Many educators share the misconception that because it uses symbols, mathematics is not associated with any language or culture and is ideal for facilitating the transition of recent immigrant students into English instruction. To the contrary, language plays an important role in learning mathematics. Teachers use language to explain mathematical concepts and carry out math procedures. While solving problems in mathematics, we often use specialized technical vocabulary (addition, subtraction, addend, sum). And researchers of mathematical learning have found that students can deepen their understanding of mathematics by using language to communicate and reflect on their ideas and cement their understandings. Classroom talk can cause misconceptions to surface, helping teachers recognize what students do and do not understand. When students talk about their mathematical thinking, it can help them improve their ability to reason logically.
The challenge of teaching math to English learners lies not only in making math lessons comprehensible to students but also in ensuring that students have the language needed to understand instruction and express their grasp of math concepts both orally and with written language.
The challenge of teaching math to English learners lies not only in making math lessons comprehensible to students but also in ensuring that students have the language needed to understand instruction and express their grasp of math concepts both orally and with written language. ELLs have the dual task of learning a second language and content simultaneously. For this reason, “it is critical to set both content and language objectives for ELLs. Just as language cannot occur if we only focus on subject matter, content knowledge cannot grow if we only focus on learning the English language” (Hill and Flynn 2006, 22).
English language learners are faced with some common obstacles when learning math. One challenge they face is unknown or misunderstood vocabulary. For example, they can become confused during a discussion if the mathematics vocabulary has different meanings in everyday usage, as with even, odd, and function. They also may be confused if the same mathematical operation can be signaled with a variety of mathematics terms, such as add, and, plus, sum, and combine. A word such as left—as in “How many are left?”—can be confusing when the directional meaning of the word is most commonly used in everyday English. The words sum and whole also can cause confusion because they have nonmathematical homonyms (some and hole).
A second obstacle is with an incomplete understanding of syntax and grammar. For example, math questions are often embedded in language that makes the problems unclear or difficult to comprehend.
Samuel bought three bags of oranges with seven oranges in each bag.
How many oranges did he buy?
This word problem uses both the past and present tense of the irregular verb to buy in one question, which may cause difficulty for an English language learner, depending on the student’s English language proficiency.
Lisa gave a total of 12 treats to her cats.
She gave her large cat 2 more treats than she gave her small cat.
How many treats did she give to each cat?
Here, students need to understand or figure out the meanings of words such as total and treats. They also need to understand words that convey a mathematical relationship such as more . . . than. In addition, students need to infer that Lisa has only two cats.
English language learners typically experience difficulty understanding and therefore solving word problems, and this difficulty increases in the later grades of elementary school as the word problems become more linguistically and conceptually complex. Difficulty with grammar, syntax, and vocabulary lies in both understanding math instruction and having the ability to engage in discussions about math.
Many teachers use strategies to help students understand the content in their math lessons. Scaffolds for learning may include manipulatives, visuals, and graphics. These supports are all essential for building a cursory understanding of math concepts, but they may not provide students enough linguistic support for them to discuss their thinking, which would lead to a deeper understanding of content.
The challenge for teachers is to focus on math concepts and the academic language that is specific to mathematics.
For example, let’s say that a student’s understanding of polygons is based on a two-column chart with drawings that distinguish polygons from shapes that are not polygons. Once the chart is put away, the student may not have internalized enough of the linguistic elements of the lesson to be able to continue her learning in subsequent lessons on polygons. Having the language to talk about math concepts is crucial to developing an understanding of those concepts.
Classroom discussions about math have been shown to deepen students’ conceptual understanding. These discussions are a critical aspect of the development of language and content, providing a setting for English language learners to negotiate meaning in daily instructional interactions. However, if the language needed to engage in these discussions is not made explicit, ELLs are less likely to benefit from mathematical discussions and can fall further behind their peers.
The challenge for teachers is to focus on math concepts and the academic language that is specific to mathematics. Teachers must be cognizant of the linguistic demands of their lessons and how they will address those demands explicitly during instruction so that ELLs can fully participate.
Hill, Jane D., and Kathleen M. Flynn. 2006. Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Need help addressing the needs of the ELL students in your school? Our new course, Supporting English Learners in Math, offers instructional support and a lesson design process that supports differentiation for the varied levels of English learners in classrooms.
This post is excerpted from Supporting English Language Learners in Math Class, K-2 by Rusty Bresser, Kathy Melanese, and Christine Sphar.


"Quiet is the new loud," Gareth Edwards said, adding that the campaign is shifting gears as Warner Bros. prepares for a May 16 release.
With no sequels or comic book movies this summer, Warner Bros. came well prepared to hype its movies and generate word of mouth with the geek crowd that showed up at WonderCon, a smaller version of Comic-Con held in the spring that nonetheless attracts close to 50,000 fans over the course of three days.
Perhaps the most anticipated movie for Warner Bros. is Godzilla, which the studio made with Legendary. And the studio could not have closed its presentation any better.
The popular trailer was reshown and director Gareth Edwards talked up the movie. But the treat for the crowd was an extended sequence set in Hawaii that slowly built to a monster stalking a city and then ended with a nice reveal of Godzilla himself.
Warners and Legendary for the longest time have been wary to show too much of the creature, only hinting at his appearance during the trailer and being very selective at what has been shown.
"Quiet is the new loud," Edwards said of the marketing. But he also said now that the movie is only weeks away, the campaign is shifting gears, which has brought him whiplash.
"I've been in this bubble for two years [making the movie]. Everyone was, 'Keep it secret. You can't show anything.' And now it's flipped. Now it's, 'Go out and tell everybody. Go sell this movie hard.' "
The movie has a great pedigree of actors, such as Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Johnson, who are known for dramatic indie fare, not studio tentpoles. Edwards talked of how actors like to have a plan where they do one small, personal film then maybe a tentpole. Edward told the actors this kind of thinking wouldn't work. "I told them, 'You have to view this as your personal film; it's the only way this is going to work,' " he said.
Warners started off the panel tubthumping Edge of Tomorrow, the Tom Cruise sci-fi action movie. Cruise wasn't present, but Bill Paxton was a great spokesman to start off with, with his long pedigree of classic movies, such as Weird Science, True Lies and Aliens, among others.
Paxton talked about the making of the movie and the "punishment" of wearing heavy suits that were like cages, but he was also open about his career at this stage.
"I feel much free-er now. I don't have to worry about being a lead, and I'm going back to the roles that first got me noticed with audiences … I've became the guy that supports the guy," he said. "Let some other schmuck come in every day. I get to come in, do a colorful part and then party in London."
Warners also showed off intense footage from Into the Storm, a disaster movie featuring tornadoes. The sizzle reel showed three twisters hitting a small town (one even becoming a fire tornado) and the ensuing destruction.
While director Steven Quale talked about his intent to give the movie a handheld feel, Richard Armitage found himself getting the most attention of the actors present, mostly from the female fans, due to his starring role in The Hobbit movies. Armitage talked about how he went from the greenscreen and costume-heavy set of The Hobbit to what he thought was going to be an easy shoot in real-world locations. Then he faced 100-mph wind tunnels and rain machines and realized it wasn't going to be that easy.


Xiaomi is a brand that usually offers devices with good specs at a reasonable price, but the MIUI interface is not exactly popular. While the software has improved over the years, many still prefer the simplicity offered by a stock Android. The Chinese manufacturer is no stranger to this situation, and is now developing two devices with Android One.
The Xiaomi Mi A devices are part of the Android One program, so their interface is based on an almost pure Android software with the addition of a custom application for the camera. Now, it's been almost 9 months since the release of Mi A 2 and Mi A 2 Lite, so a new release from Xiaomi is expected within the next few months.
According to our source, Xiaomi would have started testing hardware on three new devices, two of which would be Android One smartphones. The code names given to these devices are "bamboo_sprout" and "cosmos_sprout", with the term "sprout" indicating the presence of Android One in them. Where does this conjecture come from? If we look at the list of all certified Android devices, we will find the suffix "sprout" in all those that are part of the Android One program.
All three devices include the acronym "fod" used to describe 'fingerprint on display'. So all three could be expected to sport the new tech. Although it is not strictly necessary to have a chip like the Snapdragon 855 for an in-display fingerprint sensor, it is very doubtful that these three smartphones have an ultrasonic sensor, as this requires the most expensive OLED screens. This leads one to think that all three will have optical sensors underneath the screen, just like most Android smartphones.
And speaking of chips, we do not know what type of processor they will have, but we know that none of the three is a flagship, so we could discount the presence of components such as the Snapdragon 855. Being probably mid-range devices, could have cheaper processors such as the Snapdragon 636/660 or even Snapdragon 675 or 710.
Official data such as names, prices and release dates are still unknown, but if we take into account that hardware testing is done well in advance, we probably won't know anything else for quite some time.
What do you think about the decision to develop new devices with Android One? Do you prefer it to an interface like MIUI? Let us know in the comments.
Traditionally these Xiaomi midrange Android One smartphones have been a great value for money product. Unlike MIUI, they are free form UI advertisements and bloatware applications, run smooth with clean stock interface and receive frequent updates, i.e monthly security patches for three years two major Android version updates. Sometimes monthly security patches can get delayed or may be skipped (rarely) due to bugs, but overall these Android One smartphones offer solid value for money and with great cameras. On the less flattering side, NFC is absent.
Now, when people never complained about traditional fingerprint scanners , why are manufacturers pushing less reliable in display fingerprint scanners? These are engineering stunts undertaken to impress gullible public and have nothing solid to offer.


How do we use inflection in a sentence? When we ask a question, our voice is slightly different. We raise our voice at the end of the sentence. This tells the listener that you are asking for information. Sometimes this is all that is needed. Look at this example.
Question: Where did you leave the milk?
This answer is also a question In the kitchen?
What kind of grammar do we use in questions?
First we have to revise some grammatical terms.
Auxiliaries: These are the words that go with the main verb to make up an English verb tense. For example, in the sentence 'I was walking' the word 'was' is an auxiliary.
Modals: Modals tell you if something can be done, might be done, or should be done. In fact, in that last sentence can, might, and should are all modals!
When you make a statement, the subject usually comes before the main verb and its auxiliary or any modals.
Fred has gone to school.
Where 'Fred' is the subject, 'gone' is the main verb, and 'has' is the auxiliary.
When you make a question, you put the auxiliary before the subject.
Has Fred gone to school?
Now the auxiliary 'has' is before the subject 'Fred'.
If we have a modal in the sentence we put that before the subject to make our question.
Fred might have gone to school.
Might Fred have gone to school?
As you continue studying English, you will see that we do not get sentences with the verb to be as the main verb in sentences which have auxilaries or modals.
So if we have the verb 'to be' in the sentence we put that before the subject to make our question.
All these questions are called 'simple questions' because they only allow you to answer with 'yes' or 'no'.
So if our friend Sally is going to have a party, the only question we can ask is 'Is Sally going to have a party?'. If we want to discover more about the party, we need to use question words.
Question words are what we put at the start of the sentence so that the person we are speaking to knows what kind of information we want.
We are going to make some more questions about Sally's party.
What is asking for information about a thing.
Question: What is happening on Saturday night?
Which is asking for information about one of many.
Question: Which Saturday is Sally's party on?
Answer: The Saturday at the end of next week.
Who is asking for a person or many people.
Question: Who will be at the party?
Answer All of Sally's friends.
Why is asking for a reason.
Question: Why is there a party?
Answer: Because Sally passed her exams.
Where is asking for a place.
Question: Where is the party?
When is asking for a time.
Question: When is the party?
Answer: At nine o'clock in the evening.
How is asking for a method.
Question: How go I get to the party?
Answer: I will take you in my car.
Can we use one-word questions?
Someone came to see you today.
Your book is in the bedroom.
What are multiple part questions?
Multiple part questions are when there are several different kinds of information that you want, so you ask for all the information in a single question.
When did he come and why didn't you call me?
You can see that each question is really two separate questions joined by the linking word 'and'. Therefore each part has the normal grammar of a direct question.
How do you use question tags?
Question tags are easy, aren't they?
Question tags are used when the speaker wants you to agree with him. All you are expected to reply is 'yes' or 'no'. A question tag is formed by taking the modal/auxiliary/verb 'to be' (the example above uses the verb to be as 'are'). This is put before the subject pronoun (they).
If the the statement is a negative one, the question tag should be positive.
They do not come often, do they?
And if the statement is positive, the question tag is negative.
For example: They come often, don't they?
So do you think that you understand questions? You have done the grammar of simple questions and you have learned to use question words to find the information you want. You have learned to use one-word questions, and questions with several parts. You have done question tags.
Now are you ready to do some exercises?


What is a Xeon Phi?
Xeon Phi is a line of Xeon CPUs manufactured by Intel, first released in 2011, that are classified as "manycore." They contain a large number of smaller cores to enable high performance by applications that are designed to be massively parallel. The Xeon Phi was initially offered as a PCIe add-on card code-named Knights Crossing. The second generation of Xeon Phi processors, code-named Knights Landing, was released in 2013 as a CPU socketed in a motherboard.
A Knights Landing CPU has 72 Airmont Atom cores, each capable of executing four parallel threads, for a total of 288 simultaneous threads per CPU, running at speeds between 1.3 and 1.7 GHz. The architecture supports up to 384 GB of 6-channel DDR4-2400 RAM, and up to 16 GB of 8-channel 3D MCDRAM.
As of early 2017, the world's second fastest supercomputer — the Tianhe-2, located in Guangzhou, China uses Xeon Phi Knights Landing processors to achieve speeds of 33.16 petaFLOPS.


Why do red, green, and blue make up all the colors?
Why do red, green, and blue combinations can make up all the visible colors?
Let's reminds ourselves what light is.
Radio waves, micro waves, X rays and gamma rays are all electromagnetic radiation and they only differ by their frequency. It just so happens that the human eye is able to detect electromagnetic radiation between ~400nm and ~800nm, which we perceive as light. The 400nm end is perceived as violet and the 800nm end is perceived as red, with the colors of the rainbow in between.
A ray of light can be a mix of any of those frequencies, and when light interacts with matter, some frequencies are absorbed while other might not: this is what we perceive as the colors of objects around us. Unlike the ear though, which is able to distinguish between a lot of sound frequencies (we can identify individual notes, voices and instruments when listening to a song), the eye is not able to distinguish every single frequency. It can generally only detect four ranges of frequencies (there are exceptions like daltonism or mutations).
This happens in the retina, where there are several kinds of photo-receptors. A first kind, called "rods", detects most frequencies of the visible light, without being able to tell them apart. They are responsible for our perception of brightness.
A second kind of photo-receptors, called "cones", exists in three specializations. They detect a narrower range of frequencies, and some of them are more sensitive to the frequencies around red, some to the frequencies around green, and the last ones to the frequencies around blue.
Because they detect a range of frequencies, they cannot tell the difference between two frequencies within that range, and they cannot tell the difference between a monochromatic light and a mix of frequencies within that range either. The visual system only has the inputs from those three detectors and reconstruct a perception of color with them.
For this reason, the eye cannot tell the difference between a white light made of all the frequencies of the visible light, and the simple mix of only red green and blue lights. Thus, with only three colors, we can reconstruct most colors we can see.
By the way, rods are a lot more sensitive than cones, and that's why we don't perceive colors in the night.
The problem with the diagrams representing the visible and RGB gamuts is that they're presented on RGB displays. They obviously cannot show you what they cannot show you : the area inside the parabola but outside of the triangle.
Similarly, RGB displays cannot show deep, saturated oranges or browns.
So it only takes 3 different monochromatic stimuli to fool our eye into thinking it sees a color that is the same as another. Red, green, and blue are good fits to the peaks of the frequency response curves of each type of color receptor.
One more thing: "violet" and "purple" are not the same color. Violet is a pure color around 400 nm; but purple is a combination of red and blue. To our not-quite-perfect human eyes they look the same.
If you pass a beam of pure violet through a triangular prism, the light will be bent but not broken up into components. If you then shine a beam of purple through the same prism, it will be separated into a blue and a red beam, with different amounts of "bend" to them.
They don't. Aside from what others have said about the physical reasons not, from a practical computer graphics standpoint, representing either surface pigments or light sources with RGB color is insufficient to model colored lighting of a scene. For example there is no way to represent a material which is translucent or reflective only in a narrow band; you can only represent translucency or reflectivity of wide bands corresponding roughly to what the red, green, and blue cones in the human eye pick up. This actually matters for a lot of real-world colors in the pink/purple/violet family, which look radically different under different types of light, even different "white" light that looks identical when viewed on a white surface.
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Why are RGB tertiary colors so similar to RGB primary colors?


I don't really understand most of the politics of Sauron and Saruman during the time-period between the departure of the fellowship from Lórien and the moment where Aragorn shows himself in Orthanc's palantír to Sauron.
For instance, why does Saruman decide to have a large host of orcs and wild-men invade Rohan (with a blow against Helm's Deep in particular), shortly after he finds out about the destruction of his expedition force carrying Merry and Pippin?
There's a relevant paragraph about this when Gandalf rejoins with Aragorn, Legolas & Gimli.
'Then is not Saruman a traitor?' said Gimli.
'Indeed yes,' said Gandalf. 'Doubly. And is not that strange? Nothing that we have endured of late has seemed so grievous as the treason of Isengard. Even reckoned as a lord and captain Saruman has grown very strong. He threatens the Men of Rohan and draws off their help from Minas Tirith, even as the main blow is approaching from the East. Yet a treacherous weapon is ever a danger to the hand. Saruman also had a mind to capture the Ring, for himself, or at least to snare some hobbits for his evil purposes. So between them our enemies have contrived only to bring Merry and Pippin with marvellous speed, and in the nick of time, to Fangorn, where otherwise they would never have come at all!
‘The victor would emerge stronger than either, and free from doubt,’ said Gandalf. 'But Isengard cannot fight Mordor, unless Saruman first obtains the Ring. That he will never do now. He does not yet know his peril. There is much that he does not know. He was so eager to lay his hands on his prey that he could not wait at home, and he came forth to meet and to spy on his messengers. But he came too late, for once, and the battle was over and beyond his help before he reached these parts. He did not remain here long. I look into his mind and I see his doubt. He has no woodcraft. He believes that the horsemen slew and burned all upon the field of battle; but he does not know whether the Orcs were bringing any prisoners or not. And he does not know of the quarrel between his servants and the Orcs of Mordor [i.e. Grishnákh's band]; nor does he know of the Winged Messenger."
So by this point in time, Saruman's politics is clearly devised to get the ring in his possession as soon as possible and he is willing to risk Sauron noticing his betrayal of their alliance for that purpose. That renders the "Saruman invaded Rohan on Sauron's orders" theory somewhat problematic. Maybe in the mind of Saruman obeying the orders of the Dark Tower now may prevent the latter from ever noticing his betrayal? If Sauron is aware of his betrayal -as we, the reader, know he is- he may be more forgiving later if Saruman now resumes the alliance in a more loyal way?
Also Sauron's calculations are difficult to understand in this theory: for military purposes (distract Rohan from helping Gondor/Minas Tirith) Isengard's invasion comes very early. In fact, we learn later that Sauron sped up his attack on Minas Tirith because of Aragorn's revelation in the Palantír (which is only after the battle of Helm's Deep). In addition, Sauron does not know yet that Merry & Pippin do not carry the Ring nor that Gandalf has returned. So he has to take into account a scenario where the Ring is in the Rohan area. In that case, his immediate worst-case scenario is: the Ring getting in Saruman's hands (Saruman being the most powerful individual in that area in terms of possibly being able to master the Ring) and Saruman claiming the Ring and mounting a challenge against Mordor. So his best strategy seems to order Saruman to refrain from aggression against Rohan in order to minimize the latter's chances to obtain the Ring.
1) If my orc-band didn't carry any prisoners, let alone the Ring, my fate is sealed anyway. So let me proceed by betting they did carry some loot.
2) It were horsemen who destroyed the orc-band, so any prisoners (or other loot) must now be on their way to Rohan. Searching for the Ring in Rohan (via Wormtongue's manipulation of the king or by force) is therefore my best hope to secure victory after all.
Saruman's goose was cooked at this point and he knew it. His invasion was a last ditch attempt to seize the ring for himself.
Who does he [Saruman] think he is, setting up on his own with his filthy white badges? They might agree with me, with Grishnakh their trusted messenger; and I Grishnakh say this: Saruman is a fool, and a dirty treacherous fool. But the Great Eye is on him.
2851: The White Council meets. Gandalf urges an attack on Dol Guldur. Saruman overrules him. [It afterwards became clear that Saruman had then begun to desire to possess the One Ring himself, and he hoped that it might reveal itself, seeking its master, if Sauron were let be for a time.] Saruman begins to search near the Gladden fields.
c3000: Saruman dares to use the Palantir of Orthanc, but becomes ensnared by Sauron, who has the Ithil Stone. He becomes a traitor to the Council. His spies report that the Shire is being closely guarded by the Rangers.
So you have come back? Why have you neglected to report for so long?
His [Saruman's] dread was great, for his hope of deceiving Sauron, or at least of receiving his favour in victory, was utterly lost. Now either he himself must gain the Ring or come to ruin and torment.
It is curious that the Tale of Years makes no mention of the Nazgûls' visit to Isengard, and it may be that Tolkien abandoned this idea, so that it is not canon. Nevertheless, the overwhelming likelihood is that Saruman knew Sauron didn't trust him. Assembling his own forces and sending Uglúk's band to the Anduin were unlikely to go unnoticed by Sauron, and Saruman must have known this.
Saruman's conversation with Gandalf in Isengard took place before the Nazgul visited. His knowledge that the latter were searching for the Shire must have come from elsewhere.
I think your supposition is correct.
He believed his assault on Rohan would please Sauron. Don't forget that the open assault began on 25 February with the first Battle of the Fords of Isen. That was a day before Merry and Pippin were abducted, so Saruman would not have thought at the time that Sauron had any reason to suspect him.
25 (Feb) The Company pass the Argonath and camp at Parth Galen. First Battle of the Fords of Isen; Théodred son of Théoden slain.
26 (Feb) Breaking of the Fellowship. Death of Boromir; his horn is heard in Minas Tirith. Meriadoc and Peregrin captured. Frodo and Samwise enter the eastern Emyn Muil. Aragorn sets out in pursuit of the Orcs at evening. Éomer hears of the descent of the Orc-band from Emyn Muil.
As the passage you quoted points out, Saruman had no way of knowing if the Ring was present when the orcs were killed by Éomer and his men. So he would think it possible that Éomer took the Ring, and his best chance of retrieving it was to attack Rohan.
As I mentioned, the assault on Rohan started before the abduction of Merry and Pippin. The passage quoted in the question tells us that Sauron knew that two hobbits had been taken towards Isengard (thanks @Thibaut Demaerel for reminding me). He might suspect that Saruman had the ring (or information about it) but he had no reason to think that the Rohirrim had it, so he would have no reason to tell Saruman to hold off on the attack.
It is not clear if or when Sauron learned what happened. After all, none of the orcs escaped from Éomer's attack. It is possible that Sauron's first suspicion that the Ring might be in Rohan was when Pippin looked in the palantír. Sauron believes that Pippin is with Saruman, and he tells Pippin to tell Saruman "this dainty" is not for him. Pippin describes his conversation with Sauron to Gandalf and the others.
The next communication with Saruman was via the Nazgûl (presumably on its way to collect "the dainty") that Gandalf sees two days after the Battle of Helm's Deep before he sets off with Pippin to Minas Tirith.
5 (Mar) Théoden reaches Isengard at noon. Parley with Saruman in Orthanc. Winged Nazgûl passes over the camp at Dol Baran. Gandalf sets out with Peregrin for Minas Tirith. Frodo hides in sight of the Morannon, and leaves at dusk.
1) Both Sauron and Saruman send sizeable expedition forces to the Anduin. (In the book, we even get to see a winged Nazgûl tracking the fellowship while they are still on the Anduin). During the chapter "the Uruk-Hai" we learn that these expedition forces have conflicting orders with regards to the destination of "the loot/prisoners". The ambush on the fellowship is not a concerted effort of the Two Towers.
So Grishnákh has returned with sufficiently many orcs to engage in 1 to 1-2 combat (there's perhaps a bit more Isengardeners than Mordor orcs). Add to that that Grishnákh may have been lying about the Nazgûl: perhaps he's in close pursuit and will join the fray as soon as the combined Mordor forces outmatch the Isengardeners. If this hypothesis is true, the Mordor plan is eventually thwarted by the early intervention of the Rohirrim (Remember that the Nazgûl's fell beast was shot by Legolas, so maybe his pursuit is slower than it otherwise would have been) and later by the presence of Saruman, Gandalf and the "Three Hunters" in that area. The thwarting of this coup allows Sauron to still feign alliance to Saruman later when Pippin looks in the Palantír (he's unaware that by that time Saruman was overthrown). In this scenario, Sauron does know about the Rohirrim ambush early on (e.g. the Nazgûl inspects the battlefield shortly after Gandalf and his company leave to Edoras) but he can extract very little information from the battlefield-leftovers.
3) After the downfall of Saruman, there's this famous event where Pippin looks into the Palantír recovered from the Orthanc. In it, Sauron first seems to think it is Saruman gazing into the Palantír. He says: “So you have come back? Why have you neglected to report for so long?”. Now recall that the ambush at Amon Hen was only the 26'th of February while Pippin looks in the Palantír on the 5th of March, so barely a week has gone by. If we surmise that Saruman failed to communicate with Sauron this whole week, we must conclude that the rapid escalation of Isengard's invasion during that week is all part of Saruman's personal agenda (i.e a final desperate attempt to recover the ring from Rohan. The reason why he does not want use the Palantír during this time is presumably that his mind is now so bent on his own will, yet he is full of doubts and fear. So he fears that his mind will be easily exposed to Sauron if he gazes into the Palantír in such a condition). Saruman is playing solo during this week of his downfall.
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Choose any topic that is cultural and talk about it.It has to be orgnized as following: 1-Introduction ( 3 sentences) - attention getter - Thesis - road map/ preview Transition words, examples ( in addition, moreover, not suprisngly, ........) 2- Body a. Topic A Transition b. Topic B Transition c. Topic C Transition 3-Conlusion a. Attention getter b. re-statement if thesis and main points c. wrap up Please make sure that the words you use will not be complex and hard. Make it simple.
The clothes we wear, the kind of music we listen to, and the food we eat in the United States have all been influenced by various dissimilar cultures found in the country. For instance, Mexican food is a vital component of an average American diet. Tex-Mex cuisine, which is Mexican food, is popular in the United States and includes dishes such as fajitas, chimichangas, nachos, enchiladas, tortilla chips and tacos. Cultural diversity is basically a variety of dissimilar peoples or societies who have dissimilar traditions, languages, nationalities, ethnicities, race, religions as well as origins and all live and interact together. A community – a city, region or nation – is culturally diverse when its inhabitants comprise members of dissimilar groups (Amedeo 23).


Why do you think self-producing content is opposed to the idea of being an aggregator? I don't think it is.
It's because they can aggregate so much demand that it makes sense for them to self-produce (can spread fixed costs over a larger base).
They also get pretty good and fast feedback on what viewers watch. That alone is giving them and edge to produce the right content, imo.
If you want kids stuff, just sub to the kids service. If you want other stuff, pay for Hulu.
Except that Marvel/Star Wars are not kids stuff.
But how many times can you watch the same movies? Disney+ looks like the type of thing you subscribe to for a month 1-2 times per year to watch a certain thing then unsubscribe. Unless you have kids.
Exactly. The greatest thing about the streaming services is that they are so easy to cancel.
I don't play the sub/unsub game.
But do the companies value it? No. They're just happy to have suckers who subscribe long term.
I get a cheap student rate for Amazon Prime but rarely watch it.
YouTube (free) is my go to for instructional vidis & music discovery.
I love the sub in / sub out models.
"Netflix’s strategy has been a textbook example of Aggregation Theory; Netflix has built leverage and monopsony power over the premium video industry not by controlling distribution, at least not at the beginning, but by delivering a superior customer experience that creates a virtuous cycle: Netflix earns the users, which increases its power over suppliers, which brings in more users, which increases its power even more."
Netflix is still an aggregator true, but like Spotify now, has to deal with a non-monopsony relationship with the traditional suppliers (DIS, CBS, NBCU, TMW). That's very different from MS with Windows, or Google with search, or FB with social graph. Some of the best economic returns. It could well be that Netflix inevitably will have lower returns than these others.
The other possibility is that Netflix could be going around studios and developing near monopsony power with smaller producers and international media companies that don't quite have NFLX threatening them (Fuji TV and NHK in Japan for example). Eventually though I think they'll all become like BBC which understands the NFLX threat to their business model.
See the FT article for how Netflix is already exerting it's power on producers. Netflix needs to leave enough crumbs on the table for producers to earn a good return.
I don't sub/unsub from Netflix or Prime Video, but I do with HBO, Showtime, and Hulu. There isn't enough on those networks worth paying all year for. That would go for Prime Video too if it were a stand-alone service, but streaming isn't the reason I have Amazon Prime, I stay subscribed for other reasons (2-day shipping, music, drive, etc...). Netflix is really the only video streaming service worth paying all year for. I suspect I might get Disney+ to checkout The Mandalorian, then cancel after I watch it.
To me that model fits the definition of aggregator.
Yeah, I misspoke - what I meant was that NFLX doesn't fit the economic model as well as others. Digitized content is not as low margin as software and it's relationship with suppliers not nearly as monopsonic as others. Makes it a less powerful aggregator, imo. But who knows.
I've looked at DIS in the past and I could never get comfortable with it because of how big a portion of their revenue ESPN is. I'm not a sports fan so maybe I don't get it, but something like $20+ of most premium cable subscribers bill from the cable company goes to ESPN, if I recall, and as more people cut the cord that number of subscribers has to come down.
Also, the money they paid for Lucas Films looks well spent because they can keep making star wars movies and selling toys. The entire DIS library is very valuable, in fact. In the 80s my sister watched The Little Mermaid, which she watched with her kids in the 2000s and I'm sure her grandkids will watch someday. They still make money from really old content. With ESPN, I don't anyone who watches a basketball game from 2 years ago, or even 2 weeks ago. The content is not evergreen. I think it's a terrible business in that sense, but what do i know?
Not an expert in this area, but I think sports is the main thing keeping cable TV alive. Basically you can watch a substitute of other shows on Netflix or Hulu, but it's quite difficult to have an online only sports game broadcast (because of the coordination issue I think). So even as they lose customers I think they should be able to command more pricing power when bundling. There are some games that are watched a long time after they are played (ESPN has "ESPN Classic" as a channel) but it's less evergreen then good TV shows or movies by far.
Live sports is why I keep my satellite subscription even though it's like $100 a month... I already have Netflix and Prime Video but we need our sports in our household.


Do you know about this little bug? This destructive aphid not only destroyed the Bordeaux vineyards but devastated vines throughout Europe during the 19th century. Well, yes, you guessed ... I'm talking about Phylloxera.
Everything began with the curiosity of some botanists who enjoyed free-trade. They brought back new plants from the USA and gradually a strange disease was discovered in greenhouses which destroyed vine pot plants.
The first infection was declared in 1863 in the Gard Region (South-East France) and spread like an oil slick in France: 1865 - Bouches-du-Rhône, 1866 - Floirac in the Gironde, 1876 - Orleans (100km south of Paris), 1894 – Champagne.
This disease respected no borders and ravaged its way throughout Europe and the rest of the world: 1863 - London, 1865 - Douro Valley of Portugal, 1871 - Switzerland, 1874 - Bonn, Germany, 1875 - Austria and Australia, 1879 - Italy near Como, 1880 - South Africa, 1885 - Algeria, 1888 - Peru. It was a full-scale invasion with attacks on all fronts!
You may say all that information is very interesting but what exactly is Phylloxera? And more importantly what are the consequences of this invasion?
There are two types of Phylloxera: one which is in the roots and will kill the vine. The second is the gall Phylloxera which affects the leaves but which is not fatal. The main consequence of this aphid is the death of a vine within three years of being infected. This is certainly what happened in Bordeaux. This famous vineyard area was destroyed because there was no known means at the time to beat this little bug!
In 1868 Jules Emile Planchon accurately described the aphid and named it Rhizaphis Vastatrix. He was unaware that in the USA, this aphid was already well-known. Planchon sent some samples to Dr Signoret, a Parisian entomologist. Signoret placed the aphid in the Phylloxera family. Coming from the east coast of USA, Europe and Bordeaux needed more than 30 years to fight against the invasion of this little bug.
Phylloxera has an annual reproduction cycle: males and females mate during the summer months. Only one egg is laid on the stump which is the 'winter egg'. This egg, which is always a female aphid, hatches at the beginning of Spring. This female either goes down into the roots (a root Phylloxera) or goes up to the leaves and becomes a gall Phylloxera.
But the cycle is not over: these females will hatch out again as soon as they are adults, 40 to 100 eggs without mating and all are female! During summer the females will shed to nymph: the winged Phylloxera hatch eggs again this time both females and males which live long enough to reproduce and hatch out the 'winter egg' and so the cycle continues ad infinitum. With this information we can understand how Phylloxera spread so fast.
What was done to fight against Phylloxera in Bordeaux?
Wine-growers have a lot of imagination and the Bordeaux wine-growers being no exception pooled all their ingenuity and knowledge to trial many treatments in order to destroy Phylloxera.
Their experiments included mustard gas, applications of a mix of lime, naphthalene and water on the vines to kill the 'winter egg', injecting the volatile liquid carbon bi-sulphide into the earth and because Phylloxera hates humidity vineyards were flooded with water. This last approach was efficient but the low-lying areas of Bordeaux are not where the well-known Chateaux are located. As you will gather, there were a lot of ideas but no demonstrable results.
Eventually the solution came naturally. It involved going back to the roots as it was realised that in the USA the vines were not attacked by Phylloxera. Was the solution in the vine?
Indeed it was, so wine-growers had to grow non vitis vinifera (which means non-European vines) in order to contain the epidemic. In fact this was the solution which was adopted in Bordeaux. Non vitis vines were planted and the vitis ones were burnt. Despite this approach a new problem appeared. The non vitis were not giving the same quality of wines as the vitis. Before arriving back at producing a top quality product, wine-growers had to wait another 30 years and experimentation with many hybrids and grafts.
It is rare in France to come across vines older than the period of devastation caused by Phylloxera. However, at Sarragachies, a town in the Gers département at the heart of the St Mont appellation, there is plot which is 200 years old. In 2012 it was designated as a 'Historic Monument of France' - the first vines to have this title. Furthermore, Maison Bollinger in Champagne has a plot of Pinot Noir with original ungrafted rootstock.
Although still present, Phylloxera is no longer ‘Enemy No 1’ in French vineyards. It has been overcome by the use of rootstocks resistant to Phylloxera. However, the guard cannot be dropped as in the 1990’s this little bug caused a lot of damage in California.


What is the official language of Kiribati?
Kiribati is an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, containing 32 atolls to the northeast of Australia. The name Kiribati was actually developed when the nation became independent in 1979, and is based on the local pronunciation of the colonial name: The Gilbert Islands.
The official language of Kiribati is English, as the islands were a British protectorate since 1892 and a British colony since 1915. However, the most widely spoken language on the island is Kiribati, also called Gilbertese or te taetae ni Kiribati. This Austronesian language is so ubiquitous that it is a de facto official language of the nation.


What are Miscellaneous antihyperlipidemic agents?
Miscellaneous antihyperlipidemic agents are used to treat hyperlipidemia. They help to decrease total cholesterol by lowering low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and triglycerides and raising high-density lipoproteins (HDL) cholesterol. Niacin (nicotinic acid) is a water-soluble B vitamin, which inhibits the synthesis of cholesterol and triglycerides, therefore lowers total cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and raises HDL cholesterol levels.


Find out about how ultra power saving mode works on the Samsung Galaxy S5/S6.
I went on a camping trip last month with my son's Scout troop to a site without any electricity. I have a Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone with a Sprint plan, and when I'm roaming away from home in remote areas with sparse coverage I find the battery really takes a beating. However, I need to be available to the outside world in case someone needs to contact me or one of their sons, so powering the phone down at lights-out isn't really an option.
Essentially, it's meant to allow phone usage and texting only but you can also choose other apps which can run in UPSM such as email, social media programs, the calculator, the clock, or the web browser. The maximum number of apps you can run in UPSM is six.
Tap "U. power saving" (you can also go to Settings, Power Saving and toggle "Ultra power saving mode" to On).
Once I did this, I received a notification that enabling UPSM would provide me with about 11 days of maximum standby time. I tapped "Turn On" and the screen went grey then dimmed.
My phone displayed the enabled default apps which consisted of Phone, Messages, Internet and Clock.
I chose to leave the default apps as is. While writing these details down I noted the screen blanked very quickly (about 10 seconds) while using UPSM, showing how brutal it is about reducing power consumption.
With UPSM enabled my phone went from 93% at about 11 AM to 91% by 7 AM the next day. There was a surge of power consumption when I turned it on, which is understandable since everything fired up once more and the display/CPU/network usage began spiking up.
Samsung claimed at release that UPSM could keep a phone alive for 12 ½ days. Someone tried this option on a cross-country trip and reported that after turning it on they were able to drive from New York City to Los Angeles in a week with 7% battery life to spare. However, the article is quick to state this "in no way is indicative of real-life." After all, the phone wasn't used at all on the road trip, which would hardly be the case with us smartphone aficionados. But it's an interesting assessment as to how conservative the power consumption on the phone becomes when UPSM is on.
I carry spare batteries on camping trips, but with no access to electricity even the most conservatively-used phone will die fairly quickly without UPSM. Ditto for the spare batteries, which only buy you time. UPSM is a simple yet powerful (pun intended) method to be reachable - or dial out - in emergencies and keep at least one toe firmly on the grid while enjoying the great outdoors (or wherever else you may happen to be).


Angelina began dancing tango in Sydney when the scene was in its infancy. She writes about tango music, tango DJing,.milongas, workshops, festivals and personalities from an Australian perspective.
''You watched them on the dance floor to find out if they could dance, and if they couldn't you kept away"...is this person talking about a milonga floor? no it is a comment from an 84 year-old in Thursday's Sydney Morning Herald about dancing at Sydney's Trocadero, a popular ballroom in the heart of town, that was sadly demolished in 1970. "You depended on your partner to make you look good. You were up there to show off": She is talking about dancing lindy hop, jive and swing in this glorious venue which operated from 1936, but the same applies to tango dancers - once you are past the beginner stage and consider that you can dance tango, you begin to check out the men as they dance, just in case they should ask you.
At a recent milonga however I was shocked when a friend who is considered a very good dancer, was told by a woman who considers herself a very good dancer, that she was not sure she wanted to accept his invitation because she hadn't seen him dance! He was shocked too - and it must have been an uncomfortable dance. At the end he asked her if he had passed the 'audition'. He won't ask her to dance again!
I find this attitude to dancing foreign. If a man asks you to dance (which is generally the case in Sydney where the cabaceo is not frequently used) and you would rather check him out first surely you can make some other excuse. I am sure the dancers at the Troc would never have made such a retort.
Tango is a social occasion as well as an opportunity to indulge one's love of the music and the dance - certainly where I come from.
Many years ago a clever IT person thought up the Sydneytango calendar, a place where people could find classes, milongas, special events and a forum to talk about issues. This was before Facebook and it became the goto for most Sydney tango dancers, and the place where out of towners could find out what was happening on the scene in the Sydney metropolitan area.
This calendar has been kept up to date assiduously until now - almost single-handedly by one dedicated tanguera, Sima Oertli. Sima has dedicated herself to keeping dancers informed about tango in Sydney and to organising and presenting events from Festivals to workshops with some of the world's very best tango dancers.
dancers to world class musicians both locally and internationally and enriched the tango scene.
The music that I love to dance to is the music of the fabulous orchestras of the Golden Age - Biagi, Calo, Canaro, Demare, D’Arienzo, Di Sarli, Troilo...but sadly many of the recordings are very scratchy and clouded by poor copying. Today’s technology allows for remastering and there are now many wonderful ‘clean’ copies of these greats sounding as they would to the Tangueros of the time when they were playing the dance halls of Buenos Aires.
Tinkering with recordings of the Golden Age by increasing the bass or changing the pitch does not improve the musical experience. Rather, as I found on the weekend at a popular milonga, it creates a thumping beat, that drowns the vocals and the melody - and gave me a thumping headache! I wasn’t the only one. When I retreated from the dance floor I found a group huddled in the foyer also escaping the DJ’s attack on the music.
This year's Milongueando in Buenos Aires in August is the 9th. An encuentro (meeting) rather than a Festival in the sense of great maestros and exotic performances. The organisers Susanna Miller and Maria Plazaola state on their website that "Everyone can dance milonguero-style tango. ...we teach students to enjoy the natural movement of the body and the dialogue that takes place in harmony with one's partner".
One of the teachers at this year's festival is Horacio Julian Prestamo. For those who love the milonguero-style of tango here is a fascinating interview - and a dance performance.
Buenos Aires Festival and Dance World Cup.
Gabriel Misse and Natalia Hills and Andres Laza Moreno and Isabel Acuna.


How do cats and dogs fight? What type of situations can this phrase describe?
An animal phrase to describe a human situation.
My older brother and I used to fight like cat and dog when we were younger. We argued all the time.
We can’t let them work together; they just fight like cat and dog. They never agree on anything.
The two students didn’t like each other– they were always fighting like cat and dog. Their arguments disturbed the other students, so they were often asked to leave their class by the teacher.


Venues Secure org Stopfakeid Helping Create 19.
org Venues Helping Stopfakeid Create Secure Helping Create org Secure Stopfakeid Venues My boyfriend gave his fake ID (actually someone else's ID he was using) to a cop who had approached him for having an open container on the street. The cop wrote out the ticket to the information on the fake ID, and that was the last we ever heard of it. The best part is that the man in the ID was not only about 10 years older than my boyfriend was at that time, but he was also a completely different race.


What is the fatty acid composition of beef bone marrow fat? I have been roasting organic marrow bones for lunch salad for some time, and saving the fat drippings on my cast iron skillet, i jar it and save for later use.I have noticed that its more opaque than muscle fat and seems much softer (less saturated?) than my home made tallow. Tallow and butter are much more "yellow" fats to my eye. I think i will be using marrow fat even more in cooking due to have more variety of fats.
Any news about the issue ?
I get them free, they are not doing any special cut for me. They cut the bones usually in 10cm pieces. I roast them in 200C oven for about 20mins.
Do you have specify to the butcher how you want the marrow bones to be cut? I have a pile of bones that don't look like something I would put on the lunch plate. (just google'd a recipe). I am interested in this and want to try roasting for lunch salad. Do you slow roast?
Thus far, I've not been successful in finding bone marrow nutrient analysis down to the specific phospholipids. Apparently it does contain considerable amounts of phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylserine but references weren't available. By taste perception, that does seem accurate though.
It may also be that bone marrow is high in glycine as Chris Masterjohn mentioned bone broth as a suggetion for increasing glycine in the diet in his March 15, 2011 article.
While this interesting 1964 paper regarding lipid content human bone (healthy and diseased) doesn't answer the question about the bones we eat, it still may be worth reading: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1215201/pdf/biochemj00768-0259.pdf "1. A modified method for the analysis of phospholipid mixtures by selective hydrolysis is described. 2. The phospholipid compositions of normal human bone marrow and of the bone marrows of patients who died with anaemia or various forms of leukaemia were investigated. 3. Phospholipids from normal bone marrow comprised about 44% of lecithin, 4% of choline plasmalogen, 7% of glyceryl ether phospholipid (choline base), 10% of sphingomyelin, 22% of phosphatidylethanolamine plus phosphatidylserine, 8% of ethanolamine plasmalogen and 5 % of glyceryl ether phospholipid (ethanolamine base). 4. The proportion of kephalin (i.e. phosphatidylethanolamine plus phosphatidylserine) in the pathological bone marrows tended to be lower than normal. No other consistent differences were observed between the normal and pathological samples. 4. A ceramide dihexoside was isolated from normal bone marrow."
I'm very interested to hear what others have to say on the topic.


Given that Jim Ryan has not closed the door completely on privatizing some government functions, you might wonder why he was endorsed by labor for county executive. It’s clear this was more of a vote against Ryan’s opponent Scott Walker than a vote for Ryan.
Walker’s record in the legislature has been that of a classic Republican conservative. He voted against raising the minimum wage twice, in 1993-94 and 1999-00. He voted against the position of state public intervener, which was the independent watchdog and advocate for environmental concerns. He voted against an amendment that would have given workers’ wages priority over the claims of banks in bankruptcy proceedings. And my favorite, Walker supported legislation removing the 18% limit on credit card interest rates.
On the one hand, Walker concedes these are the kinds of votes you’d expect from someone with his leanings. “From a conservative philosophical approach, it’s a matter of saying the government should be as uninvolved in the market as possible,” he says.
On the other hand, Walker does his best to pass off each vote. He thinks it’s better for the federal government to pass minimum wage increases than the states. He supported a later action on bankruptcy proceedings that allowed workers to get up to $2,000 in wages before banks and other companies got priority for their share. So maybe Walker is actually a secret liberal.
As for increase in credit card interest rates, this was done so companies didn’t move to other states that allowed higher interest rates, Walker says. And Walker opposed the state public intervener because he didn’t believe government should be paying someone to sue the government, including localities. That’s a very good answer for someone running for local government.
Walker also concedes he hasn’t been a consistently reliable supporter of state funding for Milwaukee County. Won’t that make harder for him to advocate for state funding to Milwaukee should he become county executive? “I think it gives me more credibility than someone with a liberal background, because legislators want accountability,” he answers.
Certainly, Walker has made a stronger case for accountability than Ryan. But I still wonder about the issue of competence. Imagine for a moment that you have a $1 billion business and an eager 34-year-old with no management experience and no college degree stops by and asks to run the company. Would any private company give such a person the time of day?
I don’t doubt Walker has the experience to be a legislator, but does he have the background to make the leap to running the state’s second biggest government? That seems a legitimate question, but the electorate may actually prefer Walker because he lacks the experience and age of a Tom Ament. Walker sounds more like the anti-Ament, and that may be all he needs to win.
The Milwaukee County pension sweepstakes continues, and on April 19 the biggest backdrop yet will be awarded: $577,000 will go to James F. Boyle, an Inpatient Branch Administrator for the Mental Health Division. In addition to this cool half million, Boyle will get a monthly pension payment of $4,136, which adds up to $49,632 annually for life. Boyle will also collect a sick pay allowance of $177,946.
Boyle’s salary was in the neighborhood of $70,000, so how could he collect such a huge pension? Through the magic of compounded interest. Boyle worked 38 years for Milwaukee County and was originally eligible for retirement in September 1993. Thus his backdrop could collect interest until this month, for a period of nearly nine years. The longer this span of years, the more you benefit from the marvelous monthly compounded interest.
As explained in previous articles, other governments that use a “drop” or “backdrop” plan typically have a limit of five or less years during which you can accumulate a drop payment. But former county administrator Gary Dobbert, the architect of Milwaukee’s plan, created a plan with absolutely no limit on the number of years for the backdrop. Which is very good news for Mr. Boyle.
Boyle’s payout beats the previous record of $437,000 set by Tom Mollan, a key aide to Tom Ament who worked closely with Dobbert and Ament to create the pension plan.
As of this month, the county has now paid out $16.7 million in backdrops to 191 people. As the sweepstakes continues, we’ll watch with interest to see if anyone can beat Jim Boyle’s record.
Mikel Holt, editor of the Community Journal, and a commentator on Charlie Sykes‘ Sunday morning pundit show, argues that Tyrone Dumas was the best qualified candidate for county executive, and the electorate wasn’t willing to elect an African American. I would certainly agree Milwaukee has a ways to go in its tolerance for diversity. But its worth pointing out that Dumas did nearly as well as Tom Nardelli, who outspent Dumas by a factor of ten to one.
Of course, you could argue the power structure was not as willing to throw their dollars toward Dumas, while Jim Ryan gained lots of campaign donations. But Dumas clearly put his emphasis on grass roots support in black districts, while Ryan courted more of the elite.
I don’t think Dumas’s showing proves all racist thought is gone in Milwaukee, but I think he was seen as a viable candidate, as he should have been. And that, combined with Louis Butler‘s strong showing in the race for circuit court judge, bodes well for Milwaukee’s future.


Given a list, there is one item missing from the list ... you provide the missing item. For people, last names will be sufficient, even though lists will include first names.
The four ghosts from the original English version of "Pac-Man"
Chemical elements that, in English, start with the letter "A"


What Is the Prognosis of Epidural Steroid Injection?
There are several types of epidural steroid injections. They can be described according to the location they are given. Injections in the neck are called cervical epidural injections, while injections in the middle back are thoracic epidural injections, and injections in the low back are called lumbar epidural injections.
They can also be described according to the path of the needle. Most epidural steroid injections are placed between the lamina, known as interlaminar epidural steroid injections. The lamina is portions of the bones on the back side of the spine that are arranged like shingles. The needle is aimed upwards toward the head and passes between two adjacent laminae. Another type of injection is a transforaminal steroid injection. In this case, the needle passes along the course of the nerve and enters the spine from a more diagonal direction.
The patient will be given specific instruction from the doctor prior to coming for the injection. In most cases, the patient can eat a small meal several hours prior to the injection. The patient can continue their normal medications with the exception of any blood thinners or anti-inflammatory medications. Please be sure to discuss all medications the patient is taking with the doctor when scheduling the injection to discuss the possibility of discontinuing any of them prior to the injection.
After the patient arrives for your epidural steroid injection an intravenous (IV) line will be placed in one of the veins. The patient may be given a medication to help them relax during the procedure. The patient will then be placed on an X-ray machine over a bolster to help open up the spaces between the bones in the back. An X-ray will be obtained to verify the proper level for the injection. The skin will be cleaned and prepared for the injection. The skin will then be injected with a medication to numb the area.
After the area is prepared and numb the doctor will insert the needle through the skin toward the spine. Once the needle is in the proper space a small amount of dye may be injected to verify the position of the needle on the X-ray. After this, the mixture of numbing medication and steroid is injected in the epidural space. The needle is then removed and a band-aid is placed over the site.
should avoid driving and operating machinery for at least 12 hours after the injection.
It is normal to have some mild drowsiness, and numbness, tingling or weakness in the legs for the remainder of the day. These symptoms will gradually wear off by the end of the day.
Epidural steroid injections are generally very safe, but there are some rare potential complications. One of the most common risks is for the needle to go too deep and cause a hole in the dura, the tissue that surrounds the spinal cord and nerve roots. When this occurs spinal fluid can leak out through the hole and cause a headache. This headache can be treated with bed rest, or with a blood patch. A blood patch involves drawing some blood from the vein and the injecting it over the hole in the dura. The blood forms a seal over the hole and prevents any further fluid from leaking out.
Rarely, a patient may develop an allergic reaction to one of the medications injected. This can cause itching, a drop in blood pressure, wheezing, or swelling.
If the needle touches the spinal cord or nerve root it can cause a neurologic injury. This most commonly causes a temporary feeling of numbness or tingling in the extremities.
There is also a very small risk of infection with the injection.
The patient will typically make a follow-up appointment after the epidural steroid injection. This will likely be between two and six weeks after the injection to determine how the patient has responded to the injection and if they have any continued symptoms from the nerve compression. If the patient continues to have symptoms or if they return after a period of time they may consider having the injection repeated. Most physicians recommend no more than 3-4 injections during a year.
The outlook for epidural steroid injections is very good. Most people who receive the injection obtain some improvement in their symptoms. Further research is being conducted to help doctors determine who will benefit most from epidural steroid injections.
"Subacute and chronic low back pain: Nonsurgical interventional treatment"
What did you do to prepare for your epidural steroid injection?
Did you experience complications from your epidural steroid injection? What were they?


I can't resist linking to this fantastic cover of Radiohead's Paranoid Android. It's an all-percussion version performed by the UMass Front Percussion Ensemble!
By now, the text of the speech on Digital Rights Management technologies that Cory Doctorow recently gave to Microsoft's Research Group has been linked to so widely it's made its way nearly to the top of Google's search results for "DRM". I'm mentioning it here in case you haven't heard about it somewhere else. I highly recommend it. The speech offers a very well-put statement on an issue that's hugely important to all of us -- the ownership and control of culture.
Help bust invalid patents that threaten tools of free expression!
My explorations into various understandings of intellecutal property and copyright have convinced me that our current system of copyright law is headed in a very dark direction and needs to change course soon. According to Clancy Ratliff (via Copyfight: the politics of IP) that makes me a copyfighter: "a copyfighter is someone who engages in conversations on authorship and intellectual property. [...] Moreover, copyfighters look at our current copyright model -- automatic copyright, life + 70 years as soon as the content is put into a fixed medium -- and express some kind of qualm about it; they think it should change in some way."
But that definition doesn't specify which way the copyfighter thinks our copyright model should change. By this standard, even the infamous Jack Valenti -- the outgoing head of the MPAA who once referred to file swappers as terrorists -- is a copyfighter. Sounds like we'd need to add an adjective to make the label meaningful. But what are the acceptible options? Left-wing copyfighter? Right-wing copyfighter? Progressive copyfighter? Conservative copyfighter? Corporate copyfighter? Indie copyfighter? When one of the most compelling voices on what one might think should be called the progressive side of this fight advocates "free culture" as in "free markets", I'm not sure any of these traditional labels make much sense.
I saw the new documentary The Corporation at its San Francisco opening day last Saturday. Overall, the film was excellent, though one image stands out in particular. According to the filmmakers, the contemporary corporation -- because it has the legal rights of a person but isn't subjected to any strong accountability -- is a textbook example of a psychopath: "characterized by absence of guilt and anxiety normally accompanying an antisocial act."


‘Desperately Seeking Susan’ is a 1985 American comedy-drama film directed by Susan Seidelman and starring Rosanna Arquette and Madonna.
Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is an unfulfilled suburban housewife living in Fort Lee, New Jersey who turns to the personals for vicarious thrills after her four-year marriage to staid hot tub salesman Gary (Mark Blum) grows stale. She is fascinated with a woman she only knows about by reading messages to and from her boyfriend Jim (Robert Joy), a struggling musician, in the personals section of a New York City tabloid. This fascination reaches a peak when one such ad with the headline "Desperately Seeking Susan" proposes a rendezvous in Battery Park with the man who regularly seeks her. Roberta decides to go to Battery Park too and gets a glimpse of Susan (Madonna) a SoHo vamp.
Susan has only just narrowly escaped being murdered alongside one of her other boyfriends -- a gangster who recently stole some Egyptian jewelry.
Through a series of complicated missteps, Roberta ends up losing her memory and convinces both herself and a broodingly handsome young man named Dez (Aiden Quinn) that she's the elusive, adventurous Susan. Soon, Roberta finds herself being romanced by Dez and pursued separately by her husband, Jim, Susan, and by a murderous mobster who's looking for the stolen jewels.
''Desperately Seeking Susan'' marks the 32-year-old director's leap from an $80,000 budget (for her first film, ''Smithereens'') to one of $5 million. Much of the extra money, she says, went into union costs and studio overhead, but it did not mean the loss of the freedom she had experienced earlier. An representative of the Orion Pictures Corporation, which is distributing the film, visited the set during the first few days of shooting, ''basically to make sure I knew what I was doing,'' Miss Seidelman said. And after that, she said, she worked independently and very, very quickly.
No party would be complete without party favors, and ''Desperately Seeking Susan'' is full of astonishing props. Where, for instance, does one find a pink, shell-encrusted telephone? ''You walk around a lot with the art director until you spot something in a store and say, 'I want that ,' '' Miss Seidelman explained. ''Then he builds it for you.'' In this case, the telephone spotted was only pink and glitter-specked, so the director saw some room for improvement.
''There were little battles along the way,'' Seidleman said. At one point, for instance, Orion recommended what Miss Seidelman calls ''a studio head's idea of a perfect blonde'' for the title role Madonna eventually played.
The filmmakers had initially wanted Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn to play the roles of Roberta and Susan but the studio wanted the film to have younger actors in order to appeal to younger filmgoers.
Other actresses up for the part of “Susan” included Melanie Griffith, Ellen Barkin and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Even Suzanne Vega auditioned for the role! ''I wanted a dark blonde, a spicy blonde,'' said the director, for the character she says ''floats through the funkiness in which she lives as if she were a princess.'' The director eventually decided to cast newcomers Rosanna Arquette and Madonna.
The movie was filmed during the late summer and early fall in 1984, early in Madonna's rise to popularity, and was intended to be an R-rated feature. However, following the success of Madonna’s 1984–85 hits (‘Like a Virgin’ and ‘Material Girl’), the film was trimmed in content by Orion Pictures to get a PG-13 rating in order to market the film to Madonna's teenage fan base.
The interior/exterior shots of The Magic Club were filmed in Harlem. Some of the scenes were filmed in Danceteria, a club that Madonna frequented and which gave her a start in the music business.
The DVD commentary track for the film (recorded in 1996) noted that after Madonna's first screen test, the producers asked her to take four weeks of acting lessons and get screen-tested again. Although the second screen test was not much of an improvement (perhaps an auger for the future), the director still wanted her for the role, as much for her presence and sense of style as for anything else.
There are two versions of the opening scene; one version opens with "The Shoop Shoop Song" and one version opens with "One Fine Day". "One Fine Day" was used for the European version where licencing prevented the use of the "Shoop Shoop Song" (as explained on the 1996 DVD commentary).
In her review for the New Yorker, critic Pauline Kael praised Madonna's performance as "an indolent, trampy goddess."
The New York Times film critic Vincent Canby named the film as one of the 10 best films of 1985.
Rosanna Arquette won a BAFTA Award for her portrayal of Roberta; the fact that the award was for a "supporting role" reflected the surge in popularity that Madonna was experiencing at the time, since in terms of billing, number of scenes, lines of dialogue, and the plot, Arquette was actually the film's lead. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical.
As was the norm, the earliest available videos were the ex-rentals that came in a large box. In the UK, the film was distributed by 'Rank' and accordingly the earliest releases bear that hallmark. Owing to the success of the film and consequent demand, the rental issue was swiftly joined by another large box 'Rank' release this time with a pink 'Hi-Fi' logo in the top left hand corner. In 1988, the video was reissued by a new distributor - Virgin Home Video - appearing in the standard video box. It was subsequently reissued again by PolyGram Video.


tl:dr; how do I prevent quiz scores from being immediately published without muting?
I make all of my quizzes for the quarter available from the first day of class. I do not want my students to know their score until after the quiz due date - the score would make it easy to discern which answer is correct and makes cheating easy - so I mute each quiz until the rest of the class has turned it in. I would like my students to be able to see their total grade for the class at all times, but when any assignments/quizzes are muted the total is not visible. This means my students can't see their total score until the last quiz has been administered.
Muting the quiz would be the only way to prevent the students from seeing their quiz scores, unless you add a question type that must be graded by the instructor. This would display the grade for the auto-graded questions, but the full score would not be visible until you grade the other question. I would recommend using the Mute option though.
I have been reviewing older questions here in the Canvas Community, and I came across your question. While I don't really have an answer for you, I wanted to check in with you because I noticed that we have not heard back from you since you first posted this question on March 23, 2018. It looks like Robbie Grant replied to you later that day. Have you had a chance to review Robbie's feedback? If so, did the information he provided help to answer your question? Or, are you still looking for some assistance from members of the Community? If you feel that Robbie's feedback has helped to answer your question, please feel free to mark his response as "Correct". However, if you are still looking for some feedback and/or help from the Community, please come back to this topic to post a message below so that someone might be able to assist you. For now, I am going to mark your question as "Assumed Answered" because we've not heard back from you in over four months and because there hasn't been any new activity in this thread for that same amount of time. However, that won't prevent you or others from posting additional questions and/or comments below that are related to this topic. I hope that's alright with you, Shawn. Looking forward to hearing back from you soon.
Still no satisfactory answer to this question.


What principles allow rapid multiplication on the mission field?
Traditionally, follow up from an evangelistic meeting is done by taking people's names and addresses and asking them to attend church or go through some materials. This is usually remarkably ineffective.
In the context I described in the last post this would have been impossible because of security issues as well as illiteracy. Instead, a Luke 10/simple church pattern enabled the harvest to be conserved and then multiplied.
Here are some of the reasons (apart from a sovereign move of God) that I believe this happened.
Prayer. The local church sponsoring the meetings has a 24 hour prayer room and much prayer was raised. Spiritual warfare was essential and very, very real.
A large, local church handled practical arrangements.
The local pastor was 100% involved and was willing to lose some of his best people (and their finance) to start churches in people's homes. Building the Kingdom of God was far more important to him than increasing the size of his church.
In a nation where there is much persecution of believers, disciples are often far more passionate about their faith than in countries where Christianity is acceptable. The harvest workers were "on fire" for Jesus.
The harvest workers responsible for follow up were trained in Luke 10 principles. They were taught how to pray for the sick and how to find people of peace.
Follow up was done at a local level by gathering new believers in the homes of people of peace. The new believers were not expected to attend a church or even to go to the homes of existing believers (extremely dangerous in their context). For similar reasons, the groups were kept very small–family gatherings.
People were trained in simple patterns that were easily duplicatable–for example, what to do when they gathered together. They were also geared towards oral learners.
The meetings were culturally relevant. They didn't appear Western.
The Gospel was sown widely–huge numbers attended. The new believers then gossipped the Gospel along relational lines. They have an uncle in the neighboring village? They go to him, tell him how Jesus touched them and offer to pray for his needs. When Jesus answers their prayer, they start something in his home.
Miracles, healings and testimonies were featured prominently.
Christian terminology wasn't used. People were invited to become "followers of Jesus" rather than to become Christians. (Actually, the name of Jesus in that language was used). There was no implication of changing culture.
The evangelist, a Westerner, has a deep, committed, ongoing relationship to that nation and to the pastor he worked with. He has faith to see the nation changed. He doesn't live in that nation, but visits as the Lord provides opportunity.


All Antibiotics Are Not Created Equal..
The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s list of Pharmaceutical Pregnancy Categories help doctors (and their patients) know the prenatal safety of medications. The categories are A, B, C, D, and X. Drugs within Category A have been found to be safe for use in pregnant women, whereas drugs within Category X have been found to be harmful to fetuses and should not be used by pregnant women. If you are pregnant or are trying to become pregnant should take care of your health and know which antibiotics can be used or not.
Birth defects associated with antibiotics defined within Category X include anencephaly (a fatal malformation of the skull and brain), choanal atresia (a blockage of the nasal passage), transverse limb deficiency, diaphragmatic hernia, eye defects, congenital heart defects and cleft palate.
The FDA requires a relatively large amount of high-quality data on a medication for a drug to be classified within Pregnancy Category A, and it is common for pregnant women to safely take Category B medications, such as Augmentin. The antibiotic is commonly used to treat bacterial infections such as sinusitis, pneumonia and bronchitis, all which can be harmful to the baby if left untreated. The drug has undergone animal reproduction studies and appears to have no negative effect on the pregnancy, says. Aleksandr M. Fuks, M.D., Director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Queens Hospital Center.
Penicillin, the most commonly used antibiotic during pregnancy, as well as other widely prescribed antibiotics, have not been found to be associated with increased risk for about 30 different birth defects, according to The National Birth Defects Prevention Study.
But ethical considerations preclude conducting drugs trials in pregnant women, so for many drugs, no adequate and well-controlled studies, Dr. Fuks says. There might be negative fetal effects associated with some Category B drugs that aren't currently recognized. "It should only be prescribed in situations where the healthcare provider strongly believes that the benefit of its use largely outweighs any possible risks to the fetus and the pregnancy," Dr. Fuks says.
Though many antibiotics such as pencillin have been used safely for decades, resistant strains of bacteria are forcing doctors to use a wider array of antibiotics. Safety depends on various factors, including the type of antibiotic, when in your pregnancy you take the antibiotic, dosage and duration of use.
Even if an antibiotic has been linked to an elevated risk of birth defect, chances remain small. For example, the risk of having a child with hypoplastic left heart syndrome is about one in 4,200. Sulfonamide antibiotics such as Septrim and Bactrim are associated with a threefold increase, making the likelihood about one in 1,400, according to the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.


How do we apply the precautionary principle to exotic, low-probability risks?
I have not been able to dig up the project documentation, but I would be astonished if there was any discussion of risk due to the experiment. After all, cooling things is rarely dangerous. We do not have any physical theories saying there could be anything risky here. No doubt there are risk assessment of liquid nitrogen or helium practical risks somewhere, but no analysis of any basic physics risks.
Compare this to the debates around the LHC, where critics at least could point to papers suggesting that strangelets, small black holes and vacuum decay were theoretically possible. Yet the LHC could argue back that particle processes like those occurring in the accelerator were already naturally occurring almost everywhere: if the LHC was risky, we ought to see plenty of explosions in the sky. Leaving aside the complications of correcting for anthropic bias, this kind of argument seems reasonably solid: if you do something that is within the envelope of what happens in the universe normally and there are no observed super-dangerous processes linked to it, then this activity is likely fine. We might wish for careful risk assessment, but given that the activity is already happening it can be viewed as just as benign as the normal activity of the universe.
How risky is it to generate such an outside of the envelope phenomenon? There is no evidence from the past. There is no cause for alarm given the known laws of physics. Yet this lack of evidence does not argue against risk either. Maybe there is an ice-9 like phase transition of matter below a certain temperature. Maybe it implodes into a black hole because of some macroscale quantum(gravity) effect. Maybe the alien spacegods get angry. There is an endless number of possible hypotheses that cannot be ruled out.
We might think that such “small theories” can safely be ignored. But we have some potential evidence that the universe may be riskier than it looks: the Fermi paradox, the apparent absence of alien intelligence. If we are alone, it is either because there are one or more steps in the evolution of life and intelligence that are very unlikely (the “great filter” is behind us), or there is a high likelihood that intelligence disappears without a trace (a future great filter). Now, we might freely assign our probabilities to (1) that there are aliens around, (2) that the filter is behind us, and (3) that it is ahead. However, given our ignorance we cannot rationally give zero probability to any of these possibilities, and probably not even give any of them less than 1% (since that is about the natural lowest error rate of humans on anything). Anybody saying one of them is less likely than one in a million is likely very overconfident. Yet a 1% risk of a future great filter implies a huge threat. It is a threat that not only reliably wipes out intelligent life, but also does it to civilizations aware of its potential existence!
We then have a slightly odd reason to be slightly concerned with experiments like CUORE. We know there is some probability that intelligence gets reliably wiped out. We know intelligence is likely to explore conditions not found in the natural universe. So a potential explanation could be that there is some threat in this exploration. The probability is not enormous – we might think the filter is behind us or the universe is teeming with aliens, and even if there is a future filter there are many possibilities for what it could be besides low-temperature physics – but nearly any non-infinitesimal probability multiplied by the value of our species (at least 7 billion lives) tends to lead to a too large risk.
At this point the precautionary principle rears its stupid head (the ugly head is asleep). The stupid head argues that we should hence never do anything that is outside the natural envelope.
The ugly head would argue we should investigate before doing anything risky, but since in this case the empirical studying is causing the risk the head would hence advice just trying out theoretical risk scenarios – not very useful given that we are dealing with something where all potential risk comes from scenarios unconstrained by evidence!
We cannot obey the stupid head much, since most human activity is about pushing the envelope. We are trying to have more and happier people than has ever existed in the universe before. Maybe that is risky (compare to Stapledon’s Last and First Men where it turned out to be dangerous to have too much intelligence in one spot), but it is both practically hard to prevent and this kind of open-ended “let’s not do anything that has not happened in the past” seems unreasonable given that most events are new ones and generally do not lead to disasters. But the pushing of the envelope into radically new directions does carry undefinable risk. We cannot avoid that. What we can do is to discuss whether we are willing to take on such hard to pin down risk.
However, this example also shows a way precaution can break down. Nobody has, to my knowledge, worried about cooling down matter besides me. There is no concerned group urging precaution since there is no empirical nor normative reason to think there is anything wrong specifically with CUORE: we only have a general Fermi paradox-induced inchoate worry. Yet proper precaution requires considering weak possibilities. I suspect that most future big new disasters will turn out to have avoided precautionary considerations just because there was no obvious reason to invoke the principle.
Many people are scared more by uncertainty than actual risk. But we cannot escape it. Especially if we want to reduce existential risk, which tends to be more uncertain than most. This little essay is about some of the really tricky limits to what we can know about new risks. We should expect them to be unexpected. And we should expect that the standard decision methods will not behave sensibly.
As for the CUORE team, I wish them the best of luck to find neutrinoless double beta decay. But they should keep an eye open for weird anomalies too – they have a chance to peek outside the envelope of the natural in a well controlled setting, and that is valuable.


"All the people that say the plot makes no sense, and they didn't know what was going on, need to read this review. To truly enjoy this movie, you have to be educated on black and white musicals, poetry, and greek mythology.
First of all I will explain the origins of the word "Xanadu".
In 1797 there was a poet named Samuel Coleridge who lived by himself. He was asleep, after taking a dose of Opium and washing it down with alcohol. In his dreams appeared a beautiful woman, (he later called her a muse) reciting a beautiful poem. Alas, a knock at the door from a friend broke him out of his dream, and he rushed to his table to write down what he could remember. The result was a poem titled "Kubla Khan"
In the poem, there is a heavenly place called XANADU, where there is eternal love and happiness. The word has sense been adopted to mean "heaven".
The movie is based on this poem. When Kira appears to a bewildered Gene Kelly, and tells him to call his new club XANADU, and together they recite the first lines of the poem KUBLA KHAN.
Now the reason Gene Kelly is in this film is because Kira has appeared in his life in the 1940's. She returns to help him out again, to inspire his dying ambitions, by inspiring him to open another music club. However he will need someone young and hip to help him out. So Kira also inspires Sonny Malone to quit his bland painting job and use his talents towards his dream. Therefore Kira brings the 2 men together.
Xanadu is a remake of a film titled "Down To Earth" starring Rita Hayworth. Rita also appears as a muse to inspire people to follow their dreams.
Gene kelly's character "Danny McGuire" was actually the name of Gene's character in the 1944 film "Covergirl".
If you are well read on Greek Mythology, you will know there are muses who represent the arts. They are called for in times of need to help inspire an artist's dying ambitions. Therefore the opening scene where the muses are coming out of the wall serves as a window between their world and ours.
Another good tidbit to know about the film, Andy Gibb was suppose to be the male star, not Michael Beck. Andy apparently was in ill health at the time and couldn't be insured by the company.
Xanadu was a film I saw as a 9 year old child. I had been severely injured and could not walk. I was hopeless and depressed. Then one night, Xanadu made its cable debut. I was carried into the living room to watch it (I couldn't walk). I had never seen Olivia Newton-John before, and I was mesmerized by the most incredible woman I had ever seen, dancing and singing through this magical fairy tale. My life had been hum drum up to that point, and the magic, glitz, animation, and music from this film made me want to get up. I was so anxious to walk and rollerskate (LOL) that I was up in no time walking around. I will forever love this movie and how a "muse" called Olivia inspired me to live again."
"I LOVE this movie. Why talk about how bad it is? Because it is VERY bad. It's so bad it's good! Whose idea was it to merge fading musical star Gene Kelly with 80's pop sensation Olivia Newton John??? Throw in some ELO music and some neon special effects and you've got XANADU. Oh, it's fabulous!! Roller skating, off-the-shoulder 80's dresses, long hair, leg warmers.... This is XANADU. The storyline is negligable. You just wait till they get to the next song! The choreography is that Kenny Ortega 80's stuff. Look for Matt Latanzi (Olivia's ex) as a dancer in the background. By the time this movie gets to it's roller-skating in the round finale, you will be rocking! (The dancers/rollers chant: "Xanadu! Xanadu!" and perform some sort of choreographed hand-jive movements! I want to learn those moves!) Enjoy it, y'all. Like the song says: "Now that you're here, now that you're near ... Xanadu!""
"Xanadu did exactly what it was supposed to do - entertain and make you imagine what it would be like to have a muse like Olivia breathe life into your dreams and have a sugar-daddy like Gene finance them! This movie was not supposed to provoke political though, cure world-hunger or make you a better person. It was created to make you dream, for your mind to be mesmerized by the colors, the music and the beauty of its entirety. The music was great, the plot was cute, and while today many might laugh at the roller-boogie of the last scene, it takes me back to my high school years where going to the rink was THE thing to do! Thank you Olivia, Gene and ELO for making a movie and music that I still enjoy to this day!!!!!"
"XANADU is a harmless, fluffy little musical from the 80's, and is a guilty pleasure movie that sits right up there with DIRTY DANCING and FOOTLOOSE in terms of being dorky but charming.Let's take a trip back in time...to a time when legwarmers, headbands and stonewash jeans were in vogue....oh no! It's the 80's!XANADU tells the story of aspiring artist Sonny Malone (Michael Beck - THE WARRIORS) who has the dream but lacks the spirit to make the dream a reality. Enter roller-skating muse, Kira (Olivia Newton-John - GREASE) who enflames Sonny's desires as well as invigorating his creative juices.Along the way, Sonny meets aged clarinet player Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly - AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, INVITATION TO THE DANCE) and together they decide to turn an abandoned old nickelodeon into a roller-skate disco called...you guessed it...Xanadu.Of course, the main highlight of the film is the great soundtrack from ELO and Olivia Newton-John, while her skimpy outfits are a big attraction, too!A forgotten classic."
"The one star rating isn't for the movie. Xanadu is what it is and I'm one of the people who love it. And because of that, I was really excited to discover they were putting out a special edition DVD. The original DVD only had the trailer as a bonus feature and between the movie's status as a cult classic and the success of the Broadway show I figured this edition would give it the treatment it deserved.
Yes, it's cool that the DVD comes with a CD of the soundtrack. But most of the people who own the DVD have likely had the soundtrack for years. So now we have 2.
And the bonus features? The original trailer, a photo gallery, and one documentary. That's it. Which wouldn't even be too bad if the documentary was a good one. But it's not, not by a long shot.
For starters, there are no Olivia interviews in the documentary. I find it hard to believe that she wouldn't have sat down with the filmmakers for a few hours, but she's nowhere to be found except in the clips from the movie. And the clips from the movie? Apparently they weren't able to license the music because that's nowhere to be heard either. In it's place is just a bunch of generic synth music that wouldn't be out of place in an E True Hollywood Story.
And the real kicker? There isn't a single mention of Michael Beck in the entire featurette. How on earth do you do a documentary on a movie and completely ignore the male lead? It's just mind boggling.
All I can conclude is that this feature wasn't specifically produced for the DVD, but it was something they just found and threw in.
But instead we get a photo gallery, the trailer from the first DVD, the CD that we all already have, and a single lame documentary.


An excerpt from the paper: "In the present state of art of science and geological theories, it is considered that all petroleum oils, which are extracted from the inner layers of the Earth, are due to the decomposition of the oils from animals and vegetations, which have died or been imbedded in the layers of the soil of this planet over millions of years. This theory considers that these remains, be it animal tissue or leaves of trees, as they were buried in the ground or covered by soil, and as these bodies decomposed, then their oil was slowly released into the earth’s solid top section. ... In fact, this planet has changed and produced its oil through and during the conversion of CO2 from gases to gans state of matter and in the process has released a vast amount of Oxygen in its atmosphere, as has been explained in the other papers by the author. (Figure 2, 3, 4) In other words, even the change of atmosphere from its acidic to oxygen levels has been through the process of conversion of state of matter and in presence of nitrogen and carbon, and hydrogen released and oxygen present has led to creation of protein, and in given condition to creation of amino acid of life on this planet. Physical and tangible lives are sometimes creating in the universe in different forms through this process and is not exclusivity of this planet."


Topman have removed an item for sale from their website and apologised profusely after come under fire on social media after users claimed the red jumper with phrases such as 'what goes around comes back around' emblazoned across it referenced the Hillsborough disaster.
The 'Goes Around' jumper had the number '96' on the back — which corresponds with the number of people who died in the 1989 stadium disaster — alongside 'what goes around comes back around' written underneath and 'karma' on the sleeve.
In a statement, the company said: 'Topman apologises unreservedly for any offence caused by this t-shirt.
Other social media users also expressed their disgust at the jumper.
Rather than Hillsborough, the item was referencing the Bob Marley song 'What Goes Around Comes Around'.
It was released in 1996 and has the lyrics 'What goes around comes around, What goes up must come down, it's called Karma baby and it goes around'.


"Are these signs to be regarded as literal or as symbolic? and have they yet been fulfilled? We answer that they have had a literal fulfilment, and are now having a symbolic fulfilment much more momentous. On May 19, 1780 (still 'in those days,' the 1260 years of Papal power, but after that power had begun to wane and the brunt of the tribulation had passed) a phenomenal darkening of the sun occurred, for which scientists of that time and since have never been able to account.. This unaccountable day, except as a sign from the Lord, is reckoned to have extended over 320,000 square miles - an area about twenty-five times the size of Palestine, to which the signs of the first advent were limited. Indeed, the fact that these signs were chiefly confined to the New England and Middle States need not surprise us, when we remember that the first movement amongst the 'Virgins'* (Matt. 25:1-5) was chiefly in the same locality. And that God should use the 'land of liberty' for sending the message of these signs to the world, is no more wonderful than that he has been pleased to send from the same quarter many of the modern blessings and inventions and lessons, recognized by the whole world, and aptly emblemized by the gift of the great French artist, Bartholdi, to New York harbor - the statue of 'Liberty Enlightening the World.