HAs use income limits developed by HUD. HUD sets the lower income limits at 80% and very low income limits at 50% of the median income for the county or metropolitan area in which you choose to live. Income limits vary from area to area so you may be eligible at one HA but not at another. The HA serving your community can provide you with the income levels for your area and family size, or you can also find the income limits here on the internet. HOW DO I APPLY?
Applicants for this program are placed on a waiting list according to the date and time of completed application. The tenant (head of household) or co-tenants must meet eligibility requirements. Eligible applicants properly verified will be placed on a waiting list. Applicants may select to be placed on specific list.
The PHA also may visit you in your home to interview you and your family members to see how you manage the upkeep of you current home.
After obtaining this information, the HA will verify the above information and do a criminal background check. WILL I NEED TO PRODUCE ANY DOCUMENTATION?
Yes, the HA representative will request whatever documentation is needed (e.g., birth certificates, tax returns) to verify the information given on your application. The PHA will also rely on direct verification from your employer, etc. You will be asked to sign a form to authorize release of pertinent information to the PHA. WHEN WILL I BE NOTIFIED?
An HA has to provide written notification. If the HA determines that you are eligible, your name will be put on a waiting list, unless the HA is able to assist you immediately. Once your name is reached on the waiting list, the HA will contact you. If it is determined that you are ineligible, the HA must say why and, if you wish, you can request an informal hearing. WILL I HAVE TO SIGN A LEASE?
The Housing Authority of the County of Butte selects participants over the full range of eligibility so that there is a broad range of incomes represented. Since the demand for housing assistance often exceeds the limited resources available to HUD and the local HAs, long waiting periods are common. In fact, an HA may close its waiting list when there are more families on the list than can be assisted in the near future. The Housing Authority of the County of Butte does not have preferences. HOW IS RENT DETERMINED?
maximum rent as set by market area.
An HA is responsible for the management and operation of its local public housing program. They may also operate other types of housing programs. (1) On-going functions: (a) Assure compliance with leases. The lease must be signed by both parties; (b) Set other charges (e.g., security deposit, excess utility consumption, and damages to unit); (c) Perform periodic reexaminations of the family's income at least once every 12 months; (d) Transfer families from one unit to another, in order to correct over/under crowding, repair or renovate a dwelling, or because of a resident's request to be transferred; (e) Terminate leases when necessary; and (f) maintain the development in a decent, safe, and sanitary condition.
(2) Maintenance of units: the Housing Authority provides for all necessary maintenance of its public housing units. For some tasks that are not considered routine wear-and-tear, there may be a charge to the tenant, in accordance with our Schedule of Charges. The current Schedule of Charges can be found in the Reports and Public Documents section of this site. HOW LONG CAN I STAY IN PUBLIC HOUSING?
In general, you may stay in public housing as long as you comply with the lease. If, at reexamination your family's income is sufficient to obtain housing on the open market, the HA may determine whether your family should stay in public housing. You will not be required to move unless there is affordable housing available for you on the open market. | {
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Show Media Item - SENFOUR MODERN BAKERIES ASSOCIATION
SENFOUR MODERN BAKERIES ASSOCIATION
Sending greetings to the President and his Cabinet and the Government as a whole. We are making dua for the success of this administration and may Allah aid the President and give him successful leadership as he guides this country in a direction in which everyone will be pleased. We are a people that always make dua for the Muslim leaders, in wishing them well, especially our Gambian leaders. To the extent where the righteous predecessors used to say, "if there was a dua that Allah was to accept, they would make it for the Muslim leader. For if he is rectified, the society would indeed be rectified."
The Senfour Modern Bakeries Association would like to address the general public regarding the recent price increases and bread shortages occurring in areas throughout the region. Please be aware the members of this association have worked diligently over the last few months to address a lingering economic crisis occurring in the business of bread manufacture and distribution. We have met diligently and in good faith with several government offices to address this critical matter. Our sole purpose in engaging these officials was to ensure the matter is resolved in a way that consumers will be minimally impacted. In keeping with that purpose, we look forward to continuing to work with the government as we find permanent solutions for this urgent matter.
Although it is convenient to blame increased prices on bakery owners, it is crucial to comprehend the full picture. When bread is sold at D7, the average profit breakdowns are as follows; D4.50 for production, 50 butut bakery profit, D1.25 biker's profit, 75 butut shopkeeper's profit. It is also important to note that capital investments for bakery owners range from 3 million to 6 million Dalasis versus the cost of a motorcycle or bicycle for bikers. Unfortunately profit margins this low are unsustainable for bakery owners who also have to consider equipment replacement and breakdowns and other expenses involved in supporting and growing their business. Our profits have reached this level because we were forced to give in to the aggressive demands of bikers (suppliers) that deliver to the public. In fact, wholesale prices have dropped so low that it has created a major economic crisis within bakeries.
Product delivery is a huge expense in this industry which can be better managed. The bikers absorb a large portion of savings that could be passed to consumers. Retailers reduce their ability to offer lower rates to consumers when they insist on using suppliers. As it stands, the bikers control both wholesale and retail rates by using harsh bargaining techniques. We encourage all customers to buy directly from their local bakeries, as it will significantly reduce the burden to both manufacturers and retailers.This will also give retailers more control over their businesses and allow them to retail at favorable rates.
Some areas are experiencing bread shortages. The association is aware of this gap and are committed to filling it as promptly as possible.To that end, we are asking consumers and retailers to help us identify these areas by contacting us at 247-2445. We will direct you to your nearest bakery or make arrangements to have bread delivered in areas where bakeries are not assessible. We also ask for your patience during this transition period. Although it will require adjustments, we believe that by resorting back to a culture that is less dependent on a third party for delivery, we can ensure bread remains affordable in our communities.
As mentioned at the start of this release, we remain committed to working with the government and the Gambian community to ensure the bakery industry remains healthy and beneficial for all of its stakeholders. | {
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On 27 June 2013, the Swedenborg Society will launch The Grand Theme and Other Essays (Swedenborg Society, 2013), a new book by our esteemed President, Anders Hallengren.
THE GRAND THEME AND OTHER ESSAYS collects together material written over a number of years and explores, through a prism of literature, poetic reflection and historical narrative, Hallengren's long standing interest in his fellow countryman, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). The author will be present at the launch to sign copies of his book, which will be available to buy at a discounted price.
Refreshments will also be served and visitors will be free to wander around Swedenborg House, a grade-II-listed building and home to the Swedenborg Society since 1924. Admission is free. Please RSVP to [email protected].
ANDERS HALLENGREN is a Swedish author, scholar, foreign affairs journalist, translator and composer. He has held a number of distinguished positions at Stockholm University and at Harvard, lecturing all around the world on diverse aspects of literature, music and history. Anders has published many books in English, including his study on Emerson, The Code of Concord (Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1994), a collection of essays, Gallery of Mirrors (Swedenborg Foundation, 1998) and a revision of Carl Robsahm's Memoirs of Swedenborg (Swedenborg Society, 2011). He is internationally renowned for his Nobel essay 'Nelson Mandela and the Rainbow of Culture'. In collaboration with the artist, Madlen Herrström, a volume of Anders' poems was recently published as Pentagrams | Pentagramme (Éditions Sander, 2012) and, as part of Ophir, Anders received a nomination for the Manifest Music Award in 2012 for the album Opus Operatum (Komplott, 2011). Anders is the current president of the Swedenborg Society. Further information. | {
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We're very excited to announce that we will have our own booth at the Mining Indaba Exhibition and Conference next week. It will be the first time we as a company will be attending the mining-specific event despite it being in existence for over 20 years. The event unites investors, mining companies, governments and other stakeholders from around the world to learn and network, all toward the single goal of advancing mining on the continent.
Bibby Maritime are keen to speak with individuals and organisations in need of accommodation for the workers involved in potential mining projects around Africa or indeed elsewhere and we believe that a floating accommodation barge could be an efficient solution to housing mining project workers in the future. "We have had interest in our floating accommodation solution from mining companies from as diverse locations as Canada & Africa to Papua New Guinea over the years. Where a mining operation requires an off-loading port, it lends itself ideally to our floating accommodation solution for your workforce. Attending Mining Indaba will definitely bring us closer to potential clients involved in many areas accross the Mining Industry" explained Carl McLaughlin, Commercial Director.
Over 6000 professionals are expected to attend this year from over 100 countries which outlines the popularity the show has gained in recent times. Bibby Maritime will be exhibiting at booth number 619 and will look forward to meeting all visitors! | {
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Most are trained informally on the job.
Employment growth will be slowed by the increasing use of new, more efficient computerized printing presses that will facilitate movement towards printing-on-demand.
Opportunities should be best for persons who qualify for formal apprenticeship training or who complete postsecondary training programs in printing.
Printing machine operators prepare, operate, and maintain the printing presses in a pressroom. Duties of printing machine operators vary according to the type of press they operate—offset lithography, gravure, flexography, screen printing, letterpress, and digital. Offset lithography, which transfers an inked impression from a rubber-covered cylinder to paper or other material, is the dominant printing process. With gravure, the recesses on an etched plate or cylinder are inked and pressed to paper. Flexography is a form of rotary printing in which ink is applied to a surface by a flexible rubber printing plate with a raised image area. Use of gravure and flexography should increase over the next decade, but letterpress, in which an inked, raised surface is pressed against paper, remains in existence only as specialty printing. In addition to the major printing processes, plateless or nonimpact processes are coming into general use. Plateless processes—including digital, electrostatic, and ink-jet printing—are used for copying, duplicating, and document and specialty printing, usually by quick and in-house printing shops, and increasingly by commercial printers for short-run jobs and variable data printing.
To prepare presses for printing, machine operators install and adjust the printing plate, adjust pressure, ink the presses, load paper, and adjust the press to the paper size. Press operators ensure that paper and ink meet specifications, and adjust margins and the flow of ink to the inking rollers accordingly. They then feed paper through the press cylinders and adjust feed and tension controls.
While printing presses are running, press operators monitor their operation and keep the paper feeders well stocked. They make adjustments to correct uneven ink distribution, speed, and temperatures in the drying chamber, if the press has one. If paper jams or tears and the press stops, which can happen with some offset presses, operators quickly correct the problem to minimize downtime. Similarly, operators working with other high-speed presses constantly look for problems, making quick corrections to avoid expensive losses of paper and ink. Throughout the run, operators may occasionally pull sheets to check for any printing imperfections, though much of this checking for quality is now being done by computers.
Machine operators' jobs differ from one shop to another because of differences in the kinds and sizes of presses. Small commercial shops are operated by one person and tend to have relatively small presses, which print only one or two colors at a time. Operators who work with large presses have assistants and helpers. Large newspaper, magazine, and book printers use giant "in-line web" presses that require a crew of several press operators and press assistants. These presses are fed paper in big rolls, called "webs," up to 50 inches or more in width. Presses print the paper on both sides; trim, assemble, score, and fold the pages; and count the finished sections as they come off the press.
Printing machine operators held about 199,000 jobs in 2002. Nearly one-half of operator jobs were in the printing industry, but newspaper publishers and paper product manufacturers also were large employers, having each about 10 percent of all printing machine operator jobs. Additional jobs were in the "in-plant" section of organizations and businesses that do their own printing—such as banks, insurance companies, government agencies, and universities.
The printing and newspaper publishing industries are two of the most geographically dispersed in the United States, and press operators can find jobs throughout the country. However, jobs are concentrated in large printing centers such as Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.
Although completion of a formal apprenticeship or a postsecondary program in printing equipment operation continues to be the best way to learn the trade, most printing machine operators are trained informally on the job while they work as assistants or helpers to experienced operators. Beginning press operators load, unload, and clean presses. With time, they move up to operating one-color sheet-fed presses and eventually advance to multicolor presses. Operators are likely to gain experience on many kinds of printing presses during the course of their career.
Apprenticeships for press operators in commercial shops take 4 years. In addition to on-the-job instruction, apprenticeships include related classroom or correspondence school courses. Once the dominant method for preparing for this occupation, apprenticeships are becoming less prevalent.
In contrast, formal postsecondary programs in printing equipment operation offered by technical and trade schools and community colleges are growing in importance. Some postsecondary school programs require 2 years of study and award an associate degree, but most programs can be completed in 1 year or less. Postsecondary courses in printing are increasingly important because they provide the theoretical knowledge needed to operate advanced equipment.
Printing machine operators may advance in pay and responsibility by working on a more complex printing press. Through experience and demonstrated ability, for example, a one-color sheet-fed press operator may become a four-color sheet-fed press operator. Others may advance to pressroom supervisor and become responsible for an entire press crew. Their understanding of the prepress requirements needed to run a press smoothly allows some operators with several years of experience to transfer to jobs as prepress technicians.
Employment of printing machine operators is expected to grow more slowly than the average through 2012. Despite the slow growth, looming retirements of printing machine operators and the need for workers trained on increasingly computerized printing equipment will create many job openings over the next decade. Opportunities to become printing machine operators are likely to be favorable for persons who qualify for formal apprenticeship training or who complete postsecondary training programs in printing.
The demand for, and the output of, printed materials is expected to grow over the 2002-12 period. Demand for books and magazines will increase as school enrollments rise, and as substantial growth in the middle-aged and older population spurs adult education and leisure reading. Additional growth should stem from increased foreign demand for domestic trade publications, professional and scientific works, and mass-market books such as paperbacks. Demand for commercial printing also will be driven by increased expenditures for print advertising materials. New market research techniques are leading advertisers to increase spending on messages targeted to specific audiences, and should continue to require the printing of a wide variety of newspaper inserts, catalogs, direct mail enclosures, and other kinds of print advertising. Other printing, such as newspapers, books, and greeting cards, also will continue to provide jobs.
Employment, however, will not grow in line with output because of the increased use of new computerized printing equipment. Also, new business practices within the publishing industry, such as printing-on-demand and electronic publishing, will cut into the production of printed materials. Printing-on-demand refers to the printing of materials as they are requested by customers, in contrast to printing thousands of publications prior to purchase, many of which are subsequently discarded. There are also expected to be fewer newspaper printing jobs as a result of mergers and consolidation within the industry.
The basic wage rate for a printing machine operator depends on the type of press being run and the geographic area in which the work is located. Workers covered by union contracts usually have higher earnings.
Other workers who set up and operate production machinery include machine setters, operators, and tenders—metal and plastic; bookbinders and bindery workers; and various precision machine operators.
Details about apprenticeships and other training opportunities may be obtained from local employers, such as newspapers and printing shops, local offices of the Graphic Communications International Union, local affiliates of Printing Industries of America, or local offices of the State employment service. | {
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Meridian Line Films win International Documentary Award for Second Year Running
We are thrilled to have won the 'Excellence in International Broadcasting' award from China's National Radio and Television Administration for the second year in a row, this time for our production How China Made It.
Meridian Line Films managed to claim the award in 2018 for our Discovery Asia series Smart China: Start-Up Revolution.
Congratulations to our amazing team, both in the UK and China who worked on the production and to Series Producer Nacressa Swan and Series Director Rob Cowling.
Broadcast on Youku and Discovery Asia in December 2018 and January 2019, How China Made It has since been viewed millions of times internationally.
The series tells the story of the immense upheaval and growth experienced by China over the past 40 years since Deng Xiaoping initiated a period of 'reform and opening up'. The series explores how this jaw-dropping change was experienced by the people who lived through it, when personal incomes rose by 9000% and life expectancy shot up by 17 years.
How China Made It was also nominated for the RTS Yorkshire Awards in 2019 in the category for Professional Excellence in a Factual Production.
'China: Time of Xi' Press Coverage
Meridian Line Films selected to meet Chinese TV delegation on visit to Britain
[email protected]
Copyright © 2020 Meridian Line Films. All Rights Reserved
Website by Hey Dan Creative | {
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Ooh. One of Zayn Malik's exes has revealed exactly what it's like to date him.
No, not Perrie Edwards. Stephanie Davis! The 23-year-old actress has been chatting about the former One Direction singer while on Celebrity Big Brother.
This is despite her saying before she entered the house that she wasn't 'about to spill the beans' on him. Erm.
Stephanie and Zayn are believed to have had a brief tryst before he hooked up with ex-fiancée Perrie, when 1D had only just graduated from The X Factor.
Describing how he called her while she was, er, picking up chips and gravy in the Hollyoaks canteen, Stephanie told her housemates: 'I wasn't bothered, it was no big deal.
Despite this apparent lack of interest, Steph did decide to meet Zayn, claiming: 'I went to Leeds to meet him and I went to his hotel and we were just messing around.
'But I thought I'm not that type of girl to sleep with you straight away, so I just ended up kissing him. When I left, he was like, grrrr. He just wanted us.' Crikey.
Both Zayn and Stephanie have well and truly moved on since those days.
Zayn, 23, is dating American model Gigi Hadid, while Stephanie is caught up in a pretty awkward love triangle between boyfriend Sam Reece and CBB's Jeremy McConnell.
Stephanie insists it was her who dumped Zayn, having found it difficult to deal with his fame as 1D's popularity grew.
She continued: 'Things got really bad. Really bad. If we wanted to go the Asda and get some food we'd have to wait 'til 4am and even if we went there would be girls there.
'I ended it with him because at the time I was oblivious to that world.
Blimey. Let's hope Gigi is prepared. | {
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Tiffany specializes in headshot and fashion photography. Take advantage of her current rates because they are only for a limited time! Visit her website for more details.
Simple, fun, and such great quality photos. Nice to have the freedom of getting the photos you want, not trapped by looks or changed. Tiffany takes care of you and pulls a lot of different options out of you.
We loved having Tiffany Eaton do our family pictures. She made us want to smile and she got some great shots. We liked her so much that we are hoping to hire her to take pictures for our daughter's wedding this summer.
I loved shooting with Tiffany! She has a great eye and the photos turned out beautifully. Would highly recommend!
I am extremely happy with the work Tiffany Eaton did on my family photos. She is get aware of her clients, and what they want. I would definitley go to her again.
Tiffany's work is amazing! She's very passionate about photography! I definitely recommend her to anyone!
Definitely had a good time shooting photos with her. Her rates are very reasonable I feel she has a good eye.
Tiffany is a great person and so easy to work with! She is very creative and really listens to what you want! I would highly recommend her! | {
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Inuyama Castle, National Treasure
Location and castle structure
Opening hours and entrance fees
Photographs and videos of the many faces of Inuyama Castle
Locations of Japanese castles were strictly chosen for optimal defense. Architects also used geology at their disposal and reinforced them while designing castle structures and architectures they worked for. How did they proceed?
Castle structure
Inuyama Castle was constructed at the northernmost point of the Owari Province (western Aichi). This point is at the base of the alluvial fan shaped by the Kiso River. It is also the connecting point for the mountainlands upstream and plains downstream of Kiso River, and was seen as an important relay point for Kiso River wood-transportation. At the same time, Kiso River was at the border with the Mino Province (Gifu Prefecture), and Gifu Castle was built to the west-northwest and Nagoya Castle was built to the south. Therefore, Inuyama Castle was grounds for many battles due to its strategic importance. The castle is built on top of a hill (Shiroyama) at a precipice approximately 85 meters high, at the south of the Kiso River.
Exterior ramparts (Sogamae)
Inuyama Castle and its castle town were protected by structures called sogamae—moats and earthwork embankments that surround the area. The road was curved at the entrance ① to make intrusions difficult and easy to defend against. The street currently used to get to the castle from Inuyama Station ② cuts across the outer moat (Sotobori) ③ around the intersection right outside the station. The outer moat prevented enemies from coming in. The street then becomes a gradual slope, and leads to the main street of the castle town (Honmacho-dori) ④. The Honmachi-dori is situated at the highest level compared to the other streets in the area, is constructed on solid ground, and was part of the main road that connected Inuyama Castle and Nagoya Castle.
The citadel (Nawabari)
The surroundings of the castle were fortified by multiple flat areas, Kuruwa (walls), Maru (enclosures), Hori (moats), Dorui or Dote (earthen walls), Kirigishi (cliffs) made by shaving off the side of the Shiroyama, structures such as stone walls (Fushin), gates and fences, Yagura (watch towers), and donjons. This configuration is called Nawabari. Inuyama Castle, with its back (north side) protected by a cliff and Kiso River, is built longwise from north to south. To its east were Kirigishi and Mizubori, and to its west were Kirigishi, karabori, and dorui.
The Honmaru ① is at the top of the hill, and Kuruwa named Sugi-no-maru ②, Momi-no-maru ③, Kiri-no-maru ④, and Matsu-no-maru ⑤ are situated to its south in consecutive tiers. The Otemichi runs through the middle of the castle territory from the base of the mountain to the Honmaru, and is made to connect to each Kuruwa from the Otemichi. The Otemichi has five gates ⑥, and are situated in a way which makes going straight impossible. The exterior of each gate was surrounded by stone walls and dorui. This series of gates (Koguchi) is called Sotomasu-gata, and is said to provide strong protection.
Inuyama Kitakoken 65-2, Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture
9:00-17:00(last admission: 16:30)
© National Treasure Inuyama Castle. All Rights Reserved. | {
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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia likes to say it's "almost heaven." Less idyllic is the spot its Republican senator, Shelley Moore Capito, is in as she decides whether to back her party's effort to bulldoze Democrat Barack Obama's health care law.
Capito's home state has shifted strongly toward the GOP in recent years, giving Donald Trump a runaway 42-point victory over Hillary Clinton in the November presidential election. That leaves little doubt about its fondness for him and the head start Capito should have when she runs for re-election in 2020.
But it's also one of the poorest and sickest states in the U.S., relying heavily on Obama's 2010 statute, which Trump and top Senate Republicans want to repeal and replace.
West Virginia is saddled with one of the country's lowest median incomes and has some of the worst rates of unemployment, drug overdose deaths, life expectancy, smoking, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and disabilities. Around 3 in 10 of the 1.8 million West Virginians are on Medicaid, making it the most dependent state on the health insurance program for the poor, disabled and nursing home residents that the GOP bill would cut.
Her stance has attracted the attention of liberal, labour, patient and provider groups, who are using social media, advertising and demonstrations to pressure Capito. A recent sit-in at her Charleston office led to six arrests.
Fellow Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who easily carried West Virginia's Democratic presidential primary last year, is headlining a health care rally in the state on Sunday. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee ran a TV ad featuring the mother of a grown daughter with cerebral palsy saying she "wants to cry" when she hears Capito may support Medicaid cuts, and liberal MoveOn.org, the state AFL-CIO and others are using #savemecapito on Twitter to whip up opposition to the GOP bill.
And while aides say she's held numerous meetings with constituents, advocacy groups and local officials, like many Senate Republicans, she avoided this week's July 4 parades — normally a staple of politicking– and skipped town halls this year.
"So far, she's been a person of ethics and morals to try to do the right thing for West Virginians," said Debrin Jenkins, executive director of the West Virginia Rural Health Association, which advocates for health care in the state's many small communities. Jenkins said the GOP bill would "gut" affordable health coverage in West Virginia.
An amiable and popular moderate in Congress since 2001, Capito is a devoted coal industry defender and daughter of former three-time Gov. Arch Moore. With her most serious re-election threat perhaps posed by a conservative in the GOP primary, many consider her a team player unlikely to help derail a paramount Republican goal like toppling Obama's law.
"I think she's going to vote for it eventually. I think there's going to be a few things in there that would allow her to say she's protecting West Virginia," said Simon Haeder, a political science professor at West Virginia University.
Yet Capito, 63, was one reason the Senate left town last week for the July 4 recess without voting on GOP legislation scrapping the law.
She was among at least a dozen Republican senators who publicly opposed or expressed qualms about it, forcing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to avert defeat by abruptly postponing the vote. Unyielding Democratic opposition means the bill loses if just three of the 52 GOP senators vote no, and McConnell is spending the break proposing changes and gauging support.
Capito said she was against the GOP bill, though she announced that after McConnell withdrew the initial measure. She said it cut Medicaid too deeply, would hurt rural providers and shortchanged efforts to combat the abuse of drugs like opioids, a deadly scourge back home.
She says McConnell's plans to add $45 billion over a decade for states' drug abuse programs is a plus, and she wants the bill's federal health care subsidies geared toward helping the state's rural, poor and often older residents.
And she wants some way to protect the state's Medicaid expansion, which has added 175,000 beneficiaries to the program. More than a fourth have substance abuse problems, and state officials say they got $112 million in federal money last year to provide services for them.
"I'm not interested" in having them "dropped out of the system," she said.
Under Obama's law, the state's percentage of uninsured people has dropped to 6 per cent, half the 2013 figure before the statute took full effect. Thanks to Medicaid expansion, West Virginia's program has around 525,000 beneficiaries overall and gets $2.8 billion in federal Medicaid assistance each year.
The Senate GOP bill would phase out the extra money West Virginia and other states get for the Medicaid expansion. It also would turn the program, which currently pays states for all eligible services, into one with a dollar cap that increases only with inflation.
That would be tough, according to a report by the Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, two nonpartisan groups. They estimated that by 2022, the measure would boost West Virginia's uninsured rate to 20 per cent and halve its Medicaid enrolment.
"It will result in pockets of people with poverty and lack of access who won't be able to afford insurance but still have health problems," said Dr. Rahul Gupta, the state's public health commissioner and Democratic appointee.
"I hope she's able to, and I think she will, she'll make a good decision here," said her West Virginia colleague, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. | {
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The Serial Killer Isn't on Trial. He's on the Jury.
Eddie Flynn (Volume 3)
Steve Cavanagh
Thirteen is the legal thriller Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and Ruth Ware are raving about and readers can't put down.
"Outstanding - an intriguing premise, a tense, gripping build-up, and a spectacular climax. This guy is the real deal. Trust me." —Lee Child
"A dead bang BEAST of a book that expertly combines Cavanagh's authority on the law with an absolutely great thrill ride. Books this ingenious don't come along very often." —Michael Connelly
It's the murder trial of the century. And Joshua Kane has killed to get the best seat in the house – and to be sure the wrong man goes down for the crime. Because this time, the killer isn't on trial. He's on the jury.
But there's someone on his tail. Former-conman-turned-criminal-defense-attorney Eddie Flynn doesn't believe that his movie-star client killed two people. He suspects that the real killer is closer than they think – but who would guess just how close?
"A brilliant, twisty, ingeniously constructed puzzle of a book. Steve Cavanagh pulls off an enviable premise with panache." —Ruth Ware
Hudson Booksellers Best of the Year
NO REPORTERS SAT in the courtroom benches behind me. No onlookers in the public gallery. No concerned family members. Just me, my client, the prosecutor, the judge, a stenographer, and a clerk. Oh, and a court...
Praise for Thirteen
Winner of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award
A Publishers Weekly Best Summer Reads of 2019
Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Best Books of the Summer
"Wickedly clever courtroom drama."
"A superb action-packed story that melds the legal thriller with the serial killer subgenre…Sharp dialogue, court scenes that crackle, well-devised red herrings and deeply sculpted characters make Thirteen an outstanding thriller."
"A terrific hook, a thoroughly likable protagonist and more twists than a tornado… A genuine, read-in-one-sitting page-turner." —The Guardian
"Outstanding - an intriguing premise, a tense, gripping build-up, and a spectacular climax. This guy is the real deal. Trust me." —Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"Courtroom drama at its finest…Thirteen is an outstanding legal thriller, so original, clever and accomplished that it should not be missed. It marks out Cavanagh as the heir apparent to John Grisham." —Express (UK)
"A dead bang BEAST of a book that expertly combines his authority on the law with an absolutely great thrill ride. Books this ingenious don't come along very often." —Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"Dazzling…One of the most accomplished legal dramas I have read this year, it reminds me of Scott Turow's stunning Presumed Innocent." —Daily Mail
"A knockout legal thriller with a doozy of a twist."
"Pulse-pounding...… More…
"Pulse-pounding...This tightly plotted page-turner delivers as both a legal thriller and serial killer investigation."
"A brilliant, twisty, ingeniously constructed puzzle of a book. Steve Cavanagh pulls off an enviable premise with panache." —Ruth Ware, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"Any reader's sheer delight.... Thirteen is a thrilling blitz of a novel, for new readers or old fans. Even as the driving question is less who and more how, there is no shortage of plot twists."
—Shelf Awareness
"A blisteringly exciting ingenious thriller with an utterly chilling killer." —The People (UK)
"An oh so clever hook for an oh so clever, gripping book. Thirteen is courtroom drama at its finest, blended with page-turning twists and characters you can't get enough of. Steve Cavanagh is the John Grisham for a new generation. Slick, thrilling and unique, Thirteen is my favorite read of the year." —Sarah Pinborough, New York Times bestselling author
"Steve Cavanagh delivers Grisham-on-steroids courtroom drama." —Irish Independent
"Smart and original. This is a belter of a book." —Clare Mackintosh, New York Times bestselling author
"A great hook and the book lives up to it!" —Ian Rankin, New York Times bestselling author
Steve Cavanagh is the international award-winning author of the Eddie Flynn novels. His debut novel, The Defense, was nominated for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Thriller of the Year, and The Plea won the Prix Polar Award for Best International Novel. Steve is still a practicing lawyer (someday he'll get the hang of it) and co-host of the chart-topping podcast Two Crime Writers And A Microphone. He has been involved in several high-profile civil rights cases, his Eddie Flynn novels have been published in over twenty countries, he's married with two young children, and in his spare time he is mostly asleep.
Donna-Lisa Healy | {
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In celebration of Vietnamese Women's Day, VX Art Gallery is glad to introduce some invaluable paintings of women by renowned artist Luong Xuan Nhi.
Women's images in Luong Xuan Nhi's painting are diverse. The characters include poor girls and old people who earn their living on the streets. Hanoi's women are often appeared in his paintings. He has hundreds of paintings on Hanoi's women. (from Nhan Dan Newspaper ).
Congratulations on all Vietnamese women for their perseverance, bravery and beauty! | {
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COTSWOLDS DISTILLERY DINNER AT THE CHURCHILL ARMS
Two awesome Cotswolds businesses are coming together for a night of amazing food and drink.
The Churchill Arms in Paxford will host a 3-course dinner on Wednesday 4th April with a menu devised by top chef and Churchill Arms proprietor Nick Deverell-Smith featuring spirits and liquors from the Cotswolds Distillery.
This is going to be very good and spaces are limited so don't hesitate to call The Churchill Arms 01386 593 159 to book!
BASTILLE TO HEADLINE WILDERNESS FESTIVAL
The line-up for Wilderness 2018 has been announced this morning with Bastille, Nile Rodgers & Chic and Kamasi Washington all on the bill.
There will also be a DJ set by Groove Armada and top chef Yotam Ottolenghi will be hosting a long table banquet.
The Festival takes place from Thursday 2nd - Sunday 5th August.
www.wildernessfestival.com
CHELTENHAM JAZZ FESTIVAL LINE-UP ANNOUNCED
The line-up for this year's Cheltenham Jazz Festival has been announced and it includes some star names from all corners of the globe.
The festival runs between 2nd - 7th May 2018 and will see Van Morrison, Imelda May, Kamasi Washington, Courtney Pine and Omar, Corinne Bailey Rae, Rick Astley + many more acts embark on Montpellier Gardens over the Bank Holiday weekend.
Tickets for Cheltenham Jazz Festival go on sale to Members on Wednesday 28 February, from 1pm; Public booking opens on Wednesday 7 March, from 1pm.
www.cheltenhamfestivals.com/jazz
NOEL GALLAGHER'S HIGH FLYING BIRDS TO PLAY AT BLENHEIM PALACE
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds will play at Blenheim Palace on Friday 15th June in a series of concerts over 4 nights. Tickets will go on general sale on Friday 16th February.
The Nocturne Live Concerts in the Great Court series also include Nile Rodgers & CHIC, plus special guests Soul II Soul, Elvis Costello & The Imposters, plus special guests The Waterboys and Nick Lowe and Gary Barlow (Sold Out).
Visit www.blenheimpalace.com/whats-on/events/nocturne-live.html for more information.
We all know the real way to someone's heart is through their stomach and award-winning Cheltenham fish and chip shop Simpsons, has created the perfect Valentine's Day bouquet.
The world's first fish and chip bouquet consists of a dozen potato roses leaf-shaped fish goujons all wrapped in traditional newspaper.
This is available for one day only on February 14th (Valentine's Day) and is a snip at £15.
simpsonsfishandchips.com
GROW YOUR OWN WILDERNESS
Wilderness Festival is one of the most anticipated weekends of the summer and the 2018 programme is being announced on Tuesday 20th February.
While you wait, head over to their website and create your own Wilderness for a chance to win 4 tickets. It's harder than it looks!
The festival held at Cornbury Park will take place from Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th August.
THIS COUNTRY SERIES TWO DATE CONFIRMED
Fans of This Country enjoyed a preview of the new series in Cirencester tonight which is returning to our screens this February.
A packed out Bingham Hall were treated to two episodes before a Q&A with the cast at a private viewing.
This Country will be aired on Wednesday 26th February and we can't wait!
IMAGE COURTESY OF STRAIGHT PR
Here is what people have been saying about it.
@bbccomedy @bbcthree I have just cried my makeup off with laughter tears at tonight's screening of #ThisCountry series 2! Hilarious!
— Yvette Ellis (@vettybambam) February 5, 2018
Wow what an evening my sides still hurt! Still as funny as ever #ThisCountry #BBCThree bbcthree… https://t.co/folRPtmJqg
— Gareth Edwards (@GarethEdwards86) February 5, 2018
@bbcthree's #thiscountry screening left me aching. Outrageously funny, superbly clever, detailed and authentic. Series out in a couple weeks! Congrats @charliecooper11 and gang .... pic.twitter.com/TLcMzoYHQU
— Ben Atkinson (@BenAtkinsonUK) February 5, 2018
SHED SEVEN AND THE BEAT TO HEADLINE 2018 WYCHWOOD FESTIVAL
Wychwood Festival, which returns to Cheltenham Racecourse from the 1st to the 3rd of June, has announced it's headliners for 2018 including Shed Seven, The Beat, Feeder and Baxter Dury.
This will be the 14th year of the hugely popular festival which been nominated as 'Best Family Festival' each year at the UK Festival awards.
Tickets are on sale now - wychwoodfestival.com
DISTILLERY WINS TOP AWARD
The Cotswolds Distillery has been awarded the title of Best Craft Producer 2018 by the highly respected Whisky Magazine in the 'Rest of the World' category.
They now go up against the other winners from Scotland, the United States, Ireland, and India for the overall title.
The Cotswold Distillery launched the first batch of their highly anticipated whisky in October 2017 - the first single malt to have ever been created in the Cotswolds. It is now available to buy on their website.
www.cotswoldsdistillery.com/shop/spirits/cotswolds-single-malt-whisky | {
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Das Forschungsdesign (auch Untersuchungsdesign, Untersuchungsplan, Versuchsplan oder Versuchsanordnung) ist auf Arbeitsgebieten, die es mit Versuchspersonen oder anderen lebenden Subjekten zu tun haben, die Grundlage jeder wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung. Es ist daher vor allem wichtig in Sozialwissenschaften, Psychologie, Biologie und Medizin. Es beschreibt, wie die empirische Fragestellung untersucht werden soll, und legt fest, welche Indikatoren wann, wie oft, wo und wie an welchen Objekten (Grundgesamtheit, Stichprobe) erfasst werden sollen. Das aufgestellte Forschungsdesign ist entscheidend für die Aussagekraft der Untersuchungsergebnisse.
Dabei gibt es grundsätzlich zwei Untersuchungsansätze:
korrelative Studien (Beobachtungsstudien)
Die Struktur der Beziehungen der relevanten Variablen werden gesucht und quantitativ-systematisch analysiert
experimentelle Studien (Interventionsstudien)
Baut auf entsprechendem Wissen über die relevanten Variablen auf und untersucht die Art der Beziehung zwischen den vermuteten Prädiktoren (unabhängige Variable) und den entsprechenden Kriterien (abhängige Variable).
Vergleichbare Überlegungen und Planungen sind auch für manche Experimente in Naturwissenschaften, Technik und anderen Gebieten notwendig. Die im Folgenden beschriebenen Begriffe beziehen sich jedoch im Wesentlichen auf die Sozialwissenschaften.
Korrelative Studien
Korrelationsstudie
Wird verwendet, wenn keine Trennung in abhängige und unabhängige Variablen möglich ist beziehungsweise die Kausalität nicht eindeutig ist.
Ex-post-facto-Designs
Ex-post-facto-Anordnungen kommen zum Einsatz, wenn weder die Anforderung für experimentelle noch jene für quasi-experimentelle Untersuchungen erfüllt sind. Sowohl unabhängige als auch abhängige Variablen werden gemessen und Störvariablen können nicht kontrolliert werden. Aus diesem Grund ermöglichen Ex-post-facto-Designs nur korrelative Aussagen. Der Vorteil besteht darin, dass mit geringem finanziellen und personellen Aufwand sehr viele Daten – meist in einer Befragung – erhoben werden können. Durch entsprechende Auswahlverfahren werden Generalisierungen möglich. Ex-post-facto-Anordnungen sind die in den Sozialwissenschaften verbreitetste Untersuchungsform. Sie können in Längsschnitt- und Querschnittstudien unterteilt werden. Je nach Fragestellung der Untersuchung bietet sich eine andere Untersuchungsform an.
Längsschnittstudien
Bei einer Längsschnittstudie wird dieselbe empirische Studie (gewöhnlich eine Befragung) zu mehreren Zeitpunkten durchgeführt und die Ergebnisse der einzelnen Untersuchungswellen werden miteinander verglichen. Man unterscheidet Trendstudien (auch: replikativer Survey), Panelstudien und Kohortenstudien.
Panel-Untersuchung, Panelforschung, eine Sonderform der Längsschnittstudien, bei denen gleiche Personen über einen Zeitraum erfasst werden. Beispiel: Das Sozio-oekonomische Panel (SOEP)
Trendstudien unterscheiden sich von Panel-Untersuchungen dadurch, dass in jeder Erhebungswelle unterschiedliche Personen befragt werden. Diese werden jedoch immer nach den gleichen Kriterien ausgewählt. Beispiel: ALLBUS
Kohortenstudie: Hier werden Personen bestimmter Altersklassen (Jahrgänge) erfasst. In den Sozialwissenschaften sind Kohorten Bevölkerungsgruppen, die durch ein zeitlich gemeinsames, längerfristig prägendes Startereignis definiert werden. Die verschiedenen Personen werden zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten überprüft.
Querschnittstudien
Hauptartikel: Querschnittstudie
Querschnitt (empirische Forschung), bei denen zum gleichen Zeitpunkt unterschiedliche Personen untersucht werden. In der empirischen Forschung spricht man von einem Querschnitt bzw. von einer Querschnitt(s)studie oder Querschnittsdesign, wenn eine empirische Untersuchung (z. B. Befragung, Inhaltsanalyse) einmalig durchgeführt wird.
Vorexperimentelle Versuchsanordnung
Die einmalige Behandlung einer Gruppe und deren "Effekt"-Messung bezeichnet man als vorexperimentelle Versuchsanordnung "one-shot-case-study". Diese Form des Forschungsdesigns ist jedoch kritisch zu sehen, da präexperimentelle Ausprägungen der abhängigen Variablen und weitere Einflussgrößen (unabhängige Variablen) unkontrolliert bleiben und Alternativerklärungen nicht ausgeschlossen werden können.
Experimentelle Designs
Um ein Experiment handelt es sich nur dann, wenn
eine Unterscheidung von unabhängigen (uV) und abhängigen Variablen (aV) möglich ist,
die uV der aV stets vorausgeht und
die Daten von wenigstens zwei Probandengruppen verglichen werden.
Experimentelle Forschungsdesigns prüfen eine Hypothese, indem sie die unabhängige Variable gezielt manipulieren und den Einfluss von Störvariablen durch Konstanthaltung der Versuchsbedingungen, Elimination, Randomisierung oder Parallelisierung kontrollieren. Man unterscheidet zwei Arten von Experimenten: Labor- und Feldexperiment. Der Vorteil von Laborexperimenten ist, dass die Versuchsbedingungen in hohem Maße kontrolliert werden können, was eine hohe interne Validität sicherstellt. Dagegen haben Feldexperimente oft den Vorteil, dass sie aufgrund der natürlichen Umgebung, in der sie durchgeführt werden, eine hohe externe Validität aufweisen.
Experimente werden vor allem in der Psychologie und der Kommunikationswissenschaft angewandt, in den übrigen Sozialwissenschaften in geringerem Umfang; jedoch gewinnen sie in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften zunehmend an Bedeutung.
Quasi-experimentelle Designs
Anders als bei Experimenten erfolgt die Zuweisung der Versuchspersonen zu den Experimental- und Kontrollgruppen in Untersuchungen mit quasi-experimentellem Versuchsplan nicht durch Randomisierung oder Parallelisierung, sondern aufgrund vorhandener Eigenschaften der Versuchsobjekte, wie Alter, Geschlecht, Raucher/Nichtraucher, Mitgliedschaft in einer Gruppe usw. Zum Beispiel fragte die Kultivierungsforschung nach Einstellungsunterschieden beim Fernsehkonsum; Personen mit hohem Fernsehkonsum wurden der Experimentalgruppe, Personen mit geringem Fernsehkonsum der Kontrollgruppe zugeordnet. Im sogenannten "natürlichen Experiment" erfolgt die Zuordnung aufgrund von natürlichen, nicht kontrollierten Ereignissen wie der Einführung eines neuen Schultyps oder der Verbreitung eines neuen Mediums. Quasi-experimentelle Untersuchungen ermöglichen keinen Rückschluss auf kausale Zusammenhänge, da nicht feststellbar ist, ob die unabhängige Variable die abhängige bedingt oder umgekehrt und ob beide Ereignisse konfundiert sind.
Vergleich: Randomisiertes Experiment und Quasiexperiment
Randomisierte Experimente sind insbesondere durch eine zufällige (randomisierte) Verteilung der Versuchspersonen auf die Experimental- und die Kontrollgruppen gekennzeichnet. Bei Quasi-Experimenten bestimmen bereits vorhandene Eigenschaften der Versuchspersonen (z. B. der tägliche Fernsehkonsum), ob sie zur Experimental- oder Kontrollgruppe gezählt werden. Den Versuchsplan echter Experimente nennt man experimentelles Design, den Versuchsplan von Quasi-Experimenten quasi-experimentelles Design.
Die möglichen Kombinationen der oben genannten Designs unterscheiden sich entsprechend nachfolgender Tabelle hinsichtlich der internen und der externen Validität (Gütekriterium). Interne Validität liegt vor, wenn die Veränderung der abhängigen Variable eindeutig auf die Variation der unabhängigen Variable zurückgeführt werden kann (keine Alternativerklärung). Externe Validität liegt vor, wenn das Ergebnis in der Stichprobe auf andere Personen, Situationen und Zeitpunkte generalisiert werden kann.
Externe Validität
Die externe Validität – auch Allgemeingültigkeit, Verallgemeinerungsfähigkeit oder ökologische Validität (vgl. Ökologischer Fehlschluss) – bezeichnet die Übereinstimmung von tatsächlichem und intendiertem Untersuchungsgegenstand. Grundidee ist hier die Frage nach der Generalisierbarkeit (Induktion).
Regelmäßig führt man zuerst Studien an kleinen und leicht zu erreichenden Gesamtheiten durch, etwa seinen Studenten oder Patienten. Eine fälschliche Generalisierung bedeutet z. B.: Obgleich man durch viele Beispiele von gravierenden Irrtümern gewarnt sein sollte, geschieht es doch immer noch sehr schnell und gerne, dass für die so gewonnenen Ergebnisse eine Allgemeingültigkeit in Anspruch genommen wird, die häufig illusorisch ist.
Ärzte beispielsweise überschätzen häufig die Schwere und die Häufigkeit von Krankheiten und Komplikationen, weil sie nur diese Fälle zu sehen bekommen; Psychiater unterschätzen genauso regelmäßig den Einfluss von psychiatrischer Hospitalisierung und Komorbiditäten, weil sie sich daran gewöhnt haben.
Das korrekte Vorgehen ist also, nach einer solchen explorativen Studie eine repräsentative durchzuführen; freilich ist dies in jedem Falle aufwändig und bisweilen auch sehr schwierig.
Stichprobenbias bezeichnet die Abweichung einer konkreten Stichprobe von dem Ideal einer streng zufälligen Auswahl aus der richtigen Grundgesamtheit.
Interne Validität
Ein Experiment besitzt dann eine hohe interne Validität (oder Ceteris-Paribus-Distributionibus-Validität), wenn Veränderungen im Verhalten der Versuchsperson (abhängige Variable) eindeutig auf die bewusste Veränderung der unabhängigen Variable (Treatment) zurückzuführen sind. Um dies zu gewährleisten, müssen Störvariablen kontrolliert bzw. durch verschiedene Methoden, wie Elimination, Randomisierung, Konstanthaltung und Parallelisierung ausgeschaltet werden.
Feldexperiment
Laborexperiment
Literatur
H. Schnell, P. B. Hill, E. Esser: Methoden der empirischen Sozialforschung. Oldenbourg, München 2005, ISBN 3-486-57684-4, S. 211–263.
M. L. Mitchell, J. M. Jolley: Research Design Explained. 4th ed. Clarion University of Pennsylvania, 2001
W. Hager: Grundlagen einer Versuchsplanung zur Prüfung empirischer Hypothesen der Psychologie. In G. Lüer (Hrsg.): Allgemeine Experimentelle Psychologie (43–253). Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart 1987.
D.T. Campbell, J.C.Stanley: Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for research. Rand McNally, Chicago 1966.
F.N. Kerlinger: Foundations of behavioral research. 2nd ed. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, London 1979.
G. Nieding, P. Ohler: Laborexperimentelle Methoden. In: R. Mangold, P. Vorderer, G. Bente (Hrsg.): Lehrbuch der Medienpsychologie (Kap. 15). Hogrefe, Göttingen 2004.
Einzelnachweise
Stichprobentheorie
Empirische Sozialforschung | {
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As Line-Ups Grow and Resources Diminish, Local Businesses are Supporting Food Banks in their Communities
SURREY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, April 27, 2020 - With food bank resources in B.C. dwindling, local businesses are stepping up to support the communities who've supported them over the years. Today, for example, 36 Toyota and Lexus dealers from across British Columbia and the Yukon Territory have joined forces with Toyota Canada to help provide food security for thousands of people with a $120,000 donation to Food Banks BC.
It's estimated that, even in prosperous times, upwards of one million people across the country rely on food banks each month. Today – with many Canadians suddenly out of work – the need is even greater. Toyota's donation – $60,000 from the Toyota dealers and matching funds from Toyota Canada – will help the network of food banks on the west coast meet increased demand for their services.
"During the current COVID-19 emergency, the more than 100,000 individuals who turn to our food banks for much needed support every month are being directly affected," said Laura Lansink, Executive Director, Food Banks BC. "Lineups for food are continuing to grow and resources are dwindling due to increased demand. Thanks to this significant gift from Toyota dealerships in B.C. and Yukon, we can help ensure that food bank doors stay open across the province – and that no one in BC will be at risk of hunger."
Thank you @ToyotaCanada & the 36 dealerships in B.C. & Yukon for your gracious donation that benefits #BCfoodbanks & families in our local communities. We are truly grateful for the relief it will bring to communities across BC-join Toyota & donate today https://t.co/BRHIMoxDEQ pic.twitter.com/FbrlYYfZjL
— Food Banks BC (@RealFoodBanksBC) April 27, 2020
Participating Toyota dealers selected Food Banks BC for this donation because it allowed them to centralize their efforts while also ensuring donations would go to the local food banks in their communities.
"For most of us, this pandemic has turned trips to the grocery store into a stressful situation, but at least we can still afford to feed our families," explained David Lee, Zone Manager for Toyota Canada. "Others in our communities are not so fortunate, so our dealers saw support for Food Banks BC as an opportunity to help."
Each of the 36 Toyota dealers contributed and identified the local food bank their donation would benefit. Toyota Canada then committed to match each donation, bringing the total to $120,000 for Food Banks BC.
The 36 contributing Toyota and Lexus dealers are: Alberni Toyota (Port Alberni), Alpine Toyota (Cranbrook), Campbell River Toyota, Castlegar Toyota, Comox Valley Toyota (Courtenay), Destination Toyota (Burnaby), Glacier Toyota (Smithers), Granville Toyota (Vancouver), Heartland Toyota (Williams Lake), Hilltop Toyota (Salmon Arm), Jim Pattison Toyota/Lexus (Downtown Vancouver, Duncan, North Shore, Surrey, Victoria), Kelowna Toyota/Lexus, Langley Toyota, Nanaimo Toyota, Nelson Toyota, Open Road Toyota/Lexus (Abbotsford, Peace Arch, Port Moody, Richmond), Peace Country Toyota (Dawson Creek), Penticton Toyota, Prince George Toyota, Quesnel Toyota, Regency Toyota/Lexus (Vancouver), Squamish Toyota, Sun Country Toyota (Kamloops), Terrace Toyota, Valley Toyota (Chilliwack), Vernon Toyota, West Coast Toyota (Maple Ridge), Westminster Toyota and Whitehorse Toyota.
Toyota Canada recently announced a donation matching program encouraging its dealers to determine how best to support their local communities during this difficult time. The company has committed up to one million dollars to the program, effectively doubling the impact of the local dealer support for a total contribution of $2 million to food banks across the country.
People looking for an opportunity to support food security for those in need can connect with Food Banks BC at www.foodbanksbc.com or visit Food Banks Canada at www.foodbankscanada.ca. | {
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Menifee man, 38, ID'd after fatally struck by vehicle following I-215 collision
January 9, 2022 Trevor Montgomery 3 comments
RIVERSIDE, Calif., — Authorities say a Menifee man was killed after he was struck by a vehicle just moments after an earlier collision on the southbound I-215 south of Columbia Avenue early Friday morning, Jan. 7.
Witnesses later told investigating California Highway Patrol officers that following the initial crash the victim had exited his vehicle and was standing in the lanes of travel when he was struck by another oncoming vehicle.
LEADING THE RCNS HEADLINES:
Bicycle rider, 7, ID'd after fatally struck by truck in San Jacinto
Corona private school teacher's aide arrested for lewd acts with a child younger than 14
Mecca man arrested for DUI/Murder after Moreno Valley crash that killed local woman, 52
Wanted felon & second man arrested after stolen vehicle pursuit near Perris
Serious injuries reported after Lake Elsinore rollover hit and run
CHP and other emergency personnel were dispatched to the scene around 2:20 a.m., after receiving reports of a multi-vehicle collision.
While responding to the scene, officers received updated reports that a man who had been involved in the initial crash had been struck by another vehicle after exiting his vehicle following the first collision.
CHP has said that a man who was involved in a collision on I-215 in Riverside was fatally struck by another vehicle after he exited his wrecked vehicle and was standing in the lanes of travel. Rod Arv photo
When officials arrived, they found the victim down in the number one lane of the freeway with major, life-threatening injuries.
He was rushed to Riverside Community Hospital where, despite extensive life-saving efforts, he succumbed to his injuries and passed away several hours later.
The Riverside County Sheriff-Coroner's Office has since identified 38-year-old Spencer Smith as the man killed in the collision. a Coroner's release indicated he was pronounced deceased at 5:36 a.m.
CHP's investigation is ongoing and no further details were immediately available.
Contact the writer: [email protected]
Trevor Montgomery, 50, moved in 2017 to the Intermountain area of Shasta County from Riverside County and runs Riverside County News Source (RCNS) and Shasta County News Source (SCNS).
Additionally, he writes or has written for several other news organizations; including Riverside County based newspapers Valley News, Valley Chronicle, Anza Valley Outlook, and Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle; the Bonsall/Fallbrook Village News in San Diego County; and Mountain Echo in Shasta County. He is also a regular contributor to Thin Blue Line TV and Law Enforcement News Network and has had his stories featured on news stations throughout the Southern California and North State regions.
Trevor spent 10 years in the U.S. Army as an Orthopedic Specialist before joining the Riverside County Sheriff's Department in 1998. He was medically retired after losing his leg, breaking his back, and suffering both spinal cord and brain injuries in an off-duty accident. (Click here to see segment of Discovery Channel documentary of Trevor's accident.)
During his time with the sheriff's department, Trevor worked at several different stations; including Robert Presley Detention Center, Southwest Station in Temecula, Hemet/Valle Vista Station, Ben Clark Public Safety Training Center, and Lake Elsinore Station; along with other locations.
Trevor's assignments included Corrections, Patrol, DUI Enforcement, Boat and Personal Water-Craft based Lake Patrol, Off-Road Vehicle Enforcement, Problem Oriented Policing Team, and Personnel/Background Investigations. He finished his career while working as a Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Investigator and was a court-designated expert in child abuse and child sex-related crimes.
Trevor has been married for more than 30 years and was a foster parent to more than 60 children over 13 years. He is now an adoptive parent and his "fluid family" includes 13 children and 18 grandchildren.
tagged with accident, Collision, Crash, Fatal, I-215, Killed, Menifee, Riverside, Slider, Spencer
Just wanted to correct your article. The man who was fatally struck was not the driver of the Jeep. He was the driver of the van
Trevor Montgomery
Thank you for the correction, Questa. This article has since been updated.
-TM
Pingback: UPDATE: Two men arrested after Old Town Temecula shooting leaves Hemet father dead, two others injured – Riverside County News Source | {
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>> Business
Nevada's solar industry on the rebound after major changes
Frank Rieger started solar panel installation company Sol-Up USA in 2009, after moving from Germany to Las Vegas in what he called a midlife crisis.
By Bailey Schulz / Las Vegas Review-Journal
Sol-Up employees prepare the roof for a residential solar panel installation in Henderson, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Erik Verduzco Las Vegas Review-Journal @Erik_Verduzco
Sol-Up employees Zack Smith, left, general foreman, and Andrew Verdi, junior installer, prepare the roof for a residential solar panel installation in Henderson, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Erik Verduzco Las Vegas Review-Journal @Erik_Verduzco
Brandon Lee, roof lead for Sol-Up, prepares the roof for a residential solar panel installation in Henderson, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Erik Verduzco Las Vegas Review-Journal @Erik_Verduzco
Brandon Lee, left, roof lead, and Brandon Lee, roof lead, prepare the roof for a residential solar panel installation in Henderson, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Erik Verduzco Las Vegas Review-Journal @Erik_Verduzco
Sol-Up employees from left, Andrew Verdi, junior installer, Brandon Lee, roof lead, and Zack Smith, general foreman, prepare the roof for a residential solar panel installation in Henderson, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Erik Verduzco Las Vegas Review-Journal @Erik_Verduzco
Brandon Lee, roof lead for Sol-Up, carries equipment for a residential solar panel installation in Henderson, Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018. Erik Verduzco Las Vegas Review-Journal @Erik_Verduzco
He loves his job, and said Las Vegas is the near-perfect place to work in solar where sun shines 85 percent of the time on average, according to financial information website NerdWallet.
But state policies can make the solar industry "very frustrating," Rieger said.
In December 2015, the Nevada Public Utilities Commission voted in favor of a new tariff structure that reduced so-called "net metering" rates — the rates NV Energy pays to buy back excess energy generated by those with rooftop solar. It also increased the monthly service charge for those solar customers.
Following the decision, the state lost about 400 solar jobs, according to The Solar Foundation. It lost another 1,800 between 2016 and 2017.
The PUC ruling was considered a major step back for the industry, but data show Nevada's solar industry is on the rebound.
'A very tough time'
The Nevada Legislature has to have the right policies in place for clean energy to truly excel, said John Restrepo, principal of Las Vegas-based RCG Economics.
"We lost a little ground with rooftop solar policy issues, but we're back to moving forward," he said.
Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a bill that restored the state's net energy metering in 2017, but local workers in the solar industry like Rieger haven't forgotten the hundreds of solar jobs lost after the PUC decision.
"It caused all of these companies to go bankrupt and leave the state," Rieger said. "We made the decision to stay on this market. … I did everything to keep this group together, but obviously, it cost a lot of money and was a very tough time."
In 2017, Nevada fell from the No. 4 state for overall solar jobs to No. 10, according to The Solar Foundation.
The PUC ruling also had a "fairly substantial impact" on solar installations in Nevada, said Austin Perea, senior analyst for the Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables team. He said Nevada's market dropped from seventh in solar installation in 2015 to 17th in 2017.
"There were still installations that were going on, but you're talking about a market that was one-fourth of the size it was in 2015 by 2017," Perea said.
Ramp up
But it's not all gray skies for Nevada's solar industry. Since the 2015 PUC decision, Nevada has picked up the pace with renewable energy projects, said Jeremy Aguero, principal analyst with Las Vegas-based Applied Analysis.
"We've probably seen more proposals relative to renewable energy in the last three years than the last 15," he said.
Rieger's company started recovering from the decision a little over a year ago. He said Sol-Up has added more than a dozen employees in the last few months and is making about three times as much revenue compared to last year.
And the industry is expected to continue to grow, according to Sean Gallagher, the vice president of state affairs for the national trade group Solar Energy Industries Association. He pointed to the abundance of solar projects being built across Nevada from companies like Switch and MGM Resorts International.
"Nevada's got one of the best solar resources in the country," he said, referencing the consistent sunshine. "Over the long run, this trend is going to continue upward as more businesses and residents go forward (installing solar). Customers like to have control over their bills."
Perea said installation rates have also seen a dramatic uptick in recent months. The state installed 11.7 megawatts worth of solar in the first quarter this year, a 166 percent increase from the same quarter in 2017, according to research from Wood Mackenzie.
"Quarter one and quarter two of this year is really when we saw this ramp up," Perea said. "In the first half [of] the year, we've seen 30 megawatts installed in Nevada on the residential side. That's more than all of 2017 combined."
Nevada is struggling to reach the top rankings in the solar industry, but it's surrounded by tough competition. California has led the nation in solar installations for the past three years, according to a 2018 report from Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables. The state had about 86,414 solar jobs in 2017, according to The Solar Foundation, compared with Nevada's 6,564. Arizona and Colorado also came in ahead in 2017 with 8,381 and 6,789 jobs, respectively.
California is unlikely to relinquish the throne to Nevada any time soon; Perea said California's high electricity rates give residents more incentive to install solar panels, and its population size gives it the upper hand.
"If every household (in Nevada) went solar, it would be only a fraction of the number for California," he said.
But Nevada's business climate and natural geography set it apart, said Tom Polikalas, a state representative of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, a public-interest organization promoting greater energy efficiency.
"Nevada is much friendlier compared to California," Polikalas said. "We don't have coal reserves, oil refineries, gas refineries. We have solar, wind, all of this emerging stuff… that's where our advantage is."
While Nevada "will never catch up to California" in solar installation rates, Perea expects the state will climb its way back up the rankings.
"We see it going back to the ninth largest market in 2018 and 2019," he said. "They've taken a lot of right steps."
Contact Bailey Schulz at [email protected] or 702-383-0233. Follow @bailey_schulz on Twitter.
Austin Perea, senior analyst for the Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables team, said some of the biggest benefits from a growing solar industry include job growth and savings for customers.
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, Nevada had more than 6,500 solar jobs in the second quarter of 2018.
And building on clean energy assets like solar could lead to a better economy within the state, bringing in new businesses and jobs in energy and construction, said Jeremy Aguero, principal analyst with Las Vegas-based Applied Analysis.
"There's no doubt that there's a positive economic impact related to renewable energy in Nevada," he said.
About 88 percent of the energy Nevada consumes comes from outside the state, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and this comes at a high price. Nevada's electric utilities import about $700 million worth of fossil fuels each year, according to the environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council.
"It's time we stop sending money to other states to buy their energy and invest more in home," said Kyle Roerink, communications director for Nevadans for a Clean Energy Future, the leading campaign for the ballot measure looking to raise the state's RPS. "We feel we can be in a much better position to measure up to other states and bolster our economy" with more clean energy.
Posted on: Business
By Bailey Schulz / RJ
Former New York Gov. David Paterson is joining Las Vegas Sands to lead the casino and resort developer's push for a casino in New York City.
The suit by New York resident Richard Schuster says the Everett casino is paying out less for certain winning hands at blackjack and rounding down payouts from slot machines. It was filed Monday in Middlesex County Superior Court.
By Nicole Raz / RJ
Encore reported $16.8 million in gross gaming revenue, more than $2 million per day, according to data released Monday by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.
By Debra J. Saunders / RJ
Boulder City-based Fisher Space Pen Co. was highlighted at President Donald Trump's third annual Made in America Showcase, an annual event highlighting American-made products held at the White House.
CCSD strikes 5-year deal to stay with NV Energy
According to the agreement, the Clark County School District would promise not to leave NV Energy in return for cost savings.
Deals, protests during 2-day Amazon Prime event
By Mae Anderson The Associated Press
July 15, 2019 - 12:07 pm July 15, 2019 - 12:07 pm
Amazon's Prime Day is coming with a wave of deals — and protests.
China's growth reaches 26-year low amid US tariff war
China's economic growth sank to its lowest level in at least 26 years in the quarter ending in June, adding to pressure on Chinese leaders as they fight a tariff war with Washington.
By Martin Crutsinger The Associated Press
The plane was grounded in March following two deadly crashes.
By Mick Akers / RJ
A lawsuit filed this past week names the Oakland Raiders and the Stadium Authority among others tied to a disputed payment mount by a subcontractor.
New Jersey bettors spend $3.2B in 1st year
Experts say it'll take more than that for the state to overtake Nevada as the biggest sports betting destination in the country. | {
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Written By: G. Wiesen
Edited By: Heather Bailey
Free PDF editor software is a type of computer software designed to allow a user to edit and make changes to a PDF file without having to buy more expensive software programs. These types of programs are often available for free download and use from a number of different websites and can have varying degrees of utility and functionality built into them. Free PDF editor software is often intended for private or personal use, and though businesses may take advantage of such programs, more powerful document creation and editing software is typically preferable.
A PDF is a type of computer file that typically is used to store text and images for use in presentations, creating pamphlets and brochures, and easy distribution across electronic media such as the Internet. The extension of the file type stands for "portable document format" and is typically associated with programs such as Adobe® Acrobat® that easily allow these files to be opened and accessed by numerous users. There are typically free programs that allow a user to download and view the information in a PDF file, and potentially add to some areas as well, but these programs do not always allow a user to edit the PDF file in more meaningful ways.
Free PDF editor software is designed to allow a user to be able to extensively change a PDF file and potentially create his or her original PDF documents as well. What these programs are capable of doing typically depends on the type of editor program used and the other programs a user may have access to. Some types of free PDF editor software will simply allow a user to access PDF documents and rearrange the order of pages within the document, along with other similar basic editing. While these programs may not be as powerful as other editors, they can allow enough functionality for some uses.
There are other free PDF editor software packages, however, that will allow a user to import a PDF into another program to allow the user to use that program to make changes to the file. These types of editor programs will also usually allow the user to then save the completed project as a PDF file for use in distribution and display. While these types of solutions may not be quite as effective as purchasing software from a company like Adobe® that can allow full access and editing of PDF files, a free PDF editor software program is also quite a bit cheaper than a professional program.
What Are the Best Tips for Opening PDF Files?
How Do I Choose the Best Open Source PDF Editor?
What is PDF Redaction Software?
How do I Convert a PDF to eBook Format?
How do I Choose the Best Free Personal Finance Software?
What is an ISO Editor?
How do I Convert a File Format? | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
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OpinionCase details
Bennett v. State
Full title:HAROLD BENNETT APPELLANT v. STATE OF ARKANSAS APPELLEE
Court:SUPREME COURT OF ARKANSAS
Date published: Oct 1, 2020
2020 Ark. 295 (Ark. 2020)
SUPREME COURT OF ARKANSAS
No. CR-19-870
HAROLD BENNETT APPELLANT v. STATE OF ARKANSAS APPELLEE
John H. Bradley, Chief Public Defender; and Rodney Chedister, Deputy Public Defender, for appellant. Leslie Rutledge, Att'y Gen., by: Christopher R. Warthen, Ass't Att'y Gen., for appellee.
JOHN DAN KEMP, Chief Justice
APPEAL FROM THE MISSISSIPPI COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT, CHICKASAWBA DISTRICT [NO. 47BCR-18-239] HONORABLE CINDY THYER, JUDGE AFFIRMED. JOHN DAN KEMP, Chief Justice
Appellant Harold Bennett appeals an order of the Mississippi County Circuit Court convicting him of first-degree murder and sentencing him to life imprisonment and a fifteen-year sentencing enhancement. For reversal, Bennett argues that the circuit court (1) erred in refusing to suppress testimony about a custodial statement that was not properly recorded, and (2) abused its discretion in admitting photographs that Bennett claimed were more prejudicial than probative. We affirm.
On June 20, 2018, a utility worker called 911 after discovering the body of Bianca Rainer in some brush in front of a house in Blytheville. Detectives noted that there were flies and maggots on her body and that the decomposition stage had begun. They observed that Rainer appeared to have suffered extensive injuries to her head and that a blanket was wrapped around her, a cord was around her neck, and several puzzle pieces were stuck to her body. The forensic pathologist determined that Rainer had been shot in the head three times and had at least nineteen lacerations to her face and scalp.
During the police investigation, detectives interviewed Bennett in his residence across the street from where Rainer's body had been found and at the police station. In the interviews, Bennett at first denied killing Rainer but eventually admitted that he had beaten her to death with a metal bar. Bennett claimed that Rainer had attempted multiple times to attack him with a knife and that he was defending himself when he hit her with the bar.
In Bennett's residence, detectives found puzzle pieces scattered on the floor and blood splatters in various rooms. There was a bleach bottle in the hallway with a toothbrush. Bennett assisted the detectives in locating the metal bar and a .32-caliber revolver, which was hidden under the sink. A firearms examiner identified the bullets recovered from Rainer's body as having been fired from that revolver.
On July 10, 2018, Bennett was charged with first-degree murder, possession of a firearm by certain persons, and obstruction of governmental operations. A jury found Bennett guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced as a habitual offender to life imprisonment plus a fifteen-year sentencing enhancement for using a firearm in the commission of the murder.
The other two offenses were nolle prossed.
II. Points on Appeal
A. Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 4.7
For his first point, Bennett argues that Detective Jason Simpkins's testimony about one of Bennett's interviews violated Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 4.7 (2019) because the interview was not properly recorded. He contends that the circuit court erred in refusing to suppress Simpkins's trial testimony about the interview on this basis.
The facts relevant to the issue are as follows. Bennett gave multiple statements to detectives. The statement at issue on appeal was given to Detective Simpkins at the Blytheville Police Department on June 21, 2018. Simpkins explained that he recorded that interview, but there were some issues with the microphone attachment. Simpkins could be heard on the recording, but many of Bennett's responses were inaudible. Simpkins did not know that there were any problems with the microphone at the time of the interview and learned about the problems only when he went back and listened to the interview.
Simpkins testified that during the interview, Bennett admitted that Rainer had been at his residence and that he had paid Rainer to perform sexual acts on him. When Bennett was unable to follow through with those acts, he asked her for a portion of his money back. Bennett claimed that Rainer refused his request and attacked him with a knife. He then struck her numerous times in the head with a metal bar. He explained that he beat her into unconsciousness. Each time she regained consciousness, she would try to attack him again, and then he would start beating her again with the metal bar. After Bennett realized that Rainer had died, he brought a trashcan inside, rolled Rainer's body up in a blanket, put her inside that trashcan, and discarded her body across the street.
After hearing the recording of the interview at issue, Simpkins's testimony about the interview, and arguments of counsel, the circuit court denied Bennett's motion to suppress the recording or Detective Simpkins's testimony. In so ruling, the circuit court recognized that Rule 4.7 does not mandate the recording of a custodial statement. It noted that in this case, a recording had been made and preserved, although it was of limited evidentiary value because of the poor audio quality. It further found that
there was no bad faith on the part of the police.
I'm certain that if there was an opportunity for them to have captured the entire exchange on video and audio, they would have. He explained the reason that the audio wasn't captured and I found his testimony to be credible in that regard.
We turn to the applicable law. When this court reviews a circuit court's ruling on a motion to suppress, we make an independent determination based on the totality of the circumstances. E.g., Anderson v. State, 2011 Ark. 461, at 12, 385 S.W.3d 214, 222. We will reverse the circuit court's ruling only if it is clearly against the preponderance of the evidence. Id., 385 S.W.3d at 222. The circuit court determines the credibility of witnesses who testify at a suppression hearing about the circumstances surrounding a defendant's custodial statements, and this court defers to the circuit court in matters of credibility. Id., 385 S.W.3d at 222.
Rule 4.7 states, in pertinent part:
(a) Whenever practical, a custodial interrogation at a jail, police station, or other similar place, should be electronically recorded.
(b)(1) In determining the admissibility of any custodial statement, the court may consider, together with all other relevant evidence and consistent with existing law, whether an electronic recording was made; if not, why not; and whether any recording is substantially accurate and not intentionally altered.
(2) The lack of a recording shall not be considered in determining the admissibility of a custodial statement in the following circumstances:
(B) a statement made during a custodial interrogation that was not recorded because electronic recording was not practical, . . . .
Ark. R. Crim. P. 4.7(a)-(b)(1), (b)(2)(B). Additionally, this court has declined to recognize a constitutional right to the recordation of a custodial statement. See Clark v. State, 374 Ark. 292, 302-04, 287 S.W.3d 567, 574-76 (2008).
We agree with the circuit court that there was no violation of Rule 4.7 for the following reasons. First, we have previously stated that Rule 4.7 does not require exclusion of an unrecorded statement. Tarver v. State, 2018 Ark. 202, at 4, 547 S.W.3d 689, 693. Second, as the circuit court stated, the statement at issue was recorded despite the microphone's malfunction. The circuit court found no bad faith on the part of police as to the malfunction and found Simpkins's explanation of the malfunction to be credible—a matter on which we must defer to the circuit court. Anderson, 2011 Ark. 461, at 12, 385 S.W.3d at 222. Third, the content of the interview, as explained through Detective Simpkins's testimony, was consistent with Bennett's two later statements, which were entered into evidence at trial. Thus, we hold that the circuit court's denial of Bennett's motion to suppress Detective Simpkins's testimony about the interview that failed to properly record was not clearly against the preponderance of the evidence. We affirm the circuit court's ruling.
At trial, the State presented Detective Simpkins's testimony about the interview instead of the actual recording of the interview. The State also introduced into evidence two subsequent interviews during which Bennett admitted having beaten Rainer to death with a metal bar. --------
B. Photographs
Bennett next argues that the circuit court abused its discretion by admitting sixteen photographs over his objections. He moved to exclude the photographs under Arkansas Rule of Evidence 403 (2019), alleging that they were more prejudicial than probative. Specifically, State's trial exhibits 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 were crime-scene photographs of the victim. In moving to exclude these photographs, his trial counsel described them as grotesque, grisly, and capable of being described through testimony without being shown to the jury. He made similar assertions about State's trial exhibits 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, and 85—autopsy photographs introduced during the forensic pathologist's testimony.
The circuit court separately ruled on the admissibility of each photograph, giving specific reasons for its admission or exclusion. It admitted all eight of the State's proposed crime-scene photographs of the victim's body, finding that they helped explain and corroborate the investigating officer's testimony, the nature and extent of the victim's injuries, and the puzzle pieces found on the victim's body. The circuit court excluded several autopsy photographs. On the eight autopsy photographs that it admitted, it found that they supported the forensic pathologist's testimony, helped explain the autopsy process, and illustrated the victim's injuries and her manner of death.
Bennett challenges the admission of the photographs under Arkansas Rule of Evidence 403, which states that relevant evidence "may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence." We have held that the admission of photographs is a matter left to the sound discretion of the circuit court, and we will not reverse absent an abuse of that discretion. Evans v. State, 2015 Ark. 240, at 4, 464 S.W.3d 916, 918.
When photographs are helpful to explain testimony, they are ordinarily admissible. Evans, 2015 Ark. 240, at 4, 464 S.W.3d at 918. The mere fact that a photograph is inflammatory or cumulative is not, standing alone, sufficient reason to exclude it. Id., 464 S.W.3d at 918. Even the most gruesome photographs may be admissible if they assist the trier of fact in any of the following ways: (1) by shedding light on some issue; (2) by proving a necessary element of the case; (3) by enabling a witness to testify more effectively; (4) by corroborating testimony; or (5) by enabling jurors to better understand the testimony. Id., 464 S.W.3d at 919. Other acceptable purposes include showing the condition of the victim's body, the probable type or location of the injuries, and the position in which the body was discovered. Id., 464 S.W.3d at 919. If a photograph serves no valid purpose and can only result in inflaming the passions of the jury, it is inadmissible. Marcyniuk v. State, 2010 Ark. 257, at 13, 373 S.W.3d 243, 252.
In Berry v. State, 290 Ark. 223, 227, 718 S.W.2d 447, 450 (1986), on which Bennett relies, we rejected a "carte blanche acceptance" by the circuit court of graphic and repetitive pictures. We stated that "[t]he analysis should firmly emphasize the need for the trial court to carefully weigh the probative value of the photographs against their prejudicial nature, rather than promoting a general rule of admissibility which essentially allows automatic acceptance of all the photographs of the victim and crime scene the prosecution can offer." Id. at 227-28, 718 S.W.2d at 450. Subsequently, in Marcyniuk, 2010 Ark. 257, at 14-15, 373 S.W.3d at 253, we affirmed the admission of seventeen crime-scene and autopsy photographs of the victim's body. There, the circuit court "carefully examined each photograph offered for admission[,] weighed the appropriate balancing test[,] exercised considerable discretion and restraint in deciding what photographs to admit[, and] individually pointed out its basis for allowing in each photograph[.]" Id., 373 S.W.3d at 253.
Here, the facts are distinguishable from those in Berry because, in Berry, we rejected the circuit court's carte blanche acceptance of graphic and repetitive photographs. Instead, as in Marcyniuk, the circuit court here ruled separately on the admissibility of each photograph, giving its basis for the photograph's admission, and it excluded several photographs in the process. Thus, we hold that the circuit court did not abuse its discretion admitting these sixteen crime-scene and autopsy photographs, and we affirm.
III. Rule 4-3(i)
Because Bennett received a sentence of life imprisonment, this court, in compliance with Arkansas Supreme Court Rule 4-3(i), has examined the record for all objections, motions, and requests made by either party that were decided adversely to Bennett. No prejudicial error has been found.
John H. Bradley, Chief Public Defender; and Rodney Chedister, Deputy Public Defender, for appellant.
Leslie Rutledge, Att'y Gen., by: Christopher R. Warthen, Ass't Att'y Gen., for appellee. | {
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« Sir Dark Invader Vs The Fanglord
Jon Langford: Gold Brick »
Gold Brick – Review
From: http://www.neumu.net/fortyfour/
The Mekons. The Waco Brothers. Pine Valley Cosmonauts. Three Johns. Ship & Pilot Band. The common denominator is, of course, Jon Langford, a one-man roots-music phenomenon who can be in three bands before breakfast and still have a few hours for painting before his radio show. Yet though he is a busy guy, his third solo album shows all the marks of careful consideration and time well spent. Gold Brick is relaxed and excellent, the kind of record that buries its skill deep within the fabric of the music, so that hardly any of the effort shows.
Part of that comes from the quality of Langford's band, which includes his Waco bass player, Alan Doughty, and more occasional collaborators like John Rice, Pat Brennan, Dan Massey and Jean Cook. Brennan's keyboard work is particularly fine, from the swell of organ and barroom piano of "Little Bit of Help" to the radiant piano trills of the title track. The string arrangements are quite good, too, adding melancholic sweetness to "Buy It Now" and vibrating tension to "Salty Dog." And the guitar work is subtly, unshowoffishly wonderful, from the Spanish drama of "Workingman's Palace" to the slashing chords of "All Roads Lead Back to Me" to the twitchy, palm-muted strut of "Gorilla & the Maiden."
Gold Brick is subtitled "Or Lies of the Great Explorers or Columbus at Guantanamo Bay," slipping listeners a broad hint at the disc's backward-looking content. Nearly every song is charged with nostalgia, as Langford, born in Wales, schooled in Leeds, a traveler all his life and currently living in Chicago, ponders the pull of home in a fractured world. In "Workingman's Palace" he finds shelter in a corner bar, where an Old Style neon light shines its welcome. In "All Roads Lead Back to Me" he recognizes himself and his audience as the only constant in a life of wandering. And in the title track, even the saccharine words on a greeting card are enough to make him cry, as "You recycle some life from the past/ With attention to detail, so rigid, so futile, consuming it all." When he finishes the album with "Lost in America," telling us that "Columbus fell down on his knees/ So weak from sailing on the seas/ He thought he was in the East Indies/ But he was lost in America," we know that he is speaking not just for the famous explorer, but himself and all of us at midlife, wondering how we got here.
This is a very consistent album, with every song bringing its own specific pleasures, but still, three stand out. "Workingman's Palace" draws you in immediately with its luminous guitar line, catches you with a chorus that sticks immediately and lodges permanently, and breaks your heart with its gently melancholy lyrics. It's the kind of song that makes you long for home, wherever it is, for reasons that you can't quite put your finger on, and its wonderful piano break, mid-song, just seals the deal. "Gorilla and the Maiden" is an entirely different beast, reminding you perhaps of Strummer's "Coma Girl" with its choked guitar line. It's held back, restrained, about to explode, and it finally does, leading into the longed-for release and abandon. And finally, "Lost in America," the song that Langford wrote for NPR's This American Life and which, most likely, was the seed from which Gold Brick eventually grew, ends the album in triumphant style.
Skill counts. Experience matters. It takes an old pro to make the hard things seem easy… and Langford does just this in Gold Brick.
by Jennifer Kelly
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/life/entertainment/news-article.aspx?storyid=51821
Jon Langford's Gold Brick
by Paul Zimmerman
First Coast News
Jon Langford is an artist, period. This guy is so busy he has his hands in practically every medium known to man. Whether it's as an artist, writer, musician,producer, member of the Mekons or being a Waco Brother, Jon Langford has just about done everything there is to do when it comes to communicating ideas.
He's one busy Welshman that has truly reached beyond his home and done more and experienced more than most of us could ever hope to. For this reason, Langford has a unique perspective on the world. He's definitely a renaissance man and he's probably one of the most creative people around today.
On his latest album, Gold Brick Langford takes on the role of a solo artist and never really loses a beat. It's a rootsy album that explores the blues, Americana, folk, and even bits of Caribbean music.
Langford's Welsh accent meshes well over the multitude of instrumentation used throughout Gold Brick. The way he rolls certain consonants is truly amazing. For someone who isn't American by birth, this is one heck of an Americana album.
After about four songs into Gold Brick its obvious that Langford is more than a talented musician he's also a brilliant wordsmith that weaves beguiling tales. Whether it's the slightly cynical "But It Now,� or the pastoral ode to age, "Tall Ships,� Gold Brick is as intriguing as it is entertaining.
Along with his music career, John Langford also finds time to be a critical artist. His paintings are brilliant looks into the past w/an edge that hits at home and makes you think. In celebration of his work, Langford recently released a book entitled, Nashville Radio: Art, Words, and Music. The book reproduces 215 paintings and etchings, along with lyrics, and even has a bit about the artist himself. It's a brilliant book and shows that John Langford is an amazingly talented guy. His insights are witty and biting and his story about the death of country music is truly hilarious. The book also comes with a CD featuring 18 of the songs in the book.
Whether it's art or music or the written word, John Langford is truly a talent that deserves to be a household name. His insights and ways with color, music, and words are fantastic and something everyone should at least check out.
http://www.citypages.com/databank/27/1314/article14108.asp
Jon Langford's American discoveries
Jon Langford's 'Lofty on Charmer'
At the moment, the collective unconscious of Americais the sound of her tired, huddled masses steppingback from the breakneck pace of freedom and saying,"What the fuck have we become?" From Terrence Malick's The New World to Bernard-Henry Levy's American Vertigo to the Enron crooks and their like-minded CEO in the White House pep talking the troops at the employee picnic, the mirror has been turned on you and me, and what it says is that we've got nothing to fear but us ourselves.
Growing up in Wales, musician, painter, and activist Jon Langford got his impression of America primarily from the "cultural imperialism" of U.S. television, specifically the cathode-ray dreams of Bonanza and High Chaparral. While polite pre-punk Britain slumbered outside, and his mates' parents languished on the dole, Langford watched gun-toting men riding horses in the wild, wild West, making up a nation on the fly. He traveled to America with the first incarnation of his band the Mekons when he was 20 years old. The Mekons played New York just after John Lennon was murdered, and they became enamored with the liberation of punk rock and the promise of America.
"The cowboy myth was sort of this weird civilian uniform you could buy into," he says. "You could come to America and buy a cowboy hat and a cowboy shirt and Western wear at a Mexican Western-wear shop in Chicago. It was kind of like going to East Berlin and buying a hammer-and-sickle hat: 'I'm not a total tourist. I've been there, and I've done that.' But it was easier to do that in America than East Berlin."
Langford is 48 years old now. He moved to Chicago when he was 27, after his sophomore band, the Three Johns, played there, and he has become something of an alt-country pioneer with the Pine Valley Cosmonauts and the Waco Brothers, two more of his many projects. Actually, "alt-country" and "pioneer" low-balls it. To him, at least: In the promotional materials for his new solo album Gold Brick (or Lies of the Great Explorers or Columbus at Guantánamo Bay, Langford describes himself as "an exile and an immigrant, a fish out of water, just one of the millions who rode the wind and woke up one day in America."
"When I was a kid, it was total absorption of all things America," he says from his home in Chicago, as he and his wife tuck their kids in for the night. He'd just returned from doing his radio show Eclectic Company on WXRT-FM, and was starting to prepare for this weekend's multimedia presentation at Walker Art Center, "The Executioner's Last Songs," based on the three-volume Bloodshot Records collection of the same name. Along with Mekons singer Sally Timms, violinist Jean Cook, DJ Barry Mills, bassist Tony Maimone, and drummer Dan Massey, Langford says his autobiographical benefit piece will seek to make sense out of the greed and violence that fuels his adopted country.
"Sometimes you feel like you're preaching to the choir, which is why with this show I deliberately didn't do a piece of agitprop musical theater stating why the death penalty is a bad thing," he says. "I tried to do something that was more tangential, more thoughtful, that raises other issues. One of the lawyers I met who's been responsible for getting a lot of people off death row said to me that support for the death penalty is 'a mile wide and an inch deep.'
"And it's true. The more you raise the issue, and talk to people, the less they like the idea of it. That goes as far as George Ryan, the [Illinois] Republican governor who cleared death row because he realized it was a broken system and he said he didn't want innocent blood on his hands."
America's bloody beginnings and the roots music it spawned have been at the heart of Langford's work. The first song he learned to play was Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues." His paintings are haunted by Day of the Dead-dipped images of Cash, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Buck Owens, and others, and his bands have made some of the most wicked-raw country-punk the land has ever known. His latest is in step with all of it, including the incendiary immigrant song "Lost in America" as well as the uncharacteristically optimistic "Anything Can Happen."
"Things seem so bad now, and there's all sorts of pressure," he says. "You keep a lid on that kind of pressure and it's gonna blow at some point. Things have a habit of changing drastically very suddenly."
Langford knows as much firsthand. He was there when punk rock overthrew dreary old England and gave voice to his generation. Before that, he sat in his home and watched men from America land on the moon. He stayed up all night watching the black and white images, and believed that by the early 21st century we'd be living on other planets.
"There was a lot of optimism about America: cowboys and spacemen," he says. "Then I got older, and we saw Nixon as a total criminal who wanted to blow up the world or something. Then Reagan and Thatcher formed this unholy alliance. Looking back on it, the way things are now, it's all sort of quaint. We were actually shocked back then by the idea of warfare; now it's just perpetual wallpaper to your life.
"When I was a student, people were very hostile to American foreign policy. I still get shit from people for living here when I go back to England. They say, 'How can you live there, especially with Bush?' They think it's a bit of a sellout for a good socialist lad. But I think people who aren't into music have a very bad view of America. Whereas for us, the explosion of music that happened in the 20th century more than makes up for all the terrible imperialism."
He laughs at his Pollyanna-side summary and concludes, "It's a love-hate thing. We were fascinated by America, and the idea of regionalism that was in all those records. And then we were incredibly disappointed when we got here."
First Appeared in The Music Box, February 2006, Volume 13, #2
Written by John Metzger
Busy co-fronting The Waco Brothers, reuniting The Mekons, working with The Pine Valley Cosmonauts to put an end to the death penalty, and constructing a series of contemporary paintings, it took Jon Langford eight years to concoct his second (proper) solo outing All the Fame of Lofty Deeds. Emboldened by the accolades that he received for the slapdash effort, which was recorded in a week, he didn't wait nearly as long to unveil his third foray Gold Brick. On the surface, the albums are strikingly similar — right down to their tuneful melodies, populist politics, and Procol Harum covers. What's different, however, is Langford's approach. Where All the Fame of Lofty Deeds was imbued with countrified simplicity, Gold Brick — the full title of which is Gold Brick (or Lies of The Great Explorers or Columbus at Guantanamo Bay) — is adorned with lustrous, more luxuriant, and, at times, downright majestic textures. Although he avoids the employment of an actual symphony, he manages to mimic one by fusing fiddle with the plucking of mandolin and dobro to give Invisible Man an orchestrated ambience, while in E Street Band fashion, he blends the grandeur of Phil Spector with the street-corner poetry of Bob Dylan to erect the explosive All Roads Lead Back to Me. Elsewhere, the combination of snaking guitar and elegant piano on Workingman's Palace draws to mind a collaboration between Mark Knopfler and Steve Nieve, while Little Bit of Help keeps one foot firmly planted in the roadhouse, even as its backing vocals turn Beatle- or, at the very least, Costello-esque. With so much on his plate, there undoubtedly have been times when Langford's songs have been written from a formulaic perspective, but on Gold Brick, he routinely shatters his mold and ambitiously redefines himself as a purveyor of carefully crafted folk-pop rather than as a conduit for his customarily country-tinged, Clash-driven swagger. *** ½
Jim Musser
(c) Copyright 2006, Iowa City Press-Citizen. All Rights Reserved.
A Welshman with a fine arts degree from the University of Leeds, Jon Langford co-founded The Mekons (a spectacularly rough 'n' tumble crew dubbed "the most revolutionary group in the history of rock 'n' roll" by the estimable Lester Bangs) in 1977.
Langford relocated to Chicago in 1992; since then, he's crammed 48 hours into every day, sustaining incarnations of The Mekons while fronting country-roots devotees The Pine Valley Cosmonauts as well as The Waco Brothers ("half Clash/half Cash"), collated three volumes of anti-death penalty fundraisers ("The Executioner's Last Songs"), squeezed out three brilliant solo discs, produced many other artists' works, added his singular artwork to dozens of records/projects and sat in with or promoted countless other Chi-town area artists.
His splendid new "Gold Brick" (due in stores Tuesday) addresses the clash of America's historical mythology with the realities of free-swinging power grabs, exploitation of the working class, the perverse implications of consumerism on the upwardly-reaching middle class and, ultimately, how all of our souls are damaged in the process.
Political? Absolutely.
But this sharp-witted, cerebral artist with the honey/gruff, everyman voice presents it all with well-paced, oft-sparking rock/pop/folk arrangements (including a deft re-working of Procol Harum's "Salty Dog") to seal the deal and sell the tale.
A powerful, penetrating record.
– Jim Musser
Posted in Disc Reviews | {
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Anyone able to explain this part of arch/arm/os/nutinit.c to me?
* WDT, we have no idea to disable but clear it.
* The watchdog is enabled after processor reset. Disable it.
above can be removed, right?
must be configurable, because WDT_MR can be written once only. | {
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В соответствии с проектом Викивиды род подразделяют на следующие виды:
Тинеины | {
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Brief Fact Summary. Filburn, an Ohio farmer who harvested wheat for home consumption and for sale, was fined $117 for violating a federal scheme devised to limit wheat production. Filburn sued arguing that the scheme was unconstitutional insofar as it regulated wheat produced for local use.
Synopsis of Rule of Law. Activities local in character that have an economic effect on interstate commerce can be regulated by Congress under the Commerce Clause.
Facts. Pursuant to the Agricultural Adjustment Act (the Act), the Secretary of Agriculture set a quota of wheat production to bring the supply of wheat into balance with the demand for it. Under the quota, every farmer was given an annual allotment of wheat he could produce. Filburn, a farmer in Ohio who raised small amounts of wheat for home consumption and for commercial use, exceeded his allotment by 239 bushels and was fined $117. Thereupon, Filburn sued the government to enjoin the enforcement of the penalty.
Issue. Was the quota subjecting Filburn to wheat production restrictions unconstitutional inasmuch as Congress has no power to regulate activities local in nature? | {
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Ваке — топоним
Ваке — коммуна в Германии
Ваке — село в Абхазии/Грузии
Ваке — азербайджанское село в Дманисском районе Грузии
Ваке — посёлок в Японии в уезде Ваке префектуры Окаяма
Ваке — район Тбилиси.
Ваке-парк — самый крупный парк в Тбилиси
Ваке — уезд в Японии в префектуре Окаяма | {
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package io.fabric8.etcd.core;
import com.google.common.util.concurrent.Futures;
import io.fabric8.etcd.api.Response;
import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
import org.apache.http.concurrent.FutureCallback;
import java.util.concurrent.Future;
public class AsynchronousExecution implements Execution<Future<Response>> {
private static final FutureCallback<HttpResponse> FUTURE_CALLBACK = new FutureCallback<HttpResponse>() {
@Override
public void completed(HttpResponse result) {
}
@Override
public void failed(Exception ex) {
}
@Override
public void cancelled() {
}
};
@Override
public Future<Response> execute(final OperationContext context, Operation operation) {
Future<HttpResponse> httpResponseFuture = context.getHttpClient().execute(operation.createRequest(context), FUTURE_CALLBACK);
return Futures.lazyTransform(httpResponseFuture, context.getConverter());
}
}
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaGithub"
} |
Q: PDO insert based on array keys as column names I have a PDO insert statement that updates a database table from a form submission. There are many fields. I have purposely used the same column names as the html input names. Is there a cleaner way of laying out this code? Currently I have 30+ $_POST variables and would prefer a cleaner looking solution via a loop of some kind.
This is my current implementation, I've only included a few fields for example's sake.
$stmt = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO myTable SET Col1 = ?, ColABC = ?, Col123 = ?, ColFoo = ?, ColDEF = ?");
$stmt->execute(
array($_POST['Col1'], $_POST['ColABC'], $_POST['Col123'], $_POST['ColFoo'], $_POST['ColDEF'])
);
A: Try something like following
$postarr = array('Col1', 'ColABC', 'Col123', 'ColFoo', 'ColDEF'); //<---- defined all the form elements you like to get from post
$sql = ''; $param = array();
foreach($postarr as $k){
$sql .= $k.'=:'.$k.','; // setting up placeholders for columns we are goign to update or get value from $_POST data
$param[$k] = $_POST[$k]; // setting up param array argument for execute() function
}
$sql = substr($sql,0,-1); // <--- remove last ,
$stmt = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO myTable SET " . $sql);
$stmt->execute($param);
A: The following is not tested but you could perhaps try something like this.
<form id='sqlpost' method='post' action='/test/target.php'>
<h1>SQL Post</h1>
<input type='text' name='user' value='fred'/>
<input type='text' name='name' value='frederick'/>
<input type='text' name='email' value='[email protected]'/>
<input type='text' name='age' value='21'/>
<input type='text' name='sex' value='male'/>
<input type="submit" name="subform" value="Submit"/>
</form>
/*
target.php
----------
*/
if( $_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD']=='POST' ){
$known=array('user','email','name');
$postdata=array();
foreach( $_POST as $field => $value ){
if( in_array( $field, $known ) ) $postdata[ $field ]=$value;
}
$keys=array_keys( $postdata );
$values=array_values( $postdata );
$sql='insert into myTable (`'.implode('`,`',$keys).'`) values (:'.implode(':',$keys).')';
echo $sql;
}
A: get all value into an array $input. and use list() as followed.
$InputArray['cal1'] = $_POST['cal1'];
$InputArray['collabc'] = $_POST['collabc'];
$InputArray['col123'] = $_POST['col123'];
$InputArray['clofoo'] = $_POST['clofoo'];
$InputArray['coldef'] = $_POST['coldef'];
if (count($inputArray) > 0) {
while (list($key, $val) = each($inputArray)) {
if(!empty($val)){
$fields.= $key . ',';
$valset.= "'". $val ."',";
}
}
}
$fields = trim($fields, ',');
$valset = trim($valset, ',');
$sql = "INSERT INTO $tableName ($fields) VALUES ($valset)";
$stmt = $this->dbCon->prepare($sql);
$stmt->execute($inputArray);
| {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaStackExchange"
} |
Hermitage, Pa.– In a competitive auto retailing economy, car dealerships always look for a competitive edge. Mel Grata Chevrolet/Toyota has found climate-controlled indoor air comfort greatly improves customer satisfaction especially during cold Pennsylvania winters.
Instead of fighting inclement weather, Mel Grata customers now drive-through one of two new climate-controlled, service/staging areas featuring doorway air curtains. The air curtains, also referred to as "air doors," efficiently separate the indoor/outdoor environments and maintain indoor temperatures especially with perpetual door openings during morning rush hours.
The newly remodeled Chevrolet three-bay service space was expanded by 2,000-square-foot. The separate 1,500-square-foot Toyota service area is a recently-built two-bay, four-door space. Both buildings adjoin the main 75,000-square-foot dealership's showroom and offices complex. Industrial Direct Drive 12 Series air curtains with three-speed motors manufactured by Berner International, New Castle, Pa., seal each of the seven 12 x 12-foot doorways with a controlled air stream to protect against outdoor air infiltration during hundreds of daily door cycles.
Air Curtains not only create a comfortable environment but are also projected to pay for themselves within two years in energy costs, according to a Berner energy audit. The savings accentuate the dealership's green construction efforts that also included high-efficiency HVAC systems and recycled building materials. Enough green strategies, including the air curtains, have been instituted into the two service buildings that the project could potentially earn a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) certification, which is a current trend in auto retailing today, according to Grata.
Berner International's sales staff was instrumental in training the HVAC contractor, General Maintenance Contractors, New Castle, Pa., and Grata's maintenance staff on a coordinated installation effort. For example, the mechanisms and rails of overhead doors common to service bay operations can be problematic by obstructing air curtain discharge. Berner wall and extension brackets resolved this issue by allowing the air curtains to be installed far enough away from the wall and past the door track as to not impede door rollups. This accessory does not impede the air curtain from creating the proper volume, velocity, and uniformity (VVU) that is critical to doorway air sealing performance.
Air curtains consist of a metal cabinet that's typically mounted above the length a doorway. Air is drawn through the air intake and accelerated by a fan into a plenum and distributed along the full length of the discharge nozzle. The angle of the nozzle and their aerofoil-shaped vanes are critical for creating a uniform air stream and minimal turbulence. Proper air discharge creates a jet stream that meets the floor near the threshold where approximately 80% of the air is returned to the building. Sizing an air curtain is critical to proper performance. Sizing factors include door dimensions, type of use, climate, prevailing winds, exterior temperature, and building pressurization.
Accurate manufacturer performance specifications are also critical to the effectiveness of the air curtains, therefore, General Maintenance Contractors chose air curtains certified by the Air Movement & Control Association–International, Arlington Heights, III., (AMCA), a trade association dedicated to certifying manufacturers' air performance statistics on all types of air movement devices including blowers, fans, motors, and air curtains.
AMCA performance certification combined with Berner's standard in-house powder-coating with colors aesthetically matching Chevrolet and Toyota's corporate colors in the interior design helped steer Grata away from another air curtain brand, according to Arthur Arena, president, General Maintenance Contractors.
HVAC and refrigeration specialists, General Maintenance Contractors, designed/built the systems that provide the heating and air conditioning environment that the air curtains help preserve.
The Toyota building, which includes service, waiting area, offices, and other rooms, features four high-efficiency packaged HVAC rooftop units by the Luxaire–div. of Johnson Controls, Norman, Okla. They range from 4-7.5 tons and include 180,000-BTU gas-fired heating. For additional air comfort near doors, Arena also specified and ceiling-mounted three 100,000-BTU HeatStar tube-style radiant heaters by Enerco, Cleveland, Ohio.
The Chevrolet building has a similar arrangement of packaged rooftop units and radiant heaters. A temperature controller by Honeywell, Minneapolis, Minn., controls all the equipment and maintains temperature through energy-efficient staging programmed by General Maintenance Contractors.
The project has created a comfortable and very aesthetic environment to bring cars and authorize service arrangements, while also efficiently using energy.
"We've had no air comfort complaints from customers or employees even on the coldest winter days, and that's good for business," said Grata. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
Kerry warns over Russian plan for Syria: 'we won't wait for long'
Philippe Naughton, Ben Hoyle and Catherine Philp
September 10 2013, 12:44pm, The Times
The United States is waiting to see a "real" and "verifiable" plan from Russia for the removal of chemical weapons from Syria but will not accept any delaying tactics, the US Secretary of State said today.
"We're waiting for that proposal. But we're not waiting for long," John Kerry told a hearing of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.
"President Obama will take a hard look at it. But it has to be swift, it has to be real, it has to be verifiable. It cannot be a delaying tactic."
Mr Kerry was speaking as Britain, the United States and France were set to table a new UN Security Council resolution in the wake of the Russian proposal that Syria should hand over its… | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} |
UK Government planning 'slow demise of devolution in hope no one will notice' claims report
Westminster. Picture by Maurice (CC BY 2.0) The Senedd building. Holyrrod by Kim Traynor (CC BY-SA 3.0). Stormont by Robert Paul Young (CC BY 2.0).
The UK Government is planning the "slow demise of devolution in the hope that no-one will notice" according to a report by the Scottish Government.
Constitution Secretary Michael Russell said that the UK Government has begun re-centralising powers in Westminster under the guise of delivering Brexit.
The report – After Brexit: The UK Internal Market Act & Devolution – says the UK Government and Parliament now regularly legislate in devolved policy areas.
It also notes that the UK Internal Market Act allows the UK Government to impose standards in a large number of areas that are devolved.
"This is not a big bang abolition – it is instead the slow demise of devolution in the hope that no-one will notice," the report says.
"The UK Government has signalled its desire is to 'undo' devolution and it is now repeatedly using its majority at Westminster to impose laws in devolved policy areas."
The report comes after the Welsh Government have also voiced concerns about what they see as a rolling back of devolution by the UK Government.
In September of last year, First Minister Mark Drakeford slammed the Internal Market ill as an "enormous power grab" which the Welsh Government will oppose "every step of the way".
"This Bill will do more to hasten the break-up of the Union than anything else since devolution began. We'll oppose it every step of the way," he added.
The Senedd subsequently withheld consent on the Bill in December. | {
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} |
Bletchley Park screen Ada film and Sydney Padua releases iPad app
Posted on September 15, 2011 September 15, 2011 by Suw
More exciting news about Ada Lovelace Day!
First up: Sydney Padua, who for the first ever Ada Lovelace Day created the wonderful webcomic, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, has announced that she is releasing that very first episode as a free iPad app. You'll also have the option to buy another webisode, The Client, for, and I quote "I dunno, a pound or something, haven't decided". The app is scheduled for release in the iTunes store on Ada Lovelace Day, 7 October.
Over the last two and a half years, Lovelace and Babbage has turned into one of the best web comics on the internet, attracting a loyal following. Although I may be biased, I would say that it's a webcomic well worth supporting!
Secondly: The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park will be screening the film To Dream Tomorrow on Saturday 8 October, free for all visitors to the museum.
To Dream Tomorrow: Ada Byron Lovelace
To celebrate Ada Lovelace Day 2011 the National Museum of Computing is proud to present Flare Productions film about Ada Lovelace, followed by a discussion with the Directors John Fuegi and Jo Francis.
'To Dream Tomorrow' is the story of Ada Byron Lovelace (1815-1852) and her contribution to computing, a hundred years before the start of the computer age. Daughter of a mathematically gifted mother and the 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know' poet Lord Byron, Ada was 17 when she began studying a prototype mechanical calculator designed by mathematician Charles Babbage. By the time she was 27, she had moved beyond her famous contemporaries and predecessors such as Leibniz & Pascal, to describe universal computing much as we understand it today. Alan Turing, who also worked at Bletchley Park, was familiar with Lovelace's work.
The screening is kindly made possible by a grant from the School of Humanities, Kingston University, London.
To Dream Tomorrow: Ada Byron Lovelace, Color, 52 minutes. Directed and Produced by John Füegi and Jo Francis, 2003.
Curated by Ele Carpenter, Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Date: 8 October 2011. The Museum will be open 1pm – 5pm and the film will screened at 2.30pm
Location: The National Museum of Computing, Block H, Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes, MK3 6EB
Tickets: Entry to the museum costs £5 / £2.50 concessions, or £10 for an annual pass. The film screening is free once you are in the museum. There is no need to book.
Find out more on The National Museum of Computing or Flare Productions websites.
Remember, if you're holding an event around Ada Lovelace Day, please let me know!
← Ada Lovelace Day: Events and new website
New website and Pod Delusion podcast → | {
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} |
HITD 028
< Back to releases
▲ THE OSCILLATION – Monographic
01. Monographic (03:05)
02. Take Us To The Moon (05:52)
03. Let It Be The End (04:23)
04. Truth In Reverse (07:19)
05. Another Attack (05:17)
06. Lonely People (08:44)
07. Alignment Zone (08:42)
07. Alignment Zone extended version (CD/DL only) (13:01)
08. Lonely People (CD/DL only) (04:51)
09. The End Of Conscious Thought (CD/DL only) (03:55)
Cat #: HITD 028
1st pressing – 1000 copies (400 white / 600 black)
2nd pressing – 500 copies (red transparent)
CD – 1000 copies digipack
Co-release with All Time Low
Release date: 11th March 2016
Written, recorded and produced by D.Castellanos
Mastered by Carim Clasmann at The Fishtank
Artwork by Julian Hand
Layout by Floriane Miny
Essentially the project of multi-instrumentalist and producer Demian Castellanos, The Oscillation was formed in London in 2006 with the release of the debut seven-inch and Rough Trade Records 'single of the week'; New Way To Feel on Bee And Smoke records. Drawing inspiration from The Cure, Loop, Can, The Durutti Column, PIL, Spacemen 3, Popol Vuh and Chrome, they've since gone on to release three critically acclaimed studio albums; Out Of Phase (2007), Veils (2011) and From Tomorrow (2013). Over the last few years The Oscillation have also appeared on several highly rated compilation albums and provided remixes for the likes of Simian Mobile Disco, Telepathe, Nick Nicely and most recently the Fat White Family.
The new long player Monographic sees the multi-talented Castellanos, who sings, play bass, guitars and synths on the album, joined by Valentina Magaletti on drums in what is without doubt the band's most accomplished and outstanding set of songs to date.
BRECHT AMEEL
INSIGHT creative studio
© Hands in the dark | {
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} |
Hi all! Thanks for visiting Cute Culture's blog. We are the exact same blog but have changed names and url's. Please visit us at foxandbeans.wordpress.com for all the illustrations you love! 😀 ❤ Thanks for visiting! Hope to see you soon! | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
According to the General Social Survey on Canadians' Safety (Victimization), there were 22 incidents of sexual assault for every 1,000 Canadians aged 15 and older in 2014. This represented approximately 636,000 self-reported incidents of sexual assault.
The rate of self-reported sexual assault in 2014 remained unchanged from 2004; however, declines were noted over the same time period for all other types of violent and non-violent crime measured by the General Social Survey on Victimization.
A higher risk of sexual assault was noted among those who were women, young, Aboriginal, single, and homosexual or bisexual, and those who had poorer mental health. In addition, individuals who had certain experiences—childhood abuse and homelessness—and more evening activities outside the home also had a higher risk of sexual assault.
Among the three types of sexual assault measured by the General Social Survey on Victimization in 2014, seven in ten self-reported incidents were unwanted sexual touching, two in ten were sexual attacks and one in ten was sexual activity where the victim was unable to consent.
Victims of sexual assault often had negative perceptions of their neighbourhood, lower levels of trust in others and less confidence in the police, compared to those who were not sexually assaulted. They were also less satisfied with their personal safety from crime and less likely to feel safe in certain situations.
Overall, sexual assault offenders were most often men, acting alone and under the age of 35. Just over half of victims knew the person who sexually assaulted them.
Most often, offenders were a friend, acquaintance or neighbour, then a stranger. Of all sexual assault incidents perpetrated by someone other than a spouse, one in twenty was reported to the police, compared to one in three incidents of other types of crime measured by the General Social Survey on Victimization.
There were more than 635,000 incidents of sexual assault reported by Canadians in 2014. In the vast majority (87%) of these incidents, the victims were women.
1 in 10 (9%) was sexual activity where the victim was unable to consent due to, for example, drugs, intoxication or manipulation.
Results show that there were approximately 22 incidents of sexual assault for every 1,000 Canadians aged 15 and older in 2014.
The rate of self-reported sexual assault in 2014 was unchanged from the rate reported a decade earlier in 2004. This was a marked contrast to all other types of violent and non-violent crime measured by the GSS on Victimization over the same time period. For instance, rates of self-reported robbery and physical assault—the other violent crimes measured by the survey—declined by 39% and 35% respectively.
While the rate of self-reported sexual assault was unchanged over the decade, police-reported sexual assault declined by 20% in Canada. This demonstrates that, due to a range of factors, police-reported data can underestimate the nature and extent of sexual assault.
As has been the case historically, few sexual assault victims turned to the police. Specifically, 1 in 20 incidents of sexual assault was reported to the police in 2014, a pattern that was unchanged from 2004.
The most common reasons for not reporting to the police were that the victim perceived the crime as minor and not worth taking the time to report (71%), that the incident was a private or personal matter and handled informally (67%), and that no one was harmed during the incident (63%).
In addition, more than 4 in 10 (45%) sexual assault victims stated they did not report the incident to the police because they did not want the hassle of dealing with the police. Similar proportions did not turn to the police because the victims thought the police would not have considered the incident important enough (43%), because of a lack of evidence (43%) and because they believed the offender would not have been adequately punished (40%).
Rates of self-reported sexual assault varied. Overall, men were far less likely to be sexually assaulted than women. Among women, the rate of sexual assault was highest for those who rated their mental health as 'fair or poor' (204 per 1,000 population) and those who self-identified as homosexual or bisexual (155), followed by young women aged 15 to 24 (134), and women who were students (127), Aboriginal (113) and single (108). These rates were all significantly higher than the overall rates for women (37) and for men (5).
Childhood abuse—that is, physical abuse or sexual abuse experienced before the age of 15 perpetrated by an adult aged 18 or older—has been identified as a serious social issue that has the potential to affect victims into adulthood.
Canadians who experienced either type of childhood abuse reported a rate of sexual assault that was over two times higher than those who had not been abused (36 versus 15 per 1,000 population). This difference was more pronounced among those who had experienced childhood sexual abuse, as those individuals had a rate that was about four times higher than those who had not been sexually abused (70 versus 17). A difference was also noted between women and men: among those who had experienced either type of childhood abuse, the rate of sexual assault was over six times higher among women than men (65 versus 10).
Victims of sexual assault experience a range of negative impacts. Most commonly, victims reported feeling angry (35%), or upset, confused or frustrated (21%) after the sexual assault incident. One in four (25%) victims reported that they had difficulty carrying out everyday activities as a result of their victimization. About one in six (15%) victims of sexual assault reported experiencing three or more longer-term emotional consequences, indicating the possibility of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Victims of sexual assault were, in general, less satisfied with their personal safety from crime. They were also less likely to feel safe in certain situations—when using public transportation alone after dark, when walking alone after dark and when home alone after dark—compared with those who were not sexually assaulted and those who were victims of physical assault.
Sexual assault victims were also less likely to report that they lived in a welcoming community. They were more likely to report that they thought crime in their neighbourhood was higher than in other areas in Canada and that they believed crime had increased in their neighbourhood over the past five years. Victims of sexual assault had lower levels of trust in neighbours and strangers, and less confidence in the police.
Nearly all (96%) incidents of self-reported sexual assault were perpetrated by someone other than a current or former spouse. Offenders in these incidents were most often identified as men (94%), acting alone (79%) and under the age of 35 (68%). In addition, sexual assault offenders were more commonly a friend, acquaintance or neighbour (52%) than a stranger (44%).
This article is based on the 2014 cycle of the General Social Survey (GSS) on Canadians' Safety (Victimization). The target population was Canadians aged 15 and older living in the provinces, excluding those living full-time in institutions. In 2014, the survey was also conducted in the three territories using a different sampling design. In 2014, the total sample size for the provinces and territories was 35,167 respondents.
The 2004 GSS on Victimization collected information from respondents in the provinces only, while the 2014 GSS on Victimization collected information from respondents in the provinces and territories. For comparisons over time, 2014 data from Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are excluded where 2004 data are discussed.
In 2014, nearly all (96%) incidents of self-reported sexual assault were perpetrated by someone other than a current or former spouse.
Spousal violence includes incidents perpetrated by a current or former spouse or common-law partner. Information about non-spousal violence is collected by incident, whereas information about spousal violence is collected as a grouping of incidents by victim and may include incidents of non-sexual violence.
Spousal violence often involves repeated victimization and it would therefore be too burdensome to ask victims to recall each incident they experienced. It is not possible to provide detail about a specific incident of spousal violence. For this reason, the characteristics of sexual assault offenders and incidents, the emotional and physical consequences of sexual assault, and reporting sexual assault incidents in the context of spousal violence are excluded from this article. Information specific to spousal violence, based on the 2014 GSS on Victimization, can be found in Section 1 "Trends in self-reported spousal violence in Canada, 2014" of the publication Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile, 2014. | {
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Delilah Belle Hamlin Husband, Net Worth, Married, Height, Age, Bio - Delilah Belle Hamlin is a famous model and Instagram star. Delilah Belle Hamlin is also famous by her parents Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin who is a popular Hollywood actor. She has played the American television series named The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
As she is an Instagram star, she has gained 752k followers on her Instagram page by posting 241 photos.
Delilah Belle Hamlin isn't married but she is dating Aidan Reilly since 2014. They are sharing and uploading their photos on the social media sites.
She is the children of the Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin. Her father and mother is the popular actor of Hollywood. She is very lucky that she has a grandfather and grandmother from both sides mother and father.
Born in Los Angles, she holds an American citizenship. Her star sign is Gemini and belongs to the White ethnic group.
Raised up in hometown with her siblings named Dmitri Hamlin and Amelia Hamlin she hasn't shared anything related to her scholastic background and academic qualification.
The gorgeous model and Instagram star Delilah Bella Hamlin stand up with an appealing height of 5 feet 7 inches with the weight of 49kg. She has a well-maintained body weight although her exact body statistics is still unknown.
She looks damn beauty whatever she wears and she also knows how to dress up in the different function and ceremonies. She has a perfect body with an attractive figure which looks great in the low- cut dresses.
She is timeless beauty who has a silky light blonde hair and forest like green eyes that arrest the heart of billion men. A charming girl, she is gifted with all the things that are necessary to be admired and popular.
She has an hourglass physique that she has maintained by doing exercise, yoga and workouts and these activities are done with the help of her personal trainer. She is very conscious about her skin and beauty so, she regularly follows her skin- routine.
She regularly posts her photos by flaunting her bodies in the bikinis on the social media sites especially on the Instagram where she has gained 752k followers.
Delilah Belle Hamlin estimated net worth hasn't been revealed yet. She has a handsome salary although her exact amount of salary is still unknown. She is a young actor who has done a lot of contribution to the film industry at the younger age.
She is living a luxurious life as she is also the children of the popular actor Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin. She is enjoying her parent's net worth as their net worth is estimated in million dollars. She is very famous in social media websites especially on the Instagram where has got 752k followers. | {
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Brand name of small pipe organ made by the Austin Organ Co. of Hartford, Connecticut, 1916.
The Diapason July, 1916, 2.
The Austin Organ Company introduced the Chorophone in June 1916. A small organ designed for the low end of the organ market, it had two manuals and four ranks (Bourdon, Dolce, Open Diapason, and Viole; 316 pipes), which were extended to provide 27 stops ranging in pitch from 16' to 2'. The contract for the first Chorophone, opus 663, for the First Christian Church in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania (OHS Database ID 11739), was signed on July 5, 1916. In all, 129 Chorophones were built. The last contract for a Chorophone was signed on January 8, 1940, opus 2031, for Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church in Washington, Connecticut (OHS Database ID 12959); the string rank in this organ was named Salicional rather than Viole.
Orpha Ochse, Austin Organs ([Richmond, Va.: Organ Historical Society, 2001), 185-87, 562-85 ("Opus List"; Chorophone organs are marked "C," and Special Chorophones are marked "C+").
There are no entries in the database that describe organs by Chorophone. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
As we emerge from pandemic, don't expand a food delivery tax that hurts families, restaurants and drivers
Adam Kovacevich
Stay home, stay healthy, save lives. For the past year, we've been advised to sacrifice the joys of pre-pandemic life for the health of our families and our neighbors. That includes forgoing indoor dining at restaurants and eating at home instead.
So why are lawmakers in Nevada considering a measure, SB 320, that amounts to a permanent food delivery tax on families? After all, Nevadans were and are just following officials' advice.
First, some history. Some delivery-oriented restaurants (think pizza and Chinese food) employ their own delivery drivers. Other restaurants choose to instead utilize third-party delivery services such as DoorDash, Grubhub or Uber Eats. They not only manage a network of drivers, but also provide delivery-related marketing, insurance, background checks, credit card processing services and customer service—depending on what the restaurant needs. These services are funded by a combination of fees paid by the restaurant on each order—which vary based on the level of service provided—and by delivery fees paid by consumers.
Last year, as restaurants saw their sales drop overnight, some local governments including Clark County capped the fees paid by restaurants. These caps may have provided some relief to restaurants' budgets at a desperate time, but they also hit families' pocketbooks—at a time when families were trying to dine safely at home and support local restaurants. That's because, even though restaurants were paying lower fees, delivery services still had to pay drivers, conduct background checks and field customer inquiries — so Nevada families made up the difference by paying even more for their delivery orders in the form of increased prices or local recovery fees.
Policymakers had good intentions, but they didn't foresee the consequences. One Oakland city councilmember who championed the city's fee cap said he didn't realize it would lead to increased prices for consumers. And when prices went up, families started ordering less from restaurants. DoorDash recently reported that restaurant sales volume decreased 4 percent year over year in St. Louis, and dipped 7 percent in Philadelphia—two cities where consumer prices went up because of city-imposed restaurant fee caps.
That didn't just hit restaurants in those cities; it also meant hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wages for delivery drivers. Delivery companies have been forced to reduce service to less populated areas, and sales declines meant less local sales tax generated for cities. Imposing a permanent fee cap in Nevada—as SB320 proposes—would spread these harms across the entire state.
Some state and local officials have suggested that delivery services be prohibited from taking remedial steps to recover their costs. But few of the delivery services are currently profitable businesses, and their goal is to run an economically sustainable three-sided marketplace that benefits consumers, restaurants and drivers.
The war on delivery services has also obscured the lifeline those services have provided to restaurants. More than 80 percent of restaurant managers reported that delivery services kept them from having to lay off staff members or cut hours. But when policymakers inserted themselves to help one party—restaurants—through fee caps, they ended up hurting families, delivery drivers and ultimately restaurants, too.
These fee caps might have felt like a reasonable band-aid a year ago. But now they're leaving a rash for consumers, drivers and even restaurants themselves. So what's a better prescription for helping restaurants rebound?
Gov. Sisolak plans to relax restrictions on indoor dining as early as June 1, which will help. And Rep. Dina Titus recently announced that the Small Business Administration is administering $29 billion in grants to restaurants through the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. Thanks to that program, Nevada restaurant owners are on the path to recovery.
When cities and states imposed fee caps, they did so as temporary measures to respond to the pandemic. They were well-intentioned, but the negative impact is now clear. Nevada should leave the delivery fee cap in the dumpster of 2020, alongside Zoom happy hours, distance learning, and sourdough starters.
Adam Kovacevich is CEO and Founder of the Chamber of Progress (progresschamber.org), a new center-left tech industry policy coalition promoting technology's progressive future. | {
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Hi all! Today I have a very cute art card using one of Rick St. Dennis's Christmas digital image, "Christmas Dress," available at I Brake for Stamps (IBFS). If you are one of those that just have to get your rubber stamps out to feel the thrill (I know that I am), you can also find her in a single rubber stamp or in a sheet of four amazing rubber stamps.
I used Spellbinder's Holly Motifs dies and cut the motifs from Old Olive cardstock. After doing the final assembly for the whole card I added some sparkle with Red Wink of Stella brush markers. I added a few red and green crystals and I think she's ready to show off her new Christmas dress.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope that you stop by our IBFSblog every day. I am sure you can pick up some inspiration from some very talented designers. Check out our IBFS Facebook page for all the happenings at IBFS. I hope everyone has a great week!
Stunning work, Aletha! Your coloring is beyond amazing and your card design is pure perfection! I love the fussy cut layers! It adds such wonderful dimension!
OMG Aletha this is absolutely stunning! I love everything about it. Your coloring is fantastic.
I'm blown away by your artwork! Not only is your beautiful coloring sheer perfection, but to find out you fussy cut that image twice! I'm amazed. The added detail of the swirls in the background give just the right touch. You are a true artist! | {
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} |
About Homeplace
Our Buildings and barns
Recipient Goat Herd at Homeplace
A Working Farm
Our Story: A History of Homeplace >
2019 Review News letter
Log pen barn progression photos
Rent Homeplace
Local Event Services
Spring Plow Day
Fall Heritage Festival
Homesteading Conference >
Homesteading Conference 2023
Review of Homesteading Conference 2022
Music in the Barn >
Theater in the Barn
Student field days
Hours and Contact
volunteer contact
Homestead Conference Sponsor
Fall Heritage Day Sponsorship
Something is always growing at Homeplace!
Looking to the New Year - Big things will be Growing On The Farm in 2023
The Program Director and Board of Directors are excited to announce our plan to make major renovations to the farm starting in 2023 through an upcoming Capital Campaign we are calling: Growing on the Farm.
Homeplace on Green River was established as a non-profit in 2001. It has grown each year in the 21 years that it has operated. We have added programs, events, activities, and projects one at a time through the dedication of a wonderful board of directors. Until 2020, the farm was managed solely by the board. In the two years since being joined by a program Director, Homeplace has worked to strengthen our branding, our administrative side of things, and the focus of our ambition. We believe we are well poised to take steps toward the next big adventure. As stewards of this incredible place, we are tasked with the preservation of the grounds and the wonderful historic buildings on our site. To ensure they survive through this century and are enjoyed by the community, some much needed renovations must take place. Beginning in 2023, we will be launching a multiyear capital campaign to fund a massive, multifaceted renovation and improvement project. This project will have many aspects but essentially three main phases.
Phase One: Raising the Barn
Conceptual Drawing
We plan a renovation and expansion of the historic Tobacco Barn including
A poured concrete floor with a gloss finish
A shed addition which will contain:
Small catering kitchen
A patio space
Having such a beautiful and functional facility at Homeplace for rentals and events will allow us to be more financially self-sufficient and enable other more mission-centric programs and activities on the farm. Also, we believe that a beautiful facility will be something the community will enjoy for years to come when we utilize it for our festivals, vendor events, and educational programs.
Phase Two: Going to Market
We want to make our feedlot, with is a 6000 square foot space on an incline more useable by pouring seven 40 by 24 foot concrete terraces and improving the bottom end to showcase our pond. We will call it The Market Pavillion. This space will be more handicapped accessible and just more functional. We will use it for large vendor events, produce/farmers market style spaces as well as a performance/presentation space.
Phase Three: Bring it Home
The historic Tate House was built in 1802 and has been partially renovated. To make the full house a useable space will require a large investment, but one that we believe is worth while. We would love for the house to eventually see it's 300th year and we have an opportunity to help ensure that it can. We plan to renovate the rest of the home and add a few modern amenities to make it a rental space. We will rent it to visitors and Event Renters, as well as hold history-focused events and possibly even use it for artist residencies and to host visiting educators. This will preserve the home while making it a source of financial support for Homeplace.
Over the next few years, we will be working on grants, holding fundraising events, and reaching out to donors big and small across our region. A successful Capital Campaign will enable us to grow the farm and protect Homeplace on Green River for generations to come. This project will benefit our region as well as it will enable us to hold events that draw visitors from a wider area, boosting tourism and local businesses.
Help Get Us Started!
You can plant a seed at the farm today by making a financial contribution, or by committing to lending a hand later in the campaign. Click the link to learn more:
#HomeplaceForTheHolidays
2022 Fall Review - Fall Family Fun in the Farm
In October, we had a series of events intended for the children and families of our area. Each Sunday, we had our corn maze open, and some additional activities were provided by a variety of student groups who partnered with us to add value to the events. Harmon Furniture sponsored the events and covered the costs of all materials! On Saturday, October 22nd, we had a Homeplace Halloween, a pumpkin carving and craft event. Unfortunately, the turnout for all the events was a little low, so next year we will reduce what we offer, but we are glad we tried something new and made some great friends along the way. We would like to say special thanks to the Campbellsville University Cheer and Dance teams, the Education Club, and the Lindsey Wilson College Bonner Scholars!
2022 Fall Review - Trail Run Coming December 17th!
The Homeplace Holiday Hustle is coming! Rocketpower Brands Inc. is producing an awesome 5/10 K race on December 17th. They are having the race as a fundraiser for Homeplace, and we are so excited to have folks competing and enjoying our unique trail system. This event is a great way to rid yourself of holiday cookie guilt! Sign up today at runsignup.com.
2022 Fall Review - Trail News
New Trail Signs
Our agrarian trail is 100% complete now with the addition of these stylish signs! Our own trail master Darren Henson designed and installed these artful metal signs along the beautiful trail. We think they look pretty sharp!
A new way to support the trail!
We've placed a sign at the trailhead encouraging contributions to help us keep the trails maintained and beautiful for years to come. Donating is as easy as scanning the QR code and pressing a few buttons on your phone. No amount is too small. We appreciate your support!
2022 Fall Review - Goat Update!
The Goats on the farm are thriving! A second "flush" was completed last week and we are expecting babies from the first round to be born in early December! For those who don't know, a "flush" is where an impregnated goat is anesthetized and the uterus is physically flushed of fertilized eggs. Those eggs are collected and implanted into "recipient" female goats. As many as 30 fertilized eggs can be collected in one flush allowing one purebred doe to produce a vast quantity of offspring. We are in partnership with local Boer Goat breeders Chris and Marie Anderson who keep their recipient herd here at Homeplace. We just love the life these goats bring to the farm, pun intended! So stop by for a cool weather hike and check out some adorable baby goats in just a few weeks!
If you are interested in learning more about how a flush works, click the "read more" link for more information and images. Please be advised, images depict a medical procedure and may be too graphic for some viewers.
2022 Fall Review - Hitched at Homeplace!
This year, we were blessed to receive a small grant from the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels to make some improvements to our barn spaces. In the Historic Bank Barn, we added darling twinkle lights, a sound system, and a few high-mounted heaters. These heaters will allow our more cold-sensitive guests to enjoy events a little earlier in the spring and a little later in the fall. We were also able to put up some lovely twinkling lights in the Tobacco barn, making the space more appealing for events of all kinds.
We had several couples who were able to take advantage of the improvements to the barns when they tied the knot at Homeplace this fall!
Homeplace on Green River was honored to be a part of these couples' special day and we wish them all every happiness in their lives together! We are taking bookings now for 2023 and 2024!
Congratulations to the Happy Couples!
Alisha and Jason Pace
Married August 27th, 2022
Meghan and Garret Haggerty
Married October 8th, 2022
Cindy and Tommy Corbin
Married October 21st, 2022
Destiny and Jonathan Rakes
Married October 1st, 2022
Brittany and Ryan Bartley
Married October 15th, 2022
2022 Fall Review - The Heartland Homesteading Conference
Early last year we were approached by members of the Homestead Preparedness Network and asked if we would be interested in partnering to host and co-produce an event focused on homesteading education. What is Homesteading you ask? Homesteading is a sometimes difficult concept to put fully into words, but in its most basic iteration, it's a lifestyle focused on self-sufficiency and subsistence agriculture. For most homesteaders, this means growing one's own food and raising one's own meat, food preservation, employing the principles of permaculture, repairing one's own tools, equipment, clothing, and other items, and practicing good stewardship of the land.
We realized that not only is Homeplace the perfect facility for a homesteading conference, but that these are the very values our local culture is built upon. So when we had the opportunity to partner with the wonderful Homestead Preparedness Network, we felt like it was a match made in Heaven. Thus, the Heartland Homesteading Conference was born!
This three-day family-friendly conference was from September 16th to the 18th. Attendants could come for one, two, or all three of the days and had the option of camping right on the grounds so they could mingle and build new friendships. We had guest speakers from 7 different states. They did demonstrations and spoke on all these incredible topics:
Cultivating fruit trees
Guide to hoof health
An introduction to blacksmithing
Raising and breeding milk goats
A beginners guide to raising Alpacas and processing their wool
How to build and use a ram pump (pumps water from source with no electricity)
Raising and processing rabbits
Processing chickens
Processing pigs
Managing a healthy Homestead
Managing a productive and prepared Homestead
Medicinal herbs and trees
Edible native plants
Homeplace on Green River is Proud to have found a new Partner with The Homestead Preparedness Network, now called the Mutual Assistance Group Network, to organize and host Central Kentucky's Homesteading Conference. Homeplace and the M.A.G. Network share a mission to create programming and content which promotes responsible land management and stewardship, best environmentally conscious practices, self-reliance, and foster fellowship and the sharing of knowledge and resources amongst like-minded people interested in the lifestyle of homesteading.
Our event was attended by over 200 people and we believe this is just the beginning. We know that the homesteading community, especially amongst the younger generation, is strong and getting stronger. While the movement has been gathering speed for several years, the pandemic most assuredly added fuel to the fire and we feel there has never been a better time to get involved in a big way with homesteading education.
The next conference has already been set for September 29th-October 1st of 2023. We can't wait!
Enjoy this slide show of images from the conference!
Fall 2022 Review - Our Fall Heritage Festival
The 14th annual Fall Heritage was September 10th this year.
The weather just barely held off for us and it was a lovely day. The threat of rain slightly diminished attendance, but the turnout was steady and everyone had a great time. We were blessed to have the folks from the Liberty Nature Center back after a 3-year Covid-related absence. They brought their raptors which made the experience quite a hoot! The kids from the Taylor County 4-H Livestock Club were absolute rockstars. In addition to bringing their adorable animals to delight the public, they brought kids games, and informational displays, and helped with the horse rides. Thank you 4H! We are so proud to have these amazing young people on the farm. Of course we had our craft and food vendors, and great live music. Folks also enjoyed the kiddie barrel train, hay and wagon rides. All in all it was a great day!
Enjoy this slide show of the events of the day!
The Heartland Homesteading Conference
By Lyn Stanton & Billy Joe Fudge
July storm rolling across the farm.
Summer is here in all its sweltering glory. The fields are plowed and sown. Schools are out of session, their regular wards turned to lose upon their families and yards. Sidewalks are scorching and making time to visit the lake or the pool is a weekly priority for many. Each evening, the smell of cook-outs glides through the air in our towns, and ice cream just tastes its best this time of year. Farms are busy and bustling with animals enjoying the season's bounty and the days are filled with never-ending chores. All the heat, the sun, the work, the games, the time with family and friends, all these things make the fabric of life in the summer. There is such wonder and magic to it.
But for all the simple joy summer brings, there is much to cause us anxiety and unease these days. Without going into many particulars, we can say 2022 is a year of uncertainty for all of us. High fuel costs, high fertilizer costs, high costs of everything, and drought conditions in Kentucky and much of the surrounding area are contributing to that sense of uncertainty. However, in the true spirit of the American Way, we are plowing forward. And at Homeplace, we are finding ways to provide some relief from economic woes with affordable rental rates, accessible family festivals, and dynamic education programs teaching self-reliance and sustainability, subscribing to that old adage about giving a fish, versus showing how to use a pole.
But before we dive into whats to come, let us share with you some highlights from the year so far as we have rounded the halfway marker. We also want to make sure to thank all the great businesses and folks who have helped us this Spring! So let's take a look back to our 2022 Plow Day Spring Festival. After missing our festivals in 2020 because of Covid and a wet 2021 Plow Day, we had an extremely successful event on the last Saturday of April. Thanks should go out to all our event sponsors, demonstrators, our hardworking and devoted board members, vendors, and those that sacrificed their time and energy to stage our many events, including folks who hauled their horses and mules from all over Kentucky and beyond. Enjoy a few snap shots of the day!
Spring Plow Day 2022 Slide Show
We were blessed this Spring to have received a grant from our local Campbellsville Walmart, which allowed us to design and purchase two big, bright new road signs so folks can't miss us!
Wedding announcements!
Congratulations Mrs. April and Mr. Danny Berry, who were married at Homeplace on June 11th.
Rental price change coming in 2023!
We want to let folks know that our prices will be increasing beginning in January of 2023, but all contracts made with deposits paid before then will honor the current price, so if you want to save on your event in 2023, book now!
Something to look forward to, we received a grant from The Honorable Kentucky Colonels to improve our barns with some bling, some bass, and some heat! We have purchased heaters, a sound system, and a ton of warm twinkle lights to install in our Bank Barn! Starting this fall, our barns will have a permanent sparkle after we wrap the interior poles in the lights and in the bank barn, guests will be able to link a play list from their phone right to the sound system via blue tooth. Plus, as the weather shifts towards winter, we will be able to keep parties going with some high mounted heaters to keep our barn in use for much more of the year.
Looking Here at the Homeplace Farm, we have been beating the heat by keeping busy and getting ready for a very busy lineup of fabulous events coming soon for our community and region. Now saddle up your mule, hitch up your britchen' and let's ride into the future. This summer and early fall are crammed full of family-friendly activities. Our calendar has never been this intense.
On July, 14, our Goat Recipient Program will officially be born (pardon the pun) before our eyes. I know most of you are getting ready to "Google" Goat Recipient Program right about now, so let me explain.
Generally speaking, there are two commercial types of goats; milk goats and meat goats. The milk goat males, of course, do not produce milk and are sold for the meat market. Their slender body type usually produces a small and low-quality carcass for the market. Consequently, many milk goat producers are using meat goat bucks to introduce hybrid vigor into their milk goat herds which produce better carcass weight and quality.
Goats typically give birth to one, two or three kids (baby goats). However, they will most often produce several more embryos that will fail to develop into fetuses. Producers of valuable meat goat breeding stock such as the Boer breed do not want to waste these valuable embryos. Therefore, they often use surrogates and harvest the extra embryos from their females and implant them into females of other breeds to act as mothers for the high value Boer goat kids.
Homeplace is proud and thankful to be partnering with Chris and Marie Anderson of Boerderline Goat Farm of Campbellsville, Ky. There are currently about 40 nanny goats being lodged at Homeplace which will soon become surrogate mothers to Boerderline and other area goat farm embryos. On July 14th we will have an embryologist here on the farm who will spend the entire day flushing does and implanting them into surrogates on the farm. The goats which reside here are not just surrogate mothers, but lovely and delightful little clowns who enjoy their peaceful pasture and visits from people. Soon we will have some feeders installed so that visitors can toss cracked corn and other treats. We welcome you to stop by to see them and us!
Trail Run!
August 20th & 21st
A 12 hour trail run called The Possum! For more information and to sign up, visit our website. It is run on a 5K agrarian and wooded trail with a change of scenery around every turn, over every hill and down each valley.
Fall Heritage Festival
South Central Kentucky's favorite, the 2022 Fall Heritage Festival! It will be bigger and better than ever with additional family oriented programming. Craft vendors, barrel train rides, hay rides, a hay maze, petting farm, guided hikes, pony rides, a raptor exhibit and new this year, a corn maze! And don't forget the food to go along with the fun! Just $20 per vehicle.
Heartland Homesteading Conference
September 16th-18th
Whether you are new to homesteading, an old pro, or just wanting to learn how to be more self-dependent during these perilous times, there is much to be learned from the many classes, booths and presentations. From blacksmithing to raising milk goats, to medicinal herbs to processing chickens, this conference is a not to be missed. Visit with old friends and make many new ones at this special event.
Family Farm Day
We will have a butchering demonstration, an old-fashioned corn picking event, a beekeeping lecture, and more! We'll have more details soon, but make sure you put this on your calendar!
October Family Fun
Every Sunday in October
We have planted a HUGE corn patch right next to campus and are working on carving it out into a maze pattern. Each Sunday in October we will have the maze open for visitors. We are partnering with a series of Campbellsville University, and Lindsey Wilson College student groups and will split the proceeds from admission with these partners to continue their good works.
Homeplace Halloween
Saturday, October 22nd
9am-3pm eastern
Bring the whole family to Homeplace for a day of fun crafts and activities. Leave the mess at home, purchase a pumpkin grown right in Campbellsville from 4E Farms to paint, or carve the Hay Maze will be open, and we'll have crafts in the bank barn, games on the field, a hay maze in the bottom of the bank barn and fairy and troll houses on the trail! We are partnering with a series of Campbellsville University, and Lindsey Wilson College student groups and will split the proceeds from admission with these partners to continue their good works. Kids are encouraged to wear and show off their costumes!
By Billy Joe Fudge
Near the end of the last century, my oldest daughter asked me to perform the marriage blessing and prayer at her reception. This was to be my first foray into the wonderful world of marriage blessings and prayers. Given that lack of experience, I set out immediately to petition the Lord Almighty to send Divine inspiration and soon. Well, as is His nature or should I say His Super Nature, He took what I considered to be an immoderate amount of time in downloading it to me. Thankfully it arrived just in time. You may not be in the market for a marriage blessing and prayer but just in case you are, here are the first four lines of mine.
"May your springs be green with renewal,
May your summers be cooled by a soft breeze,
May your autumns be filled with color and
May your winters be warmed by your love for each other"…
Yes, it is March, the first month of spring, and spring is indeed a time of renewal. The first plants to go green in spring are perennials. Perennials have roots that have held sugars and nutrients all winter long while waiting patiently for spring to arrive. Sunlight, warming temperatures, and spring rains trigger the movement of sugar and nutrient ladened liquids from the roots up through the stems of plants that do not suffer winter dieback such as trees. The sap travels to the end of twigs and limbs where the buds and leaf meristems use this super juice to grow new and longer stems, leaves, and flowers. Those perennials that die back such as clovers, grasses, and plants that come back from underground stems and bulbs such as onions, crocuses, etc. will usually respond earlier in the spring than woody-stemmed plants.
In our WINTER 2021 NEWSLETTER I made the following statement or promise. I said, "winter is going to be chocked full of planning and growing the Homeplace on Green River/Kentucky's Outdoor Classroom brand" and that has certainly been the case. The planning is ongoing with a couple of grants applied for, the appointment of five new energetic, talented and creative board members, and the table is set for hundreds and hundreds of students to attend educational field days this year. Also, the seeds are planted for expanding existing events like our Plow Day Spring Festival on April 30th, the Fall Heritage Festival on September 10th and Family Farm Day on November 5th. Additionally, we are working on other events for the Fall, the likes of which have yet to come to the Commonwealth of Kentucky. We are still in planning, but we look forward to sharing the particulars of these when we have them sorted and are ready to unveil our plans.
We have also been increasing our outreach to get the word out about our facility for rentals, and are on track to book more events this year than ever before. Our beautiful and historic campus carries the stories of countless families from our region who have celebrated life's moments at Homeplace in Green River, and we are so proud to be an integral part of people's special days. Our rental income supports our operational expenses and our Kentucky's Outdoor Classroom programming.
So, we have sap already running up the stems of perennials, and seeds are planted in good soil and will soon be germinating and producing for all to see. We are excited. The future of your Homeplace on Green River/Kentucky's Outdoor Classroom is bright. It is true that it is going to be a busy spring. It is true that we need much help. It is true that you have done much and we thank each and every individual, business, or organization that has invested time and talent, and treasure to assist us in our efforts "to protect and promote rural American culture through the sustainability of agriculture and natural resources, utilizing education, conservation and the economic opportunities of agritourism".
5807 New Columbia Rd.
Campbellville, Ky 42718 | {
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Another single truck: White Expediter P20. Slightly better than H-trans and pretty well balanced.
This time is Renault Goelette, a small truck slightly faster than H-trans and nine paper rolls of capacity, available from 1943 until 1958.
This will be the last single truck: International D-500. A payload of 10 paper rolls, 65 km/h, 165 kW, from 1938 to 1955.
Ooookay... i'm pretty much floored at the moment. I'm getting the most recent updates and engulf myself into the Bookshop Industry thanks to you Vilvoh.
Major Props to you Vilvoh. 1m times.
This is the last paper truck from now: International ACCO T2670.
Three Sentinel Steam Trucks. Yes, you've read well, they are steam powered trucks with optional trailers that can transport cement, oil and piece goods, available from 1910.
Mod note: You don't need 6 smileys to express a single line sentence.
note it may have to be PAK in all caps... with some of vilvoh's older pakfiles like the Truck Docks, I had to change "type=carstop" to "type=stop" and a new line "waytype=road"
Then put the .pak files in your pak/ directory.
p.s., is addons.simutrans.com even updated since about two years ago?
Any details on what goes wrong?
Thats all? Please have more!
You can always learn to make more yourself. This is an all volunteer community. I"m not sure you really understand that.
Thanks! I'm a big fan of you!
This is the begining of a large trucks set, about 40 road vehicles for transporting fuel, from 1900 to 2010. The first two are Peterbilt Rebel OD and Karmaz Azer 6x4T, from the 1970's.
You know, if you'd skip to the end, they'd be done faster. Er... isn't that right? Seems logical to me!
Joking aside, that looks pretty sweet.
The credit goes to the textures, but a simple 3D model also helps..
The first five trucks of the set are available for downloading..
Ooooohhhh, these are really really sweeeet. | {
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Looking to spruce up your deck area or back yard? Installing a glass deck railing instead of a wood spindle railing will increase your view when enjoying the outdoors. We also specialize in custom screens & screen enclosures. East Side Glass can help you design the deck railing system or screen enclosure system you've always dreamed of. We have access to a wide variety of different screen systems, railing systems and glass types with a variety of finishes to match your homes décor.
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Cindy Moore
Principals, Teachers, Sprvsr • School for the Deaf
* Hire date refers to the current employer, the School for the Deaf. For employees with breaks in service, it is the most recent hire date.
Oct. 1, 2022 Principals, Teachers, Sprvsr School for the Deaf 35 $72,904 +9%
July 1, 2022 Principals, Teachers, Sprvsr School for the Deaf 35 $66,853 0%
April 1, 2022 Principals, Teachers, Sprvsr School for the Deaf 35 $66,853 0%
Jan. 1, 2022 Principals, Teachers, Sprvsr School for the Deaf 35 $66,853 0%
Sept. 30, 2021 Principals, Teachers, Sprvsr School for the Deaf 35 $66,853
Principals, Teachers, Sprvsr
School for the Deaf
Got a tip about the School for the Deaf? Reach out to The Texas Tribune: [email protected]. | {
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Angola - 10/28/2014
Five minutes: the length of a protest in Angola
Anti-government protestors who gathered on Oct. 3, 2014 in Luanda were shut down by police after five minutes, probably because someone passed information about their planned meeting to the police. (Photo posted to Facebook by Central Angola 7311)
Angolan law stipulates that anyone who organises a protest must inform the authorities, who are supposed to "provide protection" for the demonstrators. But when activists do this, authorities use the information to arrest them as soon as they arrive at the designated spot. To circumnavigate the situation, a group of young people have been organising "flash mob" protests to gain a least a few minutes of activism before being shut down.
The small group of activists — non-partisan and committed to fighting for freedom of expression in Angola — text each other a time and place. On the specified day, they gather — often in front of one of the ministries in Luanda, the capital - and then citizen journalists arrive, armed with cameras. They have to move fast, as they will only have a few minutes before police or soldiers arrive.
This scene has been repeated seven or eight times over the past three months. The longest protest, held in September in front of the education ministry, lasted 25 minutes. The most recent, held on October 3, only lasted 5 minutes.
This video, which includes a timer, shows how the protestors were arrested within 15 minutes of launching their protest on August 4, 2014. It was filmed and edited by members of Angolan collective Central Angola 7311.
Police often use tear gas, water cannons and dogs on those participating in the anti-government protests, which began in 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring. Non-violent protestors are routinely beat up by police and plain clothes thugs and at least three have been killed under suspicious circumstances. Most protestors have been arrested multiple times and are sometimes held for days on end.
But for the activists, each brief protest and each photo posted to Facebook works to "erode the machine" of the Angolan state, which has been run by for the past 35 years by President José Eduardo dos Santos and his party, the MPLA [Editor's note: Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola].
While the Angolan media rarely covers the arrests of protestors, this screengrab from Portuguese television SIC NOTICIAS shows the news headline that the Angolan police arrested 12 protestors at the protest held on October 3, 2014. (photo from Central Angola 7311)
'You can't do anything without police being there in a few minutes.'
Luaty Beirão is a rapper as well as an activist, human rights monitor and member of collective Central Angola 7311, a group that shares information uncensored by the regime through its network of citizen journalists. The numbers refer to March 7, 2011, the date of the first organised, non-partisan protest held in Angola for 35 years. In 1977, the state massacred a large group of dissidents. Beirão has participated in three of the recent "flash mob protests."
We arrange the spontaneous protests amongst ourselves — but it's hard knowing who to trust even in a small group of people. We might text 20 people, but the 21st is a police informant. Here, you never know. In Luanda, we live in a quasi-police state. If the President goes out, heavily armed police are everywhere. There are always at least two police cars parked on Independence Square. You can't do anything without police being there in a few minutes.
In the five or ten minutes before the police come, our reporters are fast enough to flood the internet with pictures ,but there are still not many people who face up to the police apparatus. Most witnesses stay in the periphery to see what happens to the first group, usually made up of the same ten or fifteen people — you can count those brave souls on your fingers and toes.
The protests are often very small and only a handfull of people attend, like this protest on October 3. (Photo from Central Angola 7311.)
'Sometimes we laugh at ourselves and what we call progress'
Recently, however, the crowd has started shouting when the police try to take us away. This shows tiny steps toward real change. Sometimes we laugh at ourselves and what we call progress: three years after we began to protest, we are still only about 10 people doing flash mobs and maybe 100 people see what we are doing and stand around going "Yay, yay!"
But there are more and more spontaneous protests and people are encouraged by the results. Two months ago, a Luanda neighbourhood broke into protest after a power cut. And guess what? The energy company turned power back on.
Post by Central Angola.
At 2:50, local people began to chant "Não violência!" or "No violence" as police arrested protestors. At 5:57, a woman is pushed to the ground by police. This protest was held on September 5, 2014. (Video from the Facebook page of Central Angola 7311.)
'The government has killed protestors in the past but I don't think they'll do it again.'
The police are also becoming more wary of us. When I was arrested in March, the commander of a local station refused to take us because we had filed complaints about our treatment the last time. I also don't think the government will kill protestors again. They didn't expect consequences when they killed Cassule and Kamulingue because they were just two young ghetto kids [Editor's note: The two activists were tortured and murdered after trying to organise a protest in May 2012]. But we took their names, photos and stories to human rights groups. Now, what the government fears most are international arrest warrants.
One boy, Elias Batama, went missing after a larger protest on October 11, 2014. When we threatened to take to the streets, the police conceded and told us he was in a certain prison. The charges against him were false, but we raised the money for his bail.
This flyer was shared online after a protestor named Elias Batama disappeared on October 11, 2014 after police arrested him. He was located days later and eventually freed from prison.
'The government sent a threat letter to my grandmother last Christmas in a pretty teddy bear bag'
Of course, we are still scared, but we don't allow fear to drive our decisions. The government sent a threat letter to my grandmother last Christmas. It was wrapped in a pretty teddy bear bag and said it was from a local women's group: "We, the mothers of Sambizanga, will burn your house down if your grandson continues to protest" and seemed to say that they were worried that I would "mislead" their children. But it was obviously from the government. I published the letter instead of letting it frighten me.
It's ridiculous. You can laugh. We prefer to laugh in order not to cry. This is not a serious county. No institution can be taken seriously. But our struggle for freedom of expression is serious.
'If every Angolan comes out to demonstrate, the government won't kill everyone.'
vice-présidente de l'association de l'association des Droits de l'Homme Justice, Paix et Justice See profile
Lucia Da Silviera is the executive director of Luanda-based human rights group Associacao Justica Paz e Democracia (AJPD).
Angolans do believe in the right to protest, but they don't participate because they are afraid. They remember May 27, 1977 [Editor's note: A breakaway faction of the ruling MPLA party, led by Nito Alves, led an uprising. Most were brutally killed.] Angolan citizens need to wake up. If every Angolan comes out to demonstrate, the government won't kill everyone.
We are trying to build court cases to take to the African Commission and the UN. We have also been lobbying different embassies. Some people are using social media to spread the word on human rights violations. It's helping Angolans to get connected, to understand the situation in the country. It's a process, but we're making the government uncomfortable.
Post written with FRANCE 24 journalist Brenna Daldorph (@brennad87)
This scuffle occurred during the protest on October 3, 2014. | {
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Mom at Sixteen
Nancey Silvers
Peter Werner
Theme music composer
Richard Marvin
Bernard Sofronski (Executive Producer)
Neil Roach
Tod Feuerman
March 2005 (2005-03)
Mom at Sixteen is a 2005 Lifetime Television film about a sixteen-year-old mother, dealing with problems at school and her decaying relationship with her mother, because of her seeing her boyfriend for the first time since before her son was born.
Jacey Jeffries (Danielle Panabaker) is a 16-year-old high school student and the mother of a baby boy named Charlie. Instead of giving him up for adoption as planned, she chose to keep the baby. Her mother, Terry (Mercedes Ruehl) pretends the infant is hers to allow Jacey to finish high school and lead a relatively normal life and graduate.
When Jacey attends a new school, she criticizes several of the students for their promiscuous behavior during a class discussion. Jacey's opinions lead Donna Cooper (Jane Krakowski), the Health teacher, to take a special interest in Jacey. Jacey's comments are unique in that she does not have an interest in following what her classmates say. The teacher's husband, the swim coach Bob (Colin Ferguson), convinces Jacey to join the swim team. Jacey passes out after taking tranquilizers stolen from her mother and ends up in the hospital. Donna and Bob are unable to conceive and are devastated when they discover their latest round of In-Vitro Fertilization has failed.
Jacey feels that matters are unresolved with Charlie's father, Brad. It is apparent that Jacey was and still is in love with him. Jacey feels guilty because Brad is unaware that Jacey gave birth. Brad currently attends college. When Jacey attempts to call him, she becomes nervous upon hearing his voice and hangs up.
Donna sees Jacey with Charlie, and asks if Jacey is his mother. Although Jacey lied, many students from the school witnessed the interrogation and believe Jacey is really the mother. She begins to get teased at school for her behavior. Her secret is found out at school, when the students were asked about how guys react to what girls wear. When other students criticize her for her hypocrisy, she goes to a mothers meeting for teen mothers.
After being teased at school, she leaves abruptly to see Brad. They spend the day together, and are about to have sex, when Jacey announces that the reason she left him was because she got pregnant. Brad takes the news badly and leaves. Jacey returns home and has a huge argument with Terry who hands her Charlie and tells her to handle things on her own, angry that Jacey doesn't understand the sacrifices she has made to help Jacey have a normal life. Exhausted and confused, she turns to Donna for help and advice. Donna advocates for Jacey telling her mother that she wants to be Charlie's mom to which Terry gives a speech about the sacrifices it takes to be a 'real Mom'.
A few weeks later, Brad arrives at Jacey's house to apologize and tells Terry that he will make it work between Jacey and him. However, when Jacey makes a surprise visit to his school, she finds out Brad's parents will only help if a DNA test is done to prove Brad is the father; Jacey feels betrayed and leaves him.
At school, Jacey gives a speech on pregnancy and teen sex, using examples from her friends from the teen mother's meeting. She gets applause and respect from her former bullies for being honest and sensible. Afterwards, Macy, her sister, gives her a DVD she had put together for Charlie for him to watch when he is older. Watching it together with Terry, the two reconcile.
Later, Donna receives a call that there is a baby waiting to be adopted. Overjoyed, Donna and Bob go to adopt the child, only to find that it is Terry and Jacey who have decided to give him up to give him his best chance.
She apparently remains a part of Charlie's life, as five years later she's there at Charlie's first day at kindergarten, Donna and Bob have a new baby daughter, and Bob is shown recording Charlie and asks Charlie to talk about himself. "I'm Charlie Cooper and I'm 5 years old, I got a new baby sister." Charlie tells the camera that he has two mommies and that Jacey is his special mommy and Bob asks why. Charlie replies, "because I'm the only one who knows how her heart feels from inside her." It is indicated in one scene that this is in fact the couple that was originally going to adopt him before Jacey changed her mind.
Danielle Panabaker as Jacey Jeffries
Jane Krakowski as Donna Cooper
Clare Stone as Macy Jeffries
Tyler Hynes as Brad
Colin Ferguson as Bob Cooper
Mercedes Ruehl as Terry Jeffries
Hollis McLaren as Marlene
Rejean Cournoyer as Mr. Cheevers
Dawn McKelvie Cyr as Gretchen
Megan Edwards as Linda
Matthew MacCaull as Dr. Hughes
Sabrina Jalees as Sarah
Deborah Allen as Pauline
Anastasia Hill as Trea
Leah Fassett as Gena
Scott Smith as Charlie
Mom at Sixteen on IMDb | {
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You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Sauvignon Blanc' tag.
I was on twitter a couple of weeks ago talking to Jayson Bryant from New Zealand (twitter: @jayson_bryant) about wine when it struck me that the selection of white wine from NZ relative to Australian white wine on our shelves had changed rather dramatically over the 3 years I have been in the store.
Today, our selection ratio of NZ to Australian wine is less than 1:2. 3 years ago it would have been more like 1:5. I thought that we on Bowen might not be representative of the general Vancouver market so decided to check things out in downtown Vancouver.
Much to my surprise, our ratio is not markedly different to most stores. The 5 private wine stores I visited had ratios varying from 1:1 to 1:2 and then I visited the big BCLDB flagship store on Bute and Alberni. Their selection was very much closer to 1:1 and, checking the BCLDB website, the actual listings in BC for NZ white to Australian whites is 54 to 73 or very nearly 1:1!
This is a dramatic shift in market balance from years ago when the Australian powerhouse dominated the two countries white wine sales in BC. How has this come about?
Firstly, although there have been an increase in NZ wine selection, the primary reason the ratio is closing is that there has been a marked reduction in Australian whites in the market here. This is reflective of the shift away from all those heavily-oaked Aussie chardonnays so popular in the late '90s and early '00s. Secondly, here in BC, New Zealand was the theme country for the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival (VPIWF) this year so NZ received lots of local exposure for their increasingly diverse selection of both red and white wines.
Both countries still make great wines but the trend is very much in favour of NZ at the moment. While NZ is hugely strong with their Sauvignon Blancs, I was really impressed with the Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminers and Rieslings I tasted at VPIWF plus NZ Pinot Noirs are coming on in leaps and bounds with Syrahs not far behind.
There are potentially lessons for the BC wine industry here too. Although our industry is younger than NZ's, the total population of NZ is the same as BC's and their domestic wine consumption is almost the same per capita as here. NZ is growing now on the strength of its export prowess not so much on its local support. Perhaps it is time that the BC wine industry focuses more on exporting than on local marketing – after all, we should have huge advantages in being next door to the USA whereas NZ is 20ookm away from its nearest large market and major competitor – Australia.
On Bowen, we have already increased our NZ selection in both reds and whites and more to come in our new store (opening January 2011) I think the white ratio will drop much closer to 1:1 then. Maybe we'll even start to see the selection ratio on the reds starting to shift too.
Damilano 2004 Barolo (Italy, red) – $59.90. Our first Barolo! This is a classic Italian wine and fantastic value. Tasted this recently and it punches far above its weight. You can pay a lot more for good Barolo's but this one is worth every penny (and more). | {
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Greeting Cards and Postcards for sale direct from South Carolina photographers.
Set of five (5) folded "Choppin Cotton" notecards with envelopes by local artist Rebecca Hinson in Charleston, SC. ..
Set of five (5) half-fold greeting cards with envelopes. This beautiful set of fine art greeting cards are a great way to remember your trip to Historic Charleston, South Carolina. Also makes a beautiful gift to friends and family that may have no..
Set of five (5) folded "King Cotton" notecards with envelopes by local artist Rebecca Hinson in Charleston, SC. .. | {
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This long sleeve, breathable mesh panelled top is ideal for added ventilation during your work-out. Classic colour combination makes the top suitable for gym or leisure. This top is not bra lined. Wear with a sports bra for a layered look. Made from sweat-wicking fabric to help keep you cool. Also available in black. Fabric: 87% Polyester, 13% Elastane. 100% Stretch Mesh. • BREATHABLE MESH • SWEAT WICKING • LIGHTWEIGHT Model Height & UK Size: 6 foot/Size 12 Model Wears: Size Medium Sara's Top Tip Long sleeve, lightweight, elegant - let this top take you from yoga to mimosas!
This long sleeve, breathable mesh panelled top is ideal for added ventilation during your work-out. Classic colour combination makes the top suitable for gym or leisure. This top is not bra lined. Wear with a sports bra for a layered look. Made from sweat-wicking fabric to help keep you cool. Also available in black.
Fabric: 87% Polyester, 13% Elastane. 100% Stretch Mesh.
Long sleeve, lightweight, elegant - let this top take you from yoga to mimosas! | {
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} |
Monte Carlo seems to producing new growth. But a lot of it is dead and frankly, it looks ugly. Wondering if I should just get rid of it or stick with it.
Ludwigia Arcuata has completely melted away, took it all out yesterday. This is the second time I have failed with this plant .
Lilaeopsis B is.. kinda stuck. Some melts here and there, and no sign of growth whatsoever.
Decent growth in Marsilea. The root parts are all producing new growth, and quite fast I would say. I am taking out all the top halves gradually.
Stargrass looked dead in the beginning, and some of the stems are indeed dead. But the rest is producing decent new growth. Cut off some tips and replanted them today.
Staurogyne looks alright, but no perceivable growth yet. Some dust type algae on the leaves, but not too bad.
Alternanthera Reineckii showed good signs of growth but not much progress since then. But they look healthy.
Have upped my dosing. Alternating between two pumps of Tropica Specialized and Premium every day. Will cut down if required.
Photoperiod still at 5 hours. Will increase by 30 mins from tomorrow.
Light at 80%, approx 30 watts.
Water change every other day.
Temperature varies between 27 to 29 degrees (when lights are on).
Wondering whether to get a cooling fan With the low humidity, it will reduce 2-3 degrees I think. But I'll have to deal with the evaporation. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
Gerrie and Martie Malan were married in 1970. He started out in a new career in the South African Correctional Services soon after and remained with that department for 25 years. The couple were transferred many times through the years and also moved between Cape Town and Pretoria twice a year for eight years while Gerrie was a member of the Correctional Services' parliamentary staff. Needless to say, while Martie worked for shorter spells during those 25 years, she was mostly found in the role of homemaker, raising their three children in what was often difficult circumstances.
After being released on pension through sheer burnout in 1995, Gerrie became a lecturer in Correctional Services Management for the Technikon SA, which was later amalgamated with the University of South Africa. It was in this time that they left the reformed church in which they were both raised and embarked on a search for biblical truth through the Pentecostal and Charismatic environments. This journey proved to be a learning experience second to none. It provided wonderful experiences, but unfortunately also exposed them to man-made doctrines and practices they found raising more and more questions as they studied the Scriptures intensively.
Martie had in the meantime taken up studies in Bible-based counselling and was soon joined by Gerrie. While she specialised in the area of emotional healing, he focused on spiritual warfare. Once again they gained valuable knowledge - even in the sense of identifying unbiblical practices. Gerrie progressed into further studies in ministry and carried on untill he completed a doctorate in Systematic Theology. His thesis focussed on the "born again" and "in Christ" concepts and it has already given birth to his first book, The Lamp Of The Lord, a focus on the biblical concepts of soul and spirit. Martie's focus turn ed to intensive Bible study on various doctrines, including the biblical end-times content, but setting aside all the popular modern books and audio-visual material that so strongly influences the human mind.
A home fellowship of five in April 2001 quickly grew into a weekly meeting of 50. The group eventually became a formalised congregation (Hosea Christian Family Church). This congregation later amalgamated with another, with Gerrie and Martie taking up leadership of the Bible College. Today they are not connected by membership of any denomination, and free of denominational chains and stumbling blocks, they are able to focus on se arching unhindered for biblical truth to the many questions they have developed from their journey through the Reformed, Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions. Unlike many others who have turned their back on the Bible in similar processes, they feel they have gained much more understanding of the Bible's simple truth when it is stripped of the many centuries of philosophising and pollution that has robbed humanity of the kingdom living God wanted for them. Before relocating to the Hibiscus Coast of KwaZulu-Natal in September 2013, they fellowshipped at a small congregation in the town of Koppies in South Africa's Free State Province, where the pastoral couple understood and appreciated their heart to rightly divide the word of truth. Currently they are not attached to any denomination or congregation and are focusing on their writing and sharing their understanding through this website and their various free e-books.
The resources available on this website are part result of Gerrie and Martie's search to discern biblical truth amidst the many man-made doctrines on end-times issues Christians are being confronted with. While they have no wish to be controversial, both accept that their work will often be controversial as they unavoidably address traditions and holy cows of the many organisational Christian environments. They are simply two pilgrims on a journey seeking to understand the Bible, the word of truth, in its true and intended context. Their approach is not one of trying to prove or disprove any specific doctrines, but to present their renewed understanding of the Scriptures as they study them anew. By doing that, they hope to contribute constructively to the Bible study of their readers. In the end, none of us can pass the responsibility for our understanding and beliefs on to others,but have to take that responsibility on ourselves. The frightening array of doctrines confronting Christian believers clearly underline the danger of allowing others to interpret the Bible for us, while we blindly take anything they say for the truth. | {
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For discussion of mainstream Hip Hop or Urban music.
Wow, it looks definitely promising!
I got a feeling this is gonna be the album the Cole fans have been expecting since FNL.
"The plan was to drink until the pain over, but what's worse, the pain or the hangover?"
Then reddit, Bx & a few other people posted that supposed "tracklist"
Can someone tell me all the info and possible song styles rumors/thoughts we have so far?
Do you guys like Born Sinner ?
Chazi wrote: Do you guys like Born Sinner ? | {
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Галактическая Империя — галактическая супердержава из киновселенной «Звёздных войн». Была официально провозглашена Верховным канцлером Шивом Палпатином после неудачной попытки джедаев арестовать и сместить его с поста Верховного Канцлера и последовавшего за этим уничтожения ордена джедаев в Галактической Республике.
Сама Республика, существование которой продолжалось 25 тыс. лет, де-факто исчезла благодаря плану Палпатина в результате которого наступил период политического хаоса и опустошительных Войн клонов. После победы Оби-Вана Кеноби над генералом Гривусом в Битве на Утапау, во время расправы с лидерами Конфедерации независимых систем, учинённой Дартом Вейдером, Верховный канцлер Палпатин объявил себя Императором Галактики и преобразовал Галактическую Республику в Галактическую Империю.
История
Происхождение
Можно считать, что Империя началась с тайного стремления сенатора от планеты Набу Шива Палпатина, являвшегося на самом деле лордом ситхов Дартом Сидиусом. Используя Торговую федерацию для блокады Набу, он направлял развитие кризиса и манипулировал королевой Амидалой, чтобы спровоцировать вотум недоверия Верховному канцлеру Финису Валоруму и в результате самому стать Канцлером. Когда ученик Дарта Сидиуса Дарт Мол пал на Набу от руки Оби-Вана Кеноби, Сидиус взял в ученики бывшего джедая графа Дуку. Граф Дуку присоединился к Торговой федерации, возглавляемой вице-королём Нутом Ганреем, и другим представителям Конфедерации независимых систем. Эти сепаратисты развязали войну против Галактической Республики. Конфликт получил название «Войны клонов», поскольку основу Великой Армии Республики составляли-клоны.
Шив Палпатин оказался умелым и эффективным руководителем, быстро очистившим Галактический сенат от коррупции. Его власть в результате Войны клонов значительно возросла, поскольку Сенат с готовностью предоставлял Канцлеру всё больше и больше чрезвычайных полномочий. Наконец Сенат де-факто утратил почти всю власть и стал немногим более, чем формальностью, которую нужно было преодолевать Палпатину для проведения своих законов. Но Сенат всё ещё сохранял формальный статус. Канцлер Палпатин по-прежнему прикрывался пышными и церемонными обращениями к Сенату, но его власть выражалась в контроле над тысячами сенаторов, вовлечённых в сети его собственной коррупции а также воздействуя на сенаторов Темной Стороной Силы. Когда сам Палпатин раскрыл Энакину Скайуокеру, что он на самом деле есть лорд ситхов Дарт Сидиус, то Энакин уведомил об этом магистра-джедая Мейса Винду. Отряд джедаев, ведомый самим Винду, попытался арестовать Канцлера. После недолгой схватки Палпатин, казалось бы, был повержен, но подоспевший Скайуокер потребовал от Винду не убивать Палпатина. Будучи в глубоком замешательстве Скайуокер, тем не менее, помог Палпатину убить Винду, и таким образом стал новым учеником Дарта Сидиуса — Дартом Вейдером. После этого Палпатин отправился осуществлять великую чистку джедаев, известную также как протокол № 66, в результате которой погибли тысячи джедаев, а Дарт Вейдер уничтожил Вице-короля Нута Ганрея и остальных сепаратистов, собравшихся на огненной планете Мустафар. Так закончились Войны клонов.
Многие граждане новообразованной Империи с воодушевлением поддержали идеи, изложенные в Декларации Нового порядка. Многие сенаторы всем сердцем поддержали новое государство, и лишь немногие сенаторы поступили осторожно, предпочтя ждать и наблюдать, как новое правительство будет решать государственные задачи. А оно обещало заменить неустойчивость — силой, хаос — порядком и неопределённость — решительностью. Теперь можно утверждать, что основы Империи были заложены ещё в бытность Шива Палпатина Верховным канцлером, — тогда же были устранены и все угрозы для узурпации Палпатином власти. Как следствие переформатирование Республики в Империю был относительно гладким.
Важно подчеркнуть, что не всем сенаторам нравилось то, что происходило. Фактически, «Петиция 2000» должна была донести опасения этих сенаторов до Палпатина. Первыми петицию подписали Бейл Органа, Мон Мотма и Падме Амидала. Когда Палпатин развеял все сомнения в своих истинных целях, это стало одной из причин, приведших к созданию Органой и Мотмой Альянса за восстановление Республики.
Империализация
Провозглашение Империи стало отправной точкой для глубоких структурных реформ в бывшей Республике. Комиссия по сохранению Республики (КОМСОР) была переименована в Комиссию по охране Нового порядка (КОМПОНОП), — позднее из неё была выделена Имперская служба безопасности (ИСБ) во главе с Армандом Айсардом, которому было поручено вести массовую слежку и шпионаж в пользу Императора. Также был учреждён Инквизиторий для розыска и уничтожения выживших джедаев, а также введена цензура в СМИ.
В течение первых лет Империи Галактика пережила величайшее военное строительство в истории. Для более эффективного управления секторами и регионами Империи Императором был учрежден институт моффов. Народная поддержка политики Палпатинской администрации была высокой.
Хотя попытки установления тоталитарного режима оставались слабыми, власть постоянно укреплялась до перелома в 4 .
Падение
С введением в строй «Звезды смерти» последние остатки показной демократии были уничтожены. После Битвы при Явине в 0 Империя приступила к методичному уничтожению всех, кто мог или уже присоединился к восстанию. После битвы при Эндоре в 4 и смерти (предполагаемой) Шива I Палпатина Империя была дезорганизована. Преемником Шива I Палпатина был провозглашён первый советник Сейт Пестаж, однако Пестаж не смог удерживать Империю единой перед лицом Альянса, преобразованного в Новую Республику. К восстановленному сенату и Верховному канцлеру Мон Мотме перетекали офицеры и целые миры. Вскоре Правящий совет сверг Пестажа и провозгласил Императором Маса Амедду, последнего вице-канцлера Старой Республики и действующего Великого визиря. Тем не менее дезертирство и развал продолжалось, и власть Амедды скоро ограничилась Корусантом, а к 6 он оказался фактически под домашним арестом в Императорском дворце (бывшем Храме джедаев) по приказу командующего крупнейшим (из оставшихся) флотским соединением Галлиуса Ракса. Однако тот погиб в том же году в генеральной Битве над Джакку, и Амедда подписал Галактическое соглашение — капитуляцию Империи перед Новой Республикой.
Уцелевшие звёздные разрушители собрались в Диком космосе, куда они должны были прибыть, согласно плану, в случае падения Империи: там их уже ожидал выживший Шив Палпатин.
Астрография
Территория Галактической Империи в момент наивысшего расцвета состояла из более чем миллиона миров и 60 миллионов колоний, протекторатов и владений занимавших практически половину Галактики, протянувшись от границ Центра до края галактического диска и от Дикого космоса до Неизведанных регионов.
За кулисами
Некоторые источники усматривают параллели между Галактической Республикой и возникшей на её основе Галактической Империей с одной стороны и историей Древнего Рима — с другой. Имеются также сходства с реорганизацией Первой французской республики в Первую французскую империю Наполеоном I Бонапартом. Также перерождение Республики в Империю сравнивается с определёнными эпизодами новейшей истории США.
Некоторые считают, что приход к власти Шива Палпатина (что, в свою очередь, привело к возникновению Галактической Империи взамен Старой Республики) аналогичен приходу Адольфа Гитлера к власти в Германии. (Адольф Гитлер, став рейхсканцлером, получил «чрезвычайные полномочия» подобно Канцлеру Шиву Палпатину.). Также Шива Палпатина сравнивают с Октавианом Августом, де-юре ставшим первым римским императором, и Наполеоном Бонапартом, пришедшим к власти в республиканской Франции, а затем устроившим переворот и ставшим императором.
Аналогии и культурное влияние
Профессор теоретической физики и один из создателей теории струн Митио Каку относит Галактическую Империю из саги «Звёздных войн» к цивилизации третьего типа по шкале Кардашёва, — причём, согласно его прогнозу, земная цивилизация достигнет уровня первого типа развития уже к XXII веку, а уровня Галактической Империи через 2,5-5 тысяч лет.
Примечания
Литература
, Star Wars Encyclopedia. New York: Del Rey, 1998, ISBN 0-345-40227-8
Mary Henderson. Star Wars: The Magic of Myth. New York, USA: Bantam Spectra, 1997.
Empire Star Wars 20th Anniversary bonus mag
Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary
Ссылки
Galactic Empire Data Bank
Проект Star Wars — Imperial Center — Галактическая Империя
Вымышленные империи
Правительства «Звёздных войн» | {
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Home REGION South East Asia Alibaba to take on KL traffic
Alibaba to take on KL traffic
Traffic solution: Alibaba Cloud plans to make live traffic predictions and recommendations to increase traffic efficiency in KL by crunching data gathered from video footage, traffic bureaus, public transportation systems and mapping apps
Singapore, 30 Jan 2018 – Alibaba Group will set up a traffic control system harnessing artificial intelligence for Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur, its first such service outside China, as the e-commerce giant pushes to grow its cloud computing business.
Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, said on Monday that it plans to make live traffic predictions and recommendations to increase traffic efficiency in Kuala Lumpur by crunching data gathered from video footage, traffic bureaus, public transportation systems and mapping apps.
It is partnering state agency Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and the Kuala Lumpur city council to roll out the technology, which would be localised and integrated with 500 inner city cameras by May.
The partnership comes after Alibaba founder Jack Ma and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak launched an "e-hub" facility last year, part of an initiative aimed at removing trade barriers for smaller firms and emerging nations.
Alibaba Cloud, which set up a data centre in Malaysia last year, is considering a second one to further develop a local ecosystem, its president Simon Hu said on Monday.
He declined to elaborate on the company's total investments made and planned for in Malaysia, but said it was "no small amount" and that the investments would continue if there was demand for cloud computing technologies.
MDEC's chief executive officer Yasmin Mahmood said there was no estimate of City Brain's impact on traffic in Kuala Lumpur yet. The traffic management system in the Chinese city of Hangzhou had resulted in reports of traffic violations with up to 92 per cent accuracy, emergency vehicles reaching their destinations in half the time and an overall increase in traffic speed by 15 per cent.
Mr Najib has forged close ties with China in recent years. Last year, the Malaysian leader announced a slew of infrastructure projects, many funded by China, as he worked up momentum towards a general election that he must call by the middle of this year.
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Ferris - Meaning of Ferris, What does Ferris mean?
[ 2 syll. fer-ris, fe-rr-is ] The baby boy name Ferris is pronounced as FEH-RRihS †. Ferris is an English and Irish name of Irish Gaelic and Old Greek origin. From Irish Gaelic roots, its meaning is rock - in this context, Ferris can be used in the English language.
In addition, Ferris is an Irish form of the Dutch, English, German, Hungarian, and Scandinavian name Peter.
Ferris is also a form of the English name Piers.
The names Faris, Farris, Farrish, Feris, Ferrand, Ferrise, and Ferriss are forms of Ferris.
Another form of the name is the diminutive Ferry.
See also the related categories, rock (sand), greek, and irish.
Ferris is unusual as a baby boy name. Its usage peaked modestly in 1902 with 0.007% of baby boys being named Ferris. It had a ranking of #765 then. The baby name has slipped in popularity since then, and is now of sporadic use. Among the family of boy names directly related to Ferris, Peter was the most regularly used in 2017.
Baby names that sound like Ferris include Fabra, Fabrice, Fabriece, Fabryce, Faerfax, Farag, Faraj, Faraz, Farcas, Farces, Farckas, Farckus, Farcus, Fareak, Fareaq, Fareik, Fareiq, Fargo, Fargoe, and Fargoh.
† Pronunciation for Ferris: F as in "fee (F.IY)" ; EH as in "ebb (EH.B)" ; R as in "race (R.EY.S)" ; IH as in "it (IH.T)" ; S as in "see (S.IY)" | {
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Dr. Agnieszka Kocel
Assistant Professor at Humanitas University in Sosnowiec, linguist and sworn translator/interpreter, with specialization in legal translation and conference interpreting.
Agnieszka graduated from the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw in Poland, where she obtained her Ph.D. in historical phonology and discovered her present path. She has since completed two years of post-graduate training in conference interpretation, complimented with a few years of teaching experience acquired in Poland and England – places which may now lay claim both as her home, and to her heart.
Academically, her interests lie in two distinctly different disciplines; linguistics, dialectology and phonology, on the one hand; and jurislinguistics with contrastive studies, on the other. At the moment, Agnieszka's focuses are on comparison of various countries' legal systems, research related to legal entity differentiation, and insolvency and bankruptcy proceedings relative to Poland, Great Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia.
LingLex, a School of Legal English and translators' office that Agnieszka set up to teach lawyers and business persons, offers workshops on various aspects of Legal English and provides various Legal English courses. She currently also writes an original Legal English coursebook, which is slated to publish in the near future. Personally, she has always held that doing what one loves for a living means living without ever having to work. Agnieszka cites her great passions as linguistic study, languages in general, English in preference, and Legal English in particular; assurance that her work efforts are done with regard to what she most deeply identifies with.
Palatable Palatalization. A Story of Each, Much, Such, and Which in Middle English Dialects.
The concept of palatalization has always intrigued linguists trying to find a palatable explanation for one of the most influential processes in the English phonology. Having initiated in Old English, palatalization took Middle English by storm, introducing a variety of forms, some of which have survived well into our modern times. Contrary to the popular belief, however, the process itself was far from palatable, proving lack of consistency observed across different dialects of that period. The present monograph intends to show the true, both palatable and unpalatable, character of palatalization, examining its effects exerted on four high-frequency words: EACH, MUCH, SUCH and WHICH, all of which appear copiously in the texts of the Innsbruck Prose Corpus. The monograph thus aims to analyze the extent of phonological inhomogeneity from the point of view of lexical diffusion, which demonstrates the impossibility to establish any definitive dialectal boundaries underlining the existence of a [k]-dialect and, consequently, the everlasting idea of the north-south divide.
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Dr. Marta Sylwanowicz
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Dr. Joanna Esquibel
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Dr. inż. Hieronim Piotr Janecki
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She studied at the University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies, where she was awarded a doctoral degree in 2004. Marta specializes in English historical linguistics, her main publications are on the English medical terminology of the medieval and early modern period. In her recent studies, the author, together with Prof. Magdalena Bator (University of Social Sciences, Warsaw), concentrated on the evolution of English culinary and medical recipes in (…)
Translator, theoretical and applied linguist, with focus on the history of language and the academia; in the past, an academic lecturer with 15 years of experience at the University of Warsaw (UW) and SWPS University, Poland. Her portfolio includes curriculum design and running Postgraduate Studies in LSP Translation and BA/ MA translation programs…
Professor (Dr. Hab.) at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. Her research interests include historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and varieties of English. She has published mainly on the history of English with the focus on morphology and lexis. She is currently working on a monograph devoted to obsolete preterite-present verbs in English…
Assistant Professor at Humanitas University in Sosnowiec, linguist and sworn translator/interpreter, with specialization in legal translation and conference interpreting. Agnieszka graduated from the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw in Poland, where she obtained her Ph.D. in historical phonology and discovered her present path. She has since completed two years of post-graduate training in conference interpretation, complimented with a few years of teaching experience acquired in Poland and England – places which may now lay claim both as her home, and to her heart…
Dr Anna Budna graduated from the University of Warsaw, where she obtained her PhD in historical linguistics. Her research interests include morpho-syntactical riddles posed by intricacies of Old and Middle English, as well as modern and historical sociolinguistics in all its varieties. A certified English-language examiner, a.o. at the International American School in Warsaw, she has…
Chemist, graduate of one of the oldest faculties at Silesian University of Technology, Faculty of Technology and Chemical Engineering (now Faculty of Chemistry); doctorate from the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology in Warsaw; founder and head of the Computer-Assisted Chemistry Laboratory at the Faculty of Materials Science and Design, University of Technology and Humanities in Radom (formerly Technical University), waste minimization certified expert…
Prof. Piotr P. Chruszczewski, a scholar of English and American studies, specializing in anthropological linguistics, to include studies of text, translation, writing and language.
Head of the College for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Wrocław; chairman of the Committee for Philology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wrocław Branch; holder of grants from the Foundation for Polish Science, Fulbright Commission, and the Lanckoroński Foundation.
Dr. Aleksandra R. Knapik specializes in Contact Linguistics, Translation Studies, Rhetoric and Communication. Vice-Chair of the Committee for Philology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wrocław Branch, she is also a founding member of the Polish Society for Human and Evolution Studies.
Co-owner and editor at Æ Academic Publishing in San Diego, CA. Long-time quiet problem solver who finds a need and fills it; a mind and eye for precision.
Dr. Joel Snyder is perhaps best known internationally as one of the first "audio describers." He's a member of the Actors' Equity Association, the American Federation of TV and Radio Artists, the Screen Actors Guild, and is a 20-year veteran arts specialist for the National Endowment for the Arts. He's recorded for the Library of Congress and read privately for individuals who are blind…
Received her PhD from the Polish and Classical Philology Department, Adam Mickiewicz University (UAM) in Poznań, Poland, for her dissertation devoted to audio description in genological perspective (within genre theory). Her research oscillates mainly around the audio description of fine arts, both in theory and practice. Beata is an editor of…
Dr. Anna Drogosz received her doctorate from the Department of English, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin, and is currently employed at the University of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn, Poland. Author of two monographs and thirty papers, she specializes in Cognitive Linguistics
He has written for the TV series "Sue Thomas: FBI and The Inside." He worked as the technical adviser for "The Inside" and "Angela's Eyes" and has consulted for "Law & Order: SVU" and "Sleeper Cell". He also appeared as a guest on Oprah to discuss his role in the NAMBLA investigation. Now retired from the FBI, he spent 26 years as a "street agent." He has worked organized crime, gangs, terrorism, and child exploitation…
Tim Lee, the rebellious teenager from McLeansboro, Illinois and son of a Baptist minister, fought in violent protest against all ordained authority in both his home and community while repeatedly being spared from more unfortunate consequences by those same elders whom he grew to realize he had given little reason to grant grace. At nineteen, he joined the Marine Corps, was trained as an infantry engineer, received orders to Quang Nam Province, Vietnam, and sustained an epiphany after an explosion which took…
Raised in Thornton, CO, Scott Flanigan considers himself blessed to be in the Flanigan family. Patriotism featured prominently in his upbringing, with numerous family members having served in the military, including a grandfather who answered his country's call during World War II…
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These muffins look amazing! I love blueberry and cream cheese together!
Your pictures are looking great! Makes me want to reach into my screen and grab a muffin!
Thanks Rhonda! I wish I could send you one through your screen so that you could taste just how delicious they are!
I'm in love with the chocolate crumble right now! | {
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Next Article in Software
Jawbone's UP24 Makes Its Way to Android
By Katherine Noyes
March 11, 2014 9:10 PM PT
After initially launching to an iOS-only audience late last year, Jawbone's UP24 wireless fitness tracker on Tuesday finally arrived for Android.
With the UP24 wristband and accompanying app, users can wirelessly sync sleep, movement and diet data to the app via Bluetooth Smart.
"Now with the launch of UP24 on Android, our entire community can enjoy the benefits in real time, with continuous feedback and in-the-moment notifications to help them achieve their goals," said Travis Bogard, vice president of product management and strategy for Jawbone.
Android users already have been active participants in the UP community, Bogard added.
Priced at US$149.99, the UP24 wristband features a hypoallergenic, medical-grade rubber exterior with a textural design. It is available in onyx or persimmon. The new UP by Jawbone 3.0 app for Android is now available in 12 languages as a free download on Google Play.
'Idle Alerts'
The UP system tracks users' movement and sleep in the background while the app displays key data; users can add data such as meals and mood. Using the system, they can track sleep and physical activity; log food and drink to track nutritional information; and set goals, with suggestions from UP.
Smart Alarm and Power Nap features can wake users at an optimal time, while Idle Alerts can be set to remind users to keep moving. Users of the app also can team up with friends for encouragement and friendly competition. In addition, the app can deliver notifications of accomplishments and milestones.
Languages the app supports include English, Spanish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese/Brazilian, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. The UP24 wristband's battery lasts seven days.
'There's More Investment Required'
While it may seem like a significant drawback to have arrived on Android so late, Jawbone's tardy appearance actually isn't all that striking, Ross Rubin, a principal analyst with Reticle Research, told LinuxInsider.
In fact, another companion app for a wearable device that lagged on Android was version 2.0 of the Pebble app, Rubin pointed out.
While the Android market is clearly bigger, there is also "a much broader range of devices to support," he explained. "Some support Bluetooth 4.0, some don't, and there's a whole range of screen sizes."
In short, "there's more investment required in QA to optimize the appearance for screen sizes, resolutions and capabilities," Rubin said.
'Still in the Early Adopter Stage'
The delay may not be significant, Jim McGregor, founder and principal analyst with Tirias Research, told LinuxInsider.
"While I think launching on the Android platform would have been optimal, it was important to introduce UP as soon as possible and then add additional support and features as quickly as possible before the market becomes too crowded or — worse — dominated by a few players," McGregor explained.
"We are still in the early adopter stage," he added. "As the technology, usage models and business models around wearables evolves, so will the devices. Eventually a few key players will emerge as the industry leaders, and Jawbone is in as good a position as anyone else as long as the UP platform continues to evolve."
'Novelty Items'
It may be, however, that "launching without Android support is a huge minus for any wearable device, unless the feature set, connectivity and server-side support is limited," Steve Blum, president of Tellus Venture Associates, told LinuxInsider.
"That's a good description of the Jawbone UP24," he noted. "It's a simple product that's attractively designed, but it doesn't do anything particularly innovative."
So far, wearables like the UP24 or Fitbit "are novelty items, not must-have accessories for serious fitness enthusiasts or breakthrough lifestyle products for average consumers," Blum pointed out.
Of course, "it's early days," he added. "Soon enough, someone will find the right combination of smartphone connectivity and features, server-side processing, and wearable sensors — and create a product that makes life more enjoyable and productive, with less effort and greater convenience. That's what the iPhone did after years of proto-smartphone products that didn't exactly fail but remained in the niche category."
'Solved by a Cowboy Developer'
Toward that end, "you need the flexibility and developer support that the Android platform provides, including its easy integration with Linux server-side development," Blum said.
"The problem will be solved by a cowboy developer, not someone living between the lines of Apple's store policies," he added. "That's why Google is coming out with a wearable SDK — and why not putting Android at the top of wearable product development priorities is a mistake."
That said, "the UP24 will perform nicely as a novelty item," Blum concluded, "but my prediction is that 95 percent of units sold will be languishing in dressing table drawers within a month."
Katherine Noyes is always on duty in her role as Linux Girl, whose cape she has worn since 2007. A mild-mannered journalist by day, she spends her evenings haunting the seedy bars and watering holes of the Linux blogosphere in search of the latest gossip. You can also find her on Twitter and Google+.
More by Katherine Noyes
An Awesome iWatch Is Apple's Greatest Challenge
Nintendo Makes Health the New Name of the Game
CES 2014 Trends: The Weird and the Wonderful
From the Blogosphere With Love: A FOSSy Farewell
Hacking as a Service Hits the Mainstream
Virtual Traffic Lights Could Revolutionize City Driving
Facebook Adds Amber Alerts for Missing Kids
Google's Project Ara Smartphone Puzzle Is Coming Together
Loving Linux in a Touchscreen World
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Zee! Actor, Comedian & Podcaster.
I'm Zee! Your host of Zee'z Yerba Buena, co-host of Wreckless Intent & co-host of Tuesday's Child on Wednesday!
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By checking out the link below, you can hear some great music & conversation on my weekly podcast, Zee'z Yerba Buena! Where we talk about San Francisco & its beautiful people!
And another link below gets you to my other podcast Wreckless Intent! I'm joined by 3 others (Mike,Jay & Luke) as we tackle todays most controversial topics out there in this no holds barred weekly show!!!
For inquiries about our upcoming events, or book me for a show send me a message.
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(plume only) Embley, R et al (2004) Explorations of Mariana Arc volcanoes reveal new hydrothermal systems. EOS, Trans. AGU 85(4): 37, 40.
Embley, RW et al. (2007) Exploring the submarine ring of fire Mariana Arc - Western Pacific. Oceanography 20(4): 68-79. | {
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ScienceForBrazil.com celebrates the achievements of Brazilian science, identifies research opportunities and funding for foreign scientists working in Brazil, and profiles technology innovation in the academic, public policy, business development and commercial arenas.
Researching In Brazil
The truth behind 'Snakebite Therapy'
From the dusty cowboy bars of the old American West to the modern cities of South East Asia, there's an enduring myth that a shot of rattlesnake whisky will give a man extra courage and virility. And today's macho types flashing their rattlesnake cowboy boots in the bars of New York or Lost Angeles certainly perpetuate this legend.
So could there be truth in the idea that venomous reptiles could in some circumstances actually be beneficial to human health?
Scientists in Brazil – whose backlands are also home to some of the world's most deadly reptiles – have discovered that compounds based on snake venom can indeed help to combat hepatitis C virus. The compounds – phospholipase and crotapotin – which are derived from the crotoxin in snake venom, can indeed block entry of the hepatitis virus into cultured human cells.
Scientists carried out a series of experiments, with results published in PLOS ONE, tested the antiviral properties of three compounds isolated from the venom of Crotalus durissus terrificus, the South American rattlesnake.
Rattler Whisky is hardly "hair of the dog that bit you." Yet compounds in snake venom – phospholipase and crotapotin – can indeed prevent some harmful viruses.
Two articles were authored by Brazilian scientists affiliated with São Paulo State University (UNESP), the Federal University of Uberlândia (UFU) and the University of São Paulo (USP). One paper describes very promising results for compounds that combat hepatitis C virus, while the second looks for plant-based compounds capable of the same task.
The research was conducted at UNESP's Institute of Biosciences, Letters & Exact Sciences (IBILCE) in São José do Rio Preto, São Paulo State, by the Virology Group at the Genomic Studies Laboratory, led by Professor Paula Rahal, and at the Virology Laboratory of UFU's Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICBIM), led by Professor Ana Carolina Gomes Jardim. FAPESP provided funding of various types, as did the National Council for Scientific & Technological Development (CNPq), the Minas Gerais State Agency for Research and Development (FAPEMIG) and the Royal Society's Newton Fund (UK).
"By treating cells with crotapotin, an antiviral effect was observed on HCV release, the only stage inhibited by this compound. Our data demonstrated the multiple antiviral effects of toxins from animal venoms on HCV life cycle," the authors wrote.
The discovery is important for public health systems not only in Brazil but around the world that carry out very costly liver transplants – many of them on hepatitis B or C. For instance, hepatitis C patients alone account for 40% of all liver transplants in São Paulo.
The research originated from earlier scientific discovery that some compounds isolated from animal venom have shown activity against some viruses, such as dengue, yellow fever and measles.
The compounds from rattlesnake venom were isolated at the Toxicology Laboratory of USP's School of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Ribeirão Preto, led by Professor Suely Vilela Sampaio.
The compounds were phospholipase A2 (PLA2-CB) and crotapotin (CP). In snake venom, they are associated with each other as subunits of the crotoxin protein complex, which the researchers also tested.
In a series of in vitro experiments with cultured human cells, they tested the antiviral action of the two compounds, both separately and together in the protein complex. They observed the compounds' effects on human cells (to help prevent infection by the virus) and directly on hepatitis C virus.
The hepatitis C virus's genome consists of a single strand of RNA (ribonucleic acid), which is a simple chain of nucleotides encoding the proteins in the virus.
Compounds derived from snakebite can be therapetic – but probably not in this whisky served in Cambodia that's powerful enough to make a camera cross-eyed.
"This virus invades the human host cell to replicate, producing new viral particles. Inside the host cell, the virus produces a complementary strand of RNA, from which molecules of viral genome will emerge to constitute the new particles," Prof. Gomes Jardim told a Brazilian reporter.
"Our research showed that phospholipase can intercalate into double-stranded RNA, a virus replication intermediate, inhibiting the production of new viral particles. Intercalation reduced these by 86% compared with their production in the absence of phospholipase," she said. When the same experiment was performed using crotoxin, production of viral particles fell 58%
The second stage of the research consisted of verifying whether the compounds blocked the virus's entry into cultured human cells. In this case, the results were even more satisfactory: phospholipase blocked 97% of viral cell entry, and crotoxin reduced viral infection by 85%.
Lastly they tested crotapotin, another compound isolated from the same rattlesnake's venom. Crotapotin had no inhibitory effect on viral entry or replication but did affect another stage of the virus's life cycle, reducing release of new viral particles from cells by 78%. Treatment with crotoxin achieved 50% inhibition of viral release.
The second paper on the hunt for plant-based remedies to hepatitis C was published in Scientific Reports. It describes the action of chemical compounds against hepatitis C and was supported by FAPESP, CNPq, FAPEMIG and the Royal Society's Newton Fund.
Two plant-based flavonoids that have already been shown to have antiviral action in experiments with dengue virus, were investigated. The authors tested the antiviral potential of the sorbifolin and pedalitin flavonoids derived from Pterogyne nitens, a tree known in Portuguese as amendoim-bravo. Flavonoids are compounds found in fruit, flowers, vegetables, honey and wine. The research was conducted by Professor Luis Octávio Regasini at UNESP's Green & Medicinal Chemistry Laboratory in São José do Rio Preto.
To access the PLOS article, click here
To read a complete article on this topic by Brazilian journalist Peter Moon, click here
Brazil's best-known scientist, the veteran nuclear physicist José Goldemberg, in September 2015 took office as the president of the São…
Belmont Forum Collaborative Research Action on "Climate Predictability and Inter-Regional Linkages - 2015"
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Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior directed at a former or current partner, spouse, or boyfriend or girlfriend. The abuser uses fear, manipulation, and intimidation to gain power and control over the other person. The abuse can take many forms, including physical battering, emotional abuse, economic abuse, and sexual abuse, and may involve using children, pets, threats, intimidation, and isolation.
Emotional abuse means intense and repetitive degradation, creating isolation, and controlling the actions or behaviors of the spouse through intimidation or manipulation to the detriment of the individual. ("Five Year State Master Plan for the Prevention of and Service for Domestic Violence." Utah State Department of Human Services, January 1994)
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Domestic violence affects all types of people, regardless of gender, ethnicity, race, sexual identity, socio-economic status, and religion. It is also called intimate partner abuse, family violence, battering, elder abuse, teen relationship abuse, domestic battery, and confinement.
Domestic violence is the most under reported crime in America.
Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States; more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. ("Violence Against Women, A Majority Staff Report," Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 102nd Congress, October 1992, p. 3)
One woman is beaten by her husband or partner every 15 seconds in the United States. (Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1991)
About 1 out of 4 women are likely to be abused by a partner in her lifetime. (Sara Glazer, "Violence, Against Women" CO Researcher, Congressional Quarterly, Inc., Volume 3, Number 8, February, 1993, p. 171.; CDC, 2000)
Domestic Violence & Substance Abuse: In more than 90% of cases which report domestic violence, at least one person was abusing some substances. Learn more HERE.
Approximately 85% (Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, Feb. 2003) of the victims of domestic violence are women. (Statistics, National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, Ruth Peachey, M.D. 1988) Abuse occurs among people of all races, ages, socio-economic classes, religious affiliations, occupations, and educational backgrounds.
Fifty percent of all homeless women and children in this country are fleeing domestic violence. (Senator Joseph Biden,U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Violence Against Women: Victims of the System, 1991)
A battering incident is rarely an isolated event. Battering tends to increase and become more violent over time.
Many abusers learned violent behavior growing up in an abusive family.
25% – 45% of all women who are battered are battered during pregnancy.
Domestic violence does not end immediately with separation. Over 70% of the women injured in domestic violence cases are injured after separation.
Nearly 2.2 million people called a domestic violence crisis or hot line in 2004 to escape crisis situations, seek advice, or assist someone they thought might be victims.
Studies show that access to shelter services leads to a 60-70% reduction in incidence and severity of re-assault during the 3-12 months follow up period compared to women who did not access shelter. Shelter services led to greater reduction in severe re-assault than did seeking court or law enforcement protection, or moving to a new location. (Campbell, JC, PhD, RN, FAAN. Anna D. Wolf, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, Protective Action and Re-assault: Findings from the RAVE study.)
To reduce domestic abuse, sexual assault and suicide in our community through shelter services, crisis intervention and prevention initiatives.
Tweets by @ABWMuncie
Quick Exit and Hide History | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} |
Iveco Magirus 110-16 Military 4x4 drop side cargo truck. These trucks have a steel body and dropsides.
They are equipped with diff locks. They have optional chassis mounted winches.
Danish Army Specific: This 5000 kg 4x4 truck has superseded the Bedford R-series in the early 1980´s and is now in widespread use by the Danish Army.
Historical: It was previously designated Magirus 168M11FAL, but has been re-designated IVECO 110 - 16 by the manufacturer.
IVECO Magirus 110 - 16 AWM is mounted with Shelter M/77. Typical use is communication, operation and administration.
IVECO Magirus 110 - 16 AWM is mounted with Shelter M/68. Typical use is spare parts van.. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
The way this season has been going, the Cubs were due for a pleasant surprise.
The Chicago Cubs are now 1-4 early in the new season.
Walt Lemon, in just his third game with Chicago, was one of seven Bulls in double figures in the matchup of teams whose seasons will end without a playoff appearance.
With rain in the forecast in Chicago for almost all of Thursday, the White Sox have postponed their home opener by a day.
The Atlanta Braves took advantage of six Chicago errors to beat the Cubs 8-0 on Monday night.
Injury-plagued Chicago has lost five straight. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
There are two stories that inform our celebration of Christmas. The first one, of course, is Santa Claus. And what's not to like about Santa? Santa Claus is cheery, indulgent, gives gifts without any expectations, and is the perfect house guest— he arrives, drops presents, and then leaves after only about 10 minutes. You don't even need a clean house for his arrival.
But when he's gone, he's gone. And even a few hours later, if your house is anything like mine, the excitement of opening the presents has been displaced by fatigue from too much candy and crabby kids and adults who need a nap.
The other story of Christmas, as we hear from the Gospel of Luke, is not a story meant to cheer us up in the middle of the winter blues. It's not a story of technological gifts or piled up riches or indulgence of rich foods. Instead, it speaks to the true hungers in our lives. It's a story that sticks with us long after we put the nativity away, because it tugs at the dreams we have for our world; the hopes we hold for ourselves; and it holds within it the very essence of who God is.
The people of the Bible, Abraham's lineage and the Kings and the prophets all try to tell us throughout Scripture who God is. And their descriptions are vast— the Bible is truly a wonderful collage of descriptors about God— from mighty and powerful to merciful and just; from strong and loud like the wind to soft and quiet like our very breath.
But here, tonight, we get to see how it is that God describes God's self. For here, in Je-sus we see how God chose to come into the world— as a vulnerable baby.
It's a story that never gets told too many times, because it's about a world not so differ-ent from our own. How much of our news is filled with things we should be fearful of. Mary and Joseph live in a world like ours in many ways. It is a world that is violent, judgmental, and fearful. As with all superpowers, the Romans are afraid of losing their control, their power, so Emperor Augustus decides to make sure that everyone registers in their own hometown— after all, you can't be in control of people unless you know where they are. So Mary and Joseph set out. Not on a winter vacation, not to visit rela-tives, not even to get away before the baby is born. They set out on a mandated trip on dangerous roads in the most inconvenient time there was— right when Mary was due to have a child. There are no medical excuses or ways to get out of this edict. This is a dictatorship after all, so they go. They walk day after day after day, and when they arrive, there is no room for them anywhere— for they are just two people among all of the people who have come to register in Bethlehem.
For those of you who are parents, you know that there are never convenient times to have children. But for Mary and Joseph, this must've been the most inconvenient time they could think of. And for years I have wondered, why then, Lord? Why was it neces-sary for Jesus to come right then? This year, however, it struck me that if we look at it from God's perspective, the time was never convenient either. When is it ever conven-ient to send your son into a place of such darkness? When has our world ever been at peace for more than fifteen minutes so that God could send Jesus into a different kind of world?
We tend to focus on God being all powerful and mighty and strong and omnipresent. But the part of God's self that God chooses to reveal in Jesus, is quite different. Jesus comes as God's own son, not born to a military leader who will think he can keep him absolutely safe; not born into a rich family that will think they can protect him from life's troubles; not born into a famous family that will believe that their name will protect him. Jesus is born into one of the most vulnerable situations we could ever fathom— he is born to an unwed teenage mother, to a father who knows it is not his child, and as a refugee in a town where the King will soon search him out as a threat to the kingdom.
In Jesus God wants us to see God's own self— humble, vulnerable, loving, dignified, honest, peaceful, patient, kind. As Jesus grows into adulthood, we will see that he is respected and loved by his followers not because he fixes all of their problems or fights all of their enemies, but precisely because he loves them for who they are; expects the best from them; treats all people with dignity; and lives a life fully grounded in sharing God's love to everyone.
God's great risk is that Jesus came to earth at all— the ending is uncertain; the conse-quences great; and yet Christ came. God's great risk continuously in our lives is that vulnerability is stronger than dominance; peace is more influential than war; love is more powerful than hate.
We can see it from the very beginning. The angels choose to go to the shepherds— not the high and mighty— to share the good news. God chooses Mary, a faithful peasant girl, who is young enough to be open to this grand miracle inside of her. And humble Joseph couldn't have been too prideful or he would've broken off the engagement when he found out about the pregnancy. None of them are living in a perfect world; or a peaceful world; or a safe world.
And God comes anyway. God chooses to risk it all with those people willing to be vul-nerable who are open to receiving and sharing God's Word. And God didn't stop there. God risks everything each and every day with you and with me, inviting us to be part of sharing God's light. Because that's who God is.
The light of God came into the world and the darkness did not overcome it. The light of God continues to come into this world, over and over again. May we be bearers of that light by sharing our own vulnerability with each other. May we be bearers of that light by sharing God's love with this world. May we risk ourselves so that we can truly bear the light of Christ tonight and tomorrow and in the new year. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
136 days after we launched our Alpha Preview, I'm excited to announce the Mondo Public Beta! Over those 136 days, three thousand users have tested the app, sent their feedback, and made suggestions on our community forum, spending more than £1.5m in total across the world.
What's new in the Beta?
Anyone with an iPhone can now download the Mondo app from the App Store! If you're on the waiting list, you can see exactly where you are in the queue, and invite more friends to move forward in line.
If you live in the UK (and are aged 18+), and manage to get to the top 1,000 of the waiting list by this Sunday evening at midnight, we promise to send you a Mondo card (our MasterCard® Prepaid Debit card) early next week. After that, we'll continue to send out a thousand Mondo cards every week, to get many more of you onboard.
We're no longer London-only! If you sign up, we'll send your card directly to your home address anywhere in the UK. We've been testing this over the last few weeks and we can't wait to get many more people cards.
Mondo users can now send instant P2P (person-to-person) payments to any other Mondo user with just their phone number. Split the tab, share grocery expenses, repay borrowed money – the world is your oyster and it's all secured by Touch ID.
Many of the same caveats still apply to the Mondo Beta as they did to the Alpha, although we have made some huge improvements over the last few months. From day one, our philosophy has always been to focus on making something people want. To achieve that, we're committed to launching prototypes early to see how people react, before improving the product based on that feedback.
It's important to note that you won't yet have access to 'full banking' features like Direct Debits or Faster Payments. As we continue to work towards our banking license later this year, we'll be looking to implement these as soon as we are able. The Beta is still iOS-only, but we are launching our Android app later this year. If you're an Android developer, come and help us!
Your feedback is invaluable in helping us refine the product, so please keep it coming! You can reach us on Twitter, join our community forum, or email us with any questions or suggestions – we'd love to chat!
The term "Mondo Card" refers to the Mondo MasterCard® Prepaid Debit card. MasterCard is a registered trademark of MasterCard International Incorporated. The Card is issued by Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd ("WDCS") pursuant to licence by MasterCard International Inc. WDCS is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority to conduct electronic money service activities under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 (Ref. 900051). | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
There will not be school on Monday, January 18, 2021.
3 days ago, La Grande School District
Eastern Oregon University Head Start is Now Enrolling!
La Grande School District K-6 Grades Are Back On-Site!
LGSD has an opening for a Paraeducator I at Central Elementary and for a temporary Frosh Volleyball Coach to finish the 2020-21 season only. For more information and how to apply, please see Employment Opportunities under the menu on the La Grande School District website, lagrandesd.org.
LGSD has an opening for an Online School Coordinator. The position is a half-time, temporary position that requires a valid Oregon Teaching License. For information and how to apply please see our website at lagrandesd.org.
10 days ago, La Grande School District
Thank you to our La Grande School District Board Members!
La Grande School District has an opening for an Assistant Track Coach (Jumps and Hurdles). Please do not click the "Apply Now" button offered by Facebook, but go to our website at lagrandesd.org and select the Employment Opportunities page.
School is back in session on Monday, January 4th with all grades in Comprehensive Distance Learning. Grades K-6 will be on-site, starting January 11th. We have the potential to have grades 7-12 on-site on January 27.
January 4-8 - ALL Students in Comprehensive Distance Learning January 11 - Grades K-6 back On-Site! January 27 - Grades 7-12 MAY return to On-Site Learning.
Hot off the press! A new La Grande Pride newsletter from the La Grande School District is now available. The newsletter features articles on student resilience, Anne March and Leslie Graham (two LGSD teachers, trauma informed care, and our school nurses. https://5il.co/o2v1
about 1 month ago, La Grande School District
Please tune in tonight at 6:30 p.m.
LGSD Town Hall Wednesday, December 16th 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM Connect Via LGSD.TV or La Grande School District on Facebook. Submit a question by emailing [email protected]. LGSD will look for trends in questions and answer those on Wednesday night.
Please connect to the LGSD Town Hall via LGSD TV (lgsd.tv) or the La Grande School District Facebook page. The update will include: Current COVID-19 Data for Union County January 2021 Educational Planning Vaccine Survey and Distribution Presenters: George Mendoza, Superintendent Scott Carpenter, Director of Educational Programs Carrie Brogoitti, Center for Human Development Dr. Zachary Spoehr-Labutta, Grande Ronde Hospital
Please support LHS ASB at their hot chocolate drive-thru! December 16th, 11 am - 1 pm, in front of La Grande High School. Thank you!
LGSD will remain in Comprehensive Distance Learning with restricted Limited In-Person Instruction as we enter into our Winter Break period. Current data for Union County for (11/22/20 - 12/5/2020): Absolute case count: 156 Positivity Rate: 12.9%
La Grande School District has an opening for its Business Director position. Please see our Employment Opportunities page on our website for more information. https://www.lagrandesd.org/page/employment-opportunities
about 2 months ago, La Grande School District
La Grande School District has an opening for the CTE Coordinator position at La Grande High School. Please see our Employment Opportunities page on our website for more details. https://www.lagrandesd.org/page/employment-opportunities
La Grande School District has several openings for paraprofessionals. Please see our Employment Opportunities page of the lagrandesd.org website for more details. https://www.lagrandesd.org/page/employment-opportunities
The Island City Elementary Poinsettia Sale! Thursday, December 3rd from 12 pm to 7 pm Island City Elementary Gymnasium Come by to select and take poinsettias home and to your loved ones. For prices and more information, please see the Island City Elementary website at https://ice.lagrandesd.org/o/ices
The La Grande School District currently has openings for a Para I at Greenwood Elementary and a Para II at La Grande High School. Please see our Employment Opportunities page on our website at lagrandesd.org. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} |
CAI Track opened its season this past weekend at Purdue University. The season is definitely looking up. Freshman McKenna Cavanaugh destroyed the previous school record in the 3200 meter run by 1:48 sec. Previously, she set the school record in the 1600m as a seventh grader. Definitely a Warrior-like performance. We look forward to the Warrior track team continuing to make noise with their feet. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaC4"
} |
Sinkhole, after the rains came… and came… and came
Feb 19, 2014 | General Blog
On Saturday morning I stepped out into the street after climbing out of bed at the crack of 10.30 only to spy police cars and a small crowd at the top of the street. Asking a neighbour what the fuss was I was told that the road had been closed because of the sink hole. Now get that phrase right, it was the sink hole not a sink hole, the implication being that everybody knew about it, as should I. Scratching my head and squinting my bleary eyes I considered going back to bed but decided this was the sort of thing that I really ought to pay attention to, but not until after breakfast. If my neighbours and I were going to tumble into the Hell Mouth as seen on everything from Hollywood blockbusters to the recent documentary on Florida's sink holes, I was going to make sure I didn't have an empty stomach. Who knows what dining opportunities there are in Hell, although I imagine they are tastier than those in Heaven. (Heaven for the weather, Hell for the company as the song goes and I imagine that applies to their eateries too.)
Before long there was all manner of kafuffle going on outside including a helicopter hovering in a position that seemed to be just outside my front window and, strangely, there is one again as I write my account two days later. Let's hope, then, that having spent the weekend doing more interesting things this is still early enough for me to jump on the topical bandwagon.
Taking a wander up the road it turned out that the hole was really close, less-than-those-signs-on-the-motorway-that-say-it's-300-yards-to-the-junction close. I'd say the thing is 250 yards away on the corner of a street of new houses built less than five years ago. There wasn't much to see apart from some guy in hi-vis clothing apparently digging a hole, which didn't seem to be very sensible no matter how you considered it. The various nice policemen didn't really have much to say other than that they'd evacuated seventeen houses and that things were now under control.
Returning home I was on the phone to a concerned relative when a neighbour came into the room and interrupted, suggesting that she'd been told that we might have to evacuate. Suddenly I found myself thinking of the vast house swallowing sink holes in Florida as described on a BBC Horizon documentary only two weeks ago.
Apparently the problem in Florida is a layer of clay on top of porous, water soluble, rock, often limestone. The houses are built on the clay which remains stable while water, over thousands of years, erodes the rock beneath. Eventually the rock is no longer sufficient to support the remaining clay which collapses when it either dries and cracks or softens at times of high rain fall and drops into the void beneath. Hertfordshire is completely different to Florida in terms of landscape. Hertfordshire is hilly and temperate whereas Florida is flat and has alligators. However there are similarities in that Hertfordshire has chalk hills beneath a layer of clay instead of limestone as they have in Florida. When you begin to think about it it's surprising that Hertfordshire isn't more known for sink holes as chalk is considerably softer than limestone, more porous and, you might imagine, more easily washed away. Could there really be voids beneath us?
It seems sink holes are becoming more frequent occurrences and the recent spate of them in the UK are ascribed to the extraordinary amount of rain we've had this winter. In many cases it seems that the clay itself has washed away and in some places there might have been in filled clay pits that have opened up again. With all the recent rain the culprit would seem clear but there is talk of a water leak. Judging by the size of the hole you might imagine that there would have to be a lot of water leaking for a long time.
So the neighbour interrupting my phone call with the single word 'evacuation' lent an air of credible fear to what had until then been a curiosity at a safe distance. A 35ft wide hole twenty feet deep is no concern but add an official hint of further evacuation, even at this apparently safe distance, and the imagination runs wild. My mind began to visualise thoughts that I'd not had since they switched on the Large Hadron Collider with the consolation that if the world got sucked into a black hole at least France would be sucked in a few seconds before Britain. From the mention of possible evacuation my 250 yards of safety collapsed into nothingness. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door with a policeman asking me to move my car from the road because of the congestion. He could have been asking me anything but in that moment he triggered a full evacuation panic complete with thoughts of, 'What could I live without?' and, 'What should I absolutely take with me?' Strangely my physical possessions seemed unimportant and I was mostly concerned with my PC, software and data. What does that say about me?
Moving the car, as I prepared to load-up never to return, I found myself encountering sinkhole tourists. Talking to the police later it turned out that there hadn't been any advice regarding further evacuations and my neighbour had merely been told by a policeman that if he was in this situation he'd have a bag packed ready to leave.
Having said that even the mistaken experience of having to leave and wondering what to save brings the whole experience home to you and it makes you feel for the poor souls who have had to get out of their homes at a moment's notice. One resident told the story of not even being able to grab her purse. What must that do to your life when your home contains everything you own and is your place of refuge?
Running away to Colchester until the following day I watched the excellent new Lego Movie, which interestingly turns upon the main character, Emmet, falling down a sink hole where he begins his journey to become a hero, his perceptions are challenged, he transforms, and so the world transforms with him. It's a brilliant film, you don't have to have kids, I don't and I still had a great time. If you ever had Lego as a kid, and who didn't, you'll enjoy to it even if it's recognising the colours of the original bricks.
Leaving the film is was still early so we wandered around Colchester thinking about pubs and beer and soon headed for the excellent music venue The Bull. It you don't know The Bull it's a proper old fashioned live music venue with bands in the main pub and a second stage in The Soundhouse out the back. Colchester seems to have a thriving live music scene, something that Hemel Hempstead once had but that seems to have been killed after the changes in public entertainment regulations some years ago. The judgemental blue noses of Hemel have finished off the local music scene and left us with a soulless town with nothing going on other than bars that are little more than corporate run alcohol warehouses while Colchester is thriving and vibrant.
impassioned
The main bar in The Bull was just a little too packed so we tried out the back. Walking into the Soundhouse we found the excellent cover band The Kicks playing a truly brilliant selection of mod, punk and rock. Their performance was tight and energetic with tracks mostly taken from the seventies and early eighties with a bit of leeway for the best tracks from decades either side. When they dropped in a couple of Blur tracks or other more recent material the fit was perfect. If anything the crowd didn't seem to appreciate what they were listening too, as their response to The Kicks' impassioned rendition of All or Nothing (Small Faces) was a bit lukewarm. But perhaps I'm older than I'm prepared to admit and the rest of the audience didn't have the same association with the music. Talking to the band after, swapping stories of Steve Marriot (late lead singer of the Small Faces), I happened to mention that I'd come all the way from Hemel to see them and it seemed news of our local sink hole had reached Colchester. Okay that wasn't strictly true as I'd come over to see the film and generally have a night out, The Kicks were serendipity.
Over night it had occurred to me that we used to talk of subsidence but these days we speak of sinkholes. Returning home on Sunday the house was still there, as were the police. The nice policeman sitting in the car playing with his iPhone (because he had little else to do) said that the engineers had explained that subsidence is the movement of land whereas sinkholes were already there. In this case nobody had been prepared to commit either way. I was particularly pleased, when I looked over towards the hole, to see another three policemen gingerly venturing towards the edge of the Hell Mouth to get a better view.
Indeed there was a hole, and the police were looking into it.
Lady Danni Morinich on February 26, 2014 at 8:24 pm
Just goes to show when escaping a sink hole, the only way is Essex.
jackbarrowuk on November 25, 2014 at 9:08 pm
The road reopened today after nine months. If I ever find out any more about what they spent so long filling in I'll post an update. If anyone else has any information I'd be grateful if you could post it here. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} |
Darksiders Warmastered Edition Brings The Apocalypse To PS4 Pro In 4K
On Nov 18, 2016 1:00 pm, by Jack McBastard
This November, return to the biblical hellscape of Darksiders Warmastered Edition, where Metroidvania meets Revelations, now in 4k on PlayStation Pro. A game that I have personally described as "Bram Stoker's Legend of Zelda", Darksiders can now be experienced on current gen consoles like never before.
Deceived by the forces of evil into prematurely bringing about the end of the world, War – the first Horseman of the Apocalypse – stands accused of breaking the sacred law by inciting a war between Heaven and Hell. In the slaughter that ensued, the demonic forces defeated the heavenly hosts and laid claim to the Earth. Hunted by a vengeful group of Angels, War must take on the forces of Hell, forge uneasy alliances with the very demons he hunts, and journey across the ravaged remains of the Earth on his quest for vengeance and vindication.
Unleash the wrath of War, combining brutal attacks and supernatural abilities to decimate all who stand in your way. Wield a devastating arsenal of angelic, demonic and Earthly weapons; and blaze a trail of destruction atop Ruin, War's fiery phantom steed. Battle across the wastelands and demon-infested dungeons of the decimated Earth in your quest for vengeance and redemption. Uncover powerful ancient relics, upgrade your weapons, unlock new abilities, and customize your gameplay style. Battle against all who stand in your way – from war-weary angelic forces to Hell's hideous demon hordes.
Darksiders Warmastered Edition Features:
4k support for PC and PS4 Pro
Native 1080p rendering resolution for other console platforms
Doubled all the texture resolutions
Rendering improvements and rework
60 FPS in moment to moment gameplay (30 for WiiU)
On November 22, Darksiders Warmastered Edition will release on Sony's PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The PC version will release on November 29, and the Wii U version will follow at a later date.
Jack McBastard is a contributor for AYBOnline. His opinions are his own. He is also somewhat of a loose cannon and was asked to turn in his badge and gun, but will still pursue the case while he's on suspension no matter what the chief says.
darksiders Darksiders Warmastered Edition Jack McBastard Metroidvania THQ Nordic War | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} |
Versions: (draft-eastlake-dnsext-2929bis) 00 RFC 2929
INTERNET-DRAFT Donald E. Eastlake 3rd
Bill Manning
Expires: June 2000 February 2000
Domain Name System (DNS) IANA Considerations
------ ---- ------ ----- ---- --------------
Distribution of this draft <draft-ietf-dnsext-iana-dns-00.txt>, which
is intended to become a Best Current Practice, is unlimited. Comments
should be sent to the DNS Working Group mailing list
<[email protected]> or to the authors.
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working
documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas,
and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
months. Internet-Drafts may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by
other documents at any time. It is not appropriate to use Internet-
Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as a
``working draft'' or ``work in progress.''
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt
Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA) parameter assignment
considerations are given for the allocation of Domain Name System
(DNS) classes, RR types, operation codes, error codes, etc.
D. Eastlake 3rd, E. Brunner, B. Manning [Page 1]
INTERNET-DRAFT DNS IANA Considerations February 2000
Status of This Document....................................1
Abstract...................................................1
Table of Contents..........................................2
1. Introduction............................................3
2. DNS Query/Response Headers..............................3
2.1 One Spare Bit?.........................................4
2.2 Opcode Assignment......................................4
2.3 RCODE Assignment.......................................5
3. DNS Resource Records....................................5
3.1 RR TYPE IANA Considerations............................7
3.1.1 Special Note on the OPT RR...........................8
3.2 RR CLASS IANA Considerations...........................8
3.3 RR NAME Considerations.................................9
4. Designated Expert......................................10
5. Security Considerations................................10
References................................................10
Authors Addresses.........................................12
Expiration and File Name..................................12
The Domain Name System (DNS) provides replicated distributed secure
hierarchical databases which hierarchically store "resource records"
(RRs) under domain names.
This data is structured into CLASSes and zones which can be
independently maintained. See [RFC 1034, 1035, 2136, 2181, 2535]
familiarity with which is assumed.
This document covers, either directly or by reference, general IANA
parameter assignment considerations applying across DNS query and
response headers and all RRs. There may be additional IANA
considerations that apply to only a particular RR type or
query/response opcode. See the specific RFC defining that RR type or
query/response opcode for such considerations if they have been
defined.
IANA currently maintains a web page of DNS parameters at
<http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/dns-parameters>.
"IETF Standards Action", "IETF Consensus", "Specification Required",
and "Private Use" are as defined in [RFC 2434].
2. DNS Query/Response Headers
The header for DNS queries and responses contains field/bits in the
following diagram taken from [RFC 2136, 2535]:
1 1 1 1 1 1
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
| ID |
|QR| Opcode |AA|TC|RD|RA| Z|AD|CD| RCODE |
| QDCOUNT/ZOCOUNT |
| ANCOUNT/PRCOUNT |
| NSCOUNT/UPCOUNT |
| ARCOUNT |
The ID field identifies the query and is echoed in the response so
they can be matched.
The QR bit indicates whether the header is for a query or a response.
The AA, TC, RD, RA, AD, and CD bits are each theoretically meaningful
only in queries or only in responses, depending on the bit. However,
many DNS implementations copy the query header as the initial value
of the response header without clearing bits. Thus any attempt to
use a "query" bit with a different meaning in a response or to define
a query meaning for a "response" bit is dangerous given existing
implementation. Such meanings may only be assigned by an IETF
Standards Action.
The unsigned fields query count (QDCOUNT), answer count (ANCOUNT),
authority count (NSCOUNT), and additional information count (ARCOUNT)
express the number of records in each section for all opcodes except
Update. These fields have the same structure and data type for
Update but are instead the counts for the zone (ZOCOUNT),
prerequisite (PRCOUNT), update (UPCOUNT), and additional information
(ARCOUNT) sections.
2.1 One Spare Bit?
There have been ancient DNS implementations for which the Z bit being
on in a query meant that only a response from the primary server for
a zone is acceptable. It is believed that current DNS
implementations ignore this bit.
Assigning a meaning to the Z bit requires an IETF Standards Action.
2.2 Opcode Assignment
New OpCode assignments require an IETF Standards Action.
Currently DNS OpCodes are assigned as follows:
OpCode Name Reference
0 Query [RFC 1035]
1 IQuery (Inverse Query) [RFC 1035]
2 Status [RFC 1035]
3 available for assignment
4 Notify [RFC 1996]
5 Update [RFC 2136]
6-15 available for assignment
2.3 RCODE Assignment
It would appear from the DNS header above that only four bits of
RCODE, or response/error code are available. However, RCODEs can
appear not only at the top level of a DNS response but also inside
TSIG RRs [RFC XXX3] and OPT RRs [RFC 2671]. The OPT RR provides an
eight bit extension resulting in a 12 bit RCODE field and the TSIG RR
has a 16 bit RCODE field.
RCODE Name Description Reference
0 NoError No Error [RFC 1035]
1 FormErr Format Error [RFC 1035]
2 ServFail Server Failure [RFC 1035]
3 NXDomain Non-Existent Domain [RFC 1035]
4 NotImp Not Implemented [RFC 1035]
5 Refused Query Refused [RFC 1035]
6 YXDomain Name Exists when it should not [RFC 2136]
7 YXRRSet RR Set Exists when it should not [RFC 2136]
8 NXRRSet RR Set that should exist does not [RFC 2136]
9 NotAuth Server Not Authoritative for zone [RFC 2136]
10 NotZone Name not contained in zone [RFC 2136]
11-15 available for assignment
16 BADVERS Bad OPT Version [RFC 2671]
16 BADSIG TSIG Signature Failure [RFC XXX3]
17 BADKEY Key not recognized [RFC XXX3]
18 BADTIME Signature out of time window [RFC XXX3]
19-3840 available for assignment
0x0013-0x0F00
3841-4095 Private Use
0x0F01-0x0FFF
4096-65535 available for assignment
0x1000-0xFFFF
Since it is important that RCODEs be understood for interoperability,
assignment of new RCODE listed above as "available for assignment"
requires an IETF Consensus.
3. DNS Resource Records
All RRs have the same top level format shown in the figure below
taken from [RFC 1035]:
| |
/ /
/ NAME /
| TYPE |
| CLASS |
| TTL |
| RDLENGTH |
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--|
/ RDATA /
NAME is an owner name, i.e., the name of the node to which this
resource record pertains. NAMEs are specific to a CLASS as described
in section 3.2. NAMEs consist of an ordered sequence of one or more
labels each of which has a label type [RFC 1035, 2671].
TYPE is a two octet unsigned integer containing one of the RR TYPE
codes. See section 3.1.
CLASS is a two octet unsigned integer containing one of the RR CLASS
TTL is a four octet (32 bit) bit unsigned integer that specifies the
number of seconds that the resource record may be cached before the
source of the information should again be consulted. Zero is
interpreted to mean that the RR can only be used for the transaction
in progress.
RDLENGTH is an unsigned 16 bit integer that specifies the length in
octets of the RDATA field.
RDATA is a variable length string of octets that constitutes the
resource. The format of this information varies according to the
TYPE and in some cases the CLASS of the resource record.
3.1 RR TYPE IANA Considerations
There are three subcategories of RR TYPE numbers: data TYPEs, QTYPEs,
and MetaTYPEs.
Data TYPEs are the primary means of storing data. QTYPES can only be
used in queries. Meta-TYPEs designate transient data associated with
an particular DNS message and in some cases can also be used in
queries. Thus far, data TYPEs have been assigned from 1 upwards plus
the block from 100 through 103 while Q and Meta Types have been
assigned from 255 downwards (except for the OPT Meta-RR which is
assigned TYPE 41). There have been DNS implementations which made
caching decisions based on the top bit of the bottom byte of the RR
TYPE.
There are currently three Meta-TYPEs assigned: OPT [RFC 2671], TSIG
[RFC XXX3], and TKEY [work in progress].
There are currently five QTYPEs assigned: * (all), MAILA, MAILB,
AXFR, and IXFR.
Considerations for the allocation of new RR TYPEs are as follows:
0x0000 - TYPE zero is used as a special indicator for the SIG RR [RFC
2535] and in other circumstances and must never be allocated
for ordinary use.
0x0001 - 0x007F - remaining TYPEs in this range are assigned for data
TYPEs by IETF Consensus.
0x0080 - 0x00FF - remaining TYPEs in this rage are assigned for Q and
Meta TYPEs by IETF Consensus.
0x0100 - 0x7FFF - assigned for data, Q, or Meta TYPE use by IETF
Consensus.
0x8000 - 0xFEFF - Specification Required as defined in [RFC 2434].
0xFF00 - 0xFFFF - Private Use.
3.1.1 Special Note on the OPT RR
The OPT (OPTion) RR, number 41, is specified in [RFC 2671]. Its
primary purpose is to extend the effective field size of various DNS
fields including RCODE, label type, OpCode, flag bits, and RDATA
size. In particular, for resolvers and servers that recognize it, it
extends the RCODE field from 4 to 12 bits.
3.2 RR CLASS IANA Considerations
DNS CLASSes have been little used but constitute another dimension of
the DNS distributed database. In particular, there is no necessary
relationship between the name space or root servers for one CLASS and
those for another CLASS. The same name can have completely different
meanings in different CLASSes although the label types are the same
and the null label is usable only as root in every CLASS. However,
as global networking and DNS have evolved, the IN, or Internet, CLASS
has dominated DNS use.
There are two subcategories of DNS CLASSes: normal data containing
classes and QCLASSes that are only meaningful in queries or updates.
The current CLASS assignments and considerations for future
assignments are as follows:
0x0000 - assignment requires an IETF Standards Action.
0x0001 - Internet (IN).
0x0002 - available for assignment by IETF Consensus as a data CLASS.
0x0003 - Chaos (CH) [Moon 81].
0x0004 - Hesiod (HS) [Dyer 87].
0x0005 - 0x007F - available for assignment by IETF Consensus as data
CLASSes only.
0x0080 - 0x00FD - available for assignment by IETF Consensus as
QCLASSes only.
0x00FE - QCLASS None [RFC 2136].
0x00FF - QCLASS Any [RFC 1035].
0x0100 - 0x7FFF - assigned by IETF Consensus.
0x8000 - 0xFEFF - assigned based on Specification Required as defined
in [RFC 2434].
0xFF00 - 0xFFFE - Private Use.
0xFFFF - can only be assigned by an IETF Standards Action.
3.3 RR NAME Considerations
DNS NAMEs are sequences of labels [RFC 1035]. The last label in each
NAME is "ROOT" which is the zero length label. By definition, the
null or ROOT label can not be used for any other NAME purpose.
At the present time, there are two categories of label types, data
labels and compression labels. Compression labels are pointers to
data labels elsewhere within an RR or DNS message and are intended to
shorten the wire encoding of NAMEs. The two existing data label
types are frequently referred to as ASCII and Binary. ASCII labels
can, in fact, include any octet value including zero octets but most
current uses involve only [US-ASCII] For retrieval ASCII labels are
defined to treat upper and lower case letters the same. Binary
labels are bit sequences [RFC 2673].
IANA considerations for label types are given in [RFC 2671].
NAMEs are local to a CLASS. The Hesiod [Dyer 87] and Chaos [Moon 81]
CLASSes are essentially for local use. The IN or Internet CLASS is
thus the only DNS CLASS in global use on the Internet at this time.
A somewhat dated description of name allocation in the IN Class is
given in [RFC 1591]. Some information on reserved top level domain
names is in Best Current Practice 32 [RFC 2606].
4. Designated Expert
To provide additional support to IANA in the DNS area, the IESG MAY
appoint a designed expert.
This document addresses IANA considerations in the allocation of
general DNS parameters, not security. See [RFC 2535] for secure DNS
considerations.
[Dyer 87] - Dyer, S., and F. Hsu, "Hesiod", Project Athena Technical
Plan - Name Service, April 1987,
[Moon 81] - D. Moon, "Chaosnet", A.I. Memo 628, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, June
[RFC 1034] - P. Mockapetris, "Domain Names - Concepts and
Facilities", STD 13, November 1987.
[RFC 1035] - P. Mockapetris, "Domain Names - Implementation and
Specifications", STD 13, November 1987.
[RFC 1591] - J. Postel, "Domain Name System Structure and
Delegation", March 1994.
[RFC 1996] - P. Vixie, "A Mechanism for Prompt Notification of Zone
Changes (DNS NOTIFY)", August 1996.
[RFC 2136] - P. Vixie, S. Thomson, Y. Rekhter, J. Bound, "Dynamic
Updates in the Domain Name System (DNS UPDATE)", 04/21/1997.
[RFC 2181] - Robert Elz, Randy Bush, "Clarifications to the DNS
Specification", July 1997.
[RFC 2434] - "Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section
in RFCs", T. Narten, H. Alvestrand, October 1998.
[RFC 2535] - D. Eastlake, "Domain Name System Security Extensions",
[RFC 2606] - D. Eastlake, A. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS Names",
June 1999.
D. Eastlake 3rd, E. Brunner, B. Manning [Page 10]
[RFC 2671] - P. Vixie, "Extension mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0)", August
[RFC 2672] - M. Crawford, " Non-Terminal DNS Name Redirection",
[RFC 2673] - M. Crawford, "Binary Labels in the Domain Name System",
[RFC XXX3] - P. Vixie, O. Gudmundsson, D. Eastlake, B. Wellington,
"Secret Key Transaction Signatures for DNS (TSIG)", xxx 2000 (draft-
ietf-dnsind-tsig-*.txt).
[US-ASCII] - ANSI, "USA Standard Code for Information
Interchange", X3.4, American National Standards Institute: New York,
Authors Addresses
Donald E. Eastlake 3rd
65 Shindegan Hill Road
Carmel, NY 10512 USA
Telephone: +1-914-276-2668 (h)
+1-508-261-5434 (w)
email: [email protected]
1415 Forest Avenue
Portland, ME 04103 USA
Telephone: +1 207-797-0525
email: [email protected]
USC/ISI
4676 Admiralty Way, #1001
Marina del Rey, CA 90292 USA
Telephone: +1 310 822 1511
email: [email protected]
Expiration and File Name
This draft expires August 2000.
Its file name is draft-ietf-dnsext-iana-dns-00.txt. | {
"redpajama_set_name": "RedPajamaCommonCrawl"
} |
Welcome to the DFS Army NHL Game Break!! You have to start your research somewhere, and often times going game by game thinking about matchups and key players is the first step in our process. I'm your buddy @LowOwnedWR and you can find me out on Twitter talking hockey and football, even a little WNBA. But, you'll really find me in our VIP coaching forums inside coaching and detailing plays and strategic hockey maneuvers in an attempt to make our members better, more fundamentally sound players. If you are looking for it, we cover it as a team! Follow me, follow us, interact with me, interact with us, we welcome it all.
The first thing I do when starting my research is to look for strong teams facing weak defenses. I want the best odds I can find to score goals. I like the old Corsi number, as it denotes any shot attempt directed towards the net. It doesn't matter if this shot attempt goes wide, gets blocked, or finds the back of the twine. You can't score if you don't shoot. I also love the "High Danger" metrics. These shots come from the slot (between the dots) and off quick passes or rebounds. They are what they say they are, and teams allowing a lot of high danger chances also tend to give up goals in bunches….perfect for the DFS player to attack.
If you have questions regarding these numbers or this chart, don't hesitate to ask me on our coaching forums. Simply tag me (same name as my twitter name) and let's get on the same page. First and foremost, I'm here to teach people wanting to learn the DFS side of this glorious frozen sport.
Carolina Hurricanes: If the Hurricanes can limit the penalties and not leave Ovechkin wide open when they do draw them, this is very much still a series. Washington only had 18 shots on goal and blocked almost double the number of shots than Carolina at 17 to 9, so the Hurricanes clearly gave Washington some work. The value of CAR1 makes it hard to look away from them, Niederreiter-Aho-Faulk stack is where I would go.
Washington Capitals: To expect Washington to have under 20 shots again is just foolish, while I like Carolina, I also like Washington, the total of this game is just too low. Backstrom, Ovechkin, Wilson stand out once again, them with Carlson makes for a great 4 man stack. For GPPs a pivot down to WAS2 stands to give you leverage and save salary, but WAS1 is viable in all formats.
Dallas Stars: I am looking to Seguin and Radulov again as I respect the total set for this game, so I am not looking outside of the studs here. Heiskanen just scored 2 goals and has been averaging over 2 shots a game over his last 10, at only $4200 on DK, he looks like a stud to me tonight.
Nashville Predators: With Bishop in great form and Dallas playing sound hockey, it is hard to love Nashville tonight. Outside of Josi and Subban, I want nothing here.
Toronto Maple Leafs: To what became a surprise to far too many, the Maple Leafs took a 1-0 lead in this series. The whole top 6 looks to be in play again, Tavares and Marner are coming off a hot game but with the value that comes with TOR2 you should be able to get TOR1 at low(er) ownership tonight.
Boston Bruins: DeBrusk looks to be in danger of missing this one which would be a decent hit to Boston's top 6. This team lives and dies by its first line and that is as far as I like to look when rostering them tonight.
Colorado Avalanche: I am not letting one Mike Smith shut out take me off of MacKinnon. For GPPs you stand to gain a lot of leverage while rostering COL1 as most people will be off of Colorado entirely after putting up a goose egg. Outside of COL1, I am not looking to stack any other line here.
Calgary Flames: The forward depth we knew this team had, came out to play in game 1 and I do not expect them to stop here. Tkachuk had a great performance and his linemates Backlund and Frolik remain cheap, letting you get exposure to the heavy favorites without breaking the bank.
Mike Smith (BOTH): Following a shutout and a great performance by the boys in front of him, he is the safest grab at a W on this slate.
Ben Bishop (GPP): Nashville offensive production just hasn't been there lately and the goal total reflects that. Grabbing the road goalie on a game with an implied total of 5.0 is a sound GPP move. | {
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The hexadecimal color code #0b2c72 is a dark shade of blue. In the RGB color model #0b2c72 is comprised of 4.31% red, 17.25% green and 44.71% blue. In the HSL color space #0b2c72 has a hue of 221° (degrees), 82% saturation and 25% lightness. This color has an approximate wavelength of 470.34 nm. | {
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} |
Can we get back to Richard Blumenthal.
Remember him? The DEMOCRATIC candidate for Senate whose multiple lies about serving in Vietnam over the course of multiple years dominated an entire 24 hour news cycle.
The guy whose dissembling of his own words was Clintonesque in the extreme, as in "it depends upon what the meaning of 'in' is."
The guy around whom DEMOCRATS are rallying so strongly you'd think he had abused an intern.
The guy for whom it was not enough to be an academic and political superstar, he had to be a war hero as well.
The guy who was rescued when Rand Paul discussed, quite honestly, the dilemma of balancing individual freedom of association and speech with the need for racial equality and non-discrimination.
Can we please get back to talking about politicians who look you straight in the eye and lie?
Randy-g May 22, 2010 at 9:34 AM
Blumenthal has me nail spitting MAD! Steal the honor and bravery of those in the military to embellish your own sorely lacking personality.
It's hard for most politicians not to lie when at least 3 presidents have been caught in them:
1. Bill Clinton - master of the art of aw shucks lying and of lifting consideration of the oft unappreciated word, "it" to national prominence all of which endeared him to a nation.
2. Richard Nixon - Dark and solemn practitioner of lies with deep meaning and consequences.
3. George "Baby" Bush - master of the "What? Who, me"? school for the deft handling of uncovered lies. The technique also includes a component titled, "and don't tell my mother. lies.
Blumenthal is small-time and potatoes. We're accustomed to upper strata political lies now. This is a minor distraction and, oh well, he really didn't mean it to be taken that way or to go that far. If he apologizes, everything will be OK, right? It's come home, all is forgiven time. Ease up on a guy with a nice address.
Beer, Bicycles and the VRWC May 22, 2010 at 10:06 AM
He didn't just "lie". He lied about service to this country, claimed he was a COMBAT VETERAN. And did it for his own gain. This isn't just a "white lie". And for Dems to rally around him is even more reprehensible than their cheering of the Mexican President as he bashed Arizona.
In another day, all this is treason of a high order.
Teresa May 22, 2010 at 10:06 AM
Blumenthal is a liar! He was trying to pull one over on the American people. He is such a disgrace and I really hope he loses the race.
J. E. Burke May 22, 2010 at 10:55 AM
No question Blumenthal is a repulsive liar while Rand Paul is just a nit-wit.
There is a terrific scene in "NYPD Blue" (season 2, episode 17 -- "Hollie and the Blowfish") in which Andy gets furious at a loudmouth cop for lying that he was Andy's brother in arms during the Vietnam War. he drags the guy into a corner and tells him nose to nose that he can lie about everything else but not about serving in Vietnam and if he won't, Andy will beat the crap out of him.
Anyone who knows how to extract this scene from the video and put it up online as an example of what most Americans would like to say to Blumenthal will have a blog post that deserbedly gets millions of hits.
Antimedia May 22, 2010 at 5:13 PM
Surely you don't think a lying politician is more newsworthy than a raaaaaccccciiiiiisssstttt! politician???
DINORightMarie May 23, 2010 at 8:20 AM
Alinskyites and Communists are happy - Rand Paul speaking honestly gave them what they crave: a target to attack and polarize. Using the ever-popular-with-the-leftists raaacist meme. A page out of Rules for Radicals, almost a classic implementation of Rule 13.
Just what the voodoo witch-doctor ordered.
Why attack a "comrade" like Blumenthal when he agrees with you? Liars like to protect fellow-liars, dontcha know?!
Lawler Walken May 23, 2010 at 11:36 AM
If you're old enough to remember what it was like in this country during the Vietnam war you can only sit back in some kind of weird awe and fascination that it's now become a badge of honor to have been in combat in that war, so much so that politicians will mislead and lie about it. Because back when, it was fashionable to be anti-war, to have marched and demonstrated and even rioted in your opposition to the Vietnam war. It shaped the popular culture of the day and long after, the music, the movies, the books, and many a political career was made from having the right anti Vietnam war credentials.
And now? Not so much I guess. It's better to be seen to have strapped it on and done your bit. Even if you didn't. Why is that?
So awesome to see this cross-posted on Hot Air! Congrats!
Rob Crawford May 24, 2010 at 10:39 AM
Somehow, I doubt "SAMHENRY" could actually name a "lie" of President George W. Bush. Rattle off lots of things he's been told are lies? Sure. Name something that was an actual lie? No. | {
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When you were a child, who did you want to be when you grow up? Are you grown-up? If yes, are you who you said you wanted to be? If yes then great! Does it mean you stop growing? If no, then it means you are still growing up right?! Did who you want to be change along the way and/or is it still changing?
Too many questions?! I know... (Wink)! All of these questions are leading me to another question; what does it really mean when we ask children "who do you want to be when you grow up?" The question seems to imply that when you become that person you want to be, growth suddenly stops but is that really the case? Would we say there is an end point to growth or is it continuous? Would a better question be, "who would you like to be or what would you like to do asyou grow up?
Does "who/what do you want to be when you grow up" sound limiting or close ended versus "what/who would you like to be or do asyou grow up?" What are your thoughts?
Who are you in this moment? "Who would you say you are; tell the listeners/watchers who you are." Each time a guest on the Sitmpod is asked this question, I sometimes ask myself the same question and reflect/write it down to see if something changed from the last time I asked/answered the question.
To the listeners/watchers of the Sitmpod interviews, do you ever find yourself asking/answering that question? If yes, what has been your response? Does it change over time or does it remain the same? If you have never asked yourself the question; who am I, I challenge you to ask yourself that today. Make a note of it, then ask the same question 3 months from now, 6 months and a year later. Then find someone to share what you discover. You don't necessarily have to be an entrepreneur to ask/answer that question because there might come a time during your journey in life where/when you might be faced with such a question. It is part of being self-aware and assessing self-growth.
Yes, you guessed right! This is inspired by Michelle Obama's book; BECOMING. There is something about how she told her story, even better how she read it (via audible). Something about it that I can't find the right words to describe. This book gave me a renewed sense of self. It is the longest/thickest book I have listened/read thus far. I had too many 'ah ha' moments, awakening and or re-awakenings. Here with some highlights from the book that spoke to me; bold italics are words from the book.
"Failure is a feeling long before it becomes actual which is escalated by... and fear."This reminded me of moments where I visualized myself failing at something before I even attempted. I would replay thoughts of what I would do if I failed. Sometimes fear kept me from even trying. I am learning to feel/acknowledge the fear, face it rather than dismiss it and still give it a try because in life we either win or we learn. We only lose if we don't approach the situation with an open mind and learn the lessons when the outcome is not what we wanted or expected.
Fear can make us doubt our abilities. "Am I good enough?" There were instances where the author questioned herself; her college admission experience, during the initial presidential campaign as well as re-election and a number of times while she was first lady. I once came across an acronym for fear; Face Everything And Riseor Forget Everything And Run.
"What others think of you can keep you stuck in living with other people's expectations... It is one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, it is another to get a place unstuck." This line got me emotional because in it lies a part of my story/journey. First I would say that it is easier to get yourself unstuck than it is to get a place or group of people unstuck. I've learned in my journey thus far that at the very least, your immediate family wants what is best for you to the best of their knowledge/experience. To the extent that their expectations could either keep you stuck or propel you forward in a direction other than what you may envision for yourself or that which they may envision for you… Sounds like a mouthful; reread it again! :) Nonetheless, I have come to realize and understand that family wants the best for you which may be a different concept of what you consider 'best' for yourself.
The author reported failing the bar exam, it reminded me of when I failed the Pharm Tech board exam. Like her I felt like a failure; did I fail because I wasn't smart enough or was it because I really wasn't passionate about it? Well I took the exam again and failed. It could be argued that I gave-up easily or it just wasn't my journey but I would say that the underlying reason why I was propelled in that direction meant well for me.
"Find fulfillment in what you do… purpose… life is short to waste it doing that which isn't fulfilling. There's no straight line between effort and rewards." In other words, success is a rocky road, if you find purpose and fulfillment in what you are doing, you will endure the challenges but if you don't then there's a chance you'll easily give-up. There came a point when the author finally decided on what she truly wanted to do despite the pay cut, she "put herself in front of anyone who would give her advice, narrowing down the widened understanding of what's possible and how others have done it." This is how my journey to a non-traditional professionalwas. Also, this is what the Stuck in The Middle Podcast(Sitmpod) is about, bringing you stories of how people are breaking the mold and how you can go about it.
About one-third through the book, I was constantly checking to see how much was left because I felt like my mind/brain wasn't grasping the information anymore. Like I previously mentioned, this was the thickest/longest book I have read/listened to thus far. I was about to switch to a different book for a couple of days when I noticed something different in the author's voice (tone) with regards to how she ended chapter seven and introduced the next... "Chapter Eight: Barack Obama was late on day one!"In the book, this line is written in all capital letters (haha!). This to me meant, it was about to get interesting! So I kept listening/reading.
She took pride in being early or at least on time as she stated… "In life you control what you can...arriving early."Situations happen and it is all about communication rather than expecting the other person to magically figure it out. As individuals, we tend to expect from others the characteristics we ourselves portray. For example, if you are dependable, trustworthy, loyal, honest or…(ect) you tend to expect or at least hope that others would be same or you would draw closer to those who portray same or similar characteristics and drift away from those who don't.
To be continued… but in the meantime, have you read this book; BecomingBy Michelle Obama? If so what are your thoughts? If not, what are your thoughts from the perspective(s) shared? | {
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Britain is on course for a "decade of disruption" in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union, a report has warned.
Brexit has delivered a "profound shock" to the UK's political and economic order which is likely to damage growth and living standards until 2026, according to centre-left think tank IPPR. The report said the upheaval comes at a time when Britain's rapidly ageing population threatens to put new strains on the state, with the funding gap for adult social care expected to hit £13bn by 2030-31. It said: "Brexit is the firing gun on a decade of disruption.
"Even as what we do and how we work changes, the UK is likely to remain trapped in a low growth, low interest rate decade driven by demographic shifts, productivity trends, weak investment, weak labour power, high levels of debt, and the headwinds of a slowing global economy. "Without reform, our political and social system will struggle to build a more democratic, healthy society in the decades ahead, even as Brexit accelerates us towards a radically different institutional landscape." It adds that "exponential" improvements in new technologies will put two-thirds of jobs at risk of automation in the 2020s. | {
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Here's a pretty cool version of the song "Somebody That I Used To Know". Sounds really good with a sub-woofer too. Oh yeah, and it's a Capella.
Here's a version from Glee. I posted this because the second guy in this is from a show called "White Collar" we watch. | {
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} |
Das Arbeitsgericht Gießen, ein Gericht der Arbeitsgerichtsbarkeit, ist eines der sieben hessischen Arbeitsgerichte.
Gerichtssitz und -bezirk
Das Gericht hat seinen Sitz in Gießen.
Es ist örtlich zuständig für Rechtsstreitigkeiten aus den Amtsgerichtsbezirken Alsfeld (mit Ausnahme der Gemeinden Freiensteinau, Grebenhain, Herbstein, Lauterbach, Lautertal, Schlitz, Ulrichstein und Wartenberg), Büdingen, Friedberg, Gießen und Nidda.
Zum 31. Dezember 2011 wurden die Arbeitsgerichte Wetzlar und Marburg aufgelöst und deren Bezirke dem des Arbeitsgerichtes Gießen zugeschlagen. Aus dem Arbeitsgericht Wetzlar waren dies die Amtsgerichtsbezirke Dillenburg und Wetzlar und aus dem Arbeitsgericht Marburg die Amtsgerichtsbezirke Biedenkopf, Frankenberg (Eder), Kirchhain, Marburg und Schwalmstadt.
Gebäude und Größe
Das Arbeitsgericht befand sich bis Januar 2012 in der Friedrich-List-Straße im Gießener Gewerbegebiet. Nach einem Umzug ist es nun in der Innenstadt zu finden und über den Schiffenberger Weg zu erreichen.
Die Postanschrift lautet: Aulweg 45, 35392 Gießen.
Das Arbeitsgericht Gießen verfügt über 13 Kammern, von denen allerdings nur 11 besetzt sind.
Übergeordnete Gerichte
Dem Arbeitsgericht Gießen übergeordnet ist das Hessische Landesarbeitsgericht mit Sitz in Frankfurt am Main; diesem wiederum übergeordnet ist das Bundesarbeitsgericht in Erfurt.
Siehe auch
Liste deutscher Gerichte
Liste der Gerichte des Landes Hessen
Weblinks
Internetpräsenz des Arbeitsgerichts Gießen
Übersicht der Rechtsprechung des Arbeitsgerichts Gießen
Einzelnachweise
Giessen
Gericht (Gießen) | {
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Ecuador nam deel aan de Olympische Zomerspelen 2004 in Athene, Griekenland. Voor de tweede keer op rij won het geen medaille.
Deelnemers en resultaten per onderdeel
Atletiek
Boksen
Gewichtheffen
Judo
Schietsport
Tennis
Zwemmen
Land op de Olympische Zomerspelen 2004
2004 | {
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Mind Maps are not a new invention, they have been used for over 30 years. Tony Buzan is credited with developing the process. With the advent of software that makes it easy to create and share, mind maps have experienced a resurgence. I use them for everything, planning clients' website redesigns, project management, the works.
Here is a link to a mindmap I created with a colleague to help plan a teleseminar. The great thing about mind maps is that they show you the big picture and the details at the same time. You'll note that you can see how all the pieces fit together and how revenue will be generated. They are easy to do and a paper and pencil works too. Try it and let me know how you used it to help you reach your business goals.
Also, you can download my self-assessment map and refer to it as a model for creating your own Time vs. Revenue analysis.
Want to hear about how to become more valuable and do amazing work to help you survive and thrive in this recession? Of course you do!
So check out Mindjet's November Newsletter. My column is there (shameless plug) along with really very talented visual mappers like Chuck Frey and Brian Friedlander who give you their take on the new MindManager 8.
It is chock full of MindManager 8 tips & tricks as well as information on upcoming live webinars for everyone considering an upgrade to version 8. If you want to change the way you work, visual mapping is for you!
Anyone who reads this blog knows I'm an evangelist for all things Mind Mapping. I'm particularly excited about the new release of MindManager 8 by Mindjet. It's a quantum leap for mind mapping tools. The big takeaway is that you can now share working maps with anyone regardless of whether they own the software!
Also in this version you can stay within the working map while you link to databases, create project tasks and search the web.
You asked -what are the elements of a Mind Mapping session?
I often mention Mind Mapping in this blog as a way to create and problem solve. Several of you have asked me to detail the basic elements of a mind mapping session so that you can get started. Depending on where I am, I will use software (MindManager 7 from Mindjet is my favorite) or some form of paper and pens.
2. A way to view the map as a 'big picture'— It's very important to be able to stand back and see the map as a whole. You can use a wall, computer screen, a pad or anything you can step back from and see the entire map at once.
3. A flexible way to move ideas around—This is where the tools become really important. If you write on a sheet of paper, you'll have to redraw the map to suit the structure you develop. If you use sticky notes or a computer, you can move things around at will. Being able to recognize patterns and shape the map is key to a great outcome.
4. A way to stimulate creative thinking—Here's where the use of colors, pictures and anything else you want to throw into the mix will help stimulate better ideas and help you remember what you mapped.
5. A way to document and update your map—Don't forget that part of the mapping process is to let it incubate and further your thinking over time. You'll need to come away with something that is tangible so you can review it and stimulate more ideas. If you've got lots of maps or they are large, grab your digital camera and make sure to capture all of it.
Do you feel that your product or service is so unique that you just aren't sure how to find your customers? In my Mindjet newsletter column this month I present a case study about How to find the perfect customer for your product.
In the article you'll find a link to a mindmap template you can use to help find your perfect customers.
Check out my February column called "Create a Mailing List Building System with MindManager Pro 7" in the Mindjet.com Monthly Newsletter.
It shows you how to use a mailing list to take your successful business to the next level and includes a map template you can use to build your own system.
If you use Mind maps, check out my new Mindjet newsletter column where I have a free MindManager 7 dashboard template you can use to track your company's buzz.
Also, if you're so inclined, fill out the form in the column to tell me about your online marketing issue. If I choose your issue, I'll create a free mind map to show you how I'd deal with it and it will be published in the newsletter. Also, let me know if you use the buzz tracking dashboard and if you have any feedback.
Anyone who has read my blogs or looked at my website knows that I think mind mapping is an essential tool. BusinessWeek Online, Sept. 25th, has a short blurb called "A Mind Map From IDEO'S David Kelley." He sums up the use of mind maps perfectly when he says, "When I want to do something analytical I make a list. When I'm trying to come up with ideas or strategize, I make a mind map."
Small business owners often find themselves having to strategize alone—no big staff, no input, just a blank page and a bunch of ideas. If you face this on a regular basis, a mind map will help pull out the information you need to create a plan and build an effective strategy.
I have some samples on my website I call DigiMaps. Take a look at them, teach yourself the very easy process and you'll see that it can help you create a solid strategy in half the usual time. | {
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An artist from Japan 3D prints Fujin and Raijin Kabuto
3D printing helps us create rapid prototypes of things that are likely to get into our pockets and on our tables in the nearest future. 3D printing is the most suitable way to re-create pieces of history which would otherwise be either untouchable or off-limits on museum shelves behind the glass. Sure with the development of new technologies these relics can be recreated and redesigned into completely new objects.
That was the assumption of the recent competition that was held by i.materialise Japan. The task for "Kabuto Design Challenge" was to rediscover kabuto – helmets of Japanese samurais – making use of additive manufacturing. To help the competitors recreate the helmets i.materialise Japan organized Russ Ogi (mixed-media artist and competition juror) to 3D print a very special pair of kabuto, inspires by Raijin and Fujin – the gods of thunder and wind cherished in Japan.
Ogi started with trying to find something in common between two sources of inspiration. Even though he clearly understood that he had to create two different objects, he wanted to make sure they could be exhibited together.
Bearing this in mind, he studied everything that focused on the twins and Japanese characters to come up with the way of how to make this idea come true. He also tried not to take into account modern trends and influences on the images and concentrated on what life was like in the times when kabuto was worn.
Ogi carried out some research and found out that Japanese God of Lightning and Thunder Raijin and Japanese God of Wind Fujin had been seen together. Such a string cultural connection of the pair became a suitable topic of the project. Those gods can also be seen in paintings, sculptures and even tattoos. The challenge for the creator was to recreate those figures in an unusual way and to keep the recognizable at the same time.
Ogi managed to single out the distinctive features for each of the gods – drums for Raijin and the bag with wind in it for Fujin. So he started creating the ultimate designs that were then to be 3D printed.
Ogi explained that the first design element for Raijin he came up with was the ring of drums with which he created thunder. He decided not to include the exact ring of drums at the back of kabuto, but to add the drums into the front chest (the maedate) and the ear-like wings (fukigaeshi) as if the drums were drifting into the arch. Additionally Ogi included the tomoe symbol to the final design. The symbol was quite common during those times.
To develop the Fujin kabuto Ogi used a single horn as the central feature. The most difficult part in creating the design, according to the designer, was to decide where to include the bag of wind – the kazebukuro. From the outside the bag looked like an air-filled material bag having a soft rounded shape. But as it was a war helmet, Ogi wanted it to have elements that were solid and forceful.
Wooden statues of Fujin and Raijin at Sanjūsangen-dō, Kyoto, Japan
Ogi added a couple of final details to the kabuto pieces – a beard and the armor, but he found it relatively difficult to develop colorless parts. This feature is used very often to see what the pieces would really look like. Without colour he also had to determine how to tell the difference between two pieces. But he didn't want them to look completely different, he want them to create an impression of twins – not in the sense that they originated from the same world, but the sense that they were together as a pair.
Now we still don't know where and when the audience will be able to witness the ready kabuto. But it's clear that there are not so many things that are more marvelous that 3D printed samurai helmets.
New to 3D Printing? Check out our 3D Printing basics section, find the answer on popular question what is 3d printing or what types of 3d printers exist, and learn about many other interesting things.
University of Massachusetts in Lowell Develops New Conductive Ink for Electronic Radar Parts
Dentists Create Dental Materials with Form 2 SLA 3D Printer
How To Print The First Road-Ready 3D Printed Car
The Use of 3D Printing in Reviving the Statue of Zeus in Olympia
Students from University of Arizona successfully launched 3D printed rocket
3D Printer Wanhao Duplicator 5S Mini
Prototype Supply PLA 3D Printing Filament 1.75mm White
3D Printer MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop
BioHybrid Robots and 3D Printed Parts
3d Stuffmaker – Mega Prusa 3d Printer Kit | {
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OrthoSensor (Sunrise, FL) won FDA clearance for its VERASENSE device, an electronic wireless sensor used in place of tibial trial spacers during total knee replacement procedures to help guarantee proper alignment and balance. The device, which is compatible with a number of implants on the market, provides real-time feedback on its orientation and soft tissue balance as the new knee is being positioned.
Last year we spoke with Jay Pierce, the CEO of OrthoSensor about what the company is up to and how their technology was developed.
VERASENSE utilizes advanced, proprietary sensor and communications technologies to give surgeons real-time feedback on limb alignment, implant position and soft tissue balance during knee replacement. By delivering this dynamic, quantitative data, VERASENSE empowers surgeons to make evidence-based decisions regarding component placement, limb alignment and soft tissue balance to optimize clinical outcomes and enhance patient satisfaction.
VERASENSE integrates seamlessly within the current surgical workflow and is compatible for use with multiple knee implant systems. VERASENSE enables surgeons, for the first time, to rapidly make a total kinetic (force and motion) assessment of knee function and make adjustments to achieve balance and stability through a full range of motion. | {
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Director of Polish World War II Museum Forced to Step Down
Pawel Machcewicz, a Polish historian, has been fired as the director of Gdansk's Second World War Museum, writes Julia Michalska of the Art Newspaper. The museum, which opened on March 23, is considered one of the largest historical museums in the world. Machcewicz's dismissal comes on the heels of a court ruling that allows the museum to merge with the as-of-yet-unbuilt Westerplatte Museum—an institution focused on the Battle of Westerplatte, an invasion by German forces that marked the beginning of World War II. The merger will allow Poland's right-wing PiS government to organize a new state-approved cultural institution. The first task for Karol Nawrocki, the newly appointed acting director of the unified museums, will be to assess the institution's financial standing and employment situation.
The Second World War Museum has bothered members of the PiS government for a long time, as officials claim the museum's permanent collection is "too universal." In 2015, Poland's minister of culture, Piotr Glinski, requested that another museum be made to focus exclusively on the Battle of Westerplatte. Only months later, Glinski ordered that the museums combine, which would allow the government to rid themselves of Machcewicz and change the focus of the exhibits. On April 5, the Polish Supreme Administrative Court allowed for the merger to occur. | {
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The iPhone 7S could have a glass back, just like the Galaxy S7
By James Rogerson 2016-05-20T11:42:00.14Z Mobile phones
But not all models will sport the design
The idea of an all-glass iPhone has been bounced around recently, with suggestions that Apple could stick a curved glass panel on both the front and back of the 2017 flagship coming after this year's iPhone 7.
Now that possibility is looking surprisingly likely, as the CEO of one of Apple's supply chain companies has revealed that such a phone may be in the works.
Nikkei reports that speaking at his company's annual shareholder meeting, Catcher CEO Allen Horng revealed that "one model" of the iPhone 7S (or iPhone 8 as it might be called) "will adopt glass casing next year". Catcher makes the metal casing for the current iPhones so Horng should know what he's taking about
He went on to say that "I don't think this move will have an impact on Catcher's revenue as glass casing still needs a durable metal frame which requires advanced processing technology and would not be cheaper than the current model."
Glass clash
A glass front and back with a metal frame: sound familiar to anyone? It will to Samsung, as that exact description could apply to recent members of its Galaxy S range. If both panels are curved, as was previously rumored, the iPhone 7S could bear more than a passing resemblance to the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.
Of course this isn't the first time Apple has dabbled with a glass back for its phones, having first rolled one out on the iPhone 4, so you could see this as Apple imitating Samsung imitating Apple, or something. Regardless, it would certainly bring these long-time rivals closer than ever, unless Samsung also refreshes its flagship design for the Galaxy S8.
It's worth noting that even if the iPhone does go back to glass, Horng says only one model will do so, suggesting that Apple could offer two different designs on its phones. With the iPhone 7 largely rumored to look similar to the iPhone 6S, we're expecting a significantly new design for the iPhone 7S anyway, whether Apple goes for metal or glass.
An all-glass Apple patent could point to the future of the iPhone | {
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Except for their lives, the families lost everything.
In just minutes, fires ravaged a number of side-by-side homes on Cruz Lane, leaving their inhabitants homeless, helpless, and bewildered.
Cruz Lane, we can be certain, is not on any visitor's tour of the Cayman Islands. It is a short spur off Bodden Road in a disadvantaged neighborhood tucked behind Kirk Home Centre. It is the kind of neighborhood that nobody notices and rarely makes the news – unless there is a crime, a fire or, in this instance, most likely both.
But even 17 minutes was more time than the families had. These were highly flammable wooden structures – construction susceptible to nothing more than a match.
And that match was supplied, according to family members, by an arsonist. They say they know who did it.
In the aftermath, police are investigating what may be a crime of massive proportions. If those inhabitants had succumbed to flame or smoke, the result of a purposely set fire, the perpetrators could have been facing charges of mass murder or manslaughter.
Even in the present circumstances (no lives were lost) charges of attempted murder do not seem far-fetched.
In any case, what happened on Cruz Lane in the early morning hours of July 31 should raise a four-alarm warning throughout our community.
As everyone knows, there are literally hundreds of shanties, shacks and slum dwellings throughout Grand Cayman that appear to be dangerous firetraps.
Likewise, we know that Cayman's most respectable and responsible developers such as the Darts, Fraser Wellon and Brian Butler all must meet stringent fire and safety requirements before they are issued a "certificate of occupancy" for their buildings. This is a good thing and signals why Cayman enjoys a reputation as the "best of the rest" of the countries in the region.
But those good safety practices inexorably should lead government to the issue of the lack of building and fire code inspections and enforcement for the many ramshackle (but occupied) houses that are present in every district.
The conflagration on Cruz Lane, thankfully, did not lead to the loss of life, but it has now put the spotlight on a most intractable and too-often invisible reality: the dangerous condition of too much of our housing stock.
We are literally playing with fire.
Of course my heart goes out to these families who have lost just about everything in this recent fire. For most people this is an unthinkable event in their lives. For those who have experience it, especially young children, and youth, this will have a life long effect.
Hopefully we will see agencies such as the Red Cross, and other disaster support organizations step up to the plate and assist these families with temporary housing, clothing and assistance. I know the Caymanian population as a whole will do so. After all a God fearing Christian society knows a main purpose of Church and Community is to help those in need.
In regard to Government, rather than establishing new departments, commissions and agencies, perhaps it should focus on responsibly managing the systems, departments, and programs it already has. Then all living in Cayman can have a safe and productive life. | {
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Q: How grab filename from url? I write simple script for my VIP user by PHP. now I need to change many (+4000) links format to compilable with my script.
I need grab file name from url's.
URL e.x dw.example.com/download.php?d=blabla/blabla/2014/test.zip
URL e.x dw.example.com/download.php?d=blabla/blabla/test.zip
The big problem is the files are not in the same path (directory), I try to use .htaccess to rewrite url's to something like dw.example.com/download.php?d=blabla/blabla&f=test.zip
But it's not work.
Is there any way for resolve the problem by .htaccsess? if not, how can I get the file name from this url type:
URL e.x dw.example.com/download.php?d=blabla/blabla/2014/test.zip
A: Thanks to Bor691 by array_pop(explode('/',$url)) can grab the file name.
| {
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Hot Toys Iron Man 3 Gamma Armor Figure
Tony Stark has a lot of toys in his life, but his best toys include a range of Iron Man armors. This is a tradition that holds in both the comics and the Marvel films. Today, Hot Toys unveiled an expansion in their line of Iron Man "House Party Protocol" collectibles adding the the Gamma (Mark XXVI) Heavy Construction Suit Upgrade sixth scale figure as a Hot Toys Exclusive!
The Mark XXVI (26 for those of us that don't read Roman numerals) was one of a mix of new armor unveiled in Iron Man 3. It was created as part of the Iron Legion which the film unveiled down at Tony's Malibu house. In the Marvel Universe film timeline, this armor came into existence sometime after the Battle of New York and debuted when Tony ordered J.A.R.V.I.S. to initiate the "House Party Protocol" which Hot Toys is celebrating. This was the film moment when an army of automated armors entered the fray with Aldrich Killian.
Designed to resist intense temperatures and electrical surges, it takes its name from the fact that it can also withstand gamma radiation. You know, the stuff that gave us the Hulk. Here, the figure stands at 34 cm tall and features those pneumatic hammer arms that made it so memorable. There is dark green, gray, and silver painting on the armor with a beautiful mix of weathering effects. It even has LED light-up functions and comes with its own figure stand.
Expect this one to ship by the first quarter of next year!
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Covered in roughly 860 diamonds, this is a droid of a kind we've not seen before (and may not again). Rolling right off the screen of the upcoming The Force Awakens, this newly designed and highly detailed BB-8 is one of a
Chuck Moore 5 Dec 2015 • 1 min read
Activate Interlocks! Dyna-Therms Connected! Let's Go Voltron FunKo Force!
If you grew up with Voltron in your life, you are undoubtedly a fan of the franchise and animated series. It was a massive hit in the 80s and helped open doors for other Japanese-style properties in the US market. Voltron defended our universe | {
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Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere: Chapter One
Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere: Chapter One. 1
About the Visible and the Invisible. 1
What It's About and Why It's Important 1
Fear of disenchantment. 1
On the Usefulness of Ethnography and the Difficulties to Be Surmounted.. 2
The dissimilarity of ethnoi. 2
The complexities of the terminology employed. 3
Summaries and scruples. 3
Limits. 4
'The historian without geography stumbles'. 6
Nature and History. 6
The combination of nature study and history. 6
Formations and ethnoi. 7
Can one trust the historical sources?. 8
Can we believe the memorials?. 9
Are There Ethnoi?. 10
There are no signs for defining an ethnos. 10
An ethnos is not a society. 11
Language. 11
Descent from a single ancestor. 13
Ethnos as an illusion. 14
Between West and East. 14
A country and people without a name. 16
'States' and 'processes'. 17
NOTES.. 18
About the Visible and the Invisible
in which it is shown that superficial observations lead the investigator up the garden path, and means of self-control and self-checking are proposed
What It's About and Why It's Important
Fear of disenchantment.
When a reader of our day buys and opens a new book on history or ethnography, he is not sure he will even read it to the middle. It may seem boring to him, mindless, or just not to his taste. Still it's all right for the reader- he's simply lost a few dollars or roubles. But what of the author? The collecting of information. The posing of the problem. Decades of searching for the answer. Years at his desk. Discussions with publishers' readers. Battle with the editor. And suddenly it's all to no purpose-the book isn't interesting! It lies in libraries ... and no one takes it out. Which means his life has been in vain.
That is so terrible that one must take steps to avoid such a result. But what steps? During his training at university and in postgraduate studies it is often hammered into the future author that his job is to copy out as many passages as possible from sources, to put them into some kind of order, and to draw a conclusion: in antiquity there were slave owners and slaves. The slave owners were baddies but things were good for them; the slaves were goodies, but it was tough for them.
All that, of course, is correct but that's the trouble. No one wants to read about that, even the author himself. First of all, because it is so well known, and secondly, because it does not explain, for example, why some armies won, and others were defeated, and why some countries grew stronger and others weaker. And, finally, why powerful ethnoi arose, and where they vanished to, although there was obviously no complete extinction of their members.
All these matters are wholly related to my chosen theme, i.e. the sudden strengthening of one people or another and their subsequent disappearance. A clear example of that is the Mongols in the twelfth to seventeenth centuries. But that pattern has also governed other peoples. The late B.Ya. Vladimirtsov formulated the problem succinctly: 'I want to understand how and why all that happened'; but like other scholars, he did not provide an answer. I shall come back to this subject time and again, firmly convinced that the reader will not shut the book at the second page.
Quite clearly, in order to solve the problem posed we must first of all investigate the method of research. Otherwise it would have been solved long ago, because the facts are so numerous that the point is not one of adding to them but of selecting those that relate to the matter in hand. Even contemporary chroniclers have drowned in a sea of information that has not brought them closer to understanding the problem. Archaeologists and chroniclers have assembled, published, and commented on much information over the past centuries, and orientalists have increased the stock of knowledge even more, codifying sources in various languages Chinese, Persian, Latin, Greek, Armenian, and Arabic. The amount of information has grown, but has not developed into a new quality. It has still remained unclear how a small tribe sometimes gained hegemony over half the world, then increased in numbers, and later disappeared.
I have posed the question of the extent of our knowledge, or rather ignorance of the subject this study is devoted to.
On the Usefulness of Ethnography and the Difficulties to Be Surmounted
The dissimilarity of ethnoi.
When a people has lived for a long time in its homeland it seems to its members that their mode of life, manners of behaviour, tastes, opinions, and social relationships, that is to say everything that is now called the 'stereotype of behaviour', are the only possible and correct ones. And if any deviations are encountered anywhere, it is because of 'ignorance', by which is often understood simply dissimilarity from themselves. I remember when I was a child and was fond of Mayne Reid, a very cultured lady said to me: 'Negroes are muzhiks just like ours, only black'. It could not have occurred to her that a Melanesian witch-doctor might say with equal grounds: 'Englishmen are headhunters just like us, only white'. Narrow-minded Philistine judgments sometimes seem internally logical, even though based on ignorance of reality. But they immediately crumble when confronted with it.
Ethnography was not topical for the mediaeval scholars of Western Europe. Europeans' communion with other cultures was limited to the Mediterranean basin, on the coasts of which lived descendants of subjects of the Roman Empire, some of them converted to Islam. That, of course, separated them from the 'Franks and 'Latins', i.e. from the French and Italians, but the existence of common cultural roots made the difference not so big as to exclude mutual understanding. But in the age of the great geographical discoveries the position was radically changed. While it then seemed justified to call Negroes, Papuans, or North American Indians 'savages', that could not be said of the Chinese, or about the Hindus, the Aztecs, or the Incas. Other explanations had to be found.
In the sixteenth century, European travelers and explorers, discovering lands remote for them, involuntarily began to look in them for analogies of the forms of life they were used to. The Spanish Conquistadors began to give baptized caciques the title 'Don', considering them Indian noblemen. The chiefs of Negro tribes were elevated to the rank of 'kings'. Tungus shamans were considered priests, although they were simply doctors who saw the cause of illness in the influence of evil 'spirits' that were just as material in their understanding as animals or members of other tribes. Mutual incomprehension was intensified by a conviction that there was nothing to understand, and then collisions occurred that led to the murder of Europeans who wounded the feelings of the aborigines, in response to which brutal punitive expeditions were organized. The civilized Australian aborigine Waipuldanya or Phillip Roberts relates stories of tragedies that were the more terrible that they happened without visible causes. Thus aborigines killed a white man who was smoking a cigarette, considering him a spirit that had fire in its belly. They ran another through with a spear because he had drawn a watch from his pocket and looked at the sun. The aborigines decided that he was carrying the sun in his pocket. Misunderstandings like that were followed by punitive expeditions that led to the extermination of whole tribes. And tragic collisions occurred for Australian Aborigines and the Papuans of New Guinea not only with whites but also with Malays, collisions that were aggravated by the transmission of infections.
Fairly recently, on 30 October 1968, on the bank of the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon, the Indians killed a missionary and eight of his companions for nothing, from their point of view, but tactlessness. The padre, having come to the Atroari's country, announced his arrival by shots, which was improper according to their customs; he went into a small hut, despite the protest of its owner; he tweaked the ear of a child; and forbade them to take his saucepan of soup. Only the guide survived, who knew the Indians' customs and abandoned Father Cagliari, who had paid no attention to his advice and had forgotten that the people who live on the banks of the Po were not quite like those on the banks of the Amazon.
Some time passed before it was asked whether it was not better to adapt oneself to the aborigines than to exterminate them. In order to do that, however, it was necessary to admit that peoples of other cultures differed from Europeans, and from one another, not only in languages and beliefs but also in the whole 'stereotype of behaviour', which it was a good idea to study so as to avoid conflicts. So ethnography arose, the science of the differences between peoples.
Colonialism has gone, under the blows of the national liberation movement, but interethnic contacts have remained and been extended. The problem of establishing mutual understanding has consequently become more and more urgent on both the global scale of world politics and the microscopic, personal scale during meetings with people who are not like us. And so a new question has been posed, a theoretical one despite its practical significance. But why are we, people, so unlike one another that we must adapt ourselves to one another? Must study others' manners and customs, look for acceptable ways of intercourse instead of those that seem natural to us, are quite adequate for intraethnic intercourse and satisfactory for contacts with our neighbors? In some cases ethnic dissimilarity can be explained by diversity of geographical conditions, yet it is also observed where climate and relief are similar. Obviously, one cannot do without history.
In fact various peoples arose in various ages and had different historical fates, which left traces on them as ineffaceable as personal biographies that mould the character of individuals. The geographical environment influences ethnoi, of course, through man's everyday communion with the nature that feeds him, but that is not all. Traditions inherited from ancestors and traditional enmity or friendship with neighbors (the ethnic environment) play their role; cultural influences and religion have their significance, but in addition to all that there is the law of evolution or development, which applies to ethnoi just like other phenomena of nature. It is manifested in the multifarious processes of the rise and disappearance of peoples that I call ethnogenesis. Unless we allow for the peculiarities of this form of the motion of matter we cannot find the key to the riddle of ethnic psychology on either the practical or the theoretical plane. We need both, but unexpected difficulties crop up on the path I have elected.
The complexities of the terminology employed.
The abundance of initial information and the poor development of the principles of systematizing are felt particularly painfully in history and ethnography. For the bibliography alone fills volumes, to look into which is sometimes no simpler than looking into the scientific problems themselves. The reader needs to be able to see the whole aggregate of events simultaneously (the principle of actualism), or all the modes of formation (the principle of evolutionism), and not a multi-volume list of the titles of articles and papers, for the most part out of date. The works of the founders of Marxism contain the program of a systematic approach to understanding historical process, but it has not yet been applied to questions of ethnogenesis.
Some attempts to introduce a systems method are known in old, often forgotten historiography but, in contrast to the natural sciences, their authors met with neither understanding nor sympathy. Polybius's conception is now regarded as an elegant rarity, ibn Khaidun's (fourteenth century) as a curiosity. Giovanni Battista Vico is remembered only in the history of science, while the grandiose, though perhaps unsuccessful constructions of N.Ya. Danilevsky, Oswald Spengler, and Arnold Toynbee have become an excuse for rejecting the construction of historical models in general. The result of this process is unambiguous. Since it is impossible to remember the whole concatenation of historical events and since there is not and cannot be a common terminology in the absence of a systems even communion among Historians gets more difficult year by year.
By attaching various nuances to terms and investing them with a different content, historians convert them into polysemantic words. In the first stages of this process the speakers can be understood from the context, intonation, and situation in which the dispute is conducted, but in the last phases this unsatisfactory degree of understanding disappears. So the Russian word rod (gens, family) is usually employed for the concept 'clan or gentile system', but the 'clan (rod) of the Shuisky boyars' clearly has no relation to that. It is even worse with translation: if a clan (gens) is a Celtic clan, it is impossible to call any Kazakh branch of the Middle or Junior Zhus (ru) such, or the Altain kost (seok), and -vice versa, because they differ in functions and genesis. Yet all these, by no means dissimilar phenomena are named identically and, worse, are equated on that basis with one another. Willy-nilly the historian studies not the object but words that have already lost their meaning as real phenomena, while the latter elude him. Let us now assume that three historians are discussing a problem, one of them investing the concept 'gens' with the sense of clan, the second of seok, the third of the boyar family. Obviously they not only will not understand one another, but even what they are talking about.
It may be objected, of course, that agreement can be reached about terms, but the number of concepts increases proportionately with the accumulation of information; ever new terms are appearing that, in the absence of a system, become polysemantic and consequently useless for analysis and synthesis. But a way out can also be found here.
So far I have been speaking of the conditions of research; let me now speak about its perspectives. Study of any subject only has practical significance when it is possible to survey it as a whole. The electrical engineer, for example, must deal with the phenomena of ionization and thermal efficiency, the electromagnetic field, etc., but not to the same degree; the physical geographer, when speaking of Earth's envelopes, has in mind the troposphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and even the biosphere. But the historian can only draw conclusions that are more weighty and interesting for the reader when he covers a broad complex of interconnected events in a single argument, at the same time reaching agreement on terminology. It is difficult, but not impossible. It is simply important for the conclusions to correspond to all the facts taken into consideration. If anyone puts forward a more elegant and convincing conception for the facts cited in my book, I shall bow to him with respect. But if, on the contrary, anyone declared my conclusions final, not requiring review and further elaboration, I would not agree with him. Ordinary books do not live longer than people, and the development of science is an immanent law of the shaping of mankind. I therefore see it as my job to pay what honour I can to Beautiful Lady History, without whom no people can exist, and to her Wise Sister Geography, who creates people's bond with their ancestress, the Biosphere of Planet Earth. [+1]
Summaries and scruples.
The species Homo sapiens, which has spread over the whole land surface of the planet, and a considerable part of its marine surface, has made such significant changes in its configuration that they can be equated with small scale upheavals. [+2] But it follows from this that we distinguish a special historico-geographical category of laws that requires a special method for examining and studying them that combines historical and geographical techniques of research. In itself that is nothing new, but the approach to the problem has so far been eclectic: the use of C14 analysis, for example, to date archaeological finds, of resistivity prospecting (a business too laborious for practical application), and of cybernetic techniques to study 'stone Venuses' (which has given the same results as visual estimates), and so on. But the most important thing has been lost sight of! In my view this 'main point' is the ability to extract information from the silence of the sources. The inductive way limits the historian's opportunities to a simple or critical rendering of foreign words, the limit of the investigation moreover being distrust of the source. But this result is negative and therefore not conclusive. Only the establishing of a certain number of indisputable facts will be positive, and these, being derived layer by layer from the source, can be reduced to a chronological table or plotted on a historical map. In order to interpret them, a philosopheme or postulate is needed, but that infringes the accepted principle of inductive research. A blind alley!
So! But the geographer, geologist, zoologist, and soil scientist never have more facts, yet their sciences develop which happens because natural scientists employ 'empirical generalization' instead of a philosophical postulate and it, according to Vernadsky, has a reliability equal to observed fact. [+3] In other words, the natural sciences overcome the silence of the sources and even extract something useful for science from it, since they avoid the false that is always contained in a source or introduced by ourselves through inadequate perception. So why reject sources because of that? When taking nature as a source we also have to resort to a method of study, but that gives us wonderful prospects that enable us to lift the veil of Isis.
One of the tasks of science is to obtain the maximum information from a minimum of facts, to make it possible to single out precise patterns that enable the most varied phenomena to be understood from a single point of view, and subsequently learn to find one's bearings in them. These patterns are invisible but not invented. They are discovered through generalization. Let me give an example from biology.
Stars and planets move across the sky. Balloons rise, but a stone dropped from a cliff falls in space. Rivers run to the sea, and sediments slowly settle in the ocean forming layers of sedimentary rocks. Mice have very thin paws and elephants huge extremities. Land animals do not attain the size of whales and giant squid. What do those facts have in common? They are all based on the law of universal gravitation, which is intertwined with other laws, just as real, invisible, but mentally comprehensible. [+4]
Terrestrial gravitation has always existed but it needed the insight of Newton observing the fall of an apple from a branch for people to recognize its existence. And how many other powerful forces of nature that surround us and govern our fate lie outside our understanding. We live in an underdiscovered world and often move feeling our way, which sometimes leads to tragic consequences. That is why the magic eyes of science, by which I mean the insight of scientists of genius, are needed in order to understand the world around us and our place in it, and to learn to foresee even the immediate consequences of our actions.
Studies to establish the functional link of phenomena of physical geography and paleontology in material of the history of Central Asia and the archaeology of the Lower Volga, enable us to draw three conclusions. (1) The historical fate of an ethnos resulting from its economic activity is directly linked with the dynamic state of the area occupied. (2) The archaeological culture of an ethnos, which is a crystallized trace of its historical fate, reflects the paleogeographical state of the terrain in an era amenable to absolute dating. (3) The combination of historical and archaeological material makes it possible to judge the character of the areas occupied in one age or another, and consequently the character of their changes.
Precision is relative here, of course, but a tolerance of plus or minus 50 years for diffuse boundaries does not affect the conclusions and is consequently innocuous. Much more dangerous is the striving for scrupulousness in the direct sense of the word.
Scrupulus (Lat.) means a bit of grit that has got into a sandal and is irritating the sole of the foot. The ancients considered it is senseless business to study the distribution of these grits; one simply had to take off one's sandal and shake it. The word 'scrupulousness' therefore meant unnecessary concern about trifles. Now the word is used in the sense of 'superexact'.
Unfortunately the demand for 'scrupulousness' is not always innocent and harmless, in particular when natural phenomena are being correlated with historical events, because the legitimate tolerance may be as much as 50 or 60 years, and cannot be reduced since the link being sought is mediated by the economic geography of ancient epochs. The system of livelihood, cultivation, stock-breeding, or even hunting, has its own inertia. If it is undermined, say, by drought, the state founded on it is only weakened when reserves are exhausted, and the constant malnutrition (and not short-term famine) undermines the strength of the reproductive population. This process can only be discovered through a broad integration of a number of historical events, and not by a scrupulous correlating of natural and historical phenomena. In that connection one must remember the words of a famous natural scientist:
you could never learn what a mouse is like by carefully examining each of its cells separately under the electron microscope any more than you could appreciate the beauty of a cathedral through the chemical analysis or each stone that went into its construction. [+5]
Of course, when we examine one or even two facts in isolation from others, we remain trapped by old authors who were able to impose their opinion with skill and talent on the reader. But when we extract direct information from sources, and take not two facts but 2 000, we then get several causal chains that not only correlate with one another but also with the model we propose. It is not a simple functional dependence like that sought in the eighteenth century by champions of geographical determinism like Montesquieu. Here we find a systemic link, underlying the science of the relationship of mankind and nature.
The universality and specificity of the interaction I have noted makes it possible to single out study of it as an independent boundary field of science, and as a combination of history and geography, called ethnology. But here there is a new sore point. Can we find a tangible definition of ethnos?
Limits.
What do we know precisely about ethnoi? Very much and very little. We have no grounds for asserting that an ethnos occurred as a phenomenon in the Lower Paleolithic. Behind the high brow ridges, and within the huge brainbox of Neanderthal man, were lodged thoughts and feelings. But what they were we still have no right even to guess if we want to remain on a platform of scientific authenticity and reliability. We know more about the people of the Upper Paleolithic. They were splendid hunters, made spears and javelins, dressed in clothes of animal skins, and drew no worse than the Parisian Impressionists. The form of their collective life was seemingly similar to those that are known to us, but that is only a supposition on which we cannot even build a scientific hypothesis. It is not excluded that there were features in ancient times that have not come down to us.
But we can consider the peoples of the Late Neolithic and Bronze Ages (third and second millennia B.C.) similar to historical ones with a high degree of probability. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the ethnic differences then is fragmentary and scanty, so that if we rely on it we risk not distinguishing the patterns that interest us at the moment from local features and, by taking the particular for the general or -vice versa, falling into error.
So-called historical time gives us reliable material for analysis, when written sources throw light on the history of ethnoi and their interconnections. We have the right, when studying this period of time, to apply the observations obtained to earlier times and to fill the gaps in our knowledge arising in the first stage of study by extrapolation. We thus avoid the aberrations of distance, one of the most frequent mistakes of the historical critic.
It is convenient to take the beginning of the nineteenth century as the upper date because we need only completed processes in order to establish patterns. One can only speak of uncompleted processes for purposes of forecasting, but for that we have to have a formula of regularity available - the same as the one we are looking for. In addition, when we are studying twentieth-century phenomena, there is the possibility of an aberration of propinquity by which phenomena lose scale just as with the aberration of distance. I shall therefore limit myself to the 3 000 years between the twelfth century B.C. and the nineteenth century A.D., for posing the problem, or for clarity of representation, from the fall of Troy to the overthrow of Napoleon.
To begin with I shall investigate our abundant material by a synchronic method, basing myself on a comparison and collation of information about whose reliability there is no doubt. The new element that I shall decide to introduce will be the combining of facts in the aspect I propose. That is necessary because the kaleidoscope of dates in the various chronological tables does not give the reader any idea of what happened with peoples throughout their historical life. The method proposed is not as characteristic of the humanities, as it is of the natural sciences. Empirical generalization is neither a hypothesis nor a popularization, although it is built on facts already assembled and tested rather than on original material (experience, observation, and reading of primary sources). The introduction of material into the system and the construction of a conception is the middle stage of comprehension of the problem that precedes philosophical generalization. For my purposes I need precisely this middle stage.
It would seem that the more detailed and numerous the information about a subject the easier it is to form an exhaustive idea of it. But is that so in fact? Most likely not. Unnecessary and too fine information, while not altering the picture as a whole, creates what they call 'noise' or 'interference' in cybernetics and the study of systems. But for other purposes it is precisely nuances of mood that are needed. In short, in order to clarify the nature of phenomena one must take in the whole concatenation of facts relating to the problem under consideration, but not all the information available in the arsenal of science.
But what are we to take as 'relating to the problem'? The answer will obviously be different in different cases. The history of mankind and the biographies of famous people are not equal phenomena, and the pattern of development will be different in both cases, but there are as many gradations as you like between them. The point is complicated by the fact that any historical phenomenon (war, the promulgation of a law, the building of an architectural monument, the founding of a princedom or republic, and so on) has to be treated in several degrees of approximation, the comparison of which, moreover, yields contradictory results at first glance. Let me take an example from the history of Europe. After the Reformation a struggle began between the Protestant Union and the Catholic League (approximation A). Consequently all the Protestants of Western Europe should have been battling against all the Catholics. But Catholic France was a member of the Protestant Union, and Protestant Denmark stabbed Protestant Sweden in the back in 1643, i.e. political interests were put before ideological ones (approximation B). Does that mean that the first statement was not true? By no means. It was only more generalized. In addition, mercenaries fought in the armies of both sides, for the most part indifferent to religion, but avid for plunder. That means that one could characterize the Thirty Years' War in the next approximation (C) as an orgy of banditry, and that, too, would be to some extent correct. Finally, real class interests lay behind the religious slogans and the golden diadems of kings, interests it would be wrong not to take into account (approximation D). And one can add to that the separatist tendencies of the different, separate regions (approximation E) discoverable by paleoethnography, and so on.
As will be seen from this example, the system of successive approximations is a complicated business, even when we are investigating a local episode. Nevertheless we need not lose hope of success because there remains the path of scientific deduction. Just as the motion of Earth is composed of many regular motions (rotation around its axis, rotation around the sun, movement with all the planets of the solar system through the galaxy, and many others), so mankind, the anthroposphere, experiences in developing not one but several effects that are studied by separate sciences. The spontaneous movement, reflected in social development, is studied by historical materialism; human physiology is a field of biology; man's relation with the landscape - historical geography - lies in the, sphere of the geographical sciences; the study of wars, laws, and institutions is political history, and of opinion and thoughts the history of culture; the study of languages is linguistics, and of literary creation philology, and so on. Where does our problem fit in?
Let me begin with the point that an ethnos (any one), like a language, for example, is not a social phenomenon, because it can exist in several formations. The influence of spontaneous social development on the molding of an ethnos is exogenous. In order to affect the forming or the break-up of an ethnos, social development operates through history, both political and cultural. One can therefore say that the problem of ethnogenesis lies on the boundary of historical science where its social aspects pass smoothly into the natural ones.
Since all phenomena of ethnogenesis originate on the earth's surface in certain geographical conditions, the question of the role of terrain and relief inevitably arises, as a factor presenting economic opportunities for human collectives (ethnoi). [+6] But the combination of history and geography is not sufficient for my problem because it is a matter of living organisms which, as we know, are always in a state of evolution or involution, or monomorphism (stability within the species), and interact with other living organisms, forming communities, and geobiocoenoses.
I must thus put my problem at the junction of three sciences: history, geography (study of relief), and biology (ecology and genetics). But that being so, we can make a second approximation of the definition of the term 'ethnos': an ethnos is a specific form of existence of the species Homo sapiens, and ethnogenesis is a local variant of the intraspecific form-making determined by a combination of historical and choronomic (landscape) factors.
The aspect in which mankind appears as an anthropofauna may seem extravagant, but Darwin and Engels laid the foundations for such a study. Following the scientific tradition, I shall turn my attention to this aspect of human activities which has been missed by most of my predecessors.
'The historian without geography stumbles'.
Man's dependence on the world around him, or rather on his geographical environment, is never disputed, although the degree of dependence is assessed differently by different scholars. In any case, however, the economic life of the peoples who have inhabited Earth and now live in it is closely linked with the relief and climate of the territories inhabited. It is quite difficult to trace the rise and decline of the economy of ancient periods, again because of the incompleteness of the information obtained from primary sources. But there is an excellent indicator - military power. As for modern times, there are no doubts whatsoever about that, but for 2 000 years matters remained precisely the same, for nomads as well as for settled peoples. Not only were well-fed, strong, tireless people needed for a campaign, capable of drawing a bow 'to the ear' (which enabled an arrow to be shot for 700 meters while with drawing 'to the eye' the range of an arrow was 350-400 meters), and of fencing with a heavy sword or (much harder) with a curved saber. It was also necessary to have horses, roughly four or five per man, taking the wagon train or pack train into account. A stock of arrows was needed, and making them was a laborious business. Stocks of provisions were needed, for example, for nomads, a flock of sheep and consequently shepherds for it. A reserve guard was needed to protect women and children. In short, war required funds even then, and big ones at that. It could only be waged at the enemy's expense after the first, considerable victory, and in order to win it a strong rear was required, a prosperous economy, and consequently optimum natural conditions.
The significance of geographical conditions, for example, relief, for military history has long been talked about, always, one might even say. Suffice it to recall some examples from ancient history. Hannibal won the battle of Lake Trasimene by making use of several deep valleys disposed at right angles to the lake's shore and the road along which the Roman troops passed. Thanks to that he attacked the Roman army in three places at once and won the battle. At Cynoscephalae the Macedonian phalanx was scattered on broken ground, and the Romans easily broke the heavily armed enemy, who had lost formation. Examples like these have always been in historians' field of vision and gave the eighteenth-century Russian scholar Ivan Boltin grounds for a famous comment: 'The historian who is not strong in geography stumbles'. [+7] But it is pointless to dwell on such an obvious problem in the twentieth century, because history is now faced with more profound tasks than it used to be, while geography has moved away from simple description of the marvels of our planet and has acquired possibilities that were inaccessible to our ancestors.
I shall therefore put the question differently: not only how does the geographical environment affect people 6ut also how far do people themselves constitute part of the envelope of Earth that is now called the biosphere; and also to what extent, precisely, do the patterns of mankind's life influence the geographical environment and to what extent do they not. That posing of the matter calls for analysis, i.e. an artificial breaking down of the problem for convenience of investigation. It consequently has only subsidiary significance for understanding history, since the aim of our work is a synthesis. Alas, however, just as one cannot build a house without a foundation so it is impossible to generalize without preliminary differentiation. Let us limit ourselves to the minimum. When we speak of the history of mankind we usually have in mind the social form of the movement of history, i.e. mankind's progressive development, as a whole, along a spiral. This is a spontaneous movement and for that reason cannot be a function of any external causes whatsoever. Neither geographical nor biological effects can influence that aspect of history. So what do they influence? Organisms including human ones. L.S. Berg had already drawn that conclusion in 1922, legitimate for all organisms, including people.
The geographical landscape necessarily affects the organism, compelling all individuals to vary in a certain direction insofar as the organization of the species permits. The tundra, forest, steppe, desert, mountains, water medium, life on islands, etc. all put a special stamp on organisms. Those species that are incapable of adapting must migrate to another geographical terrain or perish. [+8]
But by 'terrain' is meant
a sector of the earth's surface that differs qualitatively from other sectors, framed by natural boundaries, and representing a whole, and reciprocally conditioned, natural aggregate of objects and phenomena typically expressed over a considerable area and inseparably linked in all respects with the topographical envelope. [+9]
Berg called this thesis the choronomic principle of evolution (from the Greek choros, place), so linking geography and biology. In the aspect I have adopted history is added to these two sciences, yet the principle remains unshakeable. Furthermore it has received unexpected confirmation, and that obliges me to continue the examination of an ethnos's patterns of development, but now with allowance for the dynamic moment, the development of new ethnoi, i.e. of ethnogenesis, on the basis of a description of the phases of ethnogenesis. But that is the theme of another chapter.
Nature and History
The combination of nature study and history.
In antiquity, when the world seemed a whole to man, in spite of its obvious diversity, and interconnected, in spite of the seeming isolation, the problem of coupling natural science and history could not even arise. All events considered worthy of perpetuation were entered in the annals. Wars and floods, revolutions and epidemics, the birth of a genius and the flight of a comet were all considered phenomena of equal significance and interest for posterity. The principle of the magi then prevailed in scientific thought, viz., 'like breeds like', which made it possible, through broad associations, to catch the connections between phenomena of nature and the fates of people or of 'individual persons. That principle was developed into astrology and mantiké (the lore of divination), but with the development of the separate sciences, as knowledge accumulated, it was discarded as unsound, and not substantiated in practical application.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thanks to the differentiation of the sciences, a huge amount of information was accumulated, which had become vast by the beginning of the twentieth century. Figuratively speaking the mighty river of Science had been diverted into irrigation ditches. Life-giving moisture watered a broad area, but the lake previously fed by it (i.e. integral world-contemplation) dried up. And now the autumn wind drifts the bottom sediments and blows salty dust onto the friable land of fields. Soon, in the place of steppe which, even though dry, fed herds, salt marshes arise, and the biosphere gives way to inert matter, not forever, of course, but for a long time. For when people quit a doomed land, the ditches begin to silt up, and the river again cuts a channel, and fills a natural depression. The wind blows a fine layer of fresh dust over the salt marshes, grasses sprout and die, uneaten by ungulates. In a few centuries a humus layer is formed on the plain, and plankton in the lake; then herbivores arrive, and waterfowl carry fish spawn to the lake on their feet. Life again triumphs in its diversity.
So it is in science. Narrow specialization is only useful as a means of accumulating knowledge. The differentiation of disciplines was a stage, necessary and inevitable, that inevitably becomes disastrous when dragged out for a long time. Accumulation of information without its systematization into an object of broad generalization is a quite senseless task. Were the principles of ancient science indeed false? Perhaps its unsoundness was not rooted in its postulates, but rather in lack of skill in applying them. For there is an interaction 'of the history of nature and the history of men' that can be caught by employing the total of accumulated knowledge and a method of research that is developing under our eyes. So I shall endeavor to follow this path and to formulate the problem as follows: can the study of history be of benefit for interpreting phenomena of nature?
Social and natural phenomena are obviously not identical, but they do have a point of contact somewhere. And it is necessary to find it, because it cannot be the anthroposphere as a whole. Even if we understand the anthroposphere as the biomass, we must note two aspects of the phenomenon: (a) its mosaic structure, because various collectives of people interact differently with the environment; if we take into account the well-known history of the past 5 000 years, this diversity and elucidation of its causes will prove the key to the problem posed; (b) the many-sided character of the object being studied, i.e. mankind. This has to be understood in the sense that every person (or mankind as a whole) is a physical body, and an organism, and the upper fink of any biocoenosis, and a member of a society, and a member of a people or ethnic national grouping, and so on. In each of these the object (in this case man) is studied by a corresponding scientific discipline, which does not deny other aspects of research. It is the ethnic aspect of mankind as a whole that is important for my problem.
Let me make a slight excursus into epistemology. Ask yourself what is accessible to direct observation. It is not the object itself, but the limits of object. Thus we know that time, as a category, exists, but unless we see its limits we have no chance of giving a generally accepted definition of time. And the greater the contrast, the clearer objects a-re for us that we do not see but dream up, i.e. imagine.
We constantly observe history as a chain of events; consequently history is a boundary. Happily we know of what - the social and the four natural forms of the motion of matter. That being so there is, together with the sociosphere and the technosphere generated by it, a living essence that not only surrounds people but is also within them. And these elements are so contrast that they are caught by human consciousness without the least effort. Humanitarian conceptions have proved unnecessary, or rather inadequate, precisely because they pose the question of the influence on the historical process, or processes, of geographical, biological, social, or ('in idealist systems) spiritual factors, and not of the connection of the one and the other, thanks to which both the process itself and its components become accessible to empirical generalization. The approach suggested here is nothing other than the analysis, i.e. 'breaking down', needed to untangle the unclear places in history and then pass on to a synthesis in which the results of the various methods of research are taken into account.
In the historiography of the nineteenth century the interaction of the social and natural was not always allowed for. [+10] But now the dynamics of natural processes has been sufficiently studied for their comparability with social events to be obvious. Biocoenology has shown that man enters the biocoenosis of the terrain as an upper final link, because he is a major predator and, as such, is dependent on the evolution of nature, which by no means rules out the existence of an additional element, i.e. the development of the productive forces, which produce the technosphere, lacking self-development and capable only of disrupting.
Formations and ethnoi.
If, however, we look at all world history, we will note that coincidences of changes of formation and the appearance of new peoples are only rare exceptions, while ethnoi very dissimilar to one another constantly arise and develop within a formation.
Take the example of the thirteenth century when feudalism nourished from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The French barons were hardly like the free peasants of Scandinavia, the slave-warrior Mamelukes of Egypt, the unruly population of the Russian veche towns, the indigent conquerors of half the world, the Mongol nomads, or the Chinese landowners of the Sung Empire. Common to them all was the feudal mode of production, but little else. Agriculturists' and nomads' attitudes to nature did not coincide; receptivity of things foreign, or capacity for cultural borrowings, was higher in Europe than in China, no less than the striving for territorial conquests that stimulated the Crusades; Russian slash-and-burn agriculture was simpler and more primitive than the viticulture of Syria and the Peloponnese, but yielded a fabulous harvest with less expenditure of labour; languages, religion, art, education were all unlike each other, but there was no confusion in this diversity because each fife style was the property of a definite people.
It should not be thought, however, that the degree of ethnic individuality is determined only by nature. Centuries passed and the relations of ethnoi changed, some disappearing, others appearing; it is accepted in Soviet ethnography to call that process ethnogenesis. The rhythms of ethnogenesis are coupled in world history with a pulse of social development, but the coupling does not mean coincidence, let alone unity. History is a single process, but its factors are different, and my task, i.e. analysis, is to single out the phenomena directly inherent in ethnogenesis, and so to clarify what an ethnos is and what its role in the fife of mankind.
It is necessary, to start with, to agree on the meaning of the terms and the limits of the investigation. The Greek word ethnos has many meanings in the dictionary, of which I have chosen one, viz., 'species, breed', implying by that people. There is no point, for my posing of the theme, in singling out such concepts as tribe or nation, because I am interested in the common denominator; in other words the general that exists among Englishmen and among Masai, among ancient Greeks and modern Gypsies. This is the property of the species Homo sapiens to group together so as to counterpose themselves and 'theirs' (sometimes close, but often quite remote) to all the rest of the world. This singling out is characteristic of all epochs and countries: Hellenes and barbarians, Jews and the uncircumcised, Chinese (people of the Middle Kingdom) and Hu (the barbarian periphery, Russians included), Muslim Arabs in the time of the first Caliphs and 'infidels'; Catholic Europeans in the Middle Ages (the unity called the 'Christian world') and 'godless', including Greeks and Russians; 'Orthodox' (in the same period) and unbaptized, including Catholics; Tuaregs and non-Tuaregs, Gypsies and all other people, etc. This opposition is a universal phenomenon, which indicates its deep foundation, but in itself it is only the foam on a deep river, and I have still to bring out its essence. But the observation already made is enough to attest the complexity of the effect which can be called ethnic (in the sense 'stock' or 'breed') and which can be taken as an aspect for constructing an ethnic history of mankind. My task is therefore first of all to find the cause of the process.
There is an undoubted link between ethnic history and geography, but it cannot exhaust the whole complexity of the relationship of the diverse phenomena of nature and the zigzags of the history of ethnoi. Furthermore, the thesis: 'Any attribute by which ethnoi can be classified is adaptive to a concrete environment' reflects only one aspect of the process of ethnogenesis. As Hegel wrote: '...the mild Ionic sky certainly contributed much to the charm of the Homeric poems, yet this alone can produce no Homers'. [+11]
However, when an ethnos that has taken shape in a definite region where adaptation to the terrain has been maximum migrates, it retains many of the original features that distinguished it from the aboriginal ethnoi. The Spaniards who settled in Mexico, for example, did not become Indians - Aztecs or Mayas. They created an artificial microlandscape for themselves - towns and fortified haciendas - and preserved their culture, both material and spiritual, in spite of the fact that the moist tropics of Yucatan and the semideserts of Anlhuac were very different from Andalusia and Castile. But the separation of Mexico from Spain in the nineteenth century was largely the work of the descendants of Indian tribes that had adopted the Spanish language and Catholicism, but that were supported by the free tribes of the Comanche who had migrated north of the Rio Grande.
Let me now draw a first conclusion, which will be the starting point for the further exposition. The mosaic anthroposphere, which has been constantly changing in historical time and interacting with the topography of planet Earth, is nothing else than an ethnosphere. Since mankind has spread everywhere, though unevenly, over the land surface, and always interacts with Earth's natural environment, but differently, it is sensible to treat it as one of Earth's envelopes, but with an obligatory correction for ethnic differences. So I am introducing the term 'ethnosphere' which, like other geographical phenomena, must have its own patterns of development, different from the biological and the social. Ethnic patterns are observable in space (ethnography) and in time (ethnogenesis and the palaeogeography of the anthropogenic landscape).
Can one trust the historical sources?
Yatsunsky, the author of fine surveys of the geographical thought of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, justly remarked: 'Historical geography does not study the historical ideas of people of the past but the concrete geography of past centuries'. [+12] The initial data for this quest obviously have to be sought in the historical works of past ages, but how? Unfortunately, there are no pointers to a possible method of research. And here is why.
Historical materials, as sources for the reconstruction of ancient climatic conditions, have been and are employed very widely. A famous polemic developed on this plane between Berg [+13] and Grumm-Grzhimailo [+14] on the desiccation of Central Asia in the historical period. They tried to solve the problem of the fluctuations of the level of the Caspian Sea in the first millennium A.D. associated with this question by selecting citations from the works of ancient authors. Special digests of information from Russian chronicles were made so as to draw conclusions about the change in Eastern Europe's climate. But the results of the numerous, laborious studies did not come up to expectations. The information of the sources was sometimes confirmed, but tests by other ways sometimes refuted them. Hence it follows that the coincidence of the data obtained with the truth was a matter of chance, which suggested that the method was defective. In fact the method of simple references to the evidence of an ancient or mediaeval author leads to a false conclusion, or at best to an inexact one. And so it should. The chroniclers either mentioned phenomena of nature among others or, starting from the ideas of the science of their time, treated storms, floods, and droughts as omens or punishment for sins. In both cases the phenomena were described selectively, when they came into an author's field of view, and we cannot even guess how many got left out. One author would draw attention to nature, but another, in the next century, did not; and it could turn out that rains were mentioned more often in a dry time than in a wet one. The historical criticism is unable to help here because it is power. less as regards omissions of events not linked by a causal dependence.
Ancient authors always wrote their works with a definite purpose and, as a rule, attached exaggerated importance to events that interested them. The degree of exaggeration or belittling is very difficult to determine, and is not always possible. So Berg concluded, from historical works, that the conversion of cultivated land into desert was a consequence of wars. That idea is now taken without criticism; P.K. Kozlov's find, the dead Tangut city of Yijing-ai known as Hara-Hoto [+15], is often cited as an example. This is so significant a point that I shall concentrate attention on one problem the geographical location of this city and the conditions of its death.
The Tangut kingdom was located in the Ordos and the AlaShan, in places where there are now sandy deserts. This state, it would seem, was poor and thinly populated, but in fact it maintained an army of 150 000 horsemen, had a university, an academy, schools, a legal procedure, and even a trade deficit, because it imported more than it exported. The deficit was covered in part by gold dust from its Tibetan possessions; the main export was live cattle, which constituted its wealth.
The city discovered by Kozlov lay in the lower reaches of the Edzin-Gol, in a locality now uninhabited. The two ox-bow lakes that surround it on the east and west indicate that there used to be water, but the river changed course to the west and now falls by two arms into lakes (a salt one - Gashun Nor, and a fresh one - Sogo Nor). Kozlov described the valley of the Sogo Nor as a freshwater oasis in the desert surrounding it, but noted at the same time that it could not feed a large population. But the citadel of Hara-Hoto alone is a square with sides of 400 metres. Around it there are traces of lesser structures and fragments of ceramics that indicate the existence of handicraft suburbs. The destruction of the city is often ascribed to the Mongols. In fact Genghis-khan took the Tangut capital in 1227 and the Mongols brutally made short work of its population. But the city discovered by Koziov continued to exist still in the fourteenth century, as is attested by the dates of the many documents found by members of the expedition. Then the end of the city was linked with the change in the river's course, which was diverted by the besiegers, according to Torgod folk tradition by means of a dam made of sandbags. The dam has survived to the present in the form of a wall. So, it seemingly existed, but the Mongols had nothing to do with it. In the descriptions of the capture of the city of Urahai (Mongolian) or Heshuicheng (Chinese) there is no such information. And it would simply have been impossible since the Mongol horsemen were not equipped with the necessary trenching tool. The death of the city was ascribed to the Mongols by an evil tradition that began back in the Middle Ages of ascribing everything bad to them. In fact the Tangut city perished in 1372 and was captured by Chinese troops of the Ming Dynasty, who were then waging war against the last of the Genghisites, and was laid waste as a base of Mongols who were threatening China from the west.
But why didn't it revive? The change in the river's course was not the reason, since the city could have migrated to another tributary of the Edzin-Gol. An answer to that can be found in Kozlov's book. With the powers of observation characteristic of him, he noted that the amount of water in the Edzin-Gol had got less, and the lake Sogo Nor had grown shallower, and overgrown with reeds. The shifting of the river bed to the west had played a certain role in that, but it alone could not explain why the country had fed a huge population in the thirteenth century, but had been converted into a sandy desert at the beginning of the twentieth.
So the blame for the desolation of the cultivated land of Asia does not fall on the Mongols but on changes of climate which I have described in special works. [+16]
Can we believe the memorials?
But why were Genghis-khan and his sons blamed for the devastation of Asia, while other events of a much greater scale (for example, the defeat of the Uighurs by the Kyrgyz in A.D. 841-846, or the general extermination of the Kalmycks by the Manchurian emperor Ch'ien Lung in 1756-1758) [+17] have remained outside historians' field of view?
The answer has to be sought in historiography rather than in the history of peoples. Talented books on history are not often written, in any case, and besides do not all come down to us. In the Near East the age of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was a period of the flowering of literature, but the struggle against the Mongol yoke both in Persia and in Russia then was the most pressing problem, and a host of works was devoted to it there that have survived to our day. Among them were both talented and brilliant works, judging by those that have come down to us. They evoked imitations and repetitions, which increased the total number of works on this question. The extermination of the Oirats did not find its historian, or he perished in the massacre. Thus, it turned out, events were not illuminated uniformly and their significance was distorted, since they were presented, as it were, on different scales. Hence, too, a hypothesis arose that ascribed the almost total annihilation of the population of the lands conquered by Genghis-khan, and the complete alteration of the landscape, to his hordes, which by no means corresponds to the truth. It should be noted that the maximum desiccation did not occur in countries ravaged by the hordes, but in Uighuria, where they were not at all, and Jungaria, where no one decided to destroy the grassy steppeland. The historical and geographical information of the sources is consequently unreliable.
And, finally, it is tempting to consider tremendous historical events, like the Mongols' campaigns of the thirteenth century, as migrations. The eminent British scholars Ellsworth Huntington and C.E.P. Brooks, for example, yielded to this temptation. But the Mongol campaigns were not associated with migrations. The victories were not won by crowds of nomads but by smallish, beautifully organized mobile detachments that returned to their native steppes after the campaigns. The numbers on the move were insignificant even for the thirteenth century. The khans of the Juchid branch, for instance, Batu, Orda, and Shayban, received by Genghis-khan's will only 4 000 horsemen, i.e. around 20 000 persons, who were settled over a territory from the Carpathians to the Altai. The real migration of the Kalmycks in the seventeenth century, on the contrary, remained unnoted by most historians because it did not have great resonance in works of world history. Consequently, a more solid knowledge of history is required, in order to tackle the problem posed, than what is readily derived from summary works, and a more detailed knowledge of geography than that to which historians or agricultural economists usually limit themselves. The main point is that it is necessary to extract reliable information from the subjective perceptions characteristic of many authors of written sources from Herodotus to our day.
We are well acquainted with the dates and details of battles, peace treaties, palace revolutions, and great discoveries, but we do not always know how to link these data up with definite phenomena of nature. The method of comparing the facts of history and changes of nature only began to be developed in the twentieth century.
Le Roy Ladurie, the historian of climate, has noted that the tendency to reduce booms and slumps of the economy in the various countries of Europe to periods of increased or lowered precipitation, cooling or warming, was based on an ignoring of economic and social crises, whose role was not doubted. He thus considered that the increase in imports of Baltic (i.e. Russian.-L.G.) grain into the Mediterranean, and reduction of the number of sheep in Spain in the sixteenth and especially the seventeenth centuries, are more easily correlated with the destruction inflicted on European countries by the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation than with insignificant changes in annual temperatures. [+18] He is right! Suffice it to note that there was a fall in population in that century not only in Germany, on whose territory the devastating Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) was fought, but also in Spain, a country that did not suffer ravages (in 1600, 8 000 000, and in 1700, 7 300 000). But that was due to a large part of the young men having been mobilized in America or the Netherlands, as a consequence of which there were not enough working hands in the country to maintain the economy and families.
What would we think of a historian who undertook to explain all the economic progress of Europe since 1850 by the retreat of glaciers established beyond doubt in the Alps,
Ladurie wrote; [+19] it is impossible not to agree with him. It is consequently necessary, in his opinion, simply to amass facts dated as accurately and unambiguously as possible, so as not to encourage contradictory interpretations.
There is no exact method of determining absolute dating in geography. A mistake of a thousand years is considered quite acceptable in it. It is easy to establish, for example, that deposits of silt have covered strata of loams, and consequently to note the existence of flooding, but it is impossible to say when it happened 500 or 5 000 years ago. Pollen analysis indicates the existence, for example, of xerophilous (drought-tolerant) plants in a place where moisture-loving ones now grow, but there is no guarantee that the swamping of a valley occurred because of a shifting of the channel of a near-by river, and not through a change of climate. Remains of groves have been discovered in the steppes of Mongolia and Kazakhstan but it is impossible to say from them whether they died out from desiccation or from being chopped down by people; and even if the latter were demonstrated, the time of savage treatment of the landscape would still remain unknown.
Perhaps archaeology can help? Memorials of material culture distinctly mark periods of the flourishing and decline of peoples, and are amenable to quite accurate dating. The things found in the ground, or old burials, do not tend to mislead researchers or inspire them to distort the facts. But things are mute, which gives the archaeologists plenty of scope for imagination. And our contemporaries are also prone to romance and let their imagination run away with them; and although their way of thinking is very different from the mediaeval one, there is no certainty that they are any closer to reality. In the twentieth century we sometimes meet blind faith in the power of archaeological excavations, based on the truly successful finds in Egypt, Babylonia, India, and even in the Altai Mts., thanks to which we have been able to discover and investigate forgotten countries of ancient history. But that is the exception; for the most part the archaeologist has to be satisfied with shards got from the dust of scorching steppes, fragments of bones in rifled graves, and remains of walls, the height in one imprint of a brick. And one must remember, moreover, that the find is an insignificant part of the lost. It is never known what precisely is lost, but it is a mistake to consider the lost to be non-existent, and not to make allowances for it, a mistake that leads to obviously incorrect conclusions. In short, archaeology without history can lead the researcher into error. Let us try otherwise.
Are There Ethnoi?
There are no signs for defining an ethnos.
According to my suggested definition, the form of existence of the species Homo sapiens is a collective of individuals opposing themselves to all other collectives. It is more or less stable, although it arises and disappears in historical time, which constitutes the problem of ethnogenesis. All these collectives differ more or less from one another, sometimes in language, sometimes in customs, sometimes in system of ideology, sometimes in origin, but always in historical fate or destiny. An ethnos is consequently, on the one hand, a product of history, and on the other is linked, through productive activity or the economy, with the biocoenosis of the landscape and country in which it was formed. Consequently an ethnic national group can change this relation, but with that it is altered beyond recognition, and continuity is only traceable by the scientific method, with the strictest criticism of sources, because words are deceptive.
Before I go any further, we must agree on the concept 'ethnos', which I have not yet defined. We do not have a single real attribute for defining an ethnos as such, although there has never been, and is not, a human being who is unethnic. All the attributes listed define an ethnos 'sometimes', but their aggregate defines nothing at an. Let us check this thesis by the negative method.
In the theory of historical materialism the basis of society is recognized as the mode of production, which develops through socioeconomic formations. That is why self-development plays the decisive role in it; the influence of erogenous factors, including natural ones, cannot be basic in the genesis of social progress. The concept 'society' signifies an aggregate of people united by the concrete historical conditions of material life common to them. The main force in this system of conditions is the mode of production of material goods. People are united in the course of production, and the result of this uniting Is social relations, which are formed in one of the five known formations (primitive communal, slaveowning, feudal, capitalist, and communist).
It is impossible 'to be united in an ethnos', since membership of one ethnos or another is directly perceived by the subject himself, and the surrounding ones take it as a fact not subject to doubt. Feeling or sensation consequently underlies the ethnic diagnostic. A person belongs to his ethnos from infancy. It is sometimes possible to incorporate strangers, but if that happens on a broad scale it disintegrates the ethnos. An ethnos can be broken up, but it is preserved in a diasporic state, forming numerous relict forms. The historical conditions are altered more than once during the fife of an ethnos; conversely, divergence of ethnoi is often observed during the predominance of one mode of production. Starting from Marx's idea of the historical process as an interaction of the history of nature and the history of men, [+20] we can propose a first, most general division into social stimuli arising in the technosphere, and natural stimuli constantly operating from the geographical environment. Everyone is not only a member of some society or other that is at a certain level of development, but is also a physical body subject to gravitation, and the final link in some biocoenosis, an organism capable of adaptation and existing at an age determined by the effect of hormones. The same can be said about the long-living collectives that socially form class states or tribal unions of various character (social organisms), and in nature form ethnoi (tribes, nationalities, nations). Their non-coincidence is obvious.
An ethnos is not a society.
But there is another point of view, in accordance with which
an ethnos ... is a socio-historical category, whose genesis and development are determined, moreover, not by the biological laws of nature but by the specific laws of the development of society. [+21]
How is that to be understood? According to the theory of historical materialism, the spontaneous development of the productive forces causes changes in the relations of production which generates a dialectical process of class formation that are transformed by processes of class abolition. This is a global phenomenon, a peculiar social form of the development of matter. But what does that have to do with ethnogenesis? Surely the appearance of such well-known ethnoi as the French or English did not coincide chronologically or territorially with the moulding of the feudal formation. Or did these ethnoi disappear with its collapse and the transition to capitalism? But in that same France the 'socio-historical category', the Kingdom of France, already embraced, in the fourteenth century, Celtic Bretons, Basques, Provencals, and Burgundians in addition to the French; so surely they were ethnoi? Doesn't this fact, one of very many, indicate that the pedigree definition is one-sided? And so that is grounds for scientific dispute.
Dialectical materialism distinguishes various forms of the motion of matter. The mechanical, physical, chemical, and biological are natural forms, while the social stands alone; by virtue of its specific nature it is characteristic only of mankind in all its manifestations. Every person and collective of people with technique and domesticated things (tame animals and cultivated plants) is subject to the effect of both social and natural forms of the motion of matter, which are ceaselessly correlated in time (history) and space (geography). When we generalize the material in a single complex (historical geography), amenable to observation and study, we have to examine it in two aspects - the social and the natural. In the first we see social organizations (tribal unions, states, theocracies, political parties, philosophical schools, etc.), in the second, ethnoi, i.e. collectives of people that arise and break up in a relatively short time but in each case have an original structure, a unique stereotype of behaviour, and its own rhythm of development, existing within the limit of homeostasis.
It is accepted, of course, to call classes, for example, sometimes juridically registered in estates or castes, socio-historical categories. In pre-class society tribal or gentile unions, for example the Celts' clans, were their analogue. In its broad sense 'social category' can be extended to stable institutions, the state, for example, or church organization, the polis (in Hellas), or the fief. But everyone who knows history is aware that such categories only coincide with the boundaries of ethnoi in very rare cases, i.e. there is no direct link here. And, what is more, the economy, which belongs completely to the social form of the motion of matter, demolishes national boundaries. With the existence of a common European market, similar technique, similarity of education in the various countries, and widespread study of related languages, it might seen, that ethnic differences would be wiped out in twentieth-century Europe. But are they in fact? The Irish broke away from Great Britain and spared no efforts to study their ancient, almost forgotten language. Scotland and Catalonia lay claims to autonomy although they had hardly considered themselves oppressed for the past 300 years. In Belgium Flemings and Walloons, who lived in harmony until recently, have suddenly begun a violent struggle that has come to street fights between students of the two ethnoi. And since only chance coincidence of social and ethnic peaks and slumps were also observed in antiquity, it is obvious that we are observing an interference of two lines of development or, in the language of mathematics, of two independent variables. This can only be ignored with a very strong desire to do so.
Let us try to discover the nature of the perceptible manifestation of the existence of ethnoi, the phenomenon of the counterposing of itself to all others, i.e. the 'we' and the 'not us'. What gives rise to this opposition and feeds it? Not unity of language, because there are many bilingual and trilingual ethnoi and on the contrary different ethnoi that speak one language. The French, for instance, speak four languages - French , Celtic, Basque, and Provencal, which does not prevent their present ethnic unity in spite of the history of the unification, or rather the Parisian kings' conquest of France from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, having been quite bloody. On the other hand, the Mexicans, Peruvians, and Argentines speak Spanish, but are not Spaniards. For some reason torrents of blood were spilled at the beginning of the nineteenth century only in order for war-torn Latin America to fall into the hands of trading companies of Great Britain and the USA. The Englishmen of Northumberland speak a language close to Norwegian because they are the descendants of Vikings who settled in England; and until recently the Irish knew only English but did not become English. Several different peoples speak Arabic; for many Uzbeks their mother tongue is Tajik, and so on. In addition there are group languages, like French in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Greek in Parthia in the second and first centuries B.C., Arabic in Persia from the seventh to eleventh centuries A.D., and so on. Since the integrity of the ethnic national group was not disrupted, one must conclude that it is not a matter of language.
Furthermore, linguistic diversity often finds practical application, the practice bringing people speaking different languages closer together. During the U.S.- Japanese war in the Pacific, for example, the Japanese succeeded so well in decoding American radio transmissions that the Americans lost the possibility of transmitting secret information by radio. But they found a clever, unexpected way out, by teaching the Morse code to called-up Indians. An Apache transmitted to a Navajo in Athabaskan, an Assiniboin to a Sioux in Dakota, and the receiver translated the text into English. The Japanese broke the code but were helpless in face of the texts. Military service often brings people together; the Indians who returned home remained friends with their paleface war comrades. It did not, however, assimilate the Indians; the command, moreover, valued precisely their ethnic features, including bilingualism. So, although language may serve as an indicator of ethnic community in separate cases, it is not the cause of it.
The Weps, Udmurts, Karelians, and Chuvash, let us note, still speak their our languages at home, but study Russian in school, and on quitting their villages are practically indistinguishable from Russians. Their knowledge of their native language does not in the least prevent them from working on a common footing.
Finally, the Ottoman Turks! In the thirteenth century the Turkmenian chieftain Orthogrul, escaping from the Mongols, led around 500 horsemen and their families into Asia Minor. The sultan of Iconium settled the arrivals in Brussa, on the border with Nicaea, to wage a border war with the 'infidel' Greeks. Under the first sultans volunteer ghazi gathered in Brussa from all over the Near East, attracted by the allure of booty and land for settlement; they constituted cavalry, spahis. The conquest of Bulgaria and Macedonia in the fourteenth century enabled the Turkish sultans to organize infantry from Christian boys, who were torn from their families, converted to Islam, trained for warfare, and given the status of guards - the 'new troops' (janissaries). In the fifteenth century a navy was created, manned by all the adventurists of the coasts of the Mediterranean. In the sixteenth century light cavalry (akinji) were added, formed from emigrants from conquered Diarbekr, Iraq, and Kurdistan. French renegades became diplomats, and Greeks, Armenians, and Jews financiers and economists. These people bought wives in the slave markets (Poles, Ukrainians, Germans, Italians, Georgians, Greeks, Berbers, Negroes, etc.). These women were the mothers and grandmothers of the Turkish troops. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Turks were an ethnos, but the young soldier received orders in Turkish, talked with his mother in Polish, and his grandmother in Italian, traded in the bazaar in Greek, read verses in Persian, and prayed in Arabic. But he was an 'Ottoman' because he behaved as an Ottoman did, a brave, pious warrior of Islam.
The numerous European renegades broke down this unity in the nineteenth century, and formed the Young Turks in Paris. In the twentieth century the Ottoman Empire fell, and the ethnos broke up - people passed into other ethnoi. The descendants of the Seljuks raised a new Turkey from the depths of Asia Minor, and the remnants of the Ottomans lived out their remaining days in the alleys of Istanbul. So, a religious community, not a linguistic one, united the Ottoman ethnos for 600 years.
Ideology and culture are sometimes also attributes, but not necessary ones. Only an Orthodox Christian could be a Byzantine, for example, and all Orthodox were considered subjects of the Constantinople emperor, and perceived as 'ours'. But that was disrupted as soon as the baptized Bulgars started war with the Greeks, while Rus, having adopted Orthodoxy, did not dream of submitting to Czargrad. The principle of like-mindedness was also proclaimed by the Caliphs, the successors of Muhammed, but it did not withstand the rivalry of living reality - ethnoi again arose within the unity of Islam. On the other hand, preaching sometimes unites a group of people, which becomes an ethnos-the Sikhs in northwest India, for example, and the Ottoman Turks (see above). But in the Ottoman Empire there were Sunni Muslims, subjects of the Sultan, Arabs, and Crimean Tatars, who did not, however, consider themselves Turks. Even linguistic closeness to the Ottomans played no role for the Tatars. So faith, too, is not a common attribute of ethnicity.
A clear example of the confessional self-awareness of an ethnos is the Sikhs, a sect of Indian origin. The caste system established in India was considered obligatory for all Hindus. It was a special structure of the ethnos. Being a Hindu meant being a member of a definite caste. It was not a political unity, but the stereotype of behaviour was firmly maintained, even quite brutally. Each caste had the right to a certain type of occupation, and those on whom military service was settled were few. That made it possible for Afghan Muslims to master India and jeer at the defenseless population, the inhabitants of Punjab suffering most. In the sixteenth century a teaching appeared there that at first proclaimed non-resistance to evil, but later set an aim of war against Muslims. The caste system was abolished, which distinguished the Sikhs (the name of devotees of the new faith) from Hindus. They isolated themselves from the Indian community by endogamy, developed their own stereotype of behaviour, and established a structure of their own community. According to the principle I have adopted, the Sikhs should be regarded as a rising ethnos counterposed to Hindus. And so they perceive themselves. The religious conception has become a symbol for them, and for us an indicator of ethnic divergence.
The teaching of the Sikhs cannot be considered just a doctrine, because if anyone in Moscow were to embrace this religion fully he would not become a Sikh, and they would not consider him one of them. The Sikhs became an ethnos on the basis of religion, the Mongols on the basis of kinship, the Swiss through a successful war against Austrian feudalists, who welded together a country where four languages were spoken. Ethnoi are formed by various means, and our task is to find the common pattern in that.
Most major peoples have several ethnographic types that constitute a harmonious system but that differ very much from one another both in time and in social structure. Compare seventeenth century Moscow with its boyar hats and beards, when women spun behind mica windows, or eighteenth-century Moscow when magnates in wigs and camisoles took their wives to balls, and nineteenth-century Moscow when bearded nihilist students educated young ladies from all estates; and add the decedents of the early twentieth century. Comparing them all with our age, knowing that they are one and the same ethnos, we see that ethnography could lead the investigator without a knowledge of history into error. No less indicative is a spatial cross-section for one year, say 1869. White Sea Russians, Petersburg workers, Transvolga Old Believers, Siberian gold prospectors, peasants of the forest provinces and peasants of the steppes, the Don and Ural Cossacks were outwardly quite unlike one another, but that did not disrupt the folk unity, while the closeness of the everyday life of the Greben Cossacks and the Chechens did not unite them.
Strange as it may be, the point of view put forward here has met active resistance precisely where it should attract attention. Kozlov and Pokshishevsky, whose paper I cited above, have opposed their view to mine both on the relationship of ethnography and geography and on the history of the question, i.e. on historiography. While not desiring to polemize, I nevertheless cannot ignore another conception that lays claims (without grounds) to canonicity. That would be academically incorrect.
These scholars represent the formation of ethnography as a science as follows. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century geography and ethnography developed together, but ethnography later split into socio-historical and geographical trends. Lewis Morgan, J.J. Bachofen, E.B. Tylor, Sir James Frazer, and L.Ya. Sternberg belonged to the first trend, and Friedrich Ratzel, L.D. Sinitsky, and A.A. Coubert and the French school of 'human geography' to the second. There is a substantial defect in the classification proposed, which reduces it essentially to nought. The members of the 'trends' were interested in different subjects and devoted their attention to different themes. And that being the case, it is unjustified to counterpose them. For when Ratzel tried to substantiate the geographical character of ethnographic division into districts he by no means disputed the conception of animism, sympathetic magic, or ritual murder of a priest, i.e. the subjects to which Frazer devoted his Golden Bough. But it was to the existence of versatile scholars' diverse interests that authors ascribed the separation of ethnography from geography, and its rebirth as a social science. There was a certain confusion in that fraught with sorry consequences. Any science develops by broadening its range of investigation, and not by a simple change of thematic. Consequently, when historical aspects were added to the achievements of geographical ethnography, that was progress of the science, but when some subjects were replaced by others that was marking time, which is always extremely damaging.
Equally, one must not replace ethnography by a theory about 'economic-cultural types' characteristic of peoples that are approximately at an identical level of socioeconomic development and living in similar natural geographical conditions (for example, the type of 'Arctic marine-mammal hunters', 'herdsmen of the and steppes', and so on). [+22] This trend is fruitful for paleo-economic geography, but does not and cannot have any relation to ethnography - there are, for example, reindeer Chukchi i.e. pastoralists, and Chukchi hunters of marine mammals. According to the classification proposed they should be put into different groups, although they are one ethnos. And surely the Russian peasants of Moscovy, the White Sea Russians (Pomors), and Siberian sable hunters are one ethnos. And there is indeed no end of examples.
It, is also incorrect to equate ethnos with biological taxonomic units, i.e. races or populations. Races differ from one another in physical attributes that have no essential significance for man's life activity. [+23] A population is an aggregate of individuals peopling a definite territory, in which they freely cross-breed, and are separated from neighboring populations by isolation of some sort. An ethnos, in my understanding, is a collective of individuals that has a unique inner structure and an original stereotype of behaviour, both components being dynamic. Consequently an ethnos is an elementary phenomenon that is not reducible to either sociological biological, or geographical phenomena.
Reduction of ethnogenesis to 'linguistic-cultural processes' distorts reality, removing the complexity of ethnic history, which Bromley pointed out when he proposed introducing the supplementary terms 'ethnikos' and 'eso' (ethno-social organization) in order to clarify the problem. [+24] I believe one can be not satisfied with his solution, but it is incorrect to ignore it altogether.
Descent from a single ancestor.
In ancient times such descent was considered obligatory for an ethnos. Often an animal, which was not always a totem, figured as the ancestor. For the Turks and the Romans it was a she-wolf wet-nurse; for the Uighurs a wolf that fertilized a queen; for the Tibetans an ape and a female rakshas (forest demon). But usually it was a man whose image was distorted beyond recognition by legend: Abraham, the ancestor of the Jews, his son Ismail, the ancestor of the Arabs, Cadmus, the founder of Thebes and initiator of the Beotians, and so on.
Strange as it may seem, these archaic views have not died out; only in our time we try to put some ancient tribe in the place of a person, as the ancestors of an existing ethnos. But that, too, is incorrect. As there is no person who has only a father or a mother, so there is no ethnos that had not been produced by various ancestors, And one should not confuse ethnoi with races, as is often done, but without justification. The grounds for temptation is the preconceived idea that 'the processes of racial origin (like the processes of ethnogenesis.- L. G.) probably developed in certain areas of the world and were governed by the specific nature of the natural environment,' [+25] i.e. by the climate, flora, and fauna of geographical zones.
There is an impermissible substitution of an object here, i.e. the initial race is arbitrarily equated with ethnos. Let us examine this.
During the Upper Paleolithic, when sub-arctic conditions prevailed in Europe, with a very arid climate, the valley of the Rhone was settled by the Grimaldi Negroid race, while the tropical forests of Africa were inhabited by the Khoisan race, which combined Mongoloid and Negroid features. This race was ancient; its origin is unclear, but there are no grounds for considering it a hybrid. The Negroid Bantu pushed the Khoisan to the extreme south of Africa in a quite historical period, beginning in the first century A.D. up to the nineteenth century, when the Bechauna drove the Bushmen into the Kalahari Desert. Negroid features did not arise at all in equatorial America, although the natural conditions were similar to the African.
The arid zone of Eurasia was peopled by Europeoids of the Cromagnon type and by Mongoloids, but that did not lead to a wiping out of racial features. In Tibet the Mongoloid Bod (Bodyul) were neighbors of the Europeoid Dardi and Pamirtsy, and in the Himalayas the Gurkhas of the Patani. But the similarity of natural environment did not influence the racial character. In short, one must recognize that the functional connection of anthropological differences among various populations and the geographical conditions of the areas peopled by them is not clear. Furthermore, there is no certainty that there is one in general in nature, the more so that the idea runs counter to the achievements of modern paleoanthropology, which bases racial classification not on zones of latitude but by meridional regions (Atlantic, to which Europeoids and African Negroids are assigned; and Pacific, to which the Mongoloids of East Asia and America belong). This point of view rules out the effect of natural conditions on the origin of races because both groups took shape in various climatic zones.
Ethnoi are always linked, on the contrary, with natural conditions, through active economic activity, which is manifested in two directions, viz., adaptation to the terrain, and of the latter to the ethnos. In both cases, however, we come up against an ethnos as a really existing phenomenon, although the reason for its origin is not clear.
It is also not necessary to reduce the whole diversity of my theme to some one thing. It is better simply to establish the role of certain factors. The terrain, for example, determines an ethnic collective's possibilities during its rise, but a newly born ethnos alters the terrain in accordance with its requirements. Such mutual adaptation is only possible when a rising ethnos is full of strength and is seeking to apply it. Later, however, it becomes used to the established situation, which becomes near and dear to its descendants. Denial of that leads inevitably to a conclusion that peoples have no homeland, understood here as a combination of topographical elements dear to all hearts. Hardly anyone will agree with that.
That alone indicates that ethnogenesis is not a social process, because spontaneous development of the sociosphere only interacts with natural phenomena, but is not a product of them. But it is precisely because ethnogenesis is a process, and a directly observed ethnos is a phase of ethnogenesis, and consequently an unstable system, that any comparison of ethnoi with anthropological races is ruled out, and so with any racial theories. In fact, the principle of anthropological classification is similarity, and the people who comprise an ethnos are diverse.
Two or more components always operate during ethnogenesis. The crossing of various ethnoi sometimes yields a new stable form, but sometimes leads to degeneration. A mixture of Slavs, Ugrians, Alans, and Turks merged into the Great Russian nationality, while the Mongolo-Chinese and Manchurian-Chinese mixtures that often took shape along the line of the Chinese Great Wall over the last two thousand years proved unstable and disappeared and did not form independent ethnic units.
Central Asia was inhabited by Sogdians in the seventh century A.D., and the term 'Tajik' already meant 'Arab' in the eighth century, i.e. warriors of the Caliph. Nasr ibn Sayyar, when suppressing a rising of Sogdians in A.D. 733, was forced to recruit Khorassan Persians, who had already adopted Islam, to his depleted forces. He picked many of them, so that Persian began to predominate in his Arab army. After his victory, when the Sogdian men were slaughtered, and the children were sold into slavery, but the beautiful women and flourishing gardens were shared out among the victors, a Persian-speaking population developed in Sogdiana and Bukhara, that resembled the Khorassians. But in 1510 the fates of Iran and Central Asia diverged. The Turk Ismail Safevi, a zealous Shiite, conquered Iran and converted the Persians to Shi'ism. But Central Asia fell to Sunni Uzbeks, and the Persian-speaking population retained the old name 'Tajik' which, before the fall of the Bukharan dynasty of the Mangyts in 1918, had no significance attached to it. When the Uzbek and Tajik Republics were formed m the old Turkestan Territory, the descendants of the Khorassan Persians, the eighth-century conquerors, who lived in Bukhara and Samarkand, were counted as Uzbeks in the census, and the descendants of the Turks, the conquerors of the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, living in Dushanbe and Shakhrisabz, as Tajiks. They knew both languages from childhood, were Muslims, and were indifferent to how they were recorded. Over the past 40 years the position has altered; Tajiks and Uzbeks have been formed as socialist nations, but how were they to be regarded before then, when religious affiliation determined ethnic affiliation (Muslims and Kafirs) and there were no clans among Tajiks? For both ethnic substrata Turks and Iranians --were 'imported' ethnoi in Central Asia a thousand years ago, quite a long enough period for adaptation. There is obviously a certain pattern here that needs to be brought out and described. But clearly community of origin cannot be the indicator for determination of an ethnos. It is a myth inherited by our consciousness from the primitive science of primitive society.
Ethnos as an illusion.
But perhaps 'ethnos' is simply a social category that takes shape with the formation of a society. [+26] Then 'ethnos' is an illusory value and ethnography a meaningless past-time, since it is simpler to study social conditions directly. That point of view is mistaken, however, which becomes obvious when speculation is replaced by observations of natural processes accessible to a thoughtful person. Let me clarify this from real examples. Celtic Bretons and Iberian Gascons live in France. In the forests of the Vendée and on the slopes of the Pyrenees they dress in their own costumes, speak their own language, and distinguish themselves distinctly in their homeland from the French. But can one say of Marshal Murat or Lannes that they were Basques and not French? Or about D'Artagnan, both as a historical personage and the hero of Dumas' novel? Can we not consider the Breton nobleman Chateaubriand and Gilles de Retz, the companion of Joan of Arc, Frenchmen? Wasn't the Irishman Oscar Wilde not an English writer? The famous Orientalist Chokan Valikhanov said of himself that he considered himself equally Russian and Kazakh. There is any number of such examples, but they all show that the ethnic affiliation discoverable in peoples' consciousness is not a product of consciousness itself. It evidently reflects some aspect or other of the person, much deeper, and external as regards consciousness, by which I understand a form of higher nervous activity. But in other cases, ethnoi for some reason manifest immense resistance to the effects of their surroundings and do not assimilate.
The Gypsies have now been separated from their society and India for a thousand years, have lost their link with their native land, and nevertheless have not merged with the Spaniards, or the French, or the Czechs, or the Mongols. They did not adopt the feudal institutions of the societies of Europe, remaining an outsider group in all the countries where they lived. The Iroquois still live as a tiny ethnic group (totaling 20 000 persons), surrounded by hypertrophied capitalism, but do not adopt the 'American way of life'. In the Mongolian People's Republic there are Turkic ethnoi (Soyots or Uranhaitsy, Kazakhs, etc.), but in spite of a similarity of the 'material and spiritual development of society', they have not merged with the Mongols, but constitute independent ethnoi. And conversely, French settled in Canada in the eighteenth century and still retain their ethnic face. Jews lived in Salonika as an endogamous group more than 400 years after their expulsion from Spain, but according to the data of 1918 they were more like Arabs than their neighbors the Greeks. Exactly the same way Germans from Hungary outwardly resembled their confréres in Germany, and Gypsies Hindus. Selection alters the correlation of attributes slowly, and mutations, we know, are rare. Any nationality living in a terrain customary for it is therefore almost in a state of equilibrium.
But one must not think that a change of conditions of existence never influences an ethnos. Sometimes it exerts such a strong impact that new attributes are formed, and new ethnic variants that are more or less stable. We must therefore examine how these processes come about and why they yield different results.
Between West and East.
When we acquaint ourselves with the cultures of the Mediterranean, we rind ourselves in an environment of accustomed concepts and values. Religion signifies belief in God, the state is a territory with a definite order and authority, countries have names, peoples an ethnic affiliation, and rivers and lakes are in definite places.
Only the customary titles 'West' and 'East' do not behave quite geographically. Morocco is considered 'East' and Hungary and Poland 'West'. But everyone manages to adapt to this convention, and there is no confusion of the concepts. Non-specialists' familiarity with the subject as a consequence of reading fiction, and the availability of living tradition, are very conducive to this.
But as soon as we cross the mountain passes that divide Central and Eastern Asia, we come into a world of another system of reckoning. Here we meet religions that deny the existence not only of a divinity but also of the world around us. Regimes and social structures prove to contradict the principle of the state and authority. We find ethnoi in nameless countries without a community of language and economy, and sometimes even of territory, while rivers and lakes will migrate like pastoralists. The tribes that we are accustomed to consider nomads prove to be settled, and the strength of armies will not depend on their numbers. Only the patterns of ethnogenesis remain unchanged.
Other material calls for another approach and consequently another scale of investigation. Otherwise it will remain incomprehensible and my book will become unnecessary for the reader. That is to say, the reader accustomed to European terms. He knows what a 'king' is, and a 'count' or 'earl', a 'chancellor', and a 'bourgeois commune'. But in the East of Oecumene there were not equivalent terms. A 'khaghan' was not a king or an emperor, but a military chieftain elected for life who combined with it the performance of rituals of honoring ancestors. But can we imagine Richard the Lion-Hearted saying a funerary mass for Henry II, whom he drove to heart failure? And even that members of the Gascon and English nobility were present at this mass? Indeed, it is nonsense! But in the east of the Great Steppes, he would have been obliged to do so, otherwise he would have been killed.
Such appellations as 'Chinese' or 'Hindus' are not equivalent to 'French' or 'Germans' but to West Europeans as a whole, because they are systems of ethnoi but united on other principles of culture. Hindus are linked by a system of castes, and Chinese by hieroglyphic writing and an education connected with it. As soon as a native of Hindustan was converted to Muhammedanism, he ceased to be a Hindu since he became an outcast or renegade for his fellow-countrymen and fell into the category of untouchables. And a Chinese living among barbarians according to their customs, was treated, according to Confucius, as a barbarian. But a foreigner who observed Chinese etiquette was regarded as a Chinese.
In order to compare the ethnoi of East and West we have to find a proper correlation with an equal scale of division. For that purpose I shall study the properties of an ethnos as a natural phenomenon characteristic of all countries and ages.
To achieve this purpose one must be very attentive to ancient traditional information about the world, and not to reject it in advance because it does not correspond to our modern notions and ideas. We constantly forget that people who lived several thousand years ago had the same consciousness, capacities, and aspiration for the truth and knowledge as modern people. Treatises that have come down to us from the various peoples of various times testify to that.
The ordinary approach is not suitable for understanding the history and culture of Eastern Asia. When we study the history of Europe we can divide it up -- into the history of France, Germany, England, etc., or ancient history, mediaeval, and modern. Then, studying the history, say, of Rome, we are interested in neighboring peoples only insofar as Rome clashed with them. For Western countries such an approach is justified by the results obtained, but when we study Central Asia by this means we do not get satisfactory results. The reason lies deep; it is that the Asian and European understanding of the term 'people' ('folk') is different. In Asia itself ethnic unity is perceived differently, and even if I take off the Levant, and India with Indo-China, as without direct relation to my theme, there remain all the same three different understandings, the Chinese, Iranian, and nomadic. The last-named, moreover, varies particularly strongly with the epoch.
In Europe an ethnonym is a stable concept; in Central Asia it is more or less fluid; in China it is absorbent, and in Iran exclusive. In other words, in order to be considered a Chinese in China, a person had to adopt the fundamentals of Chinese morality, education, and rules of behaviour. Origin was not taken into account, nor language, because the Chinese spoke different languages in antiquity. It is therefore clear that China inevitably expanded, swallowing and absorbing small peoples and tribes. In Iran, on the contrary, a Persian had to be born one, but above all, in addition, had to honour Ahura Mazda and hate Ahriman. Without that it was impossible to be an 'Aryan'. The mediaeval (Sassanid) Persians did not think it even possible to include anyone in their ranks since they called themselves 'well-born' or 'noble' (nondoron), and others did not belong to that number. As a result, the number of the people steadily fell. It is difficult to guess at the Parthian conception, but it seemingly differed from the Persian only in being rather broader.
With the Hunni it was necessary, in order to be considered one, to be a member of a clan, but a clan could only be joined through marriage or by the command of a shanyui, by which a person became a member of a clan. The heirs of the Hunni, the Tyrians, began to incorporate whole tribes. Mixed tribal alliances arose on the basis of acceptance, for example Kazakhs, Yakuts, etc. Among the Mongols, very close in general to the Turks and Hunni, the horde was given predominance, i.e. a group of people united by discipline and leadership. Neither origin nor language, nor religious belief was required for that, but only courage and readiness to submit. The names of the hordes were clearly not ethnonyms, but with the existence of hordes ethnonyms fell out of use in general since there was no need for them; the concept 'people' coincided with that of 'state'.
In that connection we have firmly to remember that the concept 'state' differs in all the cases mentioned above, and is not intertranslatable. The Chinese 'guo' is represented by a hieroglyph, viz., an enclosure and a man with a spear. That does not, by any means, correspond to the English 'state' or the French 'état', or even the Latin 'imperium' and 'respublica'. It is also remote in content from the Iranian 'shahr' or the above-mentioned term 'horde'. The nuances of the difference often prove more significant than the elements of similarity, and that determines the behaviour of the figures of history. What seems monstrous to a European is natural for a Mongol, and vice versa.
We cannot help regretting, of course, the widespread idea that all state forms, social institutions, ethnic norms, and even manners of exposition not like the European, are simply backward, imperfect, and defective. Banal Eurocentrism is sufficient for Philistine perception but not suitable for scientific comprehension of the diversity of the observed phenomena. For from the standpoint of a Chinese or an Arab West Europeans seem to be defective. And that is also incorrect, untrue and unpromising for history. We obviously have to find a system of reckoning by which all observations will be made with an equal degree of accuracy. Only such an approach will make it possible to compare dissimilar phenomena and so yield reliable conclusions.
In the West countries are distinguished by name, but in the East?
A country and people without a name.
Between the eastern boundary of the Muslim world and the north-western outskirts of the Middle Kingdom which we call China, lies a country that has no definite name. That is all the more strange since its geographical frontiers are very exactly delineated, the physical and climatic conditions within it are original and unique, the population numerous, and long concerned with culture. This country was very well known to Chinese, Greek, and Arab geographers; it was visited by Russian and West European travelers; archaeological excavations have been carried out in it many times; and everyone called it descriptively someway or other, but it did not have a name of its own. We therefore only know where it was located.
Two mountain ranges stretch eastward from the Pamirs -- the Kunlun Shan, to the south of which lies Tibet, and the Tien Shan. Between these ranges lies a sandy desert, the Takla-Makan, intersected by the river Tarim. This river has neither source nor mouth. Its beginning is taken to be the 'Aral', i.e. the 'island' between the branches of three rivers, the Yarkand, the Aksu, and the Khotan. Its end is sometimes lost in the sands, sometimes gets to the lake Karaburunkul and sometimes fills Lop Nor, a lake that constantly changes place. [+27] In this strange country the rivers and lakes wander, and people huddle in the mountain foothills. Fresh brooks flow down from the mountains, but then and there disappear under heaps of scree and come out on the surface at a considerable distance from the ridges, There are oases there; then the rivers again disappear, this time into the sands. In this very continental country there is a very deep depression, the bottom of which lies 154 meters below sea level, and in this depression there is an ancient cultural center, the Turfan oasis. How were sciences and the arts studied there in a summer heat as high as 48°C and winter frosts as low as -37°C, in the unbelievable dryness of the autumn air and the strong spring winds?! Yet they were, and with no little success.
The ancient population of this country had no name for itself. It is accepted now to call these people Tocharians, but that is not an ethnonym, but a Tibetan sobriquet -- tha gar, which means 'white head' (blond). The inhabitants of the various oases spoke various languages of the Indo-European group, including even a West Aryan one unlike those known in Europe. In the south-west of the country, in the foothills of the Kunlun Shan, roamed Tibetan tribes that were in close contact with the inhabitants of Khotan and Yarkand, but did not mix with them. In the early centuries A.D. Sakas penetrated this country from the west, who settled south of Kashgar as far as Khotan, and Chinese emigrants escaping the terrors of civil wars. The Chinese built themselves a colony Gaochang, in the Turfan oasis, which lasted until the ninth century A.D. and disappeared without trace.
As you will see, it is impossible to choose a name for this country by ethnonym, but this was a cultured population which organized an economy that must be considered the best in the ancient world.
The nature of the oases of Central Asia was brought into harmony with the needs of man. The Turfan people assimilated the Iranian system of underground water supply, keriz, thanks to which the irrigated area fed a big population. Two harvests a year were gathered. Turfan grapes can rightly be considered the best in the world; there were melons, watermelons, and apricots from spring to late autumn; the sowings of long-fiber cotton were protected from the winds by Lombardy poplars and mulberry trees. And around was a stony desert of fragments of disintegrated rocks, shingle, and boulders, through which neither tree nor shrub penetrated. This was a reliable defense of the oasis against big armies. It was very difficult to send foot soldiers across the desert, because they had to carry not only food with them, but also water, which greatly increased the baggage train. And raids of the nomads' light cavalry were not terrible for the fortress walls.
A second large center of this country, Karashahr, lay in the hills around the freshwater lake Baghrash-kul. This town 'has rich lands... abounds in fish... It is well fortified by nature and is easily defended.' [+28] From Baghr-ash-kul flows the Konche-darya, which feeds Lop Nor. The full-flowing Tarim river, bordered by groves of poplars, tamarisks, sea buckhorn, and tall reeds that give cover to deer and wild boars, can be reached along its banks without suffering thirst.
The old ideology of the settled dwellers of this country was Buddhism in the Hinayana form ('Lesser Way' or 'Lesser Vehicle', i.e. the most orthodox teaching of the Buddha without admixtures), which it is impossible to call a religion. The Hinayanists deny god, putting the moral law of karma (causal succession) in his place. A Buddha is a man who had achieved perfection and is an example for anybody wishing to liberate himself from sufferings and rebirths through the achievement of Nirvana, the state of absolute peace. Only a purposeful person or arhat (holy man) could achieve it, without depending either on divine mercy or on outside help.
It goes without saying that achieving the 'path of perfection' is the affair of the few. But what are the rest to do? They simply concerned themselves with everyday affairs, respected arhats, listened to sermons in their spare time, and hoped that they themselves might, in future rebirths, become holy ascetics. But we have already seen, by way of other examples, how insignificantly dogmas influence the ethnic stereotype of behaviour. The arhats, merchants, soldiers, and farmers of Turfan, Karashahr, and Kucha constituted a single system for which Hinayana Buddhism was only a coloring.
The coloring of an object plays its role, however, sometimes an essential one. The Hinayana community lasted until the fifteenth century, but the Mahayana, also a Buddhist doctrine, but a vague, complicated one of different character, which spread in Yarkand and Khotan, obviously not accidentally, had already given way to Islam in the eleventh century.
The Uighurs who arrived in Turfan professed Manichaeanism, but seemingly as formally as the Turfanites professed Buddhism. Manichaeanism had already disappeared as an independent confession before the twelfth century, but Manichaean ideas passed into certain Buddhist philosophical currents, and into Nestorianism which made a victorious march throughout Central Asia in the eleventh century. And in those centuries the inhabitants of Turfan, Karashahr, and Kucha began to call themselves Uighurs.
The Nestorians in Uighuria got along with the Buddhists in spite of their inherent intolerance. Christianity was seemingly welcome to people of a religious mentality remote from the atheistic abstractions of Hinayana. The merchants also became Christians, because the Buddhist doctrine forbade 'those who have taken the path' to touch gold, silver, and women. Religious people who were actively involved in economic life were therefore compelled to seek a faith that did not prevent them from living and working. One can consequently conclude that convenient ecological niches were found for both ideological systems.
The wealth of this country was mainly based on a favorable geographical position. Two caravan routes passed across it: one north of the Tien Shan and the other south of them. Chinese silk flowed by these routes to Provence, and luxury articles of France and Byzantium to China. The caravaners rested in the oases from the arduous desert crossings, and fattened their camels and horses. In that connection the local women widely practiced the first oldest profession, while the husbands permitted their wives these earnings, part of which went into their pockets. The Uighurs were so accustomed to this that even when, thanks to an alliance with Mongols, Uighuria became fabulously rich, its inhabitants begged the Mongol khan not to forbid their wives to entertain travellers. [+29]
This custom, or more correctly element of the ethnic stereotype of behaviour, proved more stable than language, religion, political system, and own name. The stereotype of behaviour developed as an adaptive attribute, i.e. as a mode of adaptation of the ethnos to its geographical environment. The names changed here more often than the ethnoi bearing them, the change of ethnonyms being explained by the political climate.
The rich, numerous population of these fertile oases could, without difficulty, feed the warlike nomads, the more so that the Uighurs, and later the Mongols, took on themselves the defense of their subjects against foreign enemies. For three hundred years the Uighurs mixed with the aborigines, but forced them to change from the Tocharian language to Turkish. That did not need much effort, incidentally, because in the eleventh century all peoples from the azure waters of the Sea of Marmara and the forested slopes of the Carpathians to the jungles of Bengal and the Great Wall of China spoke dialects of the Turkish language. Such a broad distribution of Turkish-speaking made this language convenient for trading operations, and the inhabitants of the oases of both halves of Central Asia were identically fond of trading. Change of a native but little used language for a generally accepted one therefore happened without difficulty, not only in the north-east of the Tarim basin but also in the south-west, where the role of the Uighurs had been taken on by the Turkish Yagma and Karluk tribes. But the difference between them and the Uighurs was immense. The Uighurs did not affect the way of life, religion, or culture of their subjects, but the Karluks, who had adopted Islam in A.D. 960, converted the Yashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan oases into likenesses of Samarkand and Bukhara.
A geographically monolithic region thus proved to be divided into two ethno-cultural provinces by no means friendly to one another. But the forces were balanced, and the distances between the oases were vast and almost impassable. The position therefore became stabilized for a long time.
This situation explains why the country remained without a single name. In antiquity the Chinese called it Xiyu, i.e. the 'Western Territory', and considered its end to be the 'Bow Mountains', the Pamirs and Altai. The Hellenes called this land 'Serika' and the precious commodity obtained from it serikos (silk). I shall not bother to explain the etymology of this word.
In modern times conventional names have also been used Kashgaria, Eastern Turkestan, or Sinkiang, i.e. literally the 'new frontier' established by the Manchurians in the eighteenth century. None of these names are suitable for our times. What was the 'West' for the ancient Chinese became the middle in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. To call a country inhabited by Indo-Europeans who have learned to understand Turkish speech 'Turkestan' is stupid. Kashgar never became the capital, and the 'New Frontier' did not seem to be even the horizon. Best of all we are left with the geographical conventional name, the Tarim basin. The river is a reliable reference point, in any case neutral and lasting. In addition the term 'Sinkiang' includes Jungaria (also a conventional and later name), located north of the Tien Shan, which had a quite different historical fate.
The eastern boundary of Uighuria is difficult to define. Since the disappearance of the river it has shifted significantly and many of the changes have not been dated. It can be thought that the Hami oasis belonged to the Uighurs, and perhaps the cave town of Tunhuang, a treasure-house of Buddhist art. But the more eastern lands, the oases of the Nan Shan foothills, were taken from the Uighurs by the Tanguts. These were a people which, like the Uighurs, do not now exist, although there are people who call themselves such. But that, too, is a mirage. The people calling themselves Uighurs are Ferghana Turks who settled in the east in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. And those who are taken for Tanguts are nomadic Tibetans, a relict ethnos who were once the most savage enemies of the Tanguts.
So, a historical critique shows that the meaning of name and the sound of it do not always correspond in Asia. In order to avoid annoying and, alas, frequent mistakes, one must develop a system of reckoning that would be real for Europe and Asia and America, Oceania, Africa, and Australia. But in this system sense will be preferred to phonetics, i.e. it will be based on history rather than on linguistics.
'States' and 'processes'.
The aggregate of adduced facts indicates that the system of reference taking socioeconomic formations as its basis does not apply in principle to ethnogenesis. This system fixes 'states' of society determined by the mode of production, which in turn depends on the level of the productive forces, in other words on technosphere. This system of reference is very convenient for studying the history of material culture, state institutions, styles in art, philosophical schools, in short for everything created by people. It has become so customary over the past century that it has been mechanically transferred to the analysis of ethnogenesis.
The concept 'state' has its place in both nature and society. In nature there are four states: solid, liquid, gaseous, and plasma. The transition of a molecule of inanimate matter from one state to another occurs through a certain expenditure of energy (the latent heat of melting or the generation of steam), i.e. a small jump; and the process is reversible. In the live matter of the biosphere this transition is linked with death of the organism, and is irreversible. That can mean that there are only two states, viz., life and death, for an organism, but since death is annihilation of the organism as an entity, it is ridiculous to call this moment of transition a 'state'. As for an organism's life, it too is not a 'state' but a process - from birth through an acme form in which there is reproduction, to death. The analogy of the process of life in inanimate matter is the crystallization of minerals and their subsequent metamorphosis into amorphous masses.
When studying 'states' and 'processes' we always employ different methods: for 'states', classification, by any conventionally accepted principle convenient for surveying the phenomenon as whole; for 'processes', particularly linked with evolution or the formation of species, systematics is needed, based on a hierarchical principle, i.e. the correlation of similar although not identical groups of different rank. Such is Linnaeus' systematics perfected by Darwin. The hierarchical character of the system of the organic world is governed by the course and character of evolutionary processes inseparable from life and obligatory for it. But as soon as life dies a state' arises, more or less rapidly broken up by the action of the environment, although the latter is constituted by other dead 'states' also subject to irreversible deformation. For an organism, including the human organism, of course, there is only one mode of reaching a 'state', viz., to become a mummy, and for an ethnos to become an archaeological culture.
It is otherwise with the technosphere and the relations of production associated with it. In it there are 'states'. It is easy to make scrap of a tractor, and a tractor from scrap. Only expenditure of a certain (alas, not small) amount of energy is required. There are also 'states' in social life. They used to be called estates (état). In a metaphorical sense one can call class affiliation a 'state', but it must be remembered that it is the product of relations of production and of the productive forces, i.e. also of the technosphere. This state is extremely unstable. A warrior taken prisoner became a slave, but having run away could become a feudal lord. There is no place or need for the hierarchical principle in the fate of such a person. simple recording is sufficient. Changes of social states are similar (though not identical), for instance, to changes of natural states they are reversible and require, for passage from one state to another, an investment of additional energy. But what is an ethnos? Can one, by making an effort, change one's ethnic affiliation? Seemingly not! But that already indicates that an ethnos is not a 'state' but a 'process'.
A second argument against the conception of 'state' is the erosion of boundaries between ethnoi in zones of ethnic contacts. If the change of social state is, as a rule, a once-and-for-all act, for example, the ennobling of the gentry, demotion to the ranks, sale into slavery, emancipation from bondage, etc., the mixing of peoples in the valley of the Huangho or in Constantinople, or in North America, is always a painful, long, and extremely variable process, in the sense that the results of interbreeding often prove unexpected and are always uncontrollable, which is due mainly to the absence of a developed ethnological theory that would make it possible to act with due allowance for the consequences of one's actions, and not blindly.
[+1] Biosphere, a term introduced by Vernadsky, signifies one of Earth's envelopes that includes, in addition to the aggregate of living organisms, all the fruits of their past life activity, viz., soils, sedimentary rocks, and the free oxygen of the atmosphere. The established links of ethnogenesis with biochemical processes of the bio. sphere is not 'biologism' as some of my opponents suggest, but rather 'geographism', though such a label is hardly appropriate, for everything that is on the surface of Earth is part of the sphere of geography in one way or another, either physical, economic, or historical.
[+2] V.I. Vernadsky. Khimicheskoe stroenie biosfeyy Zemli i ee okruzheniya (The Chemical Structure of Earth's Biosphere and Its Environment), Nauka, M 1965, p 273.
[+3] V.I. Vemadsky. Biosphere. Izbrannye sochineniya v 5 tomakh, Vol. 5. Izdatelstvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, Moscow-Leningrad, 1960, p 19.
[+4] A.A. Matinovsky. Puti teoretichkoii biologii (The Paths of Theoretical Biology), Znanie, Moscow, 1969, p 7.
[+5] H. Selye. From Dream to Discovery. On Being a Scientist. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, London, Toronto, 1964, p 68.
[+6] S.V. Kalesnik. Osnovy obshchego zemlevedenia (Fundamentals of General Geography), 2nd ed. Uchpedgiz, Moscow, 1961, pp 412-416.
[+7] I.N. Boltin. Primechaniya na istoriyu droniya i nyneshniaa Rossii g. Leklerka, sochinennye general-maiorom Ivanom Boltinim (Notes on M. Leclerc's History of Old and Present Russia, compiled by Maj.-Gen. Ivan Boltin), Vol. 11. St. Petersburg, 1798, p 20.
[+8] LS. Berg. Khomogenez (Homogenesis), Moscow, 1922, pp 190-181.
[+9] S.V. Kalesnik. Op. cit, p 455.
[+10] See: G.V. Pickhanov. Some Remarks on History. Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. 11. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, p 227.
[+11] G.W.F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History Translated by J. Sibree. Dover Publications, New York, 1956, p 80.
[+12] V.K Yatsunsky. Istoricheskaya geografiya (Historical Geography), Moscow, 1955, p 3.
[+13] L.S. Berg. Klimat i zhizn (Climate and Life), Moscow, 1947.
[+14] G.E. Grumm-Grzhimailo. The Growth of the Desert and Death of Pastures and Cultivated Land in Central Asia in the Historical Period. Izv. Geograficheskogo obshchestva, Vol. 1 1, Issue 5, 1933.
[+15] N.Ya. Merpert, V.I. Pashuto, LV. Cherepnin. Genghis-khan and His Heritage. Istoriya SSSAR 1962, 5: 56.
[+16] LN. Gumilev. The Heterochrony of the Moistening of Eurasia in Antiquity (Topography and Ethnos, IV). Vestnik Leningradskogo univversiteta, 1966, 6:64-71; idem The Heterochrony of the Moistening of Eurasia in the Middle Ages (Topography and Ethnos, V). Vestnik Leningradskogo universileta, 1966,18:81-90.
[+17] The Chinese emperor Ch'ien Lung carried out a mass extermination of the Oirats, the Manchus, moreover, hunting down women, children, and old people giving quarter to no one. Official Chinese history limited itself to a simple reference: 'More than a million Oirats were killed'. A tremendous event sank into red tape; and was it really the only one?! We know human history, alas, in various degrees of detail, equivalent to a geographer having a 1:200 000 map on one plane table and one of 1: 100 on another.
[+18] E Le Roy Ladurie. Histoire du clirnal depuis l'an mil. Flammarion, Paris, 1967, pp 16-17.
[+19] Ibid, p 17.
[+20] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology. Progress Publishers, 1976, p 34.
[+21] V.I. Kozlov, V.V. Pokshishevsky. Ethnography and Geography. Sovetskaya Etnographia, 1973,1: 3-13.
[+22] B.V. Andrianov, N.N. Cheboksarov. Economic-Cultural Types and the Problems of Mapping Them. Sovetskaya etnografiya, 1972, 5: 12.
[+23] Ya,Ya. Roginsky, M.G. Levin. Osnovy antropologii (Fundamentals of Anthropology), M University Press, Moscow, 1955, pp 325-329.
[+24] Yu.V. Bromley. Experience of Typologizing Ethnic Communities. Sovetskaya Etnographia, 1972, 5: 3-4.
[+25] V.I. Kozlov, V.V. Pokshishevsky. Art cit.
[+26] See: V.I. Kozlov. Dinamika chisknnosti narodov (The Dynamics of the Size of peoples), Nauka, M, 1969, p 56.
[+27] F.M. Murzaev. Priroda Sintsyana i formirovtanie pustyn Tsentralnoi Asii (The Nature of Sinkiang and the Formation of the Deserts of Central Asia), Nauka, Moscow, 1968, pp 185-190.
[+28] N.Ya. Bichurin (Iakinf). Sobranic svedenii po istoricheskoi geografii Vostochnoi i Sredinnoi Azii (Digest of Information on the Historical Geography of Eastern and Central Asia). Compiled by L.N. Gumilev and M.F. Khvan. Cheboksary, 1960, p 558
[+29] See: The Book of Sir Marco Polo. Translated and edited, with notes by Sir. Henry Yule. 2 Vols. 3rd ed. London, 1903. | {
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VOTD: Breaking Down The Dragon Visual Effects In 'Game Of Thrones' Season Five
By Ethan Anderton/Aug. 10, 2015 6:00 am EST
Just last month, not long after the fifth season of Game of Thrones came to an end, we featured a look at some of the impressive and sometimes invisible visual effects of HBO's hit fantasy series. And before that, there was a special emphasis places on the visual effects of the exciting episode "Hardhome." But we've yet to dive into the visual effects of the dragons.
That changes today with a new featurette that looks at how the dragons were created in the episode "The Dance of Dragons." Keep in mind though that this is the second to last episode of the fifth season, so if you're not caught up, then you will want to wait to watch this featurette to avoid spoilers. But if you're all good, then watch the Game of Thrones dragons visual effects featurette below!
Thanks to Wired for this look at the Game of Thrones visual effects:
The visual effects used to bring the dragons (who are much bigger than when they first appeared) to life have gotten much better in the relatively short amount of time that the show has been on the air. And this one is particularly tricky since the dragon has to interact with a few different elements, such as attacked warriors and most importantly, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) hopping on its back.
And as you can see, there are tons more visual effects here at work than just a giant computer generated dragon. These kind of effects were once just a dream, but now they're used on the relatively cheaper medium of television to great effect. And if you're curious to see just how the visual effects of Game of Thrones have evolved over the years, check out another in-depth featurette right here.
Are you impressed by the visual effects of Game of Thrones? | {
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I get so upset at this woman at work because she is always cutting me and my other co-workers down. I get so upset that it consumes me and I don't feel like staying on my program. Do you have a suggestion?
Absolutely. Forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness. In the Bible it says, how many times must I forgive? 7×70. Forgiveness is a godly way of life. I personally do not have the heart naturally to forgive, I ask that from the Lord. When someone offends me I ask God, "Please Lord, help me forgive that person." I ask this over and over until I truly feel it in my heart. I also pray for that person that they may know Gods peace and that He too, may forgive them. Sometimes I choke on the words because I don't want to pray for the person that hurt me. If, I do it anyway, and practice that forgiveness, I find myself developing true compassion for that person and thus being able to look them in the eye and generally care for them. When I can replace my anger with love through the help of the Lord, I am in a healthier, better place. | {
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Major depression can be a serious and debilitating condition. For some patients in a treatment resistant depressive episode, electroconvulsive treatment (ECT) is the only treatment that is effective. Although ECT has shown efficacy in randomized controlled trials, the treatment is still controversial and stigmatized. This can in part be attributed to our lack of knowledge of the mechanisms of action. Some reports also suggest potential harmful effects of ECT treatment and memory related side effects have been documented.
The present study will apply state of the art radiology through advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to investigate structural and functional brain effects of ECT. As a multi-disciplinary collaboration, imaging findings will be correlated to psychiatric response parameters, neuropsychological functioning as well as neurochemical and genetic biomarkers that can elucidate the underlying mechanisms. The aim is to document both treatment effects and potential harmful effects of ECT.
Sample: n = 40 patients in a major depressive episode (bipolar and major depressive disorder). Two control groups with n = 15 in each group: age and gender matched healthy volunteers not receiving ECT and patients undergoing electrical cardioversion (ECV) for atrial fibrillation (AF). Observation time: six months.
The study will contribute to our understanding of the pathophysiology of major depression as well as mechanisms of action for the most effective treatment for the disorder; ECT.
Bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder (MDD) are mental disorders with a 12-month prevalence in the EU of about 1 and 7%, respectively . They are associated with a reduced quality of life, an increased mortality risk, and are a major cause of inability to work [2,3].
The management of depression includes psychosocial treatment approaches, pharmacotherapy and, for the most severe and treatment resistant patients, electroconvulsive treatment (ECT).
The idea that convulsions could treat mental illness can be traced to the 16th century, when camphor oil was used to induce convulsions. Seizure-induction by application of electrical current to the human brain was introduced by the Italians Cerletti and Bini in 1938 . Since its introduction, ECT has been applied to various psychiatric and some somatic conditions. Modern ECT has fewer indications and has been developed with the aim to reduce side effects .
For some patients in a treatment resistant depressive episode, ECT is the only treatment that is effective. ECT is generally considered to be safe and has shown efficacy in randomized controlled trials . A recent randomized controlled trial found ECT to be more effective than pharmacological treatment for treatment-resistant bipolar depression . However, the treatment is still controversial and stigmatized . This can in part be attributed to our lack of knowledge, since the mechanisms of action is still largely unknown.
Some have compared ECT to lobotomy or hypothesize that ECT affects the brain in a manner similar to severe stress or trauma . Others regard it as a safe treatment that is underused , and a systematic review found no persistent cognitive deficits after ECT . A recent randomized controlled trial of right unilateral ECT in treatment resistant depression found no changes in general neurocognitive function, but reduced autobiographical memory consistency after ECT . This finding is in line with subjective patient reports , and further research is required.
The NICE guidelines states: "Consider ECT for acute treatment of severe depression that is life-threatening and when a rapid response is required, or when other treatments have failed" . This is in line with the Norwegian national guidelines that recommend ECT in major depression when other treatments have been ineffective (Evidence level A, ), and there has been an increase in its use in recent years .
Increased knowledge gained through thorough scientific investigations can reduce stigmata and inform patients and health care providers to make appropriate use of ECT. Better understanding of ECT and its mechanisms of action may help patients to cope with side effects and contribute to the development of new treatment options.
More than one hundred theories have been suggested for the effects of ECT . Although changes to brain structure in major depression have been confirmed by several meta-analysis [18-20] and ECT-induced structural and functional changes have been characterized (for recent reviews see [21-23]) we still lack a unifying theory for its mechanisms of action. The project will focus on three suggested effects of ECT, each reflecting proposed pathophysiological changes and mechanisms of action, see below. As a multidisciplinary study, results from the neuroradiological measures can be correlated to biomarkers in blood and behavioral parameters; e.g. improvement/remission after ECT should be correlated to improved performance on neuropsychological testing. For dichotic listening, improved scores in the forced left condition would indicate better cognitive control.
The human nervous system adapts to challenges. It can be changed by learning as well as by pathological conditions, such as psychiatric disorders. One structure that has been studied in large detail in this regard is the hippocampus; a structure that is important for learning and memory. Hippocampal volumes are reduced in major depressive disorder [19,24,25] and in a number of other psychiatric and somatic disorders (reviewed in ). The volume reduction of the hippocampus has been associated with duration of untreated depression . On the other hand, increased hippocampal volumes can occur after extensive learning, e.g. studying to become one of London's taxi drivers [28,29]. The increase in hippocampal volumes may be related to neurogenesis, which has been shown to occur in animal models [30,31]. In primates, the proliferation of granular cells in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus was shown to be reduced by stress . Seizures induce neurogenesis in rodents , and animal models have shown electroconvulsive seizures to have effects on neurotransmitters, gene expression, growth factors (such as Brain derived neurotrophic factor - BDNF, Vascular endothelial growth factor - VEGF, Fibroblast Growth Factor - FGF) and neuropeptides (such as neuropeptide Y - NPY, Thyrotropin-releasing hormone - TRH, VGF) and lead to synaptic remodeling and cellular proliferation (reviewed in ). Research from animal models also indicate that electroconvulsive shocks can reverse the effect of cortisol and even cause an increase of hippocampal volumes (reviewed in ).
Increased levels of BDNF has been reported following ECT , and BDNF has been suggested as a potential biomarker for depression . Neurogenesis has been shown to occur in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus in adult humans , and ECT-induced neuroplasticity is gaining more focus as a framework for understanding the effects of ECT . A few studies of humans have reported increased hippocampal volumes and/or other structural changes following ECT [37-41]. Nordanskog et al. [39,41] performed manual segmentation without complete blinding of the MRI time point that was traced (before or after ECT), introducing a potential observer bias. Dukart et al. used voxel-based morphometry, while Tendolkar et al. and Abbot et al. both used FreeSurfer for volumetric segmentation and analysis. Compared with these studies we will recruit more patients, use state of the art automatic segmentation procedures, and radiology readers will be blinded to study group and the time point of MRI scans. In addition, by applying multimodal imaging, structural changes can be assessed with respect to changes in diffusion properties, susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) and fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) imaging. Our design will allow longitudinal tracking of brain changes; 1-2 hours after the first ECT, after treatment completion and at 6 months follow up.
ECT has anticonvulsive effects and is sometimes used in the treatment of status epilepticus . One hypothesis suggests that the magnitude of increase in seizure threshold, induced by ECT, is important for the antidepressant efficacy . Drugs that enhance GABAergic neurotransmission are known for their anticonvulsant effect, and the role of amino acid neurotransmission systems, particularly reduced function of GABAergic neurotransmission has been increasingly appreciated in major depression (for reviews, see [45,46]). Tiagabine, a selective GABA reuptake inhibitor was shown to be effective in treatment of depression with anxiety . A post mortem study of gene expression in elderly depressed patients found alterations in GABA and glutamate pathways markers indicating diminished activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) . A recent meta-analysis suggested increased resting-state activity in the rostral ACC as a biomarker for treatment response in major depression, and a shift from GABA- to glutamate-mediated modulation was suggested .
Interestingly, one early study found increased concentrations of cortical GABA after ECT in depressed patients by use of proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) , however this finding has to our knowledge not been reproduced by other groups.
It has recently been suggested that "hyperconnectivity" in networks involved in mood regulation can be reduced after a course of ECT [51,52]. This finding may seem contrary to findings of increased fractional anisotropy (FA) in frontal limbic projections after a course of ECT [53,54]. FA is often regarded as a measure of white matter tract integrity and increased axonal integrity may seem contra-intuitive if one expects reduced connectivity after ECT. Possible explanations could be that the projections that are "enhanced" by ECT are GABAergic, or that improved integrity of certain projections may lead to more coordinated electrical activity in these projections, which overall is detected as "reduced connectivity".
Our project will encompass measures of neurotransmitters (GABA and glutamate by 1H-MRS) and diffusion parameters (e.g. fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity and separation of restricted and hindered water by Restriction Spectrum Imaging, RSI ), enabling longitudinal investigations of GABA- and glutamate levels as well as white matter properties in the same patients.
ECT has been a controversial treatment from its introduction. The most important side effects are related to memory impairments and it is recommended that the patients' cognitive functioning is monitored both during and after treatment . A recent randomized controlled trial in treatment-resistant bipolar depression found reduced autobiographic memory consistency after ECT but no deterioration of general neurocognitive function . Structural damage to the human brain has to our knowledge, never been documented to be caused by ECT. Case studies with rare complications, such as subdural hematoma, have been published , however a study using cerebral Computer Tomography in 40 patients before and after ECT detected no changes caused by ECT, even with convulsions lasting several minutes . Both conventional MRI and diffusion weighted imaging (DWI; a sequence that is sensitive to edema) have failed to find structural damage . However, changes on DWI have been shown for patients after status epilepticus . If brain injury occurs as a consequence of ECT, one may expect to find micro hemorrhages. SWI is extremely sensitive to hemorrhages, and is routinely used in imaging of stroke . However, SWI, as an indicator of microvascular dis-integrity, has to our knowledge never been applied after ECT. In addition, by using 1H-MRS we will measure N-acetylaspartate (NAA), which is primarily localized in neurons and considered a marker for neuronal integrity .
Our project will use high field strength, state of the art MRI and combine RSI, SWI and 1H-MRS which should enable detection of more subtle post-ECT effects.
Hippocampal volumes increase after ECT treatment. A) Specifically there is increased volume of the dentate gyrus, which would suggest that the increase is caused by neurogenesis. B) Changes in hippocampal structure correlate with treatment response, neurocognitive measures and increased concentrations of neurotrophic factors in blood samples.
ECT causes increased levels of the neurotransmitter GABA and changes the glutamate/GABA balance. A) GABA concentrations correlate with treatment response. B) Genes regulating GABA synthesis and cycling are up-regulated or activated. C) A subset of cortical projections is strengthened; a possible mechanism causing reduced connectivity in frontal areas.
ECT does not cause measurable signs of harmful effects to the brain. A) No changes are detected on microvascular (SWI) and microstructural (RSI) imaging. NAA (measurend in the ACC) is unaffected. B) Possible immediate post-ECT effects, e.g. edema, that is detectable by diffusion weighted imaging, are reversible.
The study is prospective and observational, and all patients will receive the standard ECT treatment, as it is provided at the ECT-department at the Haukeland University Hospital.
A flow chart of the study design is shown in Figure 1, and details on study measures and variables are listed in Table 1.
Relevant patients with depression are addressed in order to establish whether they are willing to be screened for the study. The patients must be assigned a patient number and sign the consent form after receiving oral and written information about the study prior to undergoing any study procedures.
Forty patients accepted for ECT at Haukeland University Hospital will be included. After inclusion of 8 patients, the protocol was slightly revised and the remaining 32 patients will follow the protocol as described here.
Patients (age > 18) referred to the ECT-unit and accepted for treatment because of moderate and severe depression, fulfilling the criteria for the following ICD-10 diagnoses: F31.3 and F31.4; F32.1 and F32.2 and F32.3; F33.1 and F33.2 and F33.3. In addition the symptom intensity must be verified by a score ≥ 25 on the Montgomery and Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS). There is no upper age for participation; however, the responsible clinician will consider if patients are eligible for inclusion (functioning, enable to give written informed consent).
ECT treatment within the last 12 months. Pregnancy. Patients unable to give written informed consent (according to the responsible clinician or ECT responsible). Patients who cannot participate in the MRI scanning because of contraindications to MRI.
There will be two control groups; a group of patients undergoing ECV for AF (controls 1) and healthy controls undergoing the same investigations as the ECT patient group, but not receiving ECT or anesthesia (controls 2).
In order to control for the potential effect of anesthesia on MRI images (particularly with regard to the spectroscopy) and blood samples, 15 patients referred for ECV of AF will be recruited. This is a patient group that receives similar anesthesia to ECT patients. This control group will have 2 MRI scans; one 1-2 hours before ECV and another MRI 1-2 hours after ECV. Blood samples will also be collected for the biobank at time points indicated in Figure 1. In addition to being a control group, data that is acquired will be used in a pilot investigation of potential effects of ECV of AF, if there are silent emboli to the brain. Such emboli would readily be detected on the diffusion images. Antithrombotic treatment must be Warfarin with an INR value above 2,0 at all measurements for the last 3 weeks prior to DC cardioversion or absolute compliant everyday use of Non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants (NOACs) for 3 weeks. There will be no changes in the treatment of their AF, patients are only asked to participate in additional examinations (MRI, blood samples) before and after ECV.
When analyzing longitudinal MRI data, it is important to control for effects on imaging parameters that are a consequence of repeated measurements/time, rather than effects of the treatment. 15 healthy, age and gender-matched volunteers will be recruited for repeated MR imaging, blood samples and neuropsychological testing; following the protocol for the ECT patients (see Figure 1) but with no ECT or anesthesia.
ECT will be administered with a Thymatron System IV Somatics Inc. providing brief-pulse, square wave, constant current.
Anesthesia will be obtained with either the short acting anesthetic thiopental or propofol. All patients will be hyperoxygenated with oxygen-enriched air 1 to 2 minutes before and during the initiation of anesthesia to optimize induction of seizures [62,63]. Other medication necessary during anesthesia (e.g. for premedication or termination of prolonged seizure) will be left to decision by the anesthesiologist.
Stimulation electrodes will be placed ad modem d' Elia (Right unilateral electrode placement, RUL), as high dosage ECT with unilateral placement of stimulation electrodes has shown to be as effective as bilateral placement [65,66]. Three sessions per week will be given until remission, with a maximum of 18 sessions.
The duration of the stimulus pulse will be set to 0.5 ms. The initial stimulus energy will be determined by an age based method, where the energy (E) is calculated as following : Patient's age in years × 5 ≅ stimulus charge in mC. The Thymatron delivers a charge of 25.2 to 504 mC in 20 equal steps, set by the % Energy dial. According to the above formula this makes: Patient's age in years ≅ % Energy. In order to consider gender specific differences in seizure threshold, the % Energy was adapted as following: For male patients: % Energy + 5 to 10%. For female patients: % Energy - 5 to 10%.
The adequacy of each seizure will be evaluated by the ECT-clinician based on seizure duration, δ-waves, reorientation time and clinical effect. The treatment should be followed by a comatose state, from which consciousness is gradually regained . If a sufficient seizure was not obtained in one session the patient will be either re-stimulated in the same session or/and stimulus parameter will be adjusted in the next session.
Clinical assessments and monitoring will be performed largely in accordance with a recently used protocol , as detailed below and summarized in Table 1.
Patients will be diagnosed on the basis of a clinical interview supported by information from hospital records. The diagnoses will be subsequently verified by the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI; specifically the MINI-Plus) . Symptom intensity will be measured with MADRS and the Clinical Global Impression (CGI) .
Patients will be assessed before the treatment, and weekly during the ECT-series with the Mini-Mental State (MMS) by their treating clinician.
A neuropsychological test battery that includes both standardized and normalized tests and experimental methods to assess memory, attention, psychomotor speed and executive functions, will be applied at inclusion, after treatment and at follow up, as listed in Table 1. The neuropsychological assessment will consist of standardized tests measuring cognitive functioning within verbal and visual memory with California Verbal Learning Test-II (CVLT-II) Rey Complex Figure Test (RCFT) and Digit span from Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Revised (WAIS-R), executive functioning with Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and test from the Delis –Kaplan Executive Function System (D-kefs): Color-Word Interference Test (CWIFT), Verbal fluency (VF), Tower, Trailmaking test (TMT), attention measured with Conners' Continuous Performance Test-II (CPT), Digit symbol from WAIS-R and motor speed (Pegboard), in addition to general levels of intellectual ability Wechsler's Abbreviated Scales of Intelligence (WASI). Autobiographical memory will be assessed by using the Autobiographical Memory Interview-Short Form (AMI-SF).
Placement of electrodes on the non-dominant side (unilateral stimulation) is important to reduce cognitive impairment as a side effect of ECT treatment [65,73]. Traditionally, hemispheric dominance is evaluated by handedness measures, which however is a crude measurement when it comes to subtle differences in function between the cerebral hemispheres. It is therefore suggested to use a neuropsychological task, dichotic listening, which has been shown to be comparable in sensitivity to reveal functional differences between the hemispheres to the Wada test [74,75]. We will apply the Bergen dichotic listening test both as a measure of language dominance and as an effect parameter, i.e. as a measure of cognitive control since it has been shown that varying instructions about attention focus while performing the dichotic listening task reveals capacity for cognitive control . A recent development makes it possible to deliver the test bedside, by use of an application on a hand held device; iDichotic, Bergen fMRI group . The prediction is that treatment response correlates with improved results for the instruction condition that requires highest cognitive control.
Imaging will be performed at 4 time points: ~1-2 hours before and ~1-2 hours after ECT, ~ 7-14 days after ended treatment and at follow-up 6 months after ended treatment. The same MRI protocol will be applied at each time point (Figure 1).
Initial imaging will be performed on a 3T GE Signa HDxt system with 8 channel head coil, but most of the subjects will be scanned on a 3T Discovery MR750 system with 32 channel head coil. The protocol (details specified for the MR750 system) includes a T1-weighted fast spoiled gradient echo, FSPGR (TE/TR = 2.9/6.7 ms; TI = 600 ms, flip angel = 8°; FOV = 25.6 cm; voxel size = 1.0 × 1.0 × 1.0 mm3, acquisition time = 10:32 min.); a T2-weighted CUBE FLAIR sequence (TE/TR = 129/6000 ms; TI = 1855 ms; FOV = 25.6 cm; voxel size = 1.0 × 1.0 × 1.0 mm3, acquisition time = 08:51 min.); for RSI, a single-shot pulsed-field gradient spin-echo EPI sequence (TE/TR = 85/7000 ms; FOV = 24 cm, matrix = 96 × 96 × 55 with 4 b-values (b = 0, 500, 1000 and 4000 s/mm2 and 6, 6 and 15 unique directions for the nonzero b-values, respectively), acquisition time = 3:30 min.); for SWI a gradient recalled echo 3D Ax SWAN sequence (TE/TR, 23/37 ms; slice thickness 2 mm; acquisition time 3:30 min.). For 1H-MRS, both single-voxel point-resolved spectroscopy, SV PRESS, and a spectral editing method, MEGA-PRESS , will be used. The SV-PRESS (TR = 1500 ms, TE = 35, 128 scans; acquisition time = 3:48 min.) voxel will measure 2 × 2 × 2 cm3 and the placement alternate between right and left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for each new patient. For MEGA-PRESS (TR = 1500 ms, TE = 68 ms, 192 scans, acquisition time = 10:06 min.) the voxel will measure 3 × 3 × 3 cm3 and cross the mid-line, covering both right and left ACC in every patient.
Structural data will be analyzed using FreeSurfer and Quarc . In a preprocessing step, structural images will be corrected for distortions caused by gradient non-linearity , diffusion weighted (DW) images will be corrected for motion, eddy currents and magnetic susceptibility artifacts [82,83] and the DW volume will be co-registered to the structural volumes. SWI data will be analyzed using Statistical Parametrical Mapping (SPM8/SPM12) analysis software package (Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology) running under MATLAB (Mathworks). RSI data will be analyzed using custom made software and processing and/or with FSL [84,85] and MRS data by using LCModel Software . SPSS will be used for statistical analyses.
Analysis methods and software may change if newer versions or other software is found to be more suitable than the above mentioned.
We will analyze multiple peripheral blood biomarkers relevant for the hypotheses outlined in the introduction. Due to the constant progress in the field, the decision on the specific markers to analyze and how to perform the analysis should not be taken too early. However, candidate markers include neurotrophic factors (e.g. BDNF), pro-inflammatory cytokines, neurotransmitter related amino acids, monoamines and related metabolites (e.g. GABA, glutamate, kynurenines, neopterin) and S100B (a marker of damage to the blood-brain barrier). Measurements of peripheral biomarker levels will be supplemented by analyses of DNA variants and peripheral blood mRNA levels (array based genome wide DNA genotyping, methylation profiling of target genes and real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction mRNA measurements). Blood samples (up to 30 ml) will be collected and stored as whole blood, serum and on an RNA stabilization medium at -80°C for later analysis. A dedicated research biobank "Imaging and Depression - ImDep" has been generated for the project using existing infrastructure (storage, alarm and registration) established in a previous project.
Only one study has measured GABA changes after ECT by MRS in humans, and found an increase from 0.85 (SD = 0.34) to 1.51 (SD = 048) mmol/kg brain tissue, N = 8 . Using a mean difference of 0.6 and a SD of 0.5, α = 0.05 and power of 0.8 the total sample size needed would be 8 (calculated using G*Power 3.1.3, paired t-test, two-tailed).
For analysis of hippocampal volumes, data from Nordanskog et al. were used. For the right hippocampus the mean difference in volumes after a course of ECT was 133 μL with a SD of 123 μL, similar analysis as above indicates that the sample size needs to be at least 9.
We found no studies on SWI and DWI imaging that could be used to estimate power of the suggested study protocol. Based on the analysis above, a total of 10 patients is a minimum. Due to wide inclusion criteria, expected heterogeneity of the sample population and in order to increase the robustness we intend to include 40 patients.
The study is based on written informed consent. Patients will receive standard ECT treatment. The study, and the specific Biobank, are approved by the Regional Committee for Medical and Health Research Ethics, REC South East, Norway.
Participation in the project will for the patients include MRI scans (4 time points) and blood samples (5 time points) as well as neuropsychological testing (3 time points) that are not part of the standard treatment regimen. For controls1 (AF-ECV) participation will include MRI (2 time points) and blood samples (2 time points) that is not part of the standard clinical treatment. For controls2 participation will require MRI scans (4 time points) and blood samples (5 time points) as well as neuropsychological testing (3 time points). Controls2 will be economically compensated for participating.
There are no known adverse effects related to MRI scanning when standard safety procedures are followed. However, scanners are noisy and scans will last up to one hour. Blood samples will require venous puncture. A neuroradiologist will screen the first MRI scan for each participant. In the case of incidental findings of relevant pathology, the participant will be offered referral to medical consultation.
As health care professionals we are obliged to ensure that our treatments are well documented and safe. Thorough investigations of ECT effects will improve patients' feeling of safety and possibly reduce stigmata related to the condition. Depression is a common disorder with substantial costs for individuals, employers, and health and welfare systems. New knowledge about the pathophysiology of major depression as well as mechanisms of action and possible harmful effects of ECT is crucial and may lead to new prospects for future treatments.
By use of multimodal neuroradiological imaging as well as multidisciplinary investigations spanning from genes to behavior, the study aims at increasing knowledge about what ECT does to the brain, such as: a) Does ECT affect microvascular integrity? b) How are hippocampal volumes related to ECT parameters and treatment effects? c) Does GABA-levels increase after ECT?
Several of the measures have to our knowledge never before been applied in this setting, e.g. RSI, SWI, Dichotic listening, and a control group that receives a similar anesthesia and electrical stimulation to the chest. Strengths of the study are comprehensive investigations and a moderately large sample size. Potential weaknesses are the rather broad inclusion criteria and expected heterogeneity in the patients' use of medications, both of which may increase the variance in study measures. However, ECT is an unspecific treatment and although we expect that its effects on the brain and the human physiology should be largely independent of diagnosis, medication use and age, it will be interesting to see how ECT-induced changes relate to treatment effects and clinical parameters.
Regional Committee for Medical and Health Research Ethics, REC South East ID: 2013/1032 ECT and Neuroradiology. Approved first in June 2013, last revision December 2014.
This study is supported by Western Norway Regional Health Authority, Haukeland University Hospital and the University of Bergen, Norway.
Anders M. Dale is a Founder of and holds equity in CorTechs Labs, Inc, and serves on its Scientific Advisory Board. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI), and receives funding through research agreements with General Electric Healthcare (GEHC) and Medtronic, Inc. The terms of these arrangements have been reviewed and approved by the University of California, San Diego in accordance with its conflict of interest policies. The other authors declare that they have no competing interests.
LO and UK drafted the manuscript. LO conceived of the study and coordinated the work. UK, LE, RG, PIH, OAA, JH, AMD, ÅH, KH and KJO contributed to the background and/or design of the study. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript. | {
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Jennifer Steinhauer and Stephanie Strom reported in today's New York Times that, "The Senate will grapple this week with perhaps the most contentious issue in the food industry: whether the government should require mandatory labeling on foods containing genetically engineered ingredients.
"On Wednesday, the Senate is set to vote on a measure that would create voluntary national standards for labeling food with genetically modified ingredients. The bill would prevent states from mandating labels just before Vermont was set to become the first in the nation to impose such requirements.
The Times article noted that, "This month, for example, the Corn Refiners Association released a study concluding that nationwide labeling — and a consequent shift in ingredients by food companies seeking to avoid the labels' stigma — would raise the average family's grocery bill by more than $1,000 a year.
The article added that, "A Stabenow aide said the fundraiser had been in the works for months and was not timed to coincide with action on the Republican-authored bill. The legislation, however, has been a topic of heated debate in Washington and the agricultural industry for months, and Stabenow played a key role in negotiations on the issue.
"On Tuesday, Stabenow sided with organic food companies and came out against the bill, authored by Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.). Opponents argue the legislation fails consumers by preventing states from requiring labels on food products that contain genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Stabenow's opposition is a serious blow to the bill's chances of clearing a Democratic filibuster.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) (full transcript)- "We are where we are because the Vermont law is not written in a way that merely impacts the citizens of Vermont. It is astonishing to hear the misleading claim that the Vermont law is about the right to know. If the Vermont law is about the right to know, why is it that the law exempts so many products? | {
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Subsets and Splits