In early 1915 the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire decided to deport hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Assyrians from their homes into distant parts of the Empire, eventually into the deserts of Syria. Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman Army were demobilized and massacred; women and children were driven on long marches, starved, beaten, and often murdered. These events have been called the first major genocide of the 20th century, but the government of the Turkish state and many of its supporters deny that a genocide took place; rather, they claim that the government acted to suppress an Armenian insurrection and people were killed in the process. New scholarship confirms that the Ottoman government intended the elimination of Armenians and Assyrians to render them impotent in the contest for lands in eastern Anatolia.
Historians generally have explained (or excused) the Turkish deportations and massacres of the Armenians during the First World War as the result of conflicting ideologies, religious or nationalist; as the understandable and justified response of the Young Turk triumvirate to Armenian subversion in time of war; or as a long-planned elimination of non-Turks in Anatolia to create a national homeland for the Turkish people. Such ideological or political explanations necessarily focus on the leadership of the two peoples in conflict - the Ottoman government and the Armenian revolutionaries - without full examination of deeper causes and the broad social and demographic dimensions of the late Ottoman environment. While a focus on the political and intellectual elites is essential to explain the instigating events of early 1915 that precipitated the Armenian tragedy, the scope of the killing and the degree of popular violence on the part of ordinary Turks, Kurds, Circassians, and others, requires investigation of both the complex evolution of interethnic relations of the Ottoman peoples as well as consideration of the international competition among the Great Powers that constrained Ottoman decision makers. Existing histories have looked upon Armenians as little more than innocent victims, without understanding their intimate connections to Ottoman society (which in part explains the passivity of the overwhelming majority), or examining the ideologies and influences that encouraged a committed minority to engage in armed resistance. Historians must ponder why the relatively benign symbiosis of several centuries, during which the ruling Ottomans referred to the Armenians as the "loyal millet" (millet-i sadika), broke down into the genocidal violence of 1915. What were the experiences and perceptions, the cognitive conclusions and affective understandings of Ottoman leaders and ordinary people, which led to the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenian and Assyrian subjects of the Ottoman Empire?
Armenians, like Assyrians, Greeks, Jews, and other non-Sunni Muslim peoples of the Empire, were not only an ethnic and religious minority in a country dominated demographically and politically by Muslims, but given an ideology of inherent Muslim superiority and the segregation of minorities, were also an underclass. They were subjects who, however high they might rise in trade, commerce, or even governmental service, were never to be considered equal to the ruling Muslims. They would always remain gavur: infidels inferior to the Muslims. Active persecution of non-Muslims was relatively rare in the earlier centuries of the Ottoman Empire, but discrimination was ubiquitous and sanctioned by law and religion. The inferiority of the gavur was voluntary, Muslims believed, since unbelievers could at any time convert to Islam and thereby change their status. When Christians and Jews maintained their separate identities and communities and became visibly wealthier, effectively identified with Europeans, resentment of their enhanced status grew among Muslims. The “natural,” divinely ordained hierarchy of Muslim superiority appeared challenged by these alien elements in their midst. Unbelievers were to "stay in their place" and not appear to be equal or better than the Muslims. As imperialist Europe and nationalist movements threatened Ottoman control of the Balkans, hostilities and fears of decline ate away at the formerly cosmopolitan idea of an empire tolerant of its diverse constituent peoples.
Even in the Tanzimat period (1839-1878), when reforming rulers and bureaucrats eliminated some of the most excessive practices against their subjects and attempted to create the basis for a Rechtsstaat in the Empire, the Christians only partially benefited from the movement toward equality under the law. Armenians in eastern Anatolia repeatedly complained about armed Kurdish bands that took their livestock, land, and women. Occasionally Muslims rose in angry pogroms against Christians, and state authorities tended to excuse such behavior as an understandable response to Armenian rebellion. Beginning in the late 1870s and through the following decade, the Armenians of the provinces petitioned in greater numbers to their leaders in Istanbul and to the European consuls stationed in eastern Anatolia. Hundreds of complaints were filed; few were dealt with. Although the most brutal treatment of Armenians was at the hands of Kurdish tribesmen, the Armenians found the Ottoman state officials absent, unreliable, or simply another source of oppression. Corruption was rampant. Ordinary Muslims suffered from it as well, but the Armenians had the added burden of not belonging to the favored Muslim faithful. Massacres were reported from all parts of eastern Anatolia, particularly after the formation in the early 1890s of the officially sanctioned Kurdish military units known as the Hamidiye. Against this background of growing Kurdish aggression, Western and Russian indifference, and the collapse of the Tanzimat reform movement with the coming to power of Abdülhamid II, Sultan of the Turks (1842-1918), a small number of Armenians, many from the Russian Empire and influenced by the radical intelligentsia of Russian Transcaucasia, turned to a revolutionary strategy. Armenian revolutionary parties - most importantly the Hunchaks and the Dashnaks - arose from a number of self-defense groups within Russia and Turkey, a tradition of resistance to state intervention characteristic of some highland Armenians, like those of Zeytun and Sasun. Armenian radicals, along with Young Turk and Macedonian revolutionaries, were seen as a serious threat to the sultan’s despotism, and in 1894-1896 massive violence led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in Anatolia.
When Ottoman military officers joined with Young Turk intellectuals early in the 20th century, the opposition proved able to bring down the Hamidian regime (July 1908). Ottoman Armenians and other minorities joyfully greeted the “revolution” that brought the Young Turks to power. They hoped that the restoration of the liberal constitution would provide a political mechanism for peaceful development within the framework of a representative parliamentary system. The leading Armenian political party, the Dashnaktsutiun, had been loosely allied with the Young Turk Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and continued to collaborate with them up to the outbreak of the Great War. Nevertheless, the deep social hostilities between the peoples of the Empire persisted, indeed worsened, in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
Politically, most Ottoman Armenians sought a future within the Empire. Reform of the more repressive Ottoman institutions like tax farming, guarantees of equality under the law, and perhaps autonomy under a Christian governor for the Anatolian provinces, made up the program of the Armenian liberals. After 1908, the revolutionaries turned to parliamentary politics, and even the most radical agreed to work for reforms within the Ottoman constitutional regime. Both the Tanzimat reform movement and the Young Turk government that came to power in 1908 promoted a notion of legal protection of non-Muslims in a program that came to be known as Ottomanism (osmanlılık). The ideological umbrella of Ottomanism, however, was broad enough to include under it those who believed that the unity of the Empire could be best guaranteed by having the Ottoman Turks rule over the other nationalities. While some Ottoman reformers were prepared to go as far as the liberal Prince Mehmed Sabaheddin (1879-1948) and call for a federation of equal nations, others used the guise of Ottomanism to mask their Turkish nationalist or Pan-Turkic preferences. In the decade from 1908 to 1918 Turkish nationalism, which included virulent hostility to non-Muslims, increasingly dominated leading intellectual and political circles close to the Young Turks.
Some 2 million Christian Armenians lived in the Ottoman lands in 1915, most of them peasants and townspeople in the six provinces of eastern Anatolia. In an Anatolian population estimated to be between 15 and 17.5 million inhabitants, Armenians were outnumbered by their Muslim neighbors in most locations, though they often lived in homogeneous villages and sections of towns, and occasionally dominated larger rural and urban areas. The most influential and prosperous Armenians lived in the imperial capital, Istanbul (Constantinople), where their visibility made them the target of both official and popular resentment from many Muslims. The mountainous plateau of eastern Anatolia - that Armenians considered to be historic Armenia - was an area in which the central government had only intermittent authority. An intense four-sided struggle for power, position, and survival pitted the agents of the Ottoman government, the Kurdish nomadic leaders, the semi-autonomous Turkish notables of the towns, and the Armenians against one another. Local Turkish officials ran the towns with little regard to central authority, and Kurdish beys held much of the countryside under their sway. Often the only way Istanbul could make its will felt was by sending in the army. Though Kurds had repeatedly revolted against the Ottoman state and collaborated with the invading Russians in the 19th century, the Sublime Porte saw Armenians as a more seriously subversive element, since European powers, most importantly Russia, promoted their protection and used the “Armenian Question” as a wedge into Ottoman internal affairs. Encouraging Muslim resentment and fear of the Armenians, the state created an Armenian scapegoat that could be blamed for the defeats and failures of the Ottoman government. The social system in eastern Anatolia was sanctioned by violence, often state violence, and the claims of the Armenians for a more just relationship were neglected or rejected. Ottoman governments recognized no right of popular resistance, and acts of rebellion were seen as the result of the artificial intervention of outside agitators and disloyal Armenian subjects.
Social grievances in towns, along with the population pressure and competition for resources in agriculture, were part of a toxic mix of social and political elements that provided the environment for growing hostility toward the Armenians. Whatever resentments the poor peasant population of eastern Anatolia may have felt toward the people in towns - the places where they received low prices for their produce, where they felt their social inferiority most acutely, and where they were alien to and unwanted by the better-dressed people - were easily transferred to the Armenians. The catalyst for killing, however, was not spontaneously generated out of the tinder of social and cultural tensions. It came from the state itself: from officials and conservative clergy who had for decades perceived Armenians as alien to the Ottoman Empire, and from dangerous revolutionaries and separatists who threatened the integrity of the state. Armenians were imagined to be responsible for the troubles of the Empire, allies of the anti-Ottoman European powers, and the introduction of politically radical ideas, including trade unionism and socialism, to the Empire.
As Europe drifted through the last decade before World War I, the Ottoman government experienced a series of political and military defeats: the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austro-Hungary in 1908, the subsequent declaration of independence by Bulgaria, the merger of Crete with Greece, revolts in Albania in 1910-1912, losses to Italy in Libya (1911), and in the course of two Balkan Wars (1912-1913) the diminution of Ottoman territory in Europe and the forced migration of hundreds of thousands of Muslims from Europe into Anatolia. As their liberal strategies failed to unify and strengthen the Empire, the Young Turk leaders gradually shifted away from their original Ottomanist views of a multinational empire based on guarantees of civil and minority rights to a more Turkish nationalist ideology that emphasized the dominant role of Turks. In desperation a group of Young Turk officers, led by Ismail Enver Pasha (1881-1922), seized the government in a coup d'état in 1913, and for the next five years, years fateful for all Armenians, a triumvirate of Enver, Ahmet Cemal Pasha (1872-1922), and Mehmed Talat Pasha (1874-1921) ruled the Empire. Their regime marked the triumph of Turkish nationalism within the government itself.
This shift toward Turkish nationalism left the Armenian political leadership in an impossible position. Torn between continuing to cooperate with the Young Turks in the hope that some gains might be won for the Armenians and breaking with their undependable political allies and going over to the opposition, the Dashnaks decided to maintain their alliance with the ruling party. Other Armenian cultural and political leaders, however, most notably the Hunchak party, opposed further collaboration with the government. As the Ottomans entered the First World War, even as Armenian soldiers joined the Ottoman Army to fight against the enemies of their government, the situation grew extremely ominous for the dangerously exposed Armenians.
What was then known as “the Great War” was a catastrophe for all the peoples of the Ottoman Empire and most completely for the Armenians and Assyrians. Of the more than 20 million subjects of the sultan, perhaps as many as 5 million would perish because of the decision by the CUP to join what was for them a war not of necessity but of choice. Most of the victims were civilians. 18 percent of Anatolian Muslims would die: the casualties of battle, famine, disease, and governmental disorganization. About 90 percent of the Armenians would be gone by the end of the war - deported, massacred, forcibly converted to Islam, or exiled beyond the borders of the new Turkey. In the twelve years from 1912 to 1924, the non-Muslim population in Ottoman Asia Minor fell from roughly 20 percent to 2 percent.
The Ottoman Empire fought from 1914 to 1918 on nine different fronts, from the Dardanelles and the Balkans to Palestine and Arabia to the Caucasus and Persia. Over 3 million Ottomans, mostly Turks, were conscripted to fight the war against the Entente. An estimated 771,844 were killed: over half by disease. The mortality rate reached 25 percent. Only Serbia would suffer the loss of a higher percentage of its population than the Ottomans. The war blurred the distinctions between civilians and the military. Violence would be visited upon all citizens in this total war. Civil society would suffer enormously, while the state’s power would be extended into society in unprecedented ways. The gross domestic product in Turkey in the 1920s was half the pre-war level. The urban populations of the region would not recover until the 1950s. Millions of people would be moved, either conscripted or forcibly deported by their government. Every tenth person in the Ottoman Empire would become a displaced person in the years of war. Hundreds of thousands would be slaughtered because of state policy, and further hundreds of thousands would be forcibly converted to Islam, losing their original identity as Christians.
What would evolve into genocide began haphazardly in policies designed both to rearrange the demographic topography of Anatolia and to prepare for the war with Russia and its European allies. For the Young Turks the war was conceived as a transformative, revolutionary opportunity, a moment to gamble in order to save their empire and make it more secure. How that might be accomplished was influenced and shaped by their own understanding of what they desired, who their friends were, and who had to be eliminated in order to realize their emerging vision. As they worked out their jerry-built design of the future empire and improvised the means to achieve it, the party leaders consolidated their hold over the state. When Enver became minister of war in January 1914, he immediately purged the army of hundreds of officers, solidifying the military’s loyalty to himself and the CUP. The Ministry of Interior under Talat took command of the Ottoman gendarmerie. To realize their ambitions in the east the Young Turks organized a new Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa) similar in aims to an already existing paramilitary and working eventually in tandem with the original organization. Headed by Doctors Behaeddin Şakir (1874-1922) and Selânikli Mehmet Nazım Bey (1870-1926), the organization was financed and supplied by the Ministry of War but in cooperation with other parts of the government and under the direct supervision of the party. Formed initially for covert action in Russian Caucasia and Persia, the new Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa recruited tribesmen - Circassians, Kurds, and others - as well as prisoners, criminals, and bandits for its ranks. Prisons were emptied on orders of the government. More than 10,000 imprisoned criminals, many of them convicted of murder, were given a new role as fighters in the squadrons of the Special Organization. By fighting for the fatherland these former “people without honor” (namussuz) became respectable (namuslu). Referred to as çetes (gangs, guerrillas), these specially recruited fighters were available to the Young Turks independently from the regular army and could be used for actions against designated civilians. They played a decisive and disastrous role in the destruction of the Armenians.
Having suffered territorial losses in the Balkan Wars and been forced to accept a European-imposed reform in the “Armenian provinces” in 1914, the Young Turks joined the Central Powers (Germany and Austro-Hungary) as they waged war against the Entente (Great Britain, France, and Russia) in a desperate effort to restore and strengthen their empire. Armenians precariously straddled the Russian–Ottoman front, and both the Russians and the Ottomans attempted to recruit Armenians in their campaigns against their enemies. Most Ottoman Armenians supported and even fought alongside the Ottomans against the Russians, while Armenians in Russia, organized into volunteer units, joined the tsarist campaign. In late 1914 and early 1915 massacres of Christians - Armenians and Assyrians - and Muslims occurred in the Caucasus and Persia, where Russians and Ottoman forces faced each other. Anxious to fight the Russians in 1914, the Ottoman government instigated the war by attacking Russian ships in the Black Sea. Enver led a huge army against tsarist forces on the eastern front late in the year, and at first, he was dramatically victorious. Kars was cut off and Sarıkamış surrounded. But the Ottoman troops were not prepared for the harsh winter in the Armenian highlands, and early in 1915 the Russians, accompanied by Armenian volunteer units from the Caucasus, pushed the Ottoman Army back. A disastrous defeat followed in which Enver lost three-quarters of his army - more than 45,000 men. Some Armenian soldiers deserted, and a few Ottoman Armenians fled to the areas occupied by the Russians, confirming in Turkish minds the treachery that marked the Christian minorities. Enver's defeat on the Caucasian front was the prelude to the "final solution" of the Armenian Question.
The Russians posed a real danger to the Ottomans, just as the Allied forces were attacking Gallipoli in the west. In this moment of defeat and desperation, the triumvirate in Istanbul decided to demobilize the Armenian soldiers in the Ottoman Army and to deport Armenians from eastern Anatolia. The first victims of the state were these disarmed Armenian soldiers, who were easily segregated and systematically killed. Thus, the muscle of the Armenian communities was removed. Almost immediately, the government ordered the deportation of Armenians from cities, towns, and villages in the east, ostensibly as a necessary military measure to ensure the security of the rear. Soon Armenians throughout the country were forced to gather what belongings they could carry or transport and leave their homes at short notice. The exodus of Armenians was haphazard and brutal; irregular forces, local Kurds, and Circassians, cut down hundreds of thousands of Christians, as civil and military officials oversaw and facilitated the removal of the Empire’s Armenian and Assyrian subjects. When some Armenians resisted the encroaching massacres in the city of Van in eastern Anatolia, the CUP had the leading intellectuals and politicians in Istanbul, several of them deputies to the Ottoman Parliament, arrested and sent from the city (24 April 1915). Most of them perished in the next few months. Thus was the brain of the Ottoman Armenian people removed: the intellectual and political leadership and the connective tissue that linked separate communities together. Women, children, and old men in town after town were marched through the valleys and mountains of eastern Anatolia. Missionaries, diplomats, and foreign military officers witnessed the convoys, recorded what they saw, and sent reports home about death marches and killing fields. Survivors reached the deserts of Syria where they languished in concentration camps; many starved to death, and new massacres occurred.
What might have been rationalized as a military necessity, given the imperial ambitions and distorted perceptions of the Ottoman leaders, quickly became a massive attack on their Armenian subjects, a systematic program of murder and pillage. An act of panic and vengeance metamorphosed monstrously into an opportunity to rid Anatolia once and for all of the one people that stood in the way of the Young Turks' plans for a more purely Muslim Empire, dominated by ethnic Turks. A whole category based on religion and ethnicity, the people of a particular millet (religious community), were singled out as potentially dangerous to the state. The deportations of Armenians and Assyrians were rationalized at the time and later as a military necessity, framed by the imperial ambitions and distorted perceptions of the Ottoman leaders, though the government refused to take responsibility for the massacres, claiming that they were caused by local officials and excessive hatred of Armenians by common people.
The causes of what has come to be known as the first genocide of the 20th century were both immediate and long-term. The environment in which genocide occurred - the imperial appetites of the Great Powers, the fierce competition for land and goods in eastern Anatolia, the aspirations and aims of Armenians, and the ambitions and ideas of the Young Turks - shaped the cognitive and emotional state of the perpetrators and their “affective disposition,” that allowed them, indeed, in their minds required them, to eliminate whole peoples. In the context of war and invasion, a mental and emotional universe developed that included perceived threats, the Manichaean construction of internal enemies, and a pervasive fear that triggered a deadly, pathological response to real and imagined immediate and future dangers. A government had come to believe that among its subject peoples whole “nations” presented an immediate threat to the security of the state. Defense of the Empire and of the “Turkish nation” became the rationale for mass murder. Armenians were neither passive nor submissive victims, but the power to decide their fate was largely out of their hands. A “great inequality in agency” existed between Young Turks and their armed agents and the segmented and dispersed Armenians.
The purpose of the genocide was to eliminate the perceived threat of the Armenians within the Ottoman Empire by reducing their numbers and scattering them in isolated, distant places, and to replace them with Muslim refugees who had fled from the Balkans. The destruction of the Ermeni milleti was carried out in three different but related ways: dispersion, massacre, and assimilation by conversion to Islam. A perfectly rational (and rationalist) explanation, then, for the genocide appears to be adequate: a strategic goal to secure the Empire by elimination of an existential threat to the state and the Turkish (or Islamic) people. But, before the strategic goal and the “rational” choices of instruments to be used can be considered, it is necessary to explain how the existential threat was imagined; how the Armenian and Assyrian enemy was historically and culturally constructed; and what cognitive and emotional processes shaped the affective disposition of the perpetrators that compelled them to carry out massive uprooting and murder of specifically targeted peoples, and to believe that such actions were justified.
Rather than being a struggle between primordial nations (as imagined by nationalists) inevitably confronting one another and contesting sovereignty over a disputed land, the genocide was the result of an accelerating construction of different ethnoreligious communities within the complex context of an empire with its possibilities of multiple and hybrid identities and coexistence. The hierarchies, inequities, institutionalized differences, and repressions that characterized imperial life and rule, had for centuries allowed people of different religions, cultures, and languages to live together. Armenians and others acquiesced to their position in the imperial hierarchy and even developed some affection for the polity in which they lived. Shared experiences as Ottomans in some cases led to material prosperity and cultural hybridity, but always under conditions of insecurity and, often capricious, governance. The imperial paradigm met its greatest challenges from what might be lumped together under the concept of “progress”: the technological and industrial advancement of the capitalist West, which rendered the Ottoman Empire relatively “backward” in the internationally competitive marketplace, as well as the idea of equality that challenged the differentiated and unequal treatment of the various peoples of the Ottoman realm. Religion, language, and culture distinguished the millets - the Muslim, Armenian, Greek, Catholic, Protestant, Assyrian, and Jewish - one from another, yet members of all of them could aspire to be Ottoman and participate in the cultural, social, and even political life of the Empire without ever achieving full equality with the ruling institution.
From abroad, two powerful influences shaped the evolution of the various Ottoman peoples: the increasingly hegemonic discourse of the nation, which redefined the nature of political communities and legitimized culture as the basis of sovereignty and possession of a “homeland”; and the imperial ambitions of European powers, which repeatedly intervened in Ottoman politics, hiving off parts of the Empire’s territory, hollowing out the sultan’s sovereignty, and insisting on protection of his Christian subjects. Migration of some peoples out of the Empire and others into it, competition over land, particularly in eastern Anatolia, Armenian resistance to old forms of “feudal” subjugation to the Kurds - all contributed to structural and dynamic influences that generated a mental world of opposition and hostility among the millets.
The Armenian genocide was not planned long in advance, but was a contingent reaction to a moment of crisis that grew more radical over time. Yet genocide became possible as a technique of state security only after a long gestation of a militant, deeply hostile anti-Armenian disposition. The genocide should be distinguished from the earlier episodes of conservative restoration of order by repression (the Hamidian massacres of 1894-1896) or urban ethnic violence (Adana, 1909). Although there were similarities with the brutal policies of massacre and deportation that earlier regimes used to keep order, the very scale of the Armenian genocide and its intended effects - to rid Anatolia and other parts of the Empire of a entire people - make it a far more radical, indeed revolutionary, transformation of the imperial setup. Neither religiously motivated nor a struggle between two contending nationalisms, one of which destroyed the other, the genocide was the product of a pathological response of desperate leaders who sought security against a people they had both construed as enemies and driven into radical opposition to the regime under which they had lived for centuries. While an anti-Armenian disposition existed and grew more virulent within the Ottoman elite long before the war, and some extremists contemplated radical solutions to the Armenian Question, particularly after the Balkan Wars, the World War not only presented an opportunity for carrying out the most revolutionary program against the Armenians, but provided the particular conjuncture that convinced the Young Turk triumvirate to deploy ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Armenians. Had there been no World War there would have been no genocide, not only because there would have been no “fog of war” to cover up the events but because the radical sense of endangerment among Turks would not have been as acute. As spring approached in 1915, and the Armenians could be linked to the Russian advance as collaborators, the governing few believed that the circumstances were propitious to remove the Armenians. Ziya Gökalp, who like so many others saw the genocide as necessary or even forced on the Ottomans, could with confidence write, “there was no Armenian massacre, there was a Turkish-Armenian arrangement. They stabbed us in the back, we stabbed them back.” What was done had to be done in the name of national security, and so a kind of lawful lawlessness was permitted.
The choice of genocide was not inevitable. Predicated on long-standing and ever more extreme affective dispositions and attitudes that had demonized the Armenians as a threat that needed to be dealt with, the ultimate choice was made by specific leaders at a particular historical conjuncture when the threat seemed to them most palpable. The Young Turks’ sense of their own vulnerability - combined with resentment at what they took to be Armenians’ privileged status, Armenian dominance over Muslims in some spheres of life, and the preference of many Armenians for Christian Russia - fed a fantasy that the Armenians presented an existential threat to Turks, not only an immediate menace but a future peril as well.
The catalytic moment that triggered the most brutal response to anxiety about the future came with the World War. There was no blueprint for genocide elaborated before or even in the early months of war, but the disposition to dispose of the Armenians had already been forming in the decade before Sarajevo. The Armenian genocide was both the result of increasingly radical attitudes of Turkish national imperialists and triggered by the events of 1914-1915: the imposition of the European reform plan; the breakdown of CUP–Armenian relations when the Dashnaks refused to instigate rebellion among Caucasian Armenians; the colossal losses at Sarıkamış; and the rapid reconstruction of Armenians as an imminent internal danger. Those who perpetrated genocide operated within their own delusional rationality. The Young Turks acted on fears and resentments that had been generated over time and directed their efforts to resolve their anxieties by dealing with those they perceived to threaten their survival - not with their external enemies but an internal enemy they saw allied to the Entente - the Armenians. What to denialists and their sympathizers appears to be a rational and justified strategic choice to eliminate a rebellious and seditious population, in this account is seen as the outcome of the Young Turk leaders’ pathological construction of the Armenian enemy. The actions that the Young Turks decided upon were based in an emotional disposition that led to distorted interpretations of social reality and exaggerated estimations of threats. The conviction that Armenians desired to form an independent state was a fantasy of the Young Turks and a few Armenian extremists. The great majority of Armenians had been willing to live within the Ottoman Empire if their lives and property could be secured. They clung to the belief that a future was possible within the Empire long after it seemed to some to be reasonable. Still, they had been socialized as Ottomans: this was their home, and what they knew. Only when their own government once again turned them into pariahs did some of them defect or resist.
The Armenian genocide, along with the killing of Assyrians and the expulsion of the Anatolian Greeks, laid the ground for the more homogeneous nation state that arose from the ashes of the Empire. Like many other states, including Australia, Israel, and the United States, the emergence of the Republic of Turkey involved the removal and subordination of native peoples who had lived on its territory prior to its founding. The connection between ethnic cleansing or genocide and the legitimacy of the national state underlies the desperate efforts to deny or distort the history of the nation and the state’s genesis.
Estimates of the Armenians killed in the deportations and massacres of 1915-1916 range from a few hundred thousand to 1,500,000. The more conservative estimates of between 600,000 and 800,000 killed, with hundreds of thousands of others converted to Islam or surviving as refugees, appear most accurate. Whatever the actual number of those killed, the result was the physical annihilation of Armenians in the greater part of historic Armenia, the final breaking of a continuous inhabitation of that region by people who called themselves Armenian. By the act of genocide, the Young Turks prepared the ground for the Turkish national state, the republic founded by Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938), that now occupies the Anatolian peninsula. Once the Greeks were driven into the sea at Smyrna in 1922 and Cilicia cleared of Armenians, the Turkish nationalists gained a homeland for the Turkish people. Though they would have to share eastern Anatolia with Kurds who in time acquired their own political ambitions, the successive Turkish regimes were successful in gaining international recognition of their rights to the territory that once made up the heartland of Armenian kingdoms and the eastern marchlands of the Byzantine Empire.
↑ Karpat, Kemal: Ottoman Population, 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics, Madison 1985, p. 190; McCarthy, Justin: Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire, New York 1983, p. 110.
↑ Zürcher, Erik-Jan: Griechisch-orthodoxe und muslimische Flüchtlinge und Deportierte in Griechenland und der Türkei seit 1912, in: Bade, Klaus J. et al. (eds.): Enzykopädie Migration in Europa vom 17. Jahhundert bis zur Gegenwart, Paderborn et al. 2007, pp. 623-627.
↑ Aksakal, Mustafa: The Ottoman Empire, in: Winter, Jay (ed.): The Cambridge History of the First World War, Cambridge 2014, p. 464.
↑ Ibid., p. 468; Erik J. Zürcher estimates 325,000 directly killed in action and between 400,000 and 700,000 wounded, see The Ottoman Soldier in World War I, in his: The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey, London et al. 2010, p. 186.
↑ Akın, Yiğit: The Ottoman Home Front during World War I: Everyday Politics, Society, and Culture, Phd. dissertation in history, Ohio State University 2011, p. 245.
↑ Kévorkian, Raymond: The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History, London 2011, pp. 180-187; Kévorkian’s account of the formation of the Special Organization is based on the testimonies at the trials of the Unionists held in 1919-1920 and published originally in Takvim-ı Vekayi.
↑ Kévorkian, Armenian Genocide 2011, pp. 184; testimony from the First Session of the Trial of the Unionists, April 27, 1919, at 1:50: Takvim-i Vakayi, no. 3540, May 5, 1919, p. 5, col. 2, lines 8-14; Krieger: Engghati Haiaspanutyan Vaveragrakan Patmutyune, New York 1980, p. 215; Sixth Session of the Trial of the Unionists, May 14, 1919, questioning of Midhat Şükrü (pp. 91-99): Takvim-i Vakayi no. 3557, May 25, 1919, p. 92.
↑ A useful review of the historiographical literature on Teşkilat-ı Masusa can be found in Safı, Polat: History in the Trench: The Ottoman Special Organization – Teşkilat-ı Masusa Literature, Middle Eastern Studies, XLVIII/1 (2012), pp. 89-106. Regrettably, the article deals primarily with what cannot be said about the Special Organization rather than what it actually was. An early account still worth reading is Stoddard, Philip H.: The Ottoman Government and the Arabs, 1911-1918: A Preliminary Study on the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa, PhD dissertation, Princeton University 1963.
↑ In the last few decades, scholars have designated other early 20th-century mass killings as genocide, most notably the German attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples in Southwest Africa in 1904-1905. See, Hull, Isabel V.: Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany, Ithaca et al. 2005.
↑ In his reply to an article on 1915, by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, historian Gerard J. Libaridian writes, “It is difficult to imagine a ‘shared history’ that does not take into consideration the great inequality of agency that existed. A shared history does indeed exist, but it is not a history of equals between the Ottoman imperial state and its Armenian subjects.” (Commentary on Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s article on the Armenian Issue: “Turkish Armenian Relations: Is a ‘Just Memory’ Possible?”, Turkish Policy Quarterly, Spring 2014, p. 7, http://www.turkishpolicy.com/article/989/commentary-on-fm-davutoglus-article-on-the-armenian-issue/).
↑ On the conceptual difference between empire and nation state, see Suny, Ronald Grigor: The Empire Strikes Out: Imperial Russia, ‘National’ Identity, and Theories of Empire, in: Suny, Ronald Grigor/ Martin, Terry (eds.): A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, Oxford et al. 2001, pp. 23-66.
↑ Gökalp, Ziya: Kızıl elma, translation from: Kinloch, Graham Charles / Mohan, Raj P.: Genocide Approaches, Case Studies, and Responses, New York 2005, p. 50; also, cited in: Jonderden, Joost: Elite Encounters of a Violent Kind: Milli İbrahim Paşa, Ziya Gökalp and Political Struggle in Diyarbekir at the Turn of the 20th Century, in: Jonderden, Joost / Verheij Jelle (eds.), Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir, Leiden 2012, p. 80.
↑ Jonderden, Elite Encounters of a Violent Kind 2012, p. 72.
↑ The words “delusional rationality” come from Turkyilmaz, Yektan: Rethinking Genocide: Violence and Victimhood in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1915, PhD dissertation in Cultural Anthropology, Duke University 2011, who writes, “These ‘rationalities’ have no basis in reason, and yet become a powerful motor for killing on a mass scale” (p. 43).
↑ The argument from state security was made repeatedly by the Young Turk leaders and was reproduced in the first major collection of materials issued by the Ottoman government on the Armenian deportations: Dahiliye, Nezareti: Ermeni Komitelerinin Amal Ve Harekat-ı Ihtilaliyesi, Istanbul 1916.
↑ For interpretations of the genocide that are compatible, though not identical, with my own analysis, see, for example, the thoughtful essay by Astourian, Stepan: The Armenian Genocide: An Interpretation, The History Teacher, XXIII, 2 (February 1990), pp. 111-160; Mann, Michael: The Dark Side of Democracy, Cambridge 2004; Levene, Mark: Genocide in the Age of the Nation State, 2 vols., London 2005; Valentino, Benjamin A.: Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Ithaca, New York 2005; and Bloxham, Donald: The Great Game of Genocide, Oxford 2005.
Balakian, Peter: The burning Tigris. The Armenian genocide and America's response, New York 2003: HarperCollins.
Bardakjian, Kevork B.: Hitler and the Armenian genocide, Cambridge 1985: Zoryan Institute.
Beylerian, Arthur: Les Grandes puissances, l'empire ottoman et les Arméniens dans les archives françaises (1914-1918), 3 volumes, Paris 1983: Publications de la Sorbonne.
Bloxham, Donald: Genocide, the world wars and the unweaving of Europe, London; Portland 2008: Vallentine Mitchell.
Bryce, Viscount James: The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916, London 1916: Sir Joseph Causton and Sons.
Dadrian, Vahakn N.: The history of the Armenian genocide. Ethnic conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, Providence 1995: Berghahn Books.
Göçek, Fatma Müge: Denial of violence. Ottoman past, Turkish present, and collective violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009, New York 2014: Oxford University Press.
Hovannisian, Richard G.: The Armenian genocide in perspective, New Brunswick 1986: Transaction Books.
Hovannisian, Richard G. (ed.): The Armenian genocide. History, politics, ethics, New York 1992: St. Martin's Press.
Kieser, Hans-Lukas / Schaller, Dominik J. (eds.): Der Völkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah / The Armenian genocide and the Shoah, Zurich 2002: Chronos.
Kloian, Richard Diran: The Armenian genocide. News accounts from the American press, 1915-1922, Richmond 1985: Anto Printing.
Lepsius, Johannes: Bericht über die Lage des armenischen Volkes in der Türkei, Potsdam 1916: Tempelverlag.
Libaridian, Gerard J. (ed.): A crime of silence. The Armenian genocide, London; Totowa 1985: Zed Books.
Mann, Michael: The dark side of democracy. Explaining ethnic cleansing, New York 2005: Cambridge University Press.
Melson, Robert: Revolution and genocide. On the origins of the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, Chicago 1992: University of Chicago Press.
Morgenthau, Henry: Ambassador Morgenthau's story, Garden City 1918: Doubleday, Page & Company.
Ternon, Yves: The Armenians. History of a genocide, Delmar 1981: Caravan Books.
Toynbee, Arnold J.: Armenian atrocities. The murder of a nation, London; New York 1915: Hodder & Stoughton.
Ussher, Clarence D. / Knapp, Grace Higley: An American physician in Turkey; a narrative of adventures in peace and in war, Boston; New York 1917: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Werfel, Franz: The forty days of Musa Dagh, New York 1937: The Modern Library.
Suny, Ronald Grigor: Armenian Genocide , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2015-05-26. DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.10646.


Will NHS England and NHS Improvement plans help to eliminate the 2018/19 deficit work?
NHS England and NHS Improvement are planning to eliminate the provider deficit of £519m, forecast in previous operating plans for 2018/19, in time for quarter two reporting.
The plans aim for the commissioning sector to deliver £265m of underspend at the end of month five; the target for providers is £254m.
NHS England figures show the commissioner sector overall has achieved balanced plans for the year so far. Some 29 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have year-to-date overspends offset by underspends on direct commissioning and NHS England central budgets. All CCGs are forecasting that any overspends will be recovered by the end of the financial year.
Providers overspent by £87m against plan in the period to month four, offset by uncommitted provider sustainability fund money of £74m, reducing the overall overspend against plan to £13m.
Providers have delivered efficiency savings of £723m up to month four, £83m below planned efficiency savings.


Hong Kong: Banking giant Standard Chartered on Tuesday announced a return of dividends for shareholders after a two-year hiatus as it reported a surge in annual profits following restructuring and cutbacks.
The Asia-focused lender said it would pay out a full-year dividend of 11 cents per share, citing "improving financial performance and strong capital".
It also said pre-tax profit jumped 175 per cent on-year to $3.01 billion in 2017.
Shares in the firm rose almost two per cent in afternoon Hong Kong trading, having been in negative territory before the results were announced during the break.
Standard Chartered swung back to profit in 2016, a year after scoring its first annual loss for more than a quarter of a century as it struggled to cope with the effect of bad debts and misconduct fines.
Chief executive Bill Winters described the performance as "steady rather than spectacular" but said it had improved significantly.
Winters replaced former CEO Peter Sands in 2015 after shareholder calls for a boardroom cull in response to profit warnings.
The London-based bank announced 15,000 job cuts around the world that year and said it would exit or restructure $100 billion of assets to refocus on affluent retail clients.
Winters said the bank was ahead of plans to remove "inefficient cost", adding that it had focused investment in areas including business in China and Africa.
But analysts said the bank still had a way to go in its turnaround.
The results fell just short of Bloomberg analysts' expectations -- they had forecast a $3.1 billion in pre-tax profit.
Jackson Wong, of Huarong International Securities, said the bank needed to find a new focus for growth, rather than concentrating on cutbacks, adding that HSBC was in a similar position after missing some profit forecasts last week.
"They don't have a core way to grow their business," Wong told AFP.
"Because they cannot find growth, they cut more cost. And if they cut more cost, they have less resources to find growth as well."
However, Wong said Standard Chartered's dividend payout would keep investors happy.
"Obviously from the business environment standpoint they are in a much better shape than last year," he added.
Regulatory costs of $1.3 billion were 15 per cent higher year-on-year, the bank said, attributing it to newly introduced programmes.
Chairman José Viñals said improving the bank's response to financial crime was a "critical journey".
In August 2014, Standard Chartered was hit by US regulators with a $300 million fine and restrictions on its dollar-clearing business for failing to detect possible money-laundering.
It paid $667 million in 2012 to settle charges that it had violated US sanctions by handling thousands of financial transactions involving Iran, Myanmar, Libya and Sudan.


The pro scouts knew James Williams was a raw talent. He had played football at a small school -- North Carolina A&T; -- and his competition was so paltry that Williams could dominate with little effort.
But if anything registers with a pro scout's computer, it is size or speed. Williams has both. The man could be a prototype defensive lineman. He is tall (6 feet 7), big (275 pounds) and nearly fast enough to play running back (4.8 seconds in the 40-yard dash).
Williams seemed destined, given time, to make an impact in the National Football League.
Williams, 27, left A&T; in 1982. The next two years he had tryouts with three teams in the NFL and two in the USFL. He never made it past training camp.
Today, Williams is back in Greensboro, N.C., putting the pieces together and pondering one more shot at football. Like so many other athletes who failed to graduate, he is working at whatever job he can get.
By day Williams works at a dairy, readying ice cream products for shipping. At night he serves as a bouncer at a nightclub.
"It only seems like yesterday that I was playing," Williams said. "I still think about giving it another chance. That's why I am working out two or three days a week."
Williams said he lacked 23 hours of college credit for his degree and that he hopes to return to school this summer.
It is his unfulfilled goal of playing pro football that nags at him, though.
"I never did put all my ability into school," he said. "I just got tired of it after a while. I don't know that anybody should feel sorry for me. At least I've got a job, and I'm happy for the job at the nightclub because I'm used to being real hyperactive, and that job gives me a chance to move around."


The Long Hair Community Discussion Boards > Discussion Forums > The "Mane" Forum > I shaved my head to start fresh!
View Full Version : I shaved my head to start fresh!
Hi everyone I'm a long time lurker. After years of contemplating I shaved all my fried hair off! Here is the original thread I posted and everyone convinced me not to roughly 2 years ago.
Is there anyone out there who has advice for scalp care to sooth my inflamed scalp and nuture it back to health? Also any links threads or tips to growing it out natural and virgin. I'm possibly doing CO or WO and no heat will be used for styling. Not totally settled and open to ideas!
TLDR: I shaved my absolutely FRIED to dismay arm pit length bob to bald, if theres any advice out there for growing virgin hair from bald or any other baldies/super shorties who want to join me in growing out long virgin hair please let me know!
P.S. I will post pictures of the damage prior to shaving and the result of shaving my head. I will also have a blog on here with pictures from every day 'til it's long for those of you who want to see. I am on mobile right now so I will once I get on a computer.
It's nice to start fresh! I did the same thing about 8 years ago and am now at Classic length. Enjoy it and keep busy during the mullet stage. The reward is nice healthy virgin hair!
Check out the "Super Shorties" thread!
I suggest a nice calming oatmeal soak to soothe your scalp. When I bleached the crap out of my pixie, I would immediately go home and saturate my head in cool jojoba, coconut, and castor oils, then wrap it up under a beanie until my head quit burning. Perhaps something like that would interest you? I was also a big fan of adding in lavender essential oil, as it is great for skin inflammation.
Good luck on your journey! For now, WO is just fine, unless your scalp needs a little more. Think of this time as your scalp pampering time! It's less about the hair and more about the scalp.
Oh, and it's never too early to start sleeping on a silk pillowcase or using a silk sleep bonnet.. After all, those roots will soon become your ends! That's what I did, though I simply started at a short pixie.
I shaved to bald around 2 years ago. I tried giving my hair more moisture as I grew it out from bald, which is something that you can look into if that interests you. I'd say treat your short hairs gently, help them get the moisture they need, and try looking into keeping your hair care on the simple side. It doesn't have to be complicated to grow out healthy hair if that's what you want to do. A silk pillowcase will help too.
ETA: Maybe an SMT can help with the inflammation since it has aloe? But I want to ask, why is your scalp inflamed? Is it a sunburn? Maybe the aloe gel by itself may help but I am no doctor.
That's very brave of you OP. I once contemplated shaving my head at one point because of how damaged it was but seeing as I have a baby face, a bald head would probably make me look like an infant. I bet it feels really good though. Good luck on your journey!


My son, whose infant head I now survey, Guiltless of hair, whilst mine, alas! is grey,— Whose feeble wailings through my bosom thrill, And cause my heart to shake my very frill,— Incline thine ear, quick summon all thy thought, And take this wisdom which my love has brought: Perpend these precepts; sift, compare, combine; And be my brain's results transferr'd to thine.
Soon as thy judgment shall grow ripe and strong, Learn to distinguish between right and wrong: Yet ponder with deliberation slow, Whether thy judgment be yet ripe or no; For wrong, when look'd at in a different light, Behold! is oft discovered to be right, And vice versâ—(such the schoolmen's phrase)— Right becomes wrong, so devious Reason's maze!
Take only the best authors' mental food, For too much reading is by no means good; And, since opinions are not all correct, Thy books thyself must for thyself select.
Accumulate ideas: yet despise Reputed wisdom,—folly oft is wise; And wisdom, if the mass be not kept cool, Mothers, and is the father of, a fool.
Be virtuous and be happy: good! but, stop,— They sow the seed who never reap the crop; For virtue oft, which men so much exact, Like ancient china, is more precious crack'd; And happiness, forsooth, not over-nice, Sometimes enjoys a pot and pipe with vice.
Get rich; 'tis well for mind and body's health: But never, never be the slave of wealth. The gain of riches is the spirit's loss; And, oh! my son, remember gold is dross.
Be honest,—not as fools or bigots rave; Your honest man is often half a knave. Let Justice guide you; but still bear in mind The goddess may mislead,—for she is blind.
Hygeia's dictates let me now declare, For health must be your most especial care. Rise early, but beware the matin chill; 'Tis fresh, but fatal,—healthy, but may kill: Nor leave thy couch, nor break the bonds of sleep, Till morning's beams from out the ocean leap; Lest, crawling, groping, stumbling on the stair, Your head descend, your heels aspire in air; As down the flight your body swiftly steals, Useless to know your head has sav'd your heels, Prone on your face with dislocated neck, You find that slumber which you sought to check.
Early to bed, but not till nature call. Be moderate at meals, nor drink at all, Save when with friends you toast the faithful lass, And raise the sparkling, oft-repeated glass; Then, graver cares and worthless scruples sunk, Drink with the best, my son,—but ne'er get drunk.
Bathe in cold water: cautious, and yet bold, Dive,—but the water must not be too cold: And still take care lest, as you gaily swim, Cramp should distort and dislocate each limb. When such the case, howe'er thy fancy urge, Postpone the bracing pastime, and emerge. Dangers on land as well as water teem, But now the bank is safer than the stream.
Say you should chance be ill (for, after all, Men are but men on this terrestrial ball); Should sickness with her frightful train invade, Lose not a moment, but apply for aid.— Yet fancy oft, imagined symptoms sees, And nervous megrim simulates disease.— Lo! at our call—the cry of coward fear— A chemist and a cane-sucker appear: The one, tough roots from earth's intestines dug, Pounds with strong arm, dissolves the nauseous drug; The other, gazing with a portentous air, Surveys the foolish tongue that call'd him there; To dulcet tones that breath deceptive calm, Your cash expires in his diurnal palm, And, sick of physic you were forced to swill, Long-labell'd phials indicate the bill.
As learning's bridge progresses arch by arch, So men, by gradual intellectual march, From savages to citizens advance.— Then gentlemen are taught to fence and dance; Whilst gay professors, with imposing show, Present the violin, and hand the bow.
Dance gracefully, and move with perfect ease, Nor bend, nor keep inflexible, the knees; Crawl not, nor with your head the ceiling touch— That were to move too little; this too much.
When first to Music's study you would come, In, and like charity, begin at home: For links of harmony you weave in vain, Whene'er you outrage ears you should enchain. Some have I known, with their vile sharps and flats, Whose fatal cat-gut wrought the death of cats; Yea, a swift doom the very strings provide, Their disembowell'd feline sires supplied!
Fencing's a noble exercise; but thence Flow dangers, may be told without offence. Still scrutinize, at your gymnastic toil, The button of your adversary's foil, Lest you strike off, at active carte and tierce, That useful stay to tools which else will pierce; And all too late you feel, consign'd to Styx, Your life not worth the button you unfix.
Swift let me call you to the sylvan grove, Where nightingales and blackbirds sing of love. Should love assail you, as it will, no doubt, Nor rudely fan the flame, nor blow it out: Sometimes, when smother'd, it the stronger grows; And sometimes, when you stir it, out it goes. Close in your breast a heart for beauty keep, Yet ne'er imagine beauty but skin-deep: Beauty is oft—a fact we must deplore— As deep as Garrick, and a great deal more.
Let not your choice too short or tall appear, No hole her mouth, or slit from ear to ear; And, though 'tis well in daily life to greet The man who struggles to make both ends meet, Yet sure the task can no great triumph win, Accomplish'd by a lady's nose and chin. Yet I, perchance, my pen and paper waste; These the exactions of an erring taste.
But let your wife be modest, and yet free; Coy, but not bashful; active as the bee; And yet unlike that bee of busy wing, That "proffers honey, and yet bears a sting;" Not sad, but thoughtful; pensive, but not glum; Grave without gloom; and silent, but not dumb; Merry when mirth's in season, and yet sad When nought akin to pleasure's to be had. In all that you possess still let her share, Yet wear no vestments you yourself should wear.
And for yourself,—since now must I conclude,— Be courteous, yet close; and plain, not rude; Open, but strict; and though reserv'd, yet frank; Treat all alike, yet pay respect to rank; Be dubious, e'en when reason would entice, And ne'er take unsolicited advice. So may my precepts sink into thy mind, And make the wisdom which thou canst not find; Until at length, so vast thy mental height, The world, beholding thee, shall take a sight; And men, in want of words to set thee higher, Shall with one voice cry "Walker!" and retire.


Summer is in full force for me but the lines between summer vacation and school are very blurred. Anyone else find this to be true? My brain is filled with reflection, summer reading, and preparations for the upcoming year. I am currently reading Creating Cultures of Thinking, Reading Reflex, Summer Reading, and Small Group Reading Instruction (by Beverly Tyner). All of these books are bringing about some new learning for me and helping me to reflect on old and current practices.
As I read Beverly Tyner's book on a differentiated teaching model for small group, I started thinking how different my current reading groups are to the ones I conducted when I first started teaching. This reflection led me to realize that there were quite a number of things I did THEN that I would not do NOW.
I remember my small group phonics lessons lasted FOREVER! The efficient, quick, systematic lesson would be all planned out. Materials would be ready. And the kids just did not master the skill to the level I thought they should. So what would I do? Spend more time on it. And where did this time come? It would get stolen from the actual reading of book. This was not time well spent. They needed to be reading.
My solution: I started setting a timer for myself. The phonics lesson would end when the timer went off and we would just revisit the skill the next day.
There have been a few years in my career where I was very unclear about the books that I needed to use in my guided reading groups. We have had some basal reader books and I have had some intervention program books. But looking back, I know these books did not always match the reading level of the student. I now know that these are tools within my toolbox but the need of my student must come before the resources in front of me.
My solution: I search for the instructional level text that will continue to push that group of learners. Sometimes this is a book from the leveled book room, a basal guided reading book, a decodable reader, a passage, or a poem.
The districts that I have worked in have never had a set group of sight words that need to be mastered by each grade level; therefore, I used the words from the basal program or intervention program that were recommended. This did not work out well for me. The gaps were clear and students were at such varying levels of sight word mastery.
My solution: My building created a document combining many sight words lists. We can pre-assess our students and support them on a more individual basis. No more gaps (hopefully).
As I have come to understand reading, learning to read, and the little young brains that I work with, my practices have changed and evolved. I like the routine that I have right now. But Ron Ritchhart explains that, "...some might argue that understanding can never be fully complete and absolute." I know for certain that my routine and practices will change as my understanding continues to grow.
what a great post, Em! I love how you told where you made a mistake and gave the solution. Those timers are crucial in guided reading. My mentee was using them for her conferring minutes, too, so she could make herself accountable to reading with all kids in the group!
Michelle! What a great idea. I have not thought about a timer for conferencing. I think this would be so helpful because it can be so hard to get through all the kids that I need to meet with. Thank you!
Thanks so much!! Oh my goodness!! I hear ya! MIni lessons can so easily turn into long lessons!!
Sight words drive me nutty! Our reading curriculum has a list that I don't like (words like "oh") because it doesn't make my kiddos readers. I give them the required ones, but supplement with words they need. HeidiSongs has been such a blessing in this regard. I've had mini lessons get away from me too, especially with my lower groups. We use the timer many times throughout the day, so this would be helpful.
Great post, Em ! I have to say that I'm learn to allow myself not to direct teach one day a week. Instead, I let students bring a favorite book from their classroom for fluency practice. They love it and I learn a lot about their learning in return. I user sight words as my student goal for grades 1-3 this year and was happy to see them pass it at 85% mastery.,.fluency shows up again !


A man has been sentenced to nine years in jail by a Virginia judge for sending millions of junk emails, or "spamming".
Jeremy Jaynes, 30, is the first person in the US to get a prison term under a spam law. He is said to have been the world's eighth most prolific spammer.
By selling sham products and services advertised in his messages, he earned up to $750,000 (£398,000) per month.
Jaynes has appealed, and the court has put off the start of his prison term because the new law raises questions.
"It was not just sending bulk emails, he was falsifying the routing information, disguising the origin," said prosecutor Lisa Hicks Thomas.
"The end user couldn't say: don't send this to me," she added.
Ms Thomas said she was pleased with the ruling and hoped it would be upheld.
Jaynes was operating through an America Online (AOL) server in Loudoun County, where the world's largest Internet services provider is based, and is believed to have sent some 10m unwanted emails a day.
Products advertised in his emails included a "Fed-Ex refund processor" which he claimed would have allowed people to earn $75 an hour by working from home.
Jaynes, who is from North Carolina, will appeal on the grounds that he has been charged as an out-of-state resident under a Virginia law that has only just come into effect.
His sentence is the harshest punishment handed down so far for junk emailing in the US, and appears to be a strong signal that authorities will not tolerate the spamming business.
Jaynes has pledged that regardless of the final outcome of his trial, he will never again be involved in what he called the "email marketing business".
It is believed that 70% of all emails are spam.


Apple working on USB 3.0 support for iOS Lightning connector?
Apple's new Lightning connector currently doesn't transfer data at USB 3.0 speeds, despite the belief that it is able to support it. A new listing on Apple's Jobs site suggests that the company is working to bring full USB 3.0 support for its iOS devices soon.
The listing, posted on 15 February, reveals that Apple is seeking a Senior Software Quality Engineer to join the USB Connectivity Compliance team to help lead testing efforts on iOS and iPod product lines.
The successful candidate will have knowledge of high-speed bus device testing USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, and will have understanding of USB interconnect at both hardware and software levels.
Among the new employee's responsibilities will be the task of working alongside hardware and software development teams on new products and product launches, as well as existing issues.
Apple's newest iMacs and MacBooks feature USB 3 ports, so it seems likely that the company is considering brining the faster transfer speeds to its mobile devices in the near future.
Last week, Apple launched a shorter Lightning to USB cable, alongside a minor update to its In-Ear Headphones.
This week, a separate job listing on Apple's Jobs site added evidence to the speculation that the company is planning to launch a more advanced version of its Apple TV set-top box, as it revealed that the company is seeking a Software Engineering Manager to "help bring the Apple experience to the Living Room."


Step 1: Melt the butter in a deep frypan over medium-low heat. Add the bacon and cook until just starting to crisp. Add the pine nuts and cook, stirring, for a further minute or until they start to brown.
Step 2: In a bowl big enough to hold the cooked pasta, whisk together the eggs, cream, garlic and parmesan. Add bacon and pine nuts, and season with salt and pepper.
Step 3: Cook the pasta according to packet instructions, then drain well. Immediately add the hot pasta to the egg mixture and toss for 1 minute, allowing the heat from the pasta to cook the sauce. Stir through the turkey and parsley, and serve topped with extra parmesan and parsley.


The narrative structure of Great Expectations can be described in three different ways.
when the novel was first published as a book, it appeared in these three volumes.
The earliest readers of Great Expectations would have received it in weekly numbers, published in Dickens' own journal All the Year Round.
Dickens also had to bear in mind that he must end each instalment on a note that would make his readers eager to buy the next issue.
For a novel of this length, this means of composition and publication required considerable effort and self-discipline on Dickens' part – but he was well used to working under pressure of time and at some points in his life he was writing two novels at once, besides editing magazines.
In the early years of his career Dickens effectively invented a new method of publishing novels in separate monthly or weekly parts, followed by volume publication as the serialization ended.
It is often said – usually by people who have not read many of his novels – that serialization had a damaging effect on Dickens' work, and that he was driven into various kinds of stereotyping and overuse of coincidence to resolve his plots.
when his plots are closely examined, they contain fewer improbabilities than is sometime suggested.
Think about the plot of Great Expectations.
To what extent does it depend on coincidence?
How would you defend Dickens' portrayal of, say, Mr. Wemmick or Matthew Pocket against the charge that they are caricatures?
Analyse its structure and content in relation to the novel's plot, characters and themes.
What kind of a climax does it have?
Mr. Dickens has tried another experiment. The periodical which he conducts is addressed to a much higher class of readers than any which the penny journals would reach, and he has spread before them novel after novel specially adapted to their tastes … Altogether, his success was so great as to warrant the conclusion … that the weekly form of publication is not incompatible with a very high order of fiction.
The instalment or volume structure of Great Expectations were most evident to Dickens' earliest readers, and many modern editions of the novel (see also Resources and further reading: Booklist) retain or indicate these divisions.
reading the novel only with the volumes or the original instalments in mind may obscure other kinds of unit in the structure and development of the plot, such as the period of Pip's regular visits to Satis House, Pip and Herbert's life in London, or the plan for Magwitch's escape.


How to Optimize Mobile Marketing for Brick and Mortar Businesses?
If you have a local business that is online as well as offline, you may think that mobile marketing and web design are the domains of e-commerce firms.
After all, your 1st and foremost objective are to urge customers to purchase goods and services from your brick-and-mortar store.
But, even if you do not sell any goods or services online, then also local mobile marketing is important for your business, and you should still build a mobile marketing optimized website for reaching out to a huge no of people and make them your customers.
In the recent analysis, approximately seven in ten Americans currently have a smartphone, and the majority of these smartphone users have used their mobile devices to search out data regarding the local businesses.
You might have even done this yourself either using your phone to find a decent restaurant near your workplace or looking for bike repair shops after getting your tire punctured on the way.
As you can easily understand from your own mobile search experiences, those that search for local business data on their devices are usually intended to require any kind of follow-up action.
In fact, a study found that fifty-fifths of mobile-influenced retail conversions occur in an hour of the first search.
Your website is often a strong tool in getting clients through the door.
But, a poorly designed website will produce a nasty 1st impression, and if mobile users struggle to search out the data they are trying to find on your website, they will possibly go with your competitor website in which they can find their desired content easily.
By implementing mobile marketing tactics in your retail or hospitality business, you are able to ensure that your possible clients receive the correct 1st impression and become motivated to visit your brick and mortar store.
These are a number of tips to enhance your local mobile marketing for brick and mortar businesses.
There are 2 ways in which customers can search out a business on their mobile: either by opening a web browser and then heading to a mobile website or by installing and opening an app.
In most cases, a mobile website is your best bet as it is easier to make, and most of the mobile phones users say they like obtaining local business data from a website instead of an app.
But, an app would possibly be more preferred if you can use it to give further advantages to your clients with it.
For instance, you may use an app to send push notifications to customers regarding the most recent discounts and specials that are there at your store.
Responsive design may be a common option while optimizing a site for a mobile device as it permits web content to adjust in any screen size.
If you are using or planning to use responsive design for your website, perform your own customer experience test by going through the website on your mobile phone and ensuring all pages are absolutely responsive and straightforward to navigate.
And in case you have a restaurant or cafe, ensure that the mobile users are able to have a look at your menu without downloading a huge PDF.
Because of comparatively massive file size, PDFs typically download in a very steady manner on mobile devices, which might be frustrating for mobile users.
So, they may not waste so much of time and mobile data in downloading the PDF’s.
The website should not crash when many people try to access it.
When customers go through your website, they are possibly searching for some essential data.
In a mobile marketing survey, it was found that a physical address is the most typically searched piece of data regarding your business, followed by directions and the exact distance from their location, working hours, and your contact details.
You need to ensure that this data is quickly accessible on your mobile site and your clients do not need to waste time in scrolling or navigating through several pages to search out what require.
Business name, address and contact no. must be there across all pages, with a consistent format (this is very essential for search engine indexing and also making it simple for individuals to search out key information).
If you are competing with online retailers, use your mobile marketing to persuade internet users that visiting your physical location is really worthwhile.
Conspicuously show special discounts or deals that buyers cannot get online, or highlight further advantages related to going to a brick-and-mortar location.
As an instance, if you have a running attire store, write a website copy which will tell in detail how customers will check shoes by running on your treadmills that they wish to buy and get the right fit with the assistance of a running footwear expert.
Your proposed deals and offers should appeal to your customers and attract them to your store by showing them the additional benefits of the schemes going on.
You also need to make sure that your dealer should be different from the several other deals in the market and much more eye-catching which can grab the attention of the customer.
Along with optimizing your website such that it appears amazing on all screen sizes, you will additionally have to target technical and on-page SEO so that the local customers will be able to find your website once they enter relevant search terms on their mobile.
Optimize the copy with location-based keywords.
Ensure that you have claimed and filled out your listing in online business directories.
Encourage your clients to share their feedback on review sites so that more people can see the popularity and benefits and can become your potential customer.
Create local content that's relevant to your business, like a local guide or list of forthcoming local events.
Ensure that your landing pages are optimized with location data.
These strategies offer a high-level summary of what goes into a solid mobile marketing strategy for local retail and hospitality businesses.
If you own a Brick and Mortar Businesses, these are the ways in which you can optimize Mobile Marketing for promoting it to earn huge profits along with ensuring customer satisfaction.
Mobile marketing is multi-channel online marketing technique focused at reaching a specific audience on their smart phone, tablets, or any other related devices through websites. CoreApps Tech is defining the technology with their in-comparative experience and vast knowledge of the ever developing digital industry. We have created some of the most challenging mobile apps and websites & also have designed the marketing strategies for various dynamic fields. Our experience allows us to move forward with forthcoming business ideas and to create an ecosystem which lets you breath in techno friendly air.


There is no error in this sentence. Though it may be tempting to think of "amongst" instead of "among," they are (usually) grammatically interchangeable. Because the comparison is between more than two people (three, in this case), the superlative "best" is correct, and the word "who" is the correct pronoun.
This sentence is grammatically sound, and thus features no error. "Either" is followed by an "or," as it should be (true also of "neither" and "nor"), and "with" is the right word for success, as opposed to, say, "preoccupation in success" or "preoccupation on success."
The library, which is made almost entirely of redwood, was built before redwood trees were protected.
This sentence is correct as written.
The atonal chords and pounding rhythms of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring provoked riots among the audience the first time the piece was performed.
While she had to admit that swimming across the English Channel would be a worthy achievement, Karen decided that climbing Mount Everest would be a more impressive life goal.
The United States has been a country of immigrants since its foundation. This is still true today. The United States allows more people to immigrate to it then any other country. This stream of immigration have resulted in an extremely diverse population with many different cultures and languages. As most public schools in the United States provide a monolingual education, immigrant parents are often unsure of whether or not they should teach their children their heritage language.
There are many myths surrounding the idea of bilingual education that prevent its widespread implementation in public schools. However, bilingual education has actually been shown to produce higher achievements in both languages. As well as enhance problem solving and critical thinking skills. Because some public school systems have successfully implemented bilingual education, there are still enormous difficulties in terms of resources and support from the U.S. Board of Education.
Which of the underlined words is used incorrectly?
All of the underlined words are used correctly.
"Because" is used incorrectly in the context of the sentence it appears in. "Because" is used to discuss two ideas that are linked by a relationship of cause and effect. However, in the sentence it appears in, the two ideas ("some public school systems have successfully implemented bilingual education" and "there are still enormous difficulties in terms of resources and support from the U.S. Board of Education") are not related to each other as cause and effect, but rather in despite of the first, the second is still true. So, a word such as "although" should be used in place of "because."
Which of the underlined words needs to be modified?
"Then" is an adverb dealing with time, but "than" is used for comparisons. In this case, "than" should be used, because the amount of imigration allowed by the United States is being compared to that of any other country. So, "then" is the underlined word that needs to be modified.
Swift's style was well suited to his thoughts, which are never subtilised by nice disquisitions, decorated by sparkling conceits, elevated by ambitious sentences, or variegated by far-sought learning. He pays no court to the passions; he excites neither surprise nor admiration; he always understands himself, and his readers always understand him: the pursuer of Swift wants little previous knowledge; it will be sufficient that he is acquainted with common words and common things; he is neither required to mount elevations nor to explore profundities; his passage is always on a level, along solid ground, without asperities, without obstruction.
It is unlikely that a reader of Swift would be called his "pursuer," but the reader might be called a "peruser."
In Swift's works, he has given very different specimens both of sentiment and expression. His Tale of a Tub has little resemblance to his other pieces. It executes a vehemence and rapidity of mind, a copiousness of images, and vivacity of diction, such as he afterwards never possessed, or never exerted. It is of a mode so distinct and peculiar, that it must be considered by itself; what is true of that, is not true of any thing else which he has written.
A work would not "execute a vehemence and rapidity of mind," but it might "express" these features.
In Swift's other works is found an equable tenor of easy language, which rather trickles than flows. His delight was in simplicity. That he has in his works no metaphor, as has been said, is not true; but his few metaphors seem to be received rather by necessity than choice. He studied purity; and though perhaps all his scriptures are not exact, yet it is not often that solecisms can be found; and whoever depends on his authority may generally conclude himself safe. His sentences are never too much dilated or contracted; and it will not be easy to find any embarrassment in the complication of his clauses, any inconsequence in his connections, or abruptness in his transitions.
The word "scriptures" makes no sense in this context; the writer originally used the similar-sounding word "strictures" here.


Does the property have extra fees for parking and pets? Depending on your location, these fees will vary greatly. Garage parking is the most expensive, so you should avoid complexes with garages. You should also ask whether the cost of utilities is shared or you have to pay your bill individually.
If you use water conservatively, you do not want to pay utilities for people who take hour-long showers. You should also check whether the property offers preferred employer or military discounts. You need to answer these questions ahead of time to save money.
Higher and lower floor units are the most expensive. People love top floors for their great views and bottom floors for their convenience. If you can settle for a mediocre view and take the stairs, you will end up saving money.
You should think about committing to an apartment that needs repairs if you want a lower rate. If the apartment only needs a fresh coat of paint, you can paint it yourself and save money in the long term. However, if you come across an apartment that needs a major makeover, you could negotiate for a much lower rate.
Depending on your negotiating skills, you can start at a low rent and be impervious to hikes in the coming years.
When looking for apartments on online sites such as https://theurbanavenue.com/dallas-apartments/uptown-dallas/, you should consider newer complexes. You should not overlook new apartments because they seem expensive. In fact, new properties tend to offer tenants the first month rent-free. Depending on your budget, such perks can make the apartment affordable for you.
To afford a costly apartment, you might have to share it with others. It is easier to afford an apartment on a combined income than on a single income. With a roommate, you will be able to make significant savings and spend the money for something else.
Rent prices go up on a daily basis. If you find a suitable apartment at an affordable price, you should express your interest by telling the leasing agent how serious you are. You can even fill out the application immediately to reserve the apartment unit.
As soon as you find the right fit, you should take a leap. If you choose to wait for a better apartment, your dream unit will find a new owner.
The number of available units increases during popular moving times and this drives the rate of rent up. Are there universities near the place you want to live? You also need to consider how often the weather changes.
Places close to colleges experience a surge in renters between semesters. You should also consider moving during rough weather because people avoid moving during such times. You will get a better deal on rent during off-seasons. For this reason, you should consider moving during the winter, because most people will not even consider moving in the winter.
Most people do not enjoy the process of apartment hunting but the above tips will help you to find an affordable apartment easily. You should also consider using a rental listing site if you want to find an apartment that will suit your needs.


Machine learning is a very broad category. In fact I'm fairly certain that recursion is largely considered to fall under that umbrella.
But to get to the bottom of your question, you can think about it like this: a recursion model will attempt to know every possible state and solution to a problem. Show the model any given chess board and it will be able to look into its memory, consider all possible next moves, and choose one that yields the most probable path to victory.
It seems pretty straight forward, that's what you would want a chess playing algorithm to do. The problem is that chess is a game with a lot of entropy (complexity) and so it's very inefficient to have the machine remember all possible game states. What would be better is if the algorithm could generalize, taking one chess board configuration from its memory and learning a lesson from it that it can apply to different scenarios.
Machine learning is a very broad category. In fact I'm fairly certain that recursion is largely considered to fall under that umbrella. But to get to the bottom of your question, you can think about it like this: a recursion model will attempt to know every possible state and solution to a problem.
Imagine you were playing a game of tic-tac-toe and I gave you a book with 5800 pages. Each page had one possible state of the game and the corresponding best move. Before each move you can look up the answer in the book. That is a simplified explanation of recursion.
Now imagine instead that each page of the book had strategies, patterns you can recognize that apply to many different situation. The book could be so much less than 5800 pages and would still be just as effective! That is basically modern machine learning, the model can generalize strategies.
Wth a game like chess and go there are way more than 5800 possible moves so it is very important we get that page count down, our computers can only remember so much!


Unless the show in reference is called Grey's Anatomy or Game Of Thrones — aka, a show where characters' lives are perpetually at risk of getting snuffed out — it's a total shock when a series' writers decides to kill off one of the most major characters. It certainly was a shock when The O.C. took a main character's life, after spending three seasons building the lives and relationships of four Newport Beach teens. The series followed Seth, Summer, Ryan and Marissa as they waded through the drama of their upper-class lives and made one terrible decision after another. That said, it was still a huge surprise that the show's queen of bad decisions, Marissa, didn't actually live long enough to see the series through. Marissa died in the Season 3 finale of The O.C. in the arms of her on-again/off-again love Ryan, in a moment that shocked fans everywhere. (Well, it would have, had Mischa Barton not announced Marissa's death on Access Hollywood prior to the episode airing.) Marissa's tragic demise was one of the most iconic moments from The O.C., which should make fans wonder: What if it never happened at all?
Obviously, The O.C. — or at least, the last season of The O.C. — would have been a completely different show. That's because Marissa's death was a huge turning point for all of the characters: who would they be in Marissa never died in that car accident?
Here are just a few major things that would have went down differently.
Summer was devastated when Marissa died, but it was more than just grief she was dealing with: she also lost a piece of her identity. Being Coop's BFF was an integral part of who she was, and without Marissa, she felt distanced from the carefree California girl she once was. When she went to Brown, she channeled all of that energy into environmental causes — but had Marissa survived, it might not have worked out like that. Instead, Summer might have been content pursuing passions more akin to the high school version of Summer, like fashion.
Ryan eventually did go to UC Berkeley, and he achieved his dream of becoming an architect. However, after Marissa died, Ryan traded in his dorm room for a storage closet in a bar, determined to self-destruct. Had Marissa lived, Ryan likely would have gone to Berkeley immediately after graduating from Newport — and perhaps Marissa would have joined him.
Taylor was a fairly minor side character in the earlier seasons of The O.C. — but when Marissa died, Taylor took over as both Ryan's love interest and Summer's BFF. Had Marissa stuck around Newport, it's likely that Taylor would have gone to Paris and popped up only on occasion.
Well, this one is just obvious. Maaaaybe Taylor could have wiggled her way into a bridesmaid role?
Marissa's letter to Ryan, which Julie found after Marissa's death, hinted that there could be a possible future for them when both were older and wiser. Unfortunately, Marissa didn't get to find that out — but had she lived, it's likely that she and Ryan would have ultimately been endgame. Would a joint wedding with Seth and Summer be a little too weird? Err, maybe, but I can still dream.
Rewatching Season 4 of The O.C. is tough for Ryan fans, if only because Ryan was at his lowest point ever. Had Marissa lived, Ryan would have dealt with his fair share of drama, but the deep depression he sank into would have been avoided completely.
Just because I could stare at Cam Gigandet forever doesn't mean that I wanted yet another destructive male who was obsessed with Marissa to be an integral part of the plot. Had Volchok not ultimately been the instrument of Marissa's death, the show might have cooled it on his plot points... something I, personally, would have been eternally grateful for.
Alas, all we have left is to imagine what The O.C. would have been with a little more Marissa. At least she'll live on in reruns.


Mr Priebus told Mr Trump that the interviewers were "courteous and professional" but did not go into specifics of what they asked, according to the sources.
Then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus listens at right as President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on Air Force One while traveling to Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Fla., Friday, Feb. 3, 2017.
Mueller, who was hired after Comey's firing, is also probing whether Trump obstructed justice when he terminated Comey.
Mr Comey claimed that the president had asked for his loyalty and to end the inquiries into his former national security adviser Michael Flynn shortly before he was sacked.
Priebus shared no details beyond saying the Special Counsel's team were courteous and professional.
The president "has been eager to see the investigation wrap up as quickly as possible, describing it as a distraction that is hurting the country", the Journal reported.
President Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with Moscow, long slamming Mueller's investigation as a "witch hunt".
"You can't put a timeline on these things", Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor, told the Journal. One deadline they floated was 60 days after said meeting, the source told the Journal.
Legal experts tell the Times the conversations probably don't meet the definition of witness tampering, but the paper notes that Trump appears to be ignoring advice from his lawyers that he should avoid appearing to interfere with Mueller's investigation into Russia's tampering with the 2016 United States presidential election.
Comey was sacked by President Trump during his investigation of possible Russian collusion with the Republican's presidential campaign.


The first two formulas described below were already mentioned in the course, but they tend to pop up again in this part of the course, since there is a lot of talk about distance and magnitudes.
Parallax - the apparent shifting of stars caused by the motion of the Earth around the Sun.
1. A star is observed to have a parallax shift of .029 milli-arcseconds. How far away is the star?
Magnitude - Distance Formula - used to give the relationship between the apparent magnitude, the absolute magnitude and the distance of objects.
The formula use the Log function. This is the base-10 log function. Many calculators also have what's called a Natural Log, usually abbreviated Ln - don't use this. When using this formula, you have to remember the order of multiplying things and adding/subtracting things. Multiplication always is before addition or subtraction.
To get values for d, you'll need to use the "un-log" function, which is 10x, or "10 to the power of a number".
Also be careful about the signs in this formula (+/-) and make sure you remember to treat them properly.
1. A Cepheid has an apparent magnitude of +15.2. For a star with its pulsation period it should have an absolute magnitude of -4.2. How far away is it?
2. A type II supernova just went off in the Andromeda galaxy. These supernova usually reach an absolute magnitude of around -17 when they are their brightest. The Andromeda galaxy is 730,000 pc away. How bright will the supernova be in the night sky (or what is its apparent magnitude)?
Kepler's Third Law for Galaxy Masses - Just like the previous version of Kepler's third law, but here the value for "k" is defined as the mass within a certain distance from the center of the galaxy ("a" in the formula). This formula is really only useful for estimating the mass of a galaxy that has organized motion, like our Milky Way.
The only complication with this formula is that the units for "a" and "P" are rather inconvenient for measuring distances within a galaxy. They are just too small! But that's the way it works.
1. If the outermost part of a galaxy is 16 kpc from the center and it takes 350 million years for that part of the galaxy to orbit around once, how much mass is contained within that galaxy?
Solution: Before you can do anything, you need to convert the distance (16 kpc) into AU. 1 pc = 206265 AU, so multiply this with 16,000 (since a kpc = 1000 pc) to get the distance in AU.
a = 16,000 x 206265 = 3.3 x 109 AU.


You will be given a noun in the nominative form and asked to provide a declined form, with a prepositional cue for context. You can type your answer in the blank, and click the CHECK ANSWER button to verify, or the SHOW ANSWER button below to display the answer. Click the NEXT WORD button to get a new word. The text box also supports keyboard shortcuts - after typing your answer, hit ENTER to check it. CTRL-ENTER will show the answer, and SHIFT-ENTER will get a new word.
The Options buttons at the botton of the table allow you to customize the flashcard to show specific cases, number, and genders, as well as the definite article. Yellow means checked, gray is unchecked. Def Art is a 3-way button; when it is dark-yellow, with bold/underlined text, you will only be prompted for forms with the definite article. Choose between the beginner database (a subset of about 1,000 words with definitions) or the expanded database (a much larger subset of the DMII database with about 185,000 nouns, 7,400 verbs, and 26,000 adjectives - although most without definitions).


Even years after Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao fought in the most commercially successful pay-per-view fight in boxing history, questions about a rematch are still being asked on a regular basis.
Pacquiao, who lost that fight against Mayweather in 2015, had always wanted a rematch, but the unbeaten Mayweather's desire for a rematch has always been inconsistent. Mayweather claims he is currently retired after his boxing match against Conor McGregor, but after he and Pacquiao met in Tokyo this past September, the idea of another fight between two seemed stronger than at any other point in the last two years.
But before Pacquiao can even think about fighting Mayweather once more, he first must successfully defend his WBA "Regular" welterweight title against Adrien Broner on January 19. Pacquiao recently participated in a conference call and was asked by Fightful whether or not the constant chatter of Mayweather vs. Pacquiao 2 has affected him as he prepares for Broner.
"You cannot avoid the people that will ask if there's a rematch with Floyd Mayweather because I think they have a big question mark in their mind and also in their heart about that what happened in that fight. I'm just answering them that I don't have a plan yet. I'm very focused on this fight January 19 against Adrien Broner because Broner is a former champion and he's the kind of fighter that you cannot underestimate or take him lightly," Pacquiao said.
Although Pacquiao may be up for a rematch, Mayweather's thoughts are a little unclear. After the meeting in Tokyo, Mayweather fought an exhibition bout against Japanese kickboxing star Tenshin Nasukawa at the Rizin 14 show. After the exhibition, however, Mayweather insisted that he is still retired.
Fightful will have a live results page for the fight between Pacquiao and Broner, which will headline a pay-per-view from the MGM Grand Garden Arena. You can listen to Pacquiao talking to Fightful in the video at the top of the page.