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GIFs are animated images or video snippets which usually depict a silly situation.
Modern genetics partially support both the claims of the Samaritans and the account in the Hebrew Bible (and Talmud), suggesting that the genealogy of the Samaritans lies in some combination of these two accounts.
In Modern Hebrew, the Samaritans are called Shomronim, which would appear to simply mean "inhabitants of Samaria". That the etymology of the Samaritans' ethnonym in Samaritan Hebrew is derived from "Guardians/Keepers/Watchers [of the Law/Torah]", as opposed to Samaritans being named after the region of Samaria, has in history been supported by a number of Christian Church fathers, including Epiphanius of Salamis in the Panarion, Jerome and Eusebius in the Chronicon and Origen in The Commentary on Saint John's Gospel, and in some Talmudic commentary of Tanhuma on Genesis 31, and Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer 38, p. According to Samaritan tradition, Mount Gerizim was the original Holy Place of the Israelites from the time that Joshua conquered Canaan and the tribes of Israel settled the land.In its account, after Joshua's death, Eli the priest left the Tabernacle which Moses erected in the desert and established on Mount Gerizim and built another one under his own rule in the hills of Shiloh.Abu l-Fath, who in the 14th century wrote a major work of Samaritan history, comments on Samaritan origins as follows: A terrible civil war broke out between Eli son of Yafni, of the line of Ithamar, and the sons of Pincus (Phinehas), because Eli son of Yafni resolved to usurp the High Priesthood from the descendants of Pincus. He was 50 years old, endowed with wealth and in charge of the treasury of the Children of Israel. He offered a sacrifice on the altar, but without salt, as if he were inattentive.There is conflict over the etymology of the name for the Samaritans in Hebrew, stemming from the fact that they are referred to differently in different dialects of Hebrew.This has accompanied controversy over whether the Samaritans are named after the geographic area of Samaria (the northern part of what is now globally known as the West Bank), or whether the area received its name from the group.The Samaritans believe that Mount Gerizim was the original Holy Place of Israel from the time that Joshua conquered Canaan.The major issue between Jews and Samaritans has always been the location of the Chosen Place to worship God: Mount Zion in Jerusalem according to the Jewish faith or Mount Gerizim according to the Samaritan faith.
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0.650467 |
WHO REIGNS IN THE RAIN?
The only guaranteed way to ensure an F1 race is not a procession is for the heavens to open. Driving talent, rather than car performance, comes to the fore in the wet. Get to know which drivers go well in the wet and you could pull off a big-priced shock.
Olivier Panis was 300-1 when he survived a treacherous Monaco Grand Prix in 1996, when only four drivers completed the course, and the chaos that rain can bring is the ideal opportunity to back a big-priced driver to find a way through the field courtesy of multiple pitstops, collisions and cars going off the circuit. Michael Schumacher is known as the Regenmeister for his prowess in the wet while Barrichello, Giancarlo Fisichella, Kimi Raikkonen and Mark Webber are similarly fearless on slippery tracks.
Betting on Formula One qualifying is an ever-changing discipline as the sport's ruling body, the FIA, is constantly tinkering with the format in an attempt to improve the show for TV viewers.
In July 2004, the sport scrapped a plan to replace the stilted one-lap format in favour of two free-for-all sessions, with a driver's aggregate time for the two used to determine grid positions. A return to the traditional 'pure' qualifying where the driver to post the fastest lap at any time in qualifying claims pole position could still happen at any time.
If it does, punters will be delighted to again know that all cars will be running the same fuel load in qualifying again (ie, very little). The 2004 rules force teams to qualify using the fuel they intend to start the race with.
Note that the main qualifying market is now usually called fastest qualifier rather than the traditional pole position. This is due to the possibility of drivers being demoted on the grid from the position their time would otherwise have earned because they changed the engine in their car during race weekend.
The main difference in selecting a driver to back in qualifying as compared to the race is that you can completely ignore reliability. While the likelihood of a temperamental engine giving up the ghost in a cloud of smoke is a major consideration for those betting on a two-hour race, even the most problematic machine should keep going long enough to complete one flying lap.
Bear in mind that some drivers are more adept at qualifying than others. Jarno Trulli, for example, has a reputation for being a great qualifier who can often look lacklustre over a race distance. His Renault team-mate, Fernando Alonso, often plays second fiddle on a Saturday only to storm past his colleague in Sunday's race.
And Mark Webber has dragged the unreliable Jaguar to the front row of the grid at big prices before without getting a blow in over a race distance. Most firms bet win-only on qualifying, although some are beginning to come over to the concept of each-way wagering.
Qualifying match bets, both fixed and spreads, are always worth consideration. Many firms annoyingly pit team-mates against each other, which rules out the prospect of taking advantage of any of the technical issues discussed above. Focus on those matches where the contestants are from different teams and, preferably, on different tyres and you could be in business.
Sunday afternoon is the focus of the weekend but who is really worth backing once the grid order has been decided? Again, the track plays a part in determining how far down the field you should look for a winner. At places like Monaco, overtaking is impossible except off the startline and during pitstops. Take note of the positions past winners of the race have come from. Bear in mind that some cars get off the startline better than others. In 2003 and 2004 Renault were the undoubted masters of the fast start and regularly made up positions before the first corner.
Tyrewear is an important factor over a race distance and check for consistent lap times over long runs in Friday practice, when teams are usually testing out their set-up for the race. Comment on websites and in the press gives immediate feedback on drivers' thoughts about their chances and over time you will learn how to screen out the corporate speak and, by learning their personalities, evaluate the competitors' true opinions of their prospects.
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0.999737 |
The Government has said they would stop new offshore oil and gas exploration. However they have now said oil giant OMV can have an extension of time to search for more oil wells.
They are also considering changes to the law that will allow increased exploration onshore next to conservation land of Taranaki.
Send an email today to the Energy Minister Megan Woods to support the ending of all oil and gas exploration for a safe climate future.
Last year Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called climate change our generation's ‘nuclear free moment’ - a moment in history when New Zealanders stood up to global powers and said ‘we will do what we consider right’.
It’s time to walk the talk. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report calls for ‘unprecedented changes’ to avoid the world warming more than 1.5 degrees celsius above pre-industrial averages.
As part of our efforts to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to global warming we must stop looking for more oil.
🌏 strongly object to allowing new or existing onshore petroleum permit holders to access conservation land for any petroleum associated activities, including minimum impact activities.
The oil industry is using all its lobbying power to pressure our elected representatives to keep our dependence on oil and gas. We need to act to support the government to take the necessary steps to move to a clean energy today.
We have provided you with suggested text but please feel free to personalise it according to your own views or experience and why this is important to you.
Dear Megan Woods, Energy Minister, I'm writing today to support the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration. I think this is awesome because we need to act today to have a clean energy future. However I am very disappointed you have allowed oil giant OMV an extension on its exploration permit, despite the new policy. Instead of extending oil permits, the government should be investing in the clean energies of the future. The IPCC report showed clearly we need to take bold action to get off our addiction to fossil fuels. We need to move investments away from carbon emitting industries such as oil and gas and into renewables for a pollution-free energy future. This affects all of us directly, and especially young people. In a survey of people aged 12 to 24 conducted by ActionStation earlier this year, young people spoke of suffering from high levels of anxiety because of the stress and fear that unaddressed climate change induces in them. We need to end offshore and onshore exploration for oil and gas. We need to invest in renewables, working with local people and iwi to ensure a just transition. We need to move investments towards developing the clean energy sources that will ensure the health of our planet and future generations. I ask you to not allow any extensions to existing exploration permits. I also strongly object to allowing new or existing onshore petroleum permit holders to access conservation land for any petroleum associated activities, including minimum impact activities. I urge you to be bold and ban offshore and onshore oil and gas exploration now.
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0.947477 |
When the Arnie the Doughnut went behind the lanes to find Betsy, his purple bowling ball with pink sprinkles, who was missing.
Did you have any favorite lines in the book?
Arnie: "Help! I am a chocolate covered sprinkle pancake!"
Arnie says " But instead of singing 'take me out to the ball game' we'll sing 'take me out for some bowling.'"
Why did you think the book was funny?
In one part, Arnie is talking to this lady and she is ignoring him and finally he say "I'm a doughnut dog" and she says "How adorable."
Arnie because he is really mischievous. He finds mysteries and solves them.
Why do you think other children should read this?
I think other children should read this because it is funny.
KK is planning on reading the next Arnie the Doughnut adventure called Invasion of the Ufonuts. Pick up a copy of Bowling Alley Bandit (The Adventures of Arnie the Doughnut) at your local bookstore or public library.
About the guest reviewer: KK is 7 years old and in the 2nd grade. She likes gymnastics, cheeseburgers, and reading.
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0.975108 |
Adding a bike rack to your vehicle can often be one of the simplest ways to conveniently and safely transport your bike from place to place. Indeed, bike racks are designed to be attached to a particular type of vehicle while these additions can help you to move your bike from one place to another when you need it. In addition, bike racks that are stationary are also available if you want to safely store or display your bike. If you are a keen cyclist or if you like to go cycling in a variety of different locations, then you should consider purchasing a lightweight and high-quality bike rack which can be safely and conveniently attached to your vehicle. By installing the right kind of bike rack on your vehicle, you can rest assured that the interior of your vehicle will remain clean while also allowing you to safely and conveniently move this unwieldy object from place to place. However, you should also be aware that bike racks for vehicles come in a variety of different types and sizes, while they can be attached to a number of locations, including the roof or the boot of your car or to a number of other vehicles. Therefore, adding a bike rack to your vehicle gives you a number of advantages, especially the ability to move several bikes in a single journey. However, when choosing a bike rack for your car, you should consider the various factors below to make sure you make the right choice of rack for your vehicle.
One of the most important considerations that you should make before purchasing a bike rack is to determine how many bikes you wish to attach to the vehicle. Indeed, you may need to consider the stability of the bike rack which can be influenced by the amount of bikes you need to transport. Another simple tip is to check the strength of the rack as well as the convenience of its various attachments.
In addition, you should also remember that choosing a roof mounted bike rack can influence the aerodynamics of your particular vehicle, meaning that fuel efficiency may become an issue if you want to transport a large number of bikes over a significant distance. You should also consider how you will load or unload the bikes which may also have an influence on which particular type of bike rack you decide to choose.
Another significant consideration that you should think about before choosing a bike rack for your vehicle is to determine which type of rack is compatible with your vehicle. Indeed, some types of vehicles, especially sports cars may not support the attachment of a bike rack on the roof, while you should also look at your bike to make sure it can be attached safely and efficiently to the rack.
Lastly, before choosing a bike rack, you should also think about the security of the bike rack as well as the bikes that you want to attach. Indeed, the vast majority of bike racks which are available on the market are lockable which can give you peace of mind that your bikes will not be stolen if you have to leave the vehicle for any time. However, you should always make sure you attach a separate lock to make sure your bike is well protected from theft.
Therefore, in conclusion, if you are looking to purchase a bike rack for your vehicle, then you should consider these various factors while you should also search online or contact your local firm of suppliers as soon as possible for advice.
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Quantitative analysis of regional endocardial geometry dynamics from 4D cardiac CT images: endocardial tracking based on the iterative closest point with an integrated scale estimation.
Regional cardiac function analysis is important for the diagnosis and treatment planning of ischemic heart disease, but has not been sufficiently developed in the field of computed tomography (CT). Therefore, we propose a three-dimensional endocardial tracking framework for cardiac CT using local point cloud registration based on the iterative closest point with an integrated scale estimation algorithm. We also introduce regional function descriptors that express the curvature and stretching of the endocardium: Surface distortion (E) and Scaling rate (S). For a region-to-region comparison, we propose endocardial segmentation according to coronary perfusion territories defined by the Voronoi partition based on coronary distribution. Our study of 65 endocardial segments in ten subjects showed that global endocardial deformation has a positive relationship with the stroke volume index (r = 0.896 and 0.829 in E and S, respectively) and ejection fraction (r = 0.804 and 0.835), and a positive relationship with the brain natriuretic peptide level (r = 0.690 and 0.776). A positive relationship between segmental E and S (r = 0.845), a higher value of E in ischemic segments (p = 0.021) that are determined by fractional flow reserve estimated from coronary CT data, and a higher value of S in the left circumflex artery territory (p < 0.05) were also observed. The required radiation dose was 5.0 ± 0.7 mSv and the computation time was 7.2 ± 1.1 min. The result suggests that proposed endocardial deformation analysis using CT can be conducted on site and in time for the acute setting, and may be useful for the diagnosis of cardiac dysfunction or myocardial ischemia.
Should we rename low risk cancers?
Lipopolysaccharide in systemic circulation induces activation of inflammatory response and oxidative stress in cardiorenal syndrome type 1.
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0.939733 |
How should we understand the role of the body in politics? This is the central theme of Judith Butler's Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, in which she argues, contra Arendt, that often the material and social conditions of political appearance are political topics in their own right: public space, the recognition of our rights to protest, both in law and socially, as well as social provisions (for example, sustenance, healthcare) are all either required for political participation, or, where they are unavailable, can be the subject of political protest. Butler argues cogently that our bodies always represent more than our specific demands when we gather to protest: all of the things that shore up the body, as well as group interaction, are prevalent at the time of political assembly, even where they are not an overt part of our deliberations or demands. Butler starts the book by situating her thinking in terms of democracy, precarity, and neoliberalism: there is, she suggests, something about the appearance of assemblies, particularly those that are aimed at protesting precarity, or unliveable conditions, that is compounded by neoliberal discourse, given that the latter at once asks people to be independent but simultaneously moves to eliminate the institutions and conditions that make self-responsibility possible. Butler understands precarity as "that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support more than others, and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death" (33). Throughout the course of the book, Butler argues that everyone is vulnerable due to being embodied and relationally supported, but that some people are particularly problematically exposed due to their networks of support being undermined.
In chapter 1 Butler is concerned with outlining the link between her work on gender performativity and her work on precarity. Butler's main emphasis is that (gender) norms constitute boundaries of appearance, with those who perform distinctly outside of the recognized norms more likely to experience abuse and/or exclusion. However, lack of recognition in the public sphere extends beyond minority genders to many populations experiencing precarity. Because of this, Butler argues, there is a problem with Arendt's assumption that the body and its supports constitute a pre-political ground for political action. Butler criticizes Arendt's view that true agency and freedom are found only where our base needs are already met, which means any political movement aimed at fighting for survival must be understood as reactive. Nevertheless, Butler argues that Arendt does provide important insights into the notion of public and political appearance, as well as the ways in which a lack of recognition or citizenship leaves people without access to rights. How we appear to others is therefore the base upon which Butler's move from gender performativity to this wider question of public assembly rests, because the ways in which we appear publicly are not similarly distributed in terms of social norms, values, and law: a French woman choosing to wear the veil has no right to public appearance in her country, just as an undocumented worker in the US has no right to protest.
In chapter 2 Butler argues that alliances across identity are necessary, not only because, as outlined in chapter 1, conditions of precarity stretch across different social groups, but also because our political and social groups, as well as our rights, are emergent and relationally produced structures and reactions to present conditions: identity does not precede our relationships with others. When we do ally and come together as an assembly--to demonstrate--Butler reminds us that the conditions of that assembly are bodies and the street: those bodies represent all of the relational supports (which include the other people required to form a critical mass) that make that public appearance a de facto assembly: these bodies therefore "speak" as bodies that are in need of support. Butler makes a link here to what she sees as a positive in Arendt's political theory, namely the necessity for subjects to appear to one another in the political domain. However, according to Butler, Arendt's political theory presupposes the existence of a private domain that supports this public appearance, even as it disvalues the private by ignoring it. Furthermore, this raises a question about how we characterize those who are not recognized, or not accorded equal recognition, in the political sphere. If we accept that these subjects cannot be political actors, by tacitly accepting that the established spaces of political appearance are the rightful place of political action, we leave those on the outside, it seems, as doubly dismissible. However, Butler argues, when excluded groups appear on the street they are creating plural political action: they create their own mode of appearance, showing that they were never nonpolitical subjects, even where they have been excluded from the established political realm.
The third chapter takes these themes further to discuss our ethical obligations to one another, particularly to those at a distance. Butler starts with the observation that, in the media age, we are called upon to respond affectively and ethically to those who are not in proximity with us and who do not form part of our "established communities." Butler then employs Levinas and Arendt in turn to discuss this in more depth, with particular reference to Palestine and Israel. In the work of Levinas, Butler highlights but pushes back against the notion of the other as more important than us: it is not that the other has primacy, but rather that we need to understand that the other, even the remote other, is intertwined with us: "the life of the other, the life that is not our own, is also our life" (108). Understanding a distant other's life as part of our own, Butler suggests, can help us to overcome the dichotomy between a communitarian stance that ethical obligations pertain only to those closest to us (dismissed as exclusionary) and a Kantian/humanist stance that we have obligations to all humans, as an abstract concept (not culturally sensitive). In the work of Arendt, similarly, it is the thrown-ness of being in the world, and the unchosen character of this that necessitates ethics: since we are unable to reconcile human difference, we must find ways of living with it, and we are all bound by this fact; no group has any prior claim to superiority. Butler concludes by circling back to precarity: "My point is not to rehabilitate humanism but, rather, to struggle for a conception of ethical obligation that is grounded in precarity. No one escapes the precarious dimension of social life" (119). Interdependency, Butler reminds us, is inevitable but not always positive; thus there will always be a necessity for us to find ethical forms of cohabitation.
Chapter 4 is titled "Bodily Vulnerability, Coalitional Politics" and is a deeper look into how bodies can be understood as modes of resistance. When we understand the body as a situated body that depends on its relationships for survival, all bodies come to be viewed as vulnerable. Vulnerability is experienced differentially, however, and this raises questions about how that inequality is parsed and responded to. What we don't want, Butler argues, is to view more vulnerable or precarious bodies as essentially vulnerable--to do so risks the rise of paternalism (or colonialism) that purports to protect, rather than enfranchisement and freedom. Butler thinks there is an important political impetus to saying the body is vulnerable that avoids showing the body as ontologically one thing or another; rather, "the body exists then in an ecstatic relation to the supporting conditions it has or must demand, but this means the body never exists in an ontological mode that is distinct from its historical situation" (148). Thus when people demand relief from precarity, from living in particularly vulnerable conditions, they are making a political claim, not about what the body is, but what the body needs or should have in a specific context. When people protest, they resist particular forms of association or social structuring that undermine their ability to flourish, but this ability is not something that remains stable over time--it is always historically contingent. Butler is clear that she in no way endorses all mass assemblies as democratic: "they are neither intrinsically good or intrinsically bad; they assume differing values depending on what they are assembled for, and how that assembly works" (124). Specifically, Butler attests that those assemblies that aim at reconfiguring or protesting against existing conditions that are unequal or unliveable can be counted as examples of democracy.
The next chapter is concerned with theorizing how we should understand claims to popular sovereignty, to being "we, the people," in relation to state legitimacy. Butler is clear that a "we" is created by assembly itself, even though it may not be clear exactly what the aim of the gathering is (even to those within the group), or the aims may be contested within the group. However, Butler argues that the coming-together of bodies in the street to protest is an instantiation of a right of assembly--the right being created by the gathering, rather than by a pre-existing law bestowed by government. Such assemblies are always a particular formation of "the people," of popular sovereignty, because they bring to light that the legitimacy of government depends upon the continued support of the population. Popular sovereignty becomes visible when assemblies highlight a withdrawal of support for government. No assembly can claim to be fully representative of a population and yet "the people," or at least "a people," is created in the act of collectively resisting. In the rise and fall of such movements state legitimacy is continually tested, and thus democracy is played out. Again, this is not to say that every assembly of bodies on the street is democratic, but those demonstrations aimed at showing where a government is failing a population or group are occasions when groups rise up to be counted as "the people" and can be considered democratic.
The final chapter considers the notion of the good life, and asks "Can One Lead a Good Life in a Bad Life?" Here, Butler is concerned with Adorno's work on ethics and sociality in the context of inequality and precarity: "it makes sense to ask, which social configuration of 'life' enters into the question, how best to live?" (195). The question, Butler argues, depends upon people being able to follow the path of life that they consider valuable, which requires that the wider social conditions will be favorable to the life of their choosing. Yet, under conditions of precarity, does such a question of the good life disappear, given that there is a requirement to live day-to-day and hand-to-mouth? Butler argues that it does not--we still feel our responsibilities and ethical obligations, even under extreme conditions in which we are struggling for survival. However, going back to Arendt's conception of these struggles for survival as pre-political, Butler argues again that this view artificially disposes of the private realm and the body in favor of pushing the notion of independent, autonomous political actors. Thus, these conditions of dependency need to be part of the conversation, not because dependency is necessarily a good thing, but because it is how we find ourselves in the world and the means through which we must find a good life. According to Adorno, a bad life must be resisted: we cannot just carve out what good we can in the midst of a bad life. However, attempting the latter may be a form of resistance in itself, Butler argues, and the social movements that struggle against precarity seek to institute new forms of dependency that are less precarious and more liveable, precisely by drawing attention to bodies and their needs.
In sum, Butler's book is a highly interesting foray into theorizing plural action and assembly, both as a specific type of social formation and as something politically relevant. The book sits at a crossroads of political theory, social theory, and ethics, and manages to bring interesting perspectives to each. Butler's "notes" circle around the notions of our bodily dependency, social relationships, and infrastructure, not as inherently good or bad, but as the conditions for political action, as well as the content of it. Butler therefore seeks to show that foregrounding interdependency can lead us to form alliances across identity boundaries, as we see the conditions that affect us are echoed in the precariousness experienced by others, and we understand our obligations as shared. When people come together to protest or resist precarity, they are creating a political space that relies upon plural action, that is not universal or unanimous, but that seeks, at times haphazardly, to institute the conditions of a better life in a particular context. This positive impetus of the theory will be welcomed by many, even where readers do not fully subscribe to the underlying understanding of precarity and neoliberalism. Understanding that forms of political resistance, particularly protest and assembly, depend on how the body is located may seem like an obvious, and therefore uninteresting, thing to highlight; however, by drawing attention to the body in political and social contexts from various perspectives, the book leaves its reader with a sense of just how little attention we give to the body when we think about politics, and makes a good case for reversing this trend.
Nicola McMillan is a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Lancaster, UK where she is completing her thesis on "Difference and Deliberative Democracy." She is interested in articulating how political participation is both fostered and stymied by social difference, as well as how difference affects questions of political legitimacy. Her main research interests are in political, feminist, and continental philosophy.
"In sum, Butler's book is a highly interesting foray into theorizing plural action and assembly, both as a specific type of social formation and as something politically relevant. The book sits at a crossroads of political theory, social theory, and ethics, and manages to bring interesting perspectives to each."
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0.942369 |
In Short: According to a new report, the OnePlus 6T will ship with a dedicated ‘Night Mode’ in its camera application. This information comes from a website called ‘TrueTech’, and the site claims that the info has been provided by “an official OnePlus representative”. In any case, take this info with a grain of salt, but if it’s true, you will find a dedicated night mode in the camera app which should help boost the phone’s low light picture-taking capabilities, it should brighten up the images, and reduce noise in them. That is more or less all the info that the source shared on the matter, details regarding this new mode were not revealed, other than the fact that it will be a combination of hardware and software which will deliver better low light results, though that is understandable, as that is always the case, so it’s pretty much stating the obvious.
Background: As many of you already know, the OnePlus 6T will become official on October 30, as the company is hosting a press event in New York City. The phone will go on sale on November 6 for most regions out there, and we already have plenty of info when it comes to this smartphone. The company has confirmed that the OnePlus 6T will sport an optical in-display fingerprint scanner, while it will come with a ‘teardrop’ display notch, which will be considerably smaller than the one included in the OnePlus 6. The phone will ship with a 3,700mAh battery, according to rumors, while the company already confirmed that the device will ship with improved camera capabilities, and a “brand new UI”. OnePlus will also add some new gestures to its gesture-based navigation offering, and Android 9 Pie will ship out of the box on the device. The OnePlus 6T will include the very same processor as the OnePlus 6, we’re looking at the Snapdragon 845 64-bit octa-core SoC here, while the phone will likely ship in both 6GB and 8GB RAM variants. OnePlus’ proprietary fast charging will be included in the package, while the device will include two cameras on the back.
Impact: We have seen a dedicated night mode in a number of camera applications out there, and the latest company to make a big deal out of it was Google, as the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL come with the so-called ‘Night Sight’ mode. It remains to be seen what will OnePlus’ implementation look like, in other words, what will the company do in order to boost the performance of the OnePlus 6T’s camera in low light, but a dedicated night mode will hopefully help with that. It seems like the company is planning to improve the quality of the OnePlus 6T’s camera quite a bit compared to the OnePlus 6, though the OnePlus 6 was quite a solid camera smartphone in its own right, though it was certainly not the best out there, so it remains to be seen how will the OnePlus 6T compare to it.
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0.966817 |
Why a high IQ ain’t all it’s cracked up to be and can you help me define SQ?
In society and in our educational systems we tend to overrate IQ. To paraphrase the multiple intelligences theory of esteemed psychologist Howard Gardner, we measure how clever you are (intellectually) rather than how you are clever (which could include loads of other talents, such as fixing a car or knowing how to build rapport with people).
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0.999577 |
Brida Harper Collins UK This is the story of Brida, a beautiful young Irish girl, and her quest for knowledge. On her journey she meets a wise man who teaches her about overcoming her fears, and a woman who teaches her how to dance to the hidden music of the world. They see in her a gift, but must let her make her own voyage of discovery. As Brida seeks her destiny, she struggles to find a balance between her relationships and her desire to transform herself. A moving tale of love, passion, mystery and spirituality from the master storyteller and author of "The Alchemist".
This is the story of Brida, a beautiful young Irish girl, and her quest for knowledge. On her journey she meets a wise man who teaches her about overcoming her fears, and a woman who teaches her how to dance to the hidden music of the world. They see in her a gift, but must let her make her own voyage of discovery.
As Brida seeks her destiny, she struggles to find a balance between her relationships and her desire to transform herself.
A moving tale of love, passion, mystery and spirituality from the master storyteller and author of "The Alchemist".
–40 % Выгода 199 ₽ Алхимик 21 рец.
–40 % Выгода 120 ₽ Алеф 7 рец.
–40 % Выгода 112 ₽ Валькирии 5 рец.
–40 % Выгода 112 ₽ Пятая гора 7 рец.
–40 % Выгода 112 ₽ Дьявол и сеньорита Прим 3 рец.
Если вы обнаружили ошибку в описании книги "Brida" (автор Paulo Coelho), пишите об этом в сообщении об ошибке. Спасибо!
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0.976892 |
In short: Samsung's Galaxy S10 lineup will feature screens with a 19:9 aspect ratio that will be even taller than the existing Infinity Display panels which utilize an 18.5:9 image format, one known industry insider from China said earlier today. The shift to a slimmer aspect ratio is in line with Samsung's recent promise of a major design change set to debut with the new Android flagship family, with the upcoming handsets also being expected to deliver even slimmer bezels. While the 19:9 image format is traditionally associated with handsets that feature a display notch (and act as 18:9 devices when not accounting for the cutout), the Galaxy S10 line almost certainly won't have such an asymmetrical screen.
Background: Earlier this week, an HTML5test benchmark listing suggested Samsung is working on a 19:9 device and while its model number (SM-G405F) was initially associated with the Galaxy Xcover series or an entirely new product range, the aforementioned insider claims Samsung has a history of masking Galaxy S-series prototypes with SM-G4x0 and SM-G4x5 identifiers. The upcoming flagship lineup is rumored to consist of three models, with one of them being set to feature a QHD+ resolution of 3,040 by 1,440 pixels. Assuming the May rumor indicating at least one Galaxy S10-series model will have a pixel density of over 600 pixels per inch is true, the SM-G405F is almost certainly the smallest member of the 2019 product family whose screen diagonal isn't longer than 5.6 inches, which would amount to 600.7 PPI. At that size, the device would be one of the best solutions for mobile virtual reality applications ever created, though Samsung has been winding down its VR focus in recent years and other advantages of such a high-fidelity screen are scarce, at least as far as consumer-grade smartphones are concerned.
Impact: Assuming the SM-G405F is truly a pre-production Galaxy S10 model, Samsung appears to be set to innovate in the mobile design space once again by debuting the world's first 19:9 handset without a display notch. Despite the model number in question likely being a placeholder, it's indicative of an international device variant, i.e. one powered by a Samsung-made Exynos chip. In the case of the Galaxy S10, that silicon should be called the Exynos 9820, as several industry insiders claimed earlier this year.
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Take a look at this BBC article on an idea that is floating around now for a mission that would begin at the ISS with the assembly of a ship, which would then carry out a lunar flyby and then return to Earth. It's a great idea and one of the best ways to make the presence of the ISS a meaningful one, now that it is almost finished construction and will be funded until at least 2020. The mission is quite easy in comparison with a lot of other proposed missions such as a manned mission to an asteroid, would be the greatest distance we have been from the Earth since the early 1970s, and being an international mission it would be a first for every participating country other than the US.
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0.905561 |
The Caribbean is a high vacation spot for travelers. Some families are very focussed on skiing, others on swimming and sun bathing on a seaside, others on wildlife experience and others again on looking. In case you have teenage kids ask them what may entice them and count on to let them deliver a classmate or other guest with them when staying on vacation.\n\nThese properties are really cheap and everyone can afford it. If you’re not going for an internet bundle, then you possibly can go to the locals on your own and ask for a discount. If you’re convincing enough, you’ll have the ability to find yourself a fantastic deal.\n\n6. Beaches: Unfortunately, we don’t reside within a number of hours of a seaside, but many people do. A fantastic weekend getaway to enjoy the walks on the seaside, dinner overlooking the ocean, beachfront resort or villa, and all a seaside vacation has to offer.\n\nWith a villa vacation, you possibly can unwind and spend time in an setting where you possibly can ease in an opulent setting. Nonetheless, the fact is that when you take some time off, get some rest and sleep, your productivity stage will go up. Other than this, travel can be an effective way of networking and exploring varied approaches to work and life.\n\nFamilies during vacations spend quality time on their own without intervention. The families traveling in caravan choose places far from their residence. Families who have experienced traveling through caravan they own save much. But families who hire caravan during vacations must produce an extra finances for the caravan rental.\n\nAfter we go on a cruise and the ship stops at the port you will note a flood of people walking the plank on their approach to some type of adventure. I know that my wife and I went on a seaside excursion in the Caribbean one time and we ended up parasailing. We enjoyed it so much that we wished to do it again but time didn’t permit. \n\nExercising proper precautions may help to make your seaside vacation gratifying. Compared to dearer vacation packages, the cheaper bundle will permit you to go to a lesser number of destinations, or spend less time at them. Low-cost all-inclusive vacations are typically made attainable when a bunch of people opt for it. The economies of scale enable the tour operator or the travel firm to offer an excellent value.
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The report below, carried in The Guardian this morning – updated last night – has interesting implications, if it is true.
The reference to ‘the current head of the IRA’ will be taken to mean that the Provisional IRA still exists, while the claim that ‘Witness O’ has been given permission to name the Birmingham bombers begs the obvious question: why not name the perpetrators in other violent incidents?
Whether this claim from ‘Witness O’ is true or not remains to be seen but in the meantime here is the text of the report, written by Frances Perraudin.
A convicted IRA bomber known as Witness O has named four men he says were responsible for the Birmingham pub bombings, telling the inquest he had been given permission to do so by the current head of the IRA in Dublin.
Twenty-one people were killed and more than 200 injured when bombs were detonated in two city centre pubs – the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town – on the evening of 21 November 1974.
Giving evidence in court on Friday, the anonymous former IRA volunteer said he had been told by the head of the IRA six months ago in Dublin that he could name those he knew were involved.
Speaking over a secure videolink, he named the officer commanding the Birmingham IRA at the time as Seamus McLoughlin, who he said was the person responsible for selecting the targets. He said he gave McLoughlin’s name to two police detectives days after the bombings while he was serving time in HMP Winson Green, but heard nothing more.
He said Mick Murray was one of the bombers. Murray, who died in 1999, was one of two men named by the former Labour MP Chris Mullin in an article in the London Review of Books published in February.
He said that two other men he knew as Dublin Dave and Socks had also been involved, but that he did not know either man’s real name.
Witness O was also asked about the role of Michael Patrick Reilly – a man who has previously been alleged to be a perpetrator – but was unable to confirm his identity.
The inquest into the deaths was opened in November 1974, but was adjourned to allow for a criminal investigation. In 1975, six men – who became known as the Birmingham Six – were convicted for the bombings but were acquitted 16 years later in 1991.
Murray was tried alongside the Birmingham Six and convicted of conspiracy to cause explosions. Gavin was also tried alongside the Birmingham Six and convicted of the possession of explosives.
Murray, Gavin, McLoughlin and Hayes were named in 1990 in the Granada Television documentary drama Who Bombed Birmingham?.
Fresh inquests into the deaths were ordered in 2016 but were delayed by disputes over whether the hearings should examine who might be responsible for the bombings.
In January 2018, the high court overturned a ruling by the coroner Sir Peter Thornton that alleged perpetrators would not fall within the framework of the inquest. Thornton appealed against that decision the following July and the court of appeal ruled in his favour in September.
Speaking outside court on Friday, Julie Hambleton, whose sister Maxine was killed in the Tavern in the Town, said: “Witness O has today named the bombers involved in the Birmingham pub bombings.
Speaking via videolink from Dublin on Thursday, the former IRA intelligence chief Kieran Conway said he knew the names of those who were responsible for the bombings but would not name them. He described the attacks as an IRA operation that went badly wrong and said the public outrage caused by the bombings had nearly destroyed the group.
After the attacks, an internal IRA court of inquiry, convened in Ireland, cleared those involved in the bombings, Conway said, with IRA chiefs agreeing that the atrocity was down to the delay in calling in the coded warning because the chosen phone box was out of order.
Conway said that at the time of the bombings IRA operations in England were carried out by active service units autonomous of the organisation’s command in Ireland, who were picking bombing targets themselves. Civilian targets were “strictly and loudly forbidden”, he said.
The headlines all read: ‘One soldier to be charged…..etc’. Shouldn’t they really read: ‘Only one soldier to be charged…..’?
‘I, Dolours‘ has won a prize for ‘Audience Favorite’ at the Capital Irish Film Festival (CIFF) at Silver Springs, Maryland just outside Washington DC last weekend.
The theatre at Silver Springs was packed and the following day at the Chicago Irish Film Festival there was standing room only. Irish-America appears to have taken to ‘I, Dolours‘ in a big way.
Our thanks to the organisers in Washington and Chicago for their hospitality and kindness!
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Princess Margaret destroyed letters from Diana, Princess of Wales to the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, the biographer William Shawcross has disclosed.
She was trying to "protect" her mother and other members of the Royal family, Shawcross believed.
The late Princess told a friend that she had ordered the destruction of large bin bags full of personal papers "because they were so private".
Shawcross, who was chosen by the Queen to write the official biography of her late mother, described the loss of the letters as "regrettable from a historical viewpoint", suggesting some might have shed new light on the breakdown of the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Queen's reaction to it.
Princess Margaret went through her mother's papers in 1993, several months after the Prince and Princess of Wales had announced their separation.
A year earlier, Andrew Morton's book Diana: Her True Story had disclosed that the Princess felt she had been rejected not only by her husband but also by the Queen and other members of the Royal family.
Several years later it was reported that Princess Margaret had burned bundles of her mother's letters though at the time it was not known which ones.
Shawcross's book contains the first confirmation that letters from the Princess of Wales were among them.
He writes: "Princess Margaret was engaged on one of her periodic 'sortings' of her mother's papers."
In a letter to her mother, who was staying at Birkhall on the Balmoral estate, the Princess wrote: "I am going back today to clear up some more of your room. Keeping the letters for you to sort later."
Shawcross writes: "On the Princess's orders, large black bags of papers were taken away for destruction rather than for ultimate consignment to the Royal Archives. There is no record of just what was thus lost but Princess Margaret later told Lady Penn (who was related by marriage to Queen Elizabeth's private secretary, Sir Arthur Penn) that among the papers she had destroyed were letters from the Princess of Wales to Queen Elizabeth – because they were so private, she said.
"No doubt Princess Margaret felt that she was protecting her mother and other members of the family. It was understandable, although regrettable from a historical viewpoint."
The Princess of Wales's grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth and historians have speculated that the Princess might have used her as a sounding board during the breakdown of her marriage.
However, Queen Elizabeth had a strong relationship with her grandson, the Prince of Wales, and might have been anxious for any material which painted him – or the Queen –in a bad light to be destroyed before it could become public property.
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0.999994 |
Context. Energetic particle enhancements that are associated with corotating interaction regions (CIRs) are typically believed to arise from the sunward propagation of particles that are accelerated by CIR-driven shocks beyond 1 AU. It is expected that these sunward-travelling particles will lose energy and scatter, resulting in a turnover of the energy spectra below ~0.5 MeV/nuc. However, the turnover has not been observed so far, suggesting that the CIR-associated low-energy suprathermal ions are accelerated locally close to the observer.
Aims. We investigate the variability of suprathermal particle spectra from CIR to CIR as well as their evolution and variation as the observer moves away from the rear shock or wave.
Methods. Helium data in the suprathermal energy range from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory/Charge, Element, and Isotope Analysis System/Suprathermal Time-of-Flight (SOHO/CELIAS/STOF) were used for the spectral analysis and were combined with data from the Advanced Composition Explorer/ Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometer (ACE/SWICS) in the solar wind energies.
Results. We investigated sixteen events: nine clean CIR events, three CIR events with possible contamination from upstream ion events or solar energetic particles (SEPs), and four events that occurred during CIR periods that were dominated by SEPs. Six of the nine clean CIR events showed possible signs of a turnover between ~10−40 keV/nuc in the fast solar wind that trails the compression regions. Three of them even showed this behaviour inside the compressed fast wind. The turnover part of the spectra became flatter and shifted from lower to higher energies with increasing connection distance to the reverse shock. The remaining three clean events showed continuous power-law spectra in both the compressed fast wind and fast wind regions, that is, the same behaviour as reported from previous observations. The spectra of the seven remaining events are more variable, that is, they show power law, turnover, and a superposition of these two shapes.
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Correct me if i'm wrong I've read a little about a wide-nine defensive scheme. Trying to get an understanding of this.
From my understanding, a wide nine defensive philosophy depends on defensive ends advancing way beyond the line of scrimmage in order to contain the play between the defensive ends.
What disadvantages are there to this scheme / philosophy? What other factors does one have to depend on to make it effective?
You are partially right. The wide nine scheme is set up by the defensive ends lining up way beyond the offensive tackles, but the point is not to play a "containment" style defense, but rather to attack the quarterback.
The defensive ends are typically smaller and faster than the opposing offensive tackles, so lining up so far to the outside gives the defensive player two advantages. First, he has a better angle to the quarterback and he can use his speed and power to get around the offensive tackle and sack the quarterback. Second, he is lined up so far the the outside of the play that he prevents the offensive guard from coming and double teaming him. The only way that he can be double teamed in this situation is if the tight end or running back stays to block.
Wide nine defenses are typically used in obvious passing situations as the defensive end is only concerned with sacking the quarterback in this setup. This is actually considered a poor technique to use against a running play because the defensive linemen are so far out of position to try and stop a run to the A or C gaps (because the defensive tackles are typically coming through the B gaps to sack the quarterback as well). Also, this play is highly susceptible to the draw play, where the quarterback drops back as if to pass but instead hands the ball off to the running back. This play works because the defensive ends are typically already behind the running back by the time he gets the ball and have no chance at tackling him.
There are two main things that you need to be effective at the wide nine. The first is very talented, fast and athletic defensive ends. The whole point of the wide nine is to get the defensive ends into a one-on-one situation with the offensive tackles and if the defensive end is not able to take advantage of this situation, then there is not much of a point in running the play. The second thing you need is good pass coverage from the defensive secondary. The wide nine is basically selling out to sack the quarterback using only four pass rushers, therefore it can take some time for the defensive ends to get past the offensive tackles and sack the quarterback, so in the mean time the defensive secondary needs to have good coverage on the eligible receivers.
It's also worth noting that the wide nine is far more effective when the quarterback takes a seven step drop rather than a three or a five step drop because it gives the defensive ends longer to get to the quarterback and it gives them a much better angle to attack from.
The wide nine was used heavily in the 2011 NFL season by the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles due to the amount of talent they had at the defensive end position. For more discussion and a video explaining the wide nine, take a look at this smartfootball link.
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged american-football tactics defense or ask your own question.
What are the black bars beneath American Footballer's eyes are used for?
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0.955736 |
Bestehen die Evangelien aus Legenden?
Sind die Evangelien lediglich Legenden?
"Ich habe mein Leben lang Gedichte, Novellen, visionäre Dichtungen, Legenden, Mythen gelesen. Ich weiß, was sie sind. Ich weiß dass keines von ihnen so aussieht.
Das engl. Original der oberen zwei ins Deutsche übersetzten Abschnitte trägt den Titel: 'Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism', Lewis schrieb dieses Essay am Westcott House, Cambridge, am 11. Mai 1959. Es wurde unter diesem Titel in: 'Christian Reflections' publiziert (1981), und es ist nun unter dem Titel 'Fern-seed and Elephants' bekannt. (1998).
"First then, whatever these men may be as Biblical critics, I distrust them as critics. They seem to me to lack literary judgement, to be imperceptive about the very quality of the texts they are reading. It sounds a strange charge to bring against men who have been steeped in those books all their lives. But that might be just the trouble. A man who has spent his youth and manhood in the minute study of New Testament texts and of other people's studies of them, whose literary experience of those texts lacks any standard of comparison such as can only grow from a wide and deep and genial experience of literature in general, is, I should think, very likely to miss the obvious thing about them. If he tells me that something in a Gospel is legend or romance, I want to know how many legends and romances he has read, how well his palate is trained in detecting them by the flavour; not how many years he has spend on that Gospel.
I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this.
These men ask me to believe they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read (in any sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seed and can't see an elephant ten yards way in broad daylight."
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Re-imagine and develop UX for different device types natively against going for lowest common denominator approach.
One size does not fit all. Design great and unique user experiences for each type of platform: Android, iOS, tablets, phablets, desktops, laptops and more. Creating one design and pushing it via different devices confuses users and could eventually drive them away. Apps should add specific UX innovation to make complex tasks easier, by overcoming the constraints of the device (small form factor) and leveraging its strengths (easy swipe/gesture/touch-based navigation). Customize these experiences and recognize user needs when using each type of device.
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0.9999 |
To view a meeting in the project's Meetings tool.
To view a meeting, 'Read-only' level permission or above on the project's Meetings tool.
To view a meeting marked 'Draft Meeting' or 'Private', 'Read-only' level permission and above AND the user must be added to the 'Scheduled Attendees' list.
This reveals the Meetings list page.
Note: Meetings are organized into meeting sets that can be expanded or collapsed by clicking on the caret (>) to the left of the meeting title.
Locate the desired meeting. Then click View.
The system reveals the selected meeting's agenda (or minutes, if the meeting is in minutes mode).
Meeting #: Indicates the meeting number. When you create a meeting, Procore automatically assigns the first meeting in a series the number one (1). Then, when you create a follow-up meeting, Procore assigns the next meeting in the series the number two (2), and so on. Note: This field does not support the entry of letters, symbols, and leading zeros.
Meeting Location: The the location where the meeting will be held (e.g., Conference Room A, Conference Room B, and so on).
Meeting Name: Type a name, title, or descriptive subject line for the meeting.
Private Meeting: Mark this checkbox so that the meeting is only visible to scheduled attendees and users with 'Admin' level permissions to the Meetings tool.
Meeting Date: Use the calendar control to set the date for a meeting.
Start Time: Enter a start time for the meeting. Include a.m. or p.m. after the start time.
Finish Time: Select an end time for the meeting. Include a.m. or p.m. after the finish time.
Timezone: Select a timezone for the meeting.
Overview: Enter a meeting summary or description. You can use the controls in the formatting toolbar to format your overview.
Click Attach File(s) and then choose the appropriate option from the shortcut menu that appears.
Use a drag-and-drop operation to move files from your computer into the grey Drag and Drop File(s) box.
Person: The scheduled attendees name.
Company: The scheduled attendee's company name.
Present: A checkmark indicates the person was present at the meeting. A red 'x' indicates the person was NOT present at the meeting.
Absent: A checkmark indicates the person was absent from the meeting. A red 'x' indicates the person was NOT absent from the meeting.
For Distribution Only: A checkmark indicates a schedule attendee is not a required to attend the meeting, but has been added to the meeting as a member of the distribution group.
Conference: A checkmark indicates the person was a remote attendee. A red 'x' indicates the person was NOT a remote attendee.
Note: You can also click View to see detail about the selected item.
#: Shows the meeting item number.
Title: Shows the title of the meeting item.
Assignment: Shows the name of the vendor/company that is assigned to the meeting item.
Due Date: Shows the due date for the meeting item.
Priority: Shows the priority assigned to the item.
Status: Shows the status assigned to the meeting item.
Related Items. Click this tab to view any related items added to the meeting. See Add a Related Item to a Meeting.
Emails. Click this tab to view any emails associated with the meeting. See Forward a Meeting by Email and Initiate an Email Communication Thread for a Meeting.
Change History. Click this tab to view the meeting's history. See View the Change History of a Meeting.
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0.914749 |
It is hard to write a review for a six-part documentary when the entire premise of the film is in question. As I wrote in Bloody Newsroom, on the night of February 26th, 2012, George Zimmerman was driving home from the store when he saw a black male wearing a hoodie go behind the townhomes of his subdivision in the rain and darkness. George being an off-duty neighborhood watchman and knowing that his subdivision had been under assault from young black males doing home invasions and robberies, got on his phone, and called the cops and started to follow the guy who was walking behind people’s homes in the rain.
The person was wearing a hoodie and was a guy visiting his father from Miami that went by the name of Trayvon Martin. Trayvon realized he was being followed behind the homes and he circled around the buildings and attacked George in the dark, according to a friend Trayvon was speaking to on the phone who later testified to this in court. Trayvon knocked him to the ground and began repeatedly smashing George’s head on the cement sidewalk.
Before George blacked out from the blows or lost his life, his legally carried and owned pistol went off in the struggle and Trayvon Martin was killed. Bleeding from all over his head and face, George stood up and called back the police and told them what happened. The police interviewed George for hours, treated his wounds medically and sent him home; no arrest was made. The police chief said at the time that Zimmerman had a right to defend himself. Then, Al Sharpton got involved.
I’m sure you as the reader do not have to guess what happened next. Al Sharpton and the usual suspects stirred the race pot and along with six weeks of misleading press coverage including edited 911 calls attempting to make George look like a racist and the constant airing of very young pictures of Trayvon; Sharpton got his arrest. Under orchestrated and fallacious race related pressure, Governor Rick Scott sent a prosecutor named Angela Corey down to Sanford from Jacksonville, and in my opinion, violated George Zimmerman’s civil rights, and charged him with second-degree murder and manslaughter.
The press pushed a successful fraudulent narrative that Trayvon was just some young kid who was coming home from the convenience store with Skittles and Arizona Ice Tea. Even President Barrack Obama said if he had a boy, he would look like Trayvon. They pushed a storyline in where Trayvon was minding his own business when he was profiled and then stalked by George Zimmerman.
During the trial, the true nature of how violent Trayvon Martin really was would not be allowed to be seen in court in front of the jury. The fact that Trayvon was picking fights with other people so he could perfect his fighting skills and brag about it on texts to a friend of his was kept from the jury. And that his reason for being able to visit his father at this point in time was because he was suspended from school because of some similar bad behavior and that was ignored by the mainstream press. And was also kept from the jury. Sadly, if a boxing trainer could have gotten a hold of Trayvon and got him into that sport, he might still be alive today.
On July 13th, 2013, a jury acquitted Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter despite every single misleading force that tried to pull justice another way. That was a miracle notwithstanding George Zimmerman’s odd behavior since the trial. Clearly, the man has issues. However, the false narrative of Skittles, Arizona Ice Tea, profiling and hoodies still exists today in place of reality. This entire situation became the first building block in the house of lies about race and became the impetus for an ongoing movement based on falsehoods.
This film Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story basks in these falsehoods and pushes forth those spurious narratives unabashedly. The narrators were a lair of usual suspects of racial aggrieved personalities and agendas. There was barely even a morsel of a counterpoint of view. When it was brought up, it was in a light to show us who disagree how wrong we are. The six-part series was a terrible disappointment and a lost opportunity to do something meaningful and out of the box on the subject of race.
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0.880723 |
"Maduro usurped power; he's not the duly elected president. Juan Guaido is the person that the Venezuelan people chose. America and now 54 other nations simply have ratified that, have said, 'Yep, we recognize that's what Venezuelans want.'" – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, March 19, 2019.
Venezuela's former regime, led by Nicolas Maduro, has consistently violated the human rights and dignity of its citizens, plundered the country's natural resources, and driven a once prosperous nation into economic ruin with his authoritarian rule and socialist economic policies. Maduro's thugs have engaged in extra-judicial killings and torture, taken political prisoners, and severely restricted freedom of speech, all in a brutal effort to retain power.
In 2015, pro-democracy opposition parties resoundingly defeated the Maduro regime in legislative elections. Shortly thereafter, Maduro began dismantling various branches of government. Lame-duck National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello rushed to stack the country's courts with unqualified party hacks to serve as Maduro's guarantors of power.
Maduro's National Electoral Council (CNE) cronies oversee the conduct of all elections and declare the winners. Since 2015, they have tilted the playing field to ensure that Maduro can't lose. They have disqualified every major opposition party and most opposition candidates since 2017.
In 2017, acting on Maduro's orders, the CNE organized widely contested elections for the National Constituent Assembly, whose primary objective was to draft a new constitution. Instead, Maduro used the Assembly to usurp the powers of the legitimate National Assembly, ratify his orders, and enact laws, many of which vilify and disparage opposition figures and their policy proposals.
On January 10, 2019, Maduro unlawfully assumed the presidency at a ceremony deemed illegitimate by many Venezuelans and more than 50 countries, including most of Venezuela's neighbors and the majority of the European Union.
In this context, Juan Guaido, elected on January 5, 2019, as President of the National Assembly, the only remaining democratically elected and legitimate institution in the country, invoked relevant articles of the Venezuelan constitution and became Venezuela's Interim President.
Maduro's most egregious corruption scheme involved embezzlement from the state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PdVSA). In 2015, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a finding under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act. A European bank accepted exorbitant commissions to process approximately $2 billion in transactions related to Venezuelan third–party money launderers, shell companies, and complex financial products to siphon off funds from PdVSA.
In 2018, a $1.2 billion money-laundering scheme involving Matthias Krull, a German national and Panamanian resident, and Gustavo Adolfo Hernandez, a Colombian national and naturalized U.S. citizen, exploited PdVSA and took advantage of the corruption in Venezuela's foreign currency exchange systems by trading U.S. dollars for Venezuelan bolivars at market rate and then back again.
In 2016, Maduro declared approximately 12% of the country to be a part of an "Orinoco Mining Arc" and awarded himself broad authorities to oversee the exploitation of resources for personal gain. In 2017, the regime ejected legitimate foreign companies doing business and replaced them with unregulated miners who operate with the backing of senior Venezuelan military officers.
In 2017, after a seven month investigation, Venezuela's National Assembly uncovered instances where the regime "spent" $42 for a box of food, which it then distributed in exchange for votes, at a time when the food items cost less than $13. Maduro's inner circle kept the difference, which totaled more than $200 million dollars in at least one case.
Venezuela ranks 169 out of 180 countries on the Transparency International's 2017 Corruption Perception Index.
In October 2018, Caracas Councilman Fernando Alban traveled to New York to denounce the Maduro regime's brutality on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. Upon his return to Venezuela on October 5, Maduro's secret police arrested him at the airport. He died in custody a few days later when he mysteriously fell from a 10th floor window of a maximum-security prison in Caracas.
On March 21, 2019, Maduro's police raided the home of Interim President Juan Guaido's chief of staff Roberto Marrero, and arrested him. Maduro's Cuban-supported intelligence agency, SEBIN, continues to detain him. SEBIN has a record of using cruel and inhumane treatment to coerce confessions.
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0.949799 |
Dell Vostro 1710 batttery not charging?
I have a Dell Vostro 1710 laptop that was purchased in December 2008.
I am currently having problems however with the battery/charger. The battery does not charge except when I first plug it in. The Power Meter icon shows that it is charging but only for up to 10 seconds, then the message then goes to "On AC Power"
I first noticed that the battery icon on the taskbar in Windows XP PRo SP3 was saying "ONn AC Power" but not charging. Sure enough, it wasn't charging. My colleague who has the same laptop purchased at the same order but does not have an issue.
I have done all the things you normally do to troubleshoot a battery including reboot, check for software updates, swap the battery with my collegue, swap AC adapter, even replace the battery with a new one yet I still have that issue.
I have now noticed that it doesn't appear to be anything to do with Windows at all as when I power it down, plugging the charger in brings the charging light on for approximately 10 seconds, then the light goes out and the laptop doesn't charge.
This morning I tried a different battery that does charge into my laptop and had the same issue, which discounts it being a battery issue I think. I also tried downloading updated drivers from this website but again no joy.
Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? Is it likely to be an issue with the motherboard, or possibly the charger? Any advice would be appreciated.
You have ruled out most things, leaving only problems with the DC socket on the system board. Failed solder connections result in several different problems, including yours. There are some shops that can repair these sockets for a nominal charge. If unrepairable, you will need to replace the system board, which is expensive. Look at e-bay for companies offering to repair system boards for your machine. Most charge only a nominal fee if they can not repair it.
This 1710 does exactly the same thing. Plug in & charge for about 5 seconds then icon shows on AC, not charging.
Upgraded BIOS to A12 and still would only show battery charging for a few seconds.
checked PhoenixBIOS Setup Utilities/ Main/ AC Adapter = "NONE".
1st I disabled 'quickboot to allow boot testing.
2nd under PhoenixBIOS Setup Utilities/ Exit 1/2 way down the list; "Load default settings" and saved on exit.
Rebooted and F2 to PhoenixBIOS Setup Utilities/ MAIN now shows AC Adapter = "90W".
Also I disabled the Quickboot setting to allow tests 1st, but I see the defaults re-enables Quickboot, so am not sure if that made the difference(?) Good Luck.
In think you may have hit on something. I assume you arre NOT using Windows 8, which has the Fast Boot function in the UEIF BIOS. Fast Boot should be similar to Quickboot. Fast Boot speeds through the boot process so fast that it's difficult to get the BIOS to see the F2 or F12 key press to get into the BIOS or Repair pages, and it is usually ignored. It's possible that the response from the battery after being queried by the BIOS is too slow, and the BIOS doesn't get the answer.
Someone out there should try this if they haven't been able yo solve the issue. To boot without Fastboot, hold the SHIFT key while pressing either SLEEP or SHUT DOWN and follow the prompts if it doesn't go off or reboot.
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Recipe Review: We really miss a good ole BBQ Roast Chicken. They're just not as readily available here like they are in Australia. However, if you want herring, well that's another story! This was only my second ever attempt at making a roast chicken and I was pretty happy with it.
1. In a small bowl, mix the ingredients together until well combined.
2. Baste your chicken all over with half of the mix.
3. Place your chicken breast side up in a preheated oven or on a rotisserie if you have one.
4. After 30 minutes of cooking, remove from the oven and baste again with the remaining marinade.
5. Return to the oven and roast until the chicken is cooked to perfection.
6. The time this takes will vary depending upon the size of your chicken, but work off 30 minutes per 500gram at 180 degrees Celsius.
7. Once cooked, rest the chicken for 5-10 minutes uncovered, then carve and enjoy!
Replace the macadamia nut oil with melted butter.
Choose the rice malt syrup.
Add lots of vegetables and also slices of lemon to your roasting dish too. You might also like to stuff your chook? I personally keep it quick and simple and wedge lemon pieces and any herbs I can rummage from my herb garden.
Toni messaged me on Facebook to say she had slow cooked this with a 10/10 husband and kids rated result! She cooked it for 8 hours on low, basting it with the marinade every 2-3 hours with great success. A great option if you like to slow cook!
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Why won't the people help us find this bad guy?
In many cases, the local people will not co-operate in providing information about criminals or those who are on the run. Here are seven reasons why they either won't or can't help track a wanted person or group down.
The bandits or whoever else the bad guys are have warned the people that if anyone talks, the informant will be killed and/or the village will be burnt down. Such is the case in certain parts of Sicily, Northern Ireland or Mexico, for example. Perhaps law enforcement is either too frightened to act or heavily infiltrated or both, and cannot be trusted to support witnesses and keep them safe.
The bad guys have a mage, witch or other magic user in their ranks who has placed a geas on the local people that stops them giving information to law enforcement or anyone else about the things that they are doing, and it's a strong one. To get anyone to talk, the PCs will first have to become aware of the geas-not easy when noone can tell them about it, and then have the magical power to Spellbreak the geas so that people can talk freely.
The seemingly innocent people are not as innocent as they seem. In the case of smuggling certain items, or plundering a shipwreck, many or perhaps everyone benefits from the crime in some way or other, so they don't want the "bad guys" or the smuggled or stolen items to be found. In real life, when a ship carrying whiskey was wrecked off a Scottish Island and plundered, law enforcement met with a wall of silence from everyone about the location of the missing whiskey.
They don't trust the PCs. Maybe they think the PCs are corrupt; maybe they think the PCs are spies sent by the bad guys to uncover snitches; or the area does not like strangers.
Unknown to the PCs many of those who they talk to are a secret band of vigilantes who, fed up with the activities of the bad guys, have decided to get together and mete out lynch law on them. If the PCs have been ordered to take the bad guys alive for trial, the vigilantes will not give them information, as they want to get to the bad guys first to mete out a bloodthirsty revenge. Historically, many bad guys and even suspected bad guys in the West ended up strung up by vigilante bands. Some of these vigilantes became de facto bad guys themselves.
The bad guys have one or more hostages from the area and have threatened to kill or maim them if anyone gives any information about them to the PCs or to anybody else. That is generally enough to keep most people silent.
Famous figures like Robin Hood, Jesse James, and Pablo Escobar are not seen as bad guys by everyone. If their targets are widely seen as rich and greedy, like the big banks, or they give at least a small amount of their ill gotten gains to the poor, or both, then they can be seen as the good guys by a surprising number of people. Certain kinds of bad guys have a romantic image about them, which they normally, but not always, don't deserve. Many people can sympathise with the criminal on the run, if his or her crime is not considered too unpleasant or brutal. Maybe the bad guy helped people find jobs, both legal and illegal. Maybe the bad guy intimidated landlords into not evicting their tenants-and the tenants are now the bad guy's strongest supporters. Maybe the bad guy is genuinely innocent and was framed. The divide between good and bad guys is not allways black and white.
"Nothing to do with me" / "None of my business"
Some people just don't want to be involved. Potential witnesses slam doors in faces. People think they're above it all, not part of events. This might overlap with fear, but really, there's an element of apathy in this attitude, an inertia that can be very hard to overcome.
Agreed. Some of these could use some fleshing out, but overall, I like this more than I typically like '7s' and '30s'.
Hell, this could even turn into a 30, with 5 or 6 main headers and several nuanced variations of each.
I have heard that in Nigeria the authorities rarely enforce section 419 of criminal code becuase every time they do, the locals tend to riot. FYI Section 419 is the part that prohibits using false pretences to conduct advance fee fraud. You know, those Nigerian Email Scams.
A wand that can be used once a day to stop Time for thirty seconds.Enough time to take a weapon or a wizard's staff, dodge a fireball,get a head start whilst running away,ect.
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Are Index Investors Unknowingly Increasing Interest Rate Risk?
Here in an interestingly look at the Barclay's US Aggregate Bond Index from Lord Abbett The below Chart shows how the duration of the Index has changed over the last ten years.
As you can see, up until late 2010 the duration of the Aggregate Bond Index tended to hover around 4.5 years. That has increased to approximately 5.5 years today. I think it is important that "passive" index investors be aware that they are currently making an "active" decision to increase their interest rate risk.
Here is an interesting look from J.P Morgan regarding the Price-to-Book ratio on Emerging Markets.
They then look at how those various Price-to-Book ratios relate to forward 1-year returns....In short, it looks good.
Although I don't like that the 1-year forward returns only use 1999 to today. Why not use the same data as the first graph back to 1993? Also, I don't tend to think any valuation metric is a reliable short-term (1 year) timing indicator. However, Rob Arnott has also been pointing out that longer-term forward returns (10 years) are also looking pretty tempting using a Shiller PE ratio. All I know is, anything looks good 'relative' to the US right now.
This post over at The Big Picture Blog which had a listing of Bull markets of 20% or more without a 20% correction got me thinking about Bull Market fundamentals. Some people talk about this bull market being driven by the Fed and not fundamentals (me included). I can easily point at a Shiller PE of 23 to highlight overvaluation but I wanted to look at it another way, so I focused on PE expansion.
Fundamentally driven bull markets should rely more on cyclically adjusted earnings growth and less on investors willingness to pay ever increasing multiples on those earnings. To look into this I decided to focus only on bull markets of 100% or more. I looked at the Starting and Ending Shiller PE using Robert Shiller's online data and updated it with daily pricing data for the important dates (as he only has monthly prices). Then I divided the Bull Market gains by the amount of PE expansion to see how much gains investors were receiving per unit of PE expansion. The results are below, sorted by most fundamentally driven to least fundamentally driven. The results are quite interesting.
Take a look at the 1974-1980 Bull Market compared to today....The magnitude of the advance is similar between the two but the 1974-1980 advance only relied on a PE expansion of 2.2 vs 11.1 today. You will also notice that those that relied least on PE expansion tended to experience smaller subsequent bear markets. The top 5 averaged a bear market loss of 30.4% vs the bottom 4 which averaged a 48.5% loss. If history is any guide people should expect that the next bear market will be deeper then average because this bull market is lacking a fundamental underpinning.
UPDATED: 3/19/2013 - Corrected chart to reflect the proper starting PE of 8.8 for the bull market starting 6/13/1949. However, this did not change the overall ranking of any of the bull markets.
Investment Management firm GMO is well know for it's Asset Class forecasts it puts out. The continued strong rally in the market has officially moved their 7-year forecast for Large-Cap stocks (S&P 500) into negative territory, joining their negative forecast for Small-Cap stocks, US Bonds, Intl Bonds (hedged), and Inflation Linked Bonds.
You can see below the history of their forecasts. Through time it has shown to be a good general guide.
With so little looking attractive how are they investing their Benchmark Free Allocation Strategy I discussed here?
While this is from 12/31/12 not much has changed except a slight increase to their Equity Risk Premium Strategy (which is a put selling strategy) they are using as a substitute for some equity exposure.
"The Analyst Rating is based on the analyst's conviction in the fund's ability to outperform its peer group and/or relevant benchmark on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term. If a fund receives a positive rating of Gold, Silver, or Bronze, it means Morningstar analysts think highly of the fund and expect it to outperform over a full market cycle of at least five years."
Now it should be clear that these ratings are longer-term in nature so take the following breakdown with a grain of salt but I said I would follow-up on these so I am.
While the distribution of ratings has gotten a little better it remains a mystery why Morningstar has an allergic reaction to assigning negative ratings. As of the start of 2013 they have now rated 1069 funds but only 52 (or less then 5%) have negative ratings. Although the neutral ratings have increased to 28%, Bronze to 25%, Silver is down to 24% and Gold down to about 18%.
Without further ado, below is how the rated funds performed in 2012. These only include funds rated at the start of 2012.
Not much really stands out after the first year. While their was a slight positive result for Gold and Silver rated funds, Neutral rated funds did even better. As for Bronze and Negative rated funds, outperformance was pretty much a coin flip.
Below is the Average Rank for each, as you can see Neutral rated funds performed the best and Negatively rated funds performed the worst.
Take this for what it's worth, which at this point is not much because full market cycles are indeed a better measuring stick. For instance, in 1999 and 2006/2007 a lot of bad managers did good thinking the unsustainable was in fact sustainable while a lot of good managers did bad as they realized irrationality when they saw it. However, this is at least a starting point for looking at the performance of these Analyst Ratings.
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VeloNews | Trek-Volkswagen calls it quits | The Journal of Competitive Cycling.
The list of riders who have suited up for the Trek-Volkswagen professional mountain bike team over the years reads like a who’s who of North American off-road racing: Travis Brown, Alison Sydor, Roland Green, Susan Haywood and Jeremiah Bishop, just to name a few. But after 13 years, the Trek-Volkswagen program is calling it quits.
The news comes after Volkswagen declined to renew its contract with the Wisconsin-based bicycle manufacturer.
Shouldn’t press releases and news articles announcing that something WILL end in the future be made public prior to the actual event that is being announced?
Could I have come up with a more complicated construction for that sentence?
More importantly, however, it is nice to know that Trek values their European-based teams more than their domestic teams, putting several American riders out of work whilst throwing a lot of money at Europeans, Kiwis and Springboks.
But continuing with a domestic program, Browne said, simply does not fit into Trek’s budget for next year.
If Trek had any integrity, it would fund the team for this season on its own, allowing the riders that have helped make the team and the company a success at least one more year of guaranteed salary while the riders look for new sponsorships for the 2010 season, or the team attempts to to pick-up a mid-season sponsor.
But by delaying the announcement of the demise of the team until late December, many of the affected riders are going to have difficulty finding a team which still has room and budget to pay them what they would have been earning had Trek not gambled with their livelihoods.
Thank you, Trek … thank you for showing your true character as a company.
You are preaching to the Choir! But the choir rejoices to hear a good sermon now and then!
As Forest Gump said stupid is as stupid does.
I am glad you and a few thousand of my close friends agree; that mountain biking in the USA matters, people matter and integrity is the yardstick of our type.
Onward to a great ride in 2009!
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JACK sitting on the stage floor, cross legged.
JACK looks at the audience.
JACK needs to take a deep breath.
JACK takes a deep breath.
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Motown Records, also known as Tamla-Motown, outside of the United States, is a record label originally based out of Detroit, Michigan ("Motor City"), where it achieved widespread international success. Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music as the first record label owned by an African American and primarily featuring African American artists to regularly achieve crossover success and have a widespread, lasting effect on the music industry.
Incorporated on January 12, 1959, by Berry Gordy, Jr. as Tamla Records, Motown has, over the course of its history, owned or distributed releases from more than 45 subsidiaries in varying genres. It is most famous for its releases in the musical genres of R&B, hip hop, pop, and soul. Motown left Detroit for Los Angeles in 1972, and remained an independent company until 1988, when Gordy sold the company to MCA. Now headquartered in New York City, Motown Records is today a subsidiary of the Universal Motown Records Group, itself a subsidiary of Universal Music Group.
In the 1960s, Motown and its soul-based subsidiaries were the most successful proponents of what came to be known as The Motown Sound, a style of soul music with distinctive characteristics, including the use of tambourine along with drums, a prominent and often melodic bass line played by the electric bass guitar, a distinctive melodical and chord structure, and a call and response singing style originating in gospel music.
Motown founder Berry Gordy, Jr. got his start as a songwriter for local Detroit acts such as Jackie Wilson and the Matadors. Wilson's single "Lonely Teardrops," co-written by Gordy and Roquel Billy Davis, became a huge success; however, Gordy did not feel he made as much money as he deserved from this and other singles he wrote for Wilson. He realized that the more lucrative end of the business was in producing records and owning the royalties.
In 1959, Billy Davis and Berry Gordy's sisters Gwen and Anna started Anna Records. Davis and Gwen Gordy wanted Berry to be the company president, but Berry wanted to strike out on his own. Therefore, in 1959, he started Tamla Records, with an $800 loan from his family. Gordy originally wanted to name the label "Tammy" Records, after the popular song from the film, Tammy and the Bachelor. When he found the name was already in use, he decided on Tamla instead.
Gordy's first signed act was The Matadors, a group he had written and produced songs for, who changed their name to The Miracles when Tamla signed them. The Miracles lead singer Smokey Robinson became the vice president of the company (and later named his daughter "Tamla" and his son "Berry" out of gratitude to Gordy and the label). Many of Gordy's family members, including his father Berry, Sr., brothers Robert and George, and sister Esther, had instrumental roles in the company. By the middle of the decade, Gwen and Anna Gordy had joined the label in administrative positions as well.
In 1959, Gordy purchased the property that would become Tamla's "Hitsville U.S.A." studio. The photography studio located in the back of the property was modified into a small recording studio and the Gordys moved into the second floor living quarters. Within a few years, Motown would occupy several neighboring houses with administrative offices, mixing, mastering and rehearsal studios.
Among Tamla's early artists were Mable John, Barrett Strong and (on the Motown label) Mary Wells. Tamla's first release was Marv Johnson's "Come to Me" in 1959. Its first hit was Barrett Strong's "Money (That's What I Want)" (1959), which made it to #2 on the Billboard R&B charts; its first #1 R&B hit was "Shop Around" by the Miracles in 1960. "Shop Around" peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and was Motown's first million-dollar selling record. Gordy launched Motown Records as a sister label in 1960. Because of the "Motown" name's association with "Motor City" Detroit, the blanket record company under which both Motown Records and Tamla Records operated was incorporated as "Motown Record Corporation." A year later, The Marvelettes scored Tamla's first US #1 pop hit, "Please Mr. Postman." By the mid-1960s, the label, with the help of songwriters and producers such as Robinson, William "Mickey" Stevenson, Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Norman Whitfield, was a major force in the music industry.
In the 1960s (from 1961 to 1971), Motown had 110 Top Ten hits. Artists such as Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross & the Supremes, The Four Tops, and The Jackson 5, were all signed to Motown labels. The company operated several labels in addition to the Tamla and Motown imprints. A third label, which Gordy named after himself, featured The Temptations and Martha and the Vandellas. A fourth, "V.I.P.," released recordings by The Velvelettes and The Spinners, and a fifth, "Soul," featured Jr. Walker & the All Stars and Gladys Knight & the Pips (who were the first act to have been successful before joining Motown, as "The Pips" on Vee-Jay). Many more Motown-owned labels released recordings in other genres, including Workshop Jazz (jazz), Mel-o-dy (country), and Rare Earth (rock). Under the slogan "The Sound of Young America," Motown's acts were enjoying widespread popularity among black and white audiences alike.
In Britain, Motown's records were released on various labels: At first London (only the Miracles' "Shop Around"/"Who's Lovin' You" and "Ain't It Baby"), then Fontana ("Please Mr. Postman" by the Marvelettes was one of four), Oriole American ("Fingertips—Pt. 2" by Little Stevie Wonder was one of many), EMI's Stateside ("Where Did Our Love Go" by the Supremes and "My Guy" by Mary Wells were Motown's first British top-twenty hits), and finally EMI's Tamla-Motown ("Ain't That Peculiar" by Marvin Gaye among many others).
Artist development was a major part of Motown's operations. The acts on the Motown label were fastidiously groomed, dressed and choreographed for live performances. Motown artists were advised that their breakthrough into the white popular music market made them ambassadors for other African American artists seeking broad market acceptance, and that they should think, act, walk and talk like royalty, so as to alter the less-than-dignified image commonly held by white Americans in that era of black musicians. Given that many of the talented young artists had been raised in housing projects and were short on social and dress skills, this Motown department was not only necessary, it created an elegant style of presentation long associated with the label. The artist development department specialized primarily in working with younger, less experienced acts; experienced performers such as Junior Walker and Marvin Gaye were exempted from artist development classes.
Many of the young artists participated in an annual package tour called the "Motortown Revue," which was popular first on the "chitlin circuit," and later around the world. The tours gave the younger singers a chance to hone their performance and social skills and also to learn from more experienced artists.
Motown's music was crafted with the same ear towards pop appeal. Berry Gordy used weekly quality control meetings, held every Friday morning, and veto power to ensure that only the very best material and performances the company came up with would be released. The test was that every new release needed to "fit" into a sequence of the top 5 selling pop singles of the week. As a result, several tracks which later became critical and commercial favorites were initially rejected by Gordy; the two most notable examples being a pair of Marvin Gaye songs, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and "What's Going On." In several cases, producers would re-work tracks in hopes of eventually getting them approved at a later Friday morning meeting, as producer Norman Whitfield did with "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and The Temptations' "Ain't Too Proud to Beg."
Many of Motown's best-known songs, such as all of the early hits for The Supremes, were written by the songwriting trio of Holland-Dozier-Holland (brothers Brian & Eddie Holland and colleague Lamont Dozier). Other important producers and songwriters at Motown's Hitsville U.S.A. recording studio and headquarters included Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson, Frank Wilson, Motown artists Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, and Gordy himself.
In addition to the songwriting prowess of the writers and producers, one of the major factors in the widespread appeal of Motown's music was Gordy's practice of using a highly select and tight-knit group of studio musicians, collectively known as "The Funk Brothers," to record the instrumental or "band" tracks of the Motown songs. Among the studio musicians responsible for the "Motown Sound" were keyboardists Earl Van Dyke, Johnny Griffith, and Joe Hunter; guitarists Joe Messina, Robert White, and Eddie Willis; percussionists Eddie "Bongo" Brown and Jack Ashford; drummers Benny Benjamin, Uriel Jones, and Richard "Pistol" Allen; and bassists James Jamerson and Bob Babbitt. The band's career and work is chronicled in the 2002 documentary film Standing in the Shadows of Motown.
After Holland-Dozier-Holland left the label in 1967 over royalty payment disputes, the quality of the Motown output began to decline, as well as the frequency with which its artists scored #1 hits. Norman Whitfield became the company's top producer, turning out hits for The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, and Gladys Knight & the Pips. In the meantime, Berry Gordy established Motown Productions, a television subsidiary which produced TV specials for the Motown artists, including TCB with Diana Ross & the Supremes and The Temptations, Diana! with Diana Ross, and Goin' Back to Indiana with The Jackson 5.
Motown had established branch offices in both New York City and Los Angeles during the mid-1960s, and by 1969 had begun gradually moving some of its operations to Los Angeles. The company moved all of its operations to Los Angeles after 1972, with a number of artists, among them Martha Reeves, The Four Tops, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Motown's Funk Brothers studio band, either staying behind in Detroit or leaving the company for other reasons. The main objective of Motown's relocation was to branch out into the motion picture industry, and Motown Productions got its start in film by turning out two hit vehicles for Diana Ross: the Billie Holliday biographical film Lady Sings the Blues (1972), and Mahogany (1975). Other Motown films would include Thank God It's Friday (1978), The Wiz (1978), and Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon (1985).
Despite losing Holland-Dozier-Holland, Norman Whitfield, and a number of its other hitmakers by 1975, Motown still had a number of successful artists during the late 1970s and 1980s, including Lionel Richie and The Commodores, Rick James, Teena Marie and DeBarge. By the mid-1980s, Motown was losing money, and Berry Gordy sold his ownership in Motown to Music Corporation of America (MCA) and Boston Ventures in June 1988 for $61 million. In 1989, Gordy sold the Motown Productions TV/film operations to Motown executive Suzanne de Passe, who renamed the company de Passe Entertainment and runs it to this day.
During the 1990s, Motown was home to successful recording artists such as Boyz II Men and ex-New Edition member Johnny Gill, although the company itself remained in a state of turmoil. A revolving door of executives were appointed by MCA to run the company, beginning with Berry Gordy's immediate successor, Jheryl Busby. Busby quarreled with MCA, alleging that the company did not give Motown's product adequate attention or promotion. In 1991, Motown sued MCA to have its distribution deal with the company terminated, and began releasing its product through PolyGram. Polygram purchased Motown from Boston Ventures three years later. In 1994, Busby was replaced by Andre Harrell, the entrepreneur behind Uptown Records. Harrell served as Motown's CEO for just under two years, leaving the company after receiving bad publicity for being inefficient. Danny Goldberg, who ran PolyGram's Mercury Records group, assumed control of Motown, and George Jackson served as president.
By 1998, Motown had added stars such as 702, Brian McKnight, and Erykah Badu to its roster. In December of 1998, PolyGram was acquired by Seagram, and Motown was folded into the Universal Music Group. Ironically, Seagram had purchased Motown's former parent MCA in 1995, and as such Motown was reunited with many of its MCA corporate siblings (Seagram had in fact, hoped to build a media empire around Universal, and started by purchasing PolyGram). Universal briefly considered shuttering the floundering label, but instead decided to restructure it. Kedar Massenburg, a producer for Erykah Badu, became the head of the label, and oversaw successful recordings from Badu, McKnight, Michael McDonald, and new Motown artist India.Arie.
In 2005, Massenburg was replaced by Sylvia Rhone, former CEO of Elektra Records. Motown was merged with Universal Records to create the Universal Motown Records Group, an umbrella division of Universal Music which oversees the releases and catalogs for Motown, Universal, Blackground, Republic, Cash Money, Casablanca, and other labels. Motown's current roster includes R&B singers India.Arie, Erykah Badu, Mýa, Kem, Yummy Bingham, pop singer Lindsay Lohan, reggae singers Damian and Stephen Marley, and rappers Trick Trick and Nick Cannon.
Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, and The Temptations had remained with the label since its early days (although both Ross and the Temptations each briefly recorded for other labels for several years). Ross left Motown in 1981, but returned in the 1990s, Robinson left the label briefly in 1999, and the Temptations in 2004. Wonder is today the only artist from Motown's "classic" period still on the label. Modern Motown releases feature a new stylized "M" logo for the label; reissues of classic Motown material continue to use the mod "M" logo first introduced in 1965.
Motown Records: Established 1960, Motown was and remains the company's main label for mainstream R&B/soul music (and, today, hip hop music as well). The label's numbering system was combined with those of Tamla and Gordy in 1982, and the label (and company) was purchased by MCA in 1988. Notable Motown artists have included Mary Wells, Diana Ross & The Supremes, The Jackson 5, Boyz II Men, and Erykah Badu.
Tamla Records: Established 1959; Tamla was a primary subsidiary for mainstream R&B/soul music. Tamla is actually the company's original label; Gordy incorporated Tamla Records several months before establishing the Motown Record Corporation. The label's numbering system was combined with those of Motown and Gordy in 1982, and the label was merged with Motown in 1988. Notable Tamla artists included Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder.
Gordy Records: Established 1961, Gordy was also a primary subsidiary for mainstream R&B/soul music. Originally known as Miracle Records (slogan: "If It's a Hit, It's a Miracle"), the name was changed in 1962 to avoid confusion with the Miracles singing group. The label's numbering system was combined with those of Motown and Tamla in 1982, and the label was merged with Motown in 1988. Notable Gordy artists included The Temptations, Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, Rick James, and DeBarge. Gordy Records slogan: "It's What's in the Grooves that Counts."
Check-Mate Records: Short-lived (1961-1962) secondary R&B/soul subsidiary, purchased from Chess Records. Notable artists included David Ruffin and The Del-Phis (later Martha & the Vandellas).
Soul Records: Established 1964, Soul was a secondary R&B/soul subsidiary for releases with less of a pop feel and/or more of a traditional soul/blues feel. Notable Soul artists included Jr. Walker & the All-Stars, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Jimmy Ruffin. The label was dissolved in 1978.
V.I.P. Records: Established 1964, V.I.P. was a secondary R&B/soul subsidiary. Notable artists included Shorty Long, The Velvelettes, The Spinners, and The Elgins. The label was dissolved in 1974.
Mo-West Records: Mo-West was a short-lived (1971-1973) subsidiary for R&B/soul artists based on the West Coast. Shut down when the main Motown office moved to Los Angeles. Notable artists included G.C. Cameron, Syreeta Wright, and Los Angeles DJ Tom Clay.
Divinity Records: Short-lived (1961-1963) gospel subsidiary.
Rare Earth Records: Established in 1969 after the signing of Rare Earth (after whom the label was named), Rare Earth Records was a subsidiary focusing on rock music by white artists. Notable acts included Rare Earth, R. Dean Taylor, The Pretty Things, and Stoney & Meatloaf. The label also was the subsidiary to house the first white band signed to Motown: The Rustix. The label was dissolved in 1976, and its acts moved to the Prodigal subsidiary.
Weed Records: A very short-lived subsidiary. Only one release, Chris Clark's 1969 CC Rides Again album, was issued. The name "Weed Records" is now owned by the Tokyo-New York based Wee Drecords.
Morocco Records: Meaning "Motown Rock Company," Morocco was a rock music subsidiary for white artists. Active from 1983 to 1984, it was a short-lived attempt to revive the Rare Earth Records concept.
Chisa Records: Motown released output for Chisa, a label owned by Hugh Masekela, from 1969 to 1972.
Ecology Records: A very short-lived label owned by Sammy Davis, Jr. and distributed by Motown. Only release: Single, "In My Own Lifetime"/"I'll Begin Again," by Davis in 1971.
Gull Records: A UK-based label still in operation, Motown released Gull's output in the U.S. in 1975. Gull had Judas Priest on its roster in 1975, but their LP Sad Wings of Destiny, intended for release by Motown in the U.S., was issued after the Motown/Gull Deal had fallen through.
Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, c. 1962. From left to right: Smokey Robinson, Claudette Rogers Robinson, Ronald White, Pete Moore, and Bobby Rogers.
Cogan, Jim, and William Clark. Temples of Sound: Inside the Great Recording Studios. San Francisco: Chromicle Books, 2003. ISBN 0-811-83394-1.
Collins, Lisa Gail, and Margo Natalie Crawford. New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-813-53695-8.
This page was last modified on 25 October 2018, at 15:27.
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I’m looking to start a company in the ski industry, i have Some good ideas for a ski company in regards to what i would Want in a ski, I’m a quality park skier, i go 50+ times a year, the dream would be a life testing a creating skis as a micro brew company like brand. I’m also very into art which would help with graphics designs and unique shapes. I think I could have success in the industry. But I’m still in the saving/planning stage.
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I’m working on a couple new books and would like to know what you would most like to see.
A drop fell on the apple tree Another on the roof; A half a dozen kissed the eaves, And made the gables laugh.
Outside the sky is light with stars; There’s a hollow roaring from the sea.
A classic! People usually don’t remember poems, but this might be an exception. It’s a classic that everyone should read and ponder.
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Nationalism and socialism were rife in China in the 1920's, this led to the rise of Communism and the formation of "The People's Republic Of China"
Mao Zedong ( ), who had become a Marxist at the time of the emergence of the May Fourth Movement (he was working as a librarian at Beijing University), had boundless faith in the revolutionary potential of the peasantry. He advocated that revolution in China focus on them rather than on the urban proletariat, as prescribed by orthodox Marxist-Leninist theoreticians. Despite the failure of the Autumn Harvest Uprising of 1927, Mao continued to work among the peasants of Hunan Province. Without waiting for the sanction of the CCP center, then in Shanghai, he began establishing peasant-based soviets (Communist-run local governments) along the border between Hunan and Jiangxi ( ) provinces. In collaboration with military commander Zhu De ( 1886-1976), Mao turned the local peasants into a politicized guerrilla force. By the winter of 1927-28, the combined "peasants' and workers'" army had some 10,000 troops.
Mao's prestige rose steadily after the failure of the Comintern-directed urban insurrections. In late 1931 he was able to proclaim the establishment of the Chinese Soviet Republic under his chairmanship in Ruijin Jiangxi Province. The Soviet-oriented CCP Political Bureau came to Ruijin at Mao's invitation with the intent of dismantling his apparatus. But, although he had yet to gain membership in the Political Bureau, Mao dominated the proceedings.
In the early 1930s, amid continued Political Bureau opposition to his military and agrarian policies and the deadly annihilation campaigns being waged against the Red Army by Chiang Kai-shek's forces, Mao's control of the Chinese Communist movement increased. The epic Long March of his Red Army and its supporters, which began in October 1934, would ensure his place in history. Forced to evacuate their camps and homes, Communist soldiers and government and party leaders and functionaries numbering about 100,000 (including only 35 women, the spouses of high leaders) set out on a circuitous retreat of some 12,500 kilometers through 11 provinces, 18 mountain ranges, and 24 rivers in southwest and northwest China. During the Long March, Mao finally gained unchallenged command of the CCP, ousting his rivals and reasserting guerrilla strategy. As a final destination, he selected southern Shaanxi ( ) Province, where some 8,000 survivors of the original group from Jiangxi Province (joined by some 22,000 from other areas) arrived in October 1935. The Communists set up their headquarters at Yan'an ( ), where the movement would grow rapidly for the next ten years. Contributing to this growth would be a combination of internal and external circumstances, of which aggression by the Japanese was perhaps the most significant. Conflict with Japan, which would continue from the 1930s to the end of World War II, was the other force (besides the Communists themselves) that would undermine the Nationalist government.
China has recently celebrated 50years of a succesfull communist government. Some see Mao-tse-tung as a visionary and liberator of China.
All reactionaries are paper tigers.
Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.
Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.
In waking a tiger, use a long stick.
Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.
Once all struggle is grasped, miracles are possible.
Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.
Revolution is not a dinner party, not an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly and modestly.
Take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own.
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Who is Alain de Botton?
Alain de Botton was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1969 and now lives in London. He is a writer of essayistic books that have been described as a 'philosophy of everyday life.' He‘s written on love, travel, architecture and literature. His books have been bestsellers in 30 countries. Alain also started and helps to run a school in London called The School of Life, dedicated to a new vision of education. Alain‘s newest book is published in April 2009 and is titled The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.
Alain started writing at a young age. His first book, Essays in Love [titled On Love in the US], was published when he was twenty-three. It minutely analyzed the process of falling in and out of love, in a style that mixed elements of a novel together with reflections and analyses normally found in a piece of non-fiction. It's a book of which many readers are still fondest and it has sold two million copies worldwide.
It was with How Proust Can Change Your Life that Alain's work reached a truly global audience. The book was a particular success in the United States, where the mixture of an ironic 'self-help' envelope and an analysis of one of the most revered but unread books in the Western canon struck a chord. It was followed by The Consolations of Philosophy, to which it was in many ways an accompaniment. Though sometimes described as popularizations, these two books were at heart attempts to develop original ideas (about, for example, friendship, art, envy, desire and inadequacy) with the help of the thoughts from other thinkers – an approach that would have been familiar to writers like Seneca or Montaigne and that disappeared only with the growing professionalization of scholarship in the 19th century.
Alain then returned to a more lyrical, personal style of writing. In The Art of Travel, he looked at themes in the psychology of travel: how we imagine places before we have seen them, how we remember beautiful things, what happens to us when we look at deserts, or stay in hotels or go to the countryside. In Status Anxiety, he examined an almost universal anxiety that is rarely mentioned directly: the anxiety about what others think of us; about whether we're judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. In The Architecture of Happiness, Alain discussed questions of beauty and ugliness in architecture. Much of the book was written at de Botton's home in West London, just near Shepherd's Bush roundabout, one of the uglier man-made places, which nevertheless provided helpful examples of how important it is to get architecture right.
Alain‘s latest book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work saw Alain traveling across the world for two years with a photographer in tow, looking at people in their workplaces and reflecting on the great themes of work: why do we do it? How can it be more bearable? What is a meaningful life? The book is at once lyrical and gripping like a novel can be, and yet also packed with ideas and analysis.
Aside from writing, de Botton has been involved in making a number of television documentaries - and now helps to run a production company, Seneca Productions. In the summer of 2008, Alain realized a life-long dream when he helped to launch a miniature 'university' called The School of Life - which emulates the spirit of enquiry and playfulness found in his books and which aims not only to discuss life, but also change it for the better.
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Please write for me the hadiths in the texts of which the Messenger (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) instructed us to memorise them.
The Sunnah is one of the major sources of sharee‘ah, for the Qur’an commands us to take whatever the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) brought.
Hence it is encouraged to memorise whatever we can of the Sunnah, but this does not refer to any particular hadith.
It was narrated that Zayd ibn Thaabit said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) say: “May Allah bless a man who hears a hadith from us and memorizes it so that he can convey it to others, for perhaps he is conveying it to one who will understand it better than him, and perhaps the one who conveys knowledge does not understand it himself.” Narrated by at-Tirmidhi (2656). And he said: Concerning this matter there are reports from ‘Abdullah ibn Mas‘ood, Mu‘adh ibn Jabal, Jubayr ibn Mut‘im, Abu’d-Darda’ and Anas. The hadith of Zayd ibn Thaabit is a hasan hadith. It was narrated by Abu Dawood (3660) and classed as saheeh by al-Albaani in Saheeh Sunan at-Tirmidhi.
It is well-known that the importance of what is memorised is based on the content of the text. That which has to do with explaining obligatory duties and things that are prohibited is what the Muslim should definitely know and memorise if he can. After that, come the hadiths which explain what is recommended (mustahabb) and what is disliked (makrooh).
Hence what the Muslim is advised to do is to pay attention to learning the hadiths which explain the rulings that he needs to know, such as the hadiths which speak of the rulings on purification (tahaarah), prayer and fasting, then the rulings on zakaah, if it is obligatory in his case, and the rulings on Hajj… and so on.
One of the most useful books on this matter for the beginner is ‘Umdat al-Ahkaam by al-Haafiz ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Maqdisi, then Buloogh al-Maraam by al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar.
He should also know the proven hadiths that speak of good manners and attitude. Useful books on this matter include al-Adab al-Mufrad by Imam al-Bukhaari, and one of the useful, comprehensive books on this topic is Riyadh as-Saaliheen by Imam an-Nawawi (may Allah have mercy on him). If the beginner student starts by memorising al-Arba‘een an-Nawawiyyah then the reports added to it by al-Haafiz Ibn Rajab (may Allah have mercy on him), that is good and there will be a great deal of benefit in that for him, in sha Allah.
It is good to memorise the wording of such hadiths, but if that is difficult for you, then it is sufficient to understand their meanings; commentaries on these hadiths are available, praise be to Allah, and they can easily be accessed on the Internet.
But there is a category of hadiths of which the Muslim should pay attention to learning the wording without changing it; these are the hadiths of du‘aa’ and dhikr.
Allaahumma aslamtu wajhi ilayka wa fawwadtu amri ilayka wa alja’tu zahri ilayka raghbatan wa rahbatan ilayka, la malja’a wa laa manjaa minka illa ilayka. Allaahumma aamantu bi kitaabika alladhi anzalta wa nabiyyika alladhi arsalta (O Allaah I submit my face to You, and I entrust my affairs to You, and I rely totally on You in hope and in fear of You. Verily there is no refuge nor safe haven from You except with You. O Allaah, I believe in Your Book which You have revealed and in Your Prophet whom You have sent).
Narrated by al-Bukhaari (247), Muslim (2710).
The most appropriate thing that may be said concerning the reason why the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) corrected the one who said Rasool (Messenger) instead of Nabi (Prophet) is that the wording of the adhkaar is tawqeefi [i.e., they can only be known through divine Revelation and sound texts of hadeeth, with no room for ijtihad], and they have special characteristics and benefits that are not subject to reasoning, so they must be memorised verbatim as they were narrated.
End quote from Fath al-Baari (11/112).
One of the most useful and most well-known books concerning this matter is al-Adhkaar by Imam an-Nawawi (may Allah have mercy on him).
This is the way in which one may study the hadiths of the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him).
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In August, we published a blog post entitled “Why Can’t I Run a 100-Node CockroachDB Cluster?”. The post outlined difficulties we encountered stabilizing CockroachDB. CockroachDB stability (or the lack of) had become significant enough that we designated it a “code yellow” issue, a concept borrowed from Google that means a problem is so pressing that it merits promotion to a primary concern of the company. For us, the code yellow was more than warranted; a database program isn’t worth the bytes to store its binary if it lacks stability.
In this post, I’ll set the stage with some background, then cover hypotheses for root causes of instability, our communication strategy, some interesting technical details, outcomes for stabilization efforts, and conclusions. It’s a long post, so bear with me!
TL;DR: We achieved most of our stability goal. While we’re still working on some of the chaos scenarios, the system is easily stable at many more than 10 node clusters – we’ve tested it successfully at 100 nodes.
To better set the stage: we announced the CockroachDB Beta release in April, after more than a year of development. Over the five months of progress on the beta, concerns over correctness, performance, and the general push for new features dominated our focus. We incorrectly assumed stability would be an emergent property of forward progress, just as long as everyone was paying some attention to, and fixing stability bugs whenever they were encountered. But by August, despite a team of 20 developers, we couldn’t stand up a 10-node cluster for two weeks without major performance and stability issues.
Nothing could more effectively convey the gulf that had opened up between our stability expectations and reality than the increasingly frequent mentions of instability as a punchline in the office. Despite feeling that we were just one or two pull requests away from stability, the inevitable chuckle nevertheless morphed into a insidious critique. This blog post chronicles our journey to establish a baseline of stability for CockroachDB.
The rapid pace of development was obscuring, or contributing to, instability faster than solutions could be developed. Imagine a delicate surgery with an excessive amount of blood welling up in the incision. You must stop the bleeding first in order to operate. This analogy suggested we’d need to work on stability fixes in isolation from normal development. We accomplished this by splitting our master branch into two branches: the master branch would be dedicated to stability, freezing with the exception of pull requests targeting stability. All other development would continue in a develop branch.
While many engineers were paying attention to stability, there was no focused team and no clear leader. Imagine many cooks in the kitchen working independently on the same dish, without anyone responsible for the result tasting right. To complicate matters, imagine many of the chefs making experimental contributions… Time to designate a head chef. We chose Peter Mattis, one of our co-founders. He leads engineering and is particularly good at diagnosing and fixing complex systems, and so was an obvious choice. Instead of his previously diffuse set of goals to develop myriad functionality and review significant amounts of code, we agreed that he would largely limit his focus to stability and become less available for other duties. The key objective here was to enable focus and establish accountability.
Instability was localized in a core set of components, which were undergoing too many disparate changes for anyone to fully understand and review. Perhaps a smaller team could apply more scrutiny to fewer, careful changes and achieve what had eluded a larger team. We downsized the team working on core components (the transactional, distributed key-value store), composed of five engineers with the most familiarity with that part of the codebase. We even changed seating arrangements, which felt dangerous and counter-cultural, as normally we randomly distribute engineers so that project teams naturally resist balkanization.
The decision to do something about stability happened quickly. I’d come home from an August vacation blithely assuming instability a solved problem. Unfortunately, new and seemingly worse problems had cropped up. This finally provided enough perspective to galvanize us into action. Our engineering management team discussed the problem in earnest, considered likely causes, and laid out a course of action over the course of a weekend. To proceed, we had to communicate the decisions internally to the team at Cockroach Labs, and after some soul searching, externally to the community at large.
One of our values at Cockroach Labs is transparency. Internally, we are open about our stability goals and our successes or failures to meet them. But just being transparent about a problem isn’t enough; where we fell down was in being honest with ourselves about the magnitude of the problem and what it meant for the company.
Where we didn’t succeed was in how precipitous the decision and communication seemed to some members of the team. We received feedback that the decision lacked sufficient deliberation and the implementation felt “railroaded”.
We didn’t decide immediately to communicate the code yellow externally, although consensus quickly formed around the necessity. For one thing, we’re building an open source project and we make an effort to use Gitter instead of Slack for engineering discussions, so the community at large can participate. It would be a step backwards to withhold this important change in focus. For another thing, the community surely was aware of our stability problems and this was an opportunity to clarify and set expectations.
Nevertheless, the task of actually writing a blog post to announce the stability code yellow wasn’t easy and wasn’t free of misgivings. Raise your hand if you like airing your problems in public… Unsurprisingly, there was criticism from Hacker News commentators, but there were also supportive voices. In the end, maintaining community transparency was the right decision and we hope established trust.
With changes to process and team structure decided, and the necessary communication undertaken, we embarked on an intense drive to address the factors contributing to instability in priority order. We of course had no idea how long this would take. Anywhere from one to three months was the general consensus. In the end, we achieved our code yellow exit criteria in five weeks.
What did we fix? Well, instability appeared in various guises, including clusters slowing precipitously or deadlocking, out-of-memory panics (OOMs), and data corruption (detected via periodic replica checksum comparisons).
The generation and communication of replica snapshots, used to rebalance and repair data in a CockroachDB cluster, was our most persistent adversary in the battle for stability. Snapshots use significant disk and network IO, and mechanisms that limit their memory consumption and processing time while holding important locks were originally considered unnecessary for beta stability. Much of the work to tame snapshots occurred during the months leading up to the stability code yellow, which hints at their significance. Over the course of addressing snapshots, we reduced their memory usage with streaming RPCs, and made structural changes to avoid holding important locks during generation. However, the true cause of snapshot instability proved to be a trivial oversight, but it was simply not visible through the fog of cluster stabilization – at least, not until after we’d mostly eliminated the obvious symptoms of snapshot badness.
1. Nodes periodically advertise the number of range replicas they maintain.
Our error was in making this judgement too literally, without applying enough of a threshold around the mean in order to avoid “thrashing”. See the animated diagram below which shows two scenarios.
Simulation 1. In the left “Exact Mean” simulation, we rebalance to within a replica of the mean; this will never stop rebalancing. Notice that far more RPCs are sent and the simulation never reaches equilibrium.
In the right “Threshold of Mean” simulation, we rebalance to within a threshold of the mean, which quickly reaches equilibrium. In practice, continuously rebalancing crowded out other, more salient, work being done in the cluster.
Tracing tools were invaluable in diagnosing lock-contention as a cause of excessively slow or deadlocked clusters. Most of these symptoms were caused by holding common locks during processing steps which could sometimes take an order of magnitude longer than originally supposed. Pileups over common locks resulted in RPC traffic jams and excessive client latencies. The solution was lock refactoring.
Locks held during Raft processing, in particular, proved problematic as commands for ranges were executed serially, holding a single lock per range. This limited parallelization and caused egregious contention for long-running commands, notably replica snapshot generation. Garbage collection of replica data after rebalancing was previously protected by a common lock in order to avoid tricky consistency issues. Replica GC work is time consuming and impractical to do while holding a per-node lock covering actions on all stores. In both cases, the expedient solution of coarse-grained locking proved inadequate and required refactoring.
Ironically, the same tracing tools used to diagnose degenerate locking behavior were themselves stability culprits. Our internal tracing tools were pedantically storing complete dumps of KV and Raft commands while those spans were held in a trace’s ring buffer. This was fine for small commands, but quickly caused Out-of-Memory (OOM) errors for larger commands, especially pre-streaming snapshots. A silver lining to our various OOM-related difficulties was development of fine-grained memory consumption metrics, tight integration with Go and C++ heap profiling tools, and integration with Lightstep, a distributed tracing system inspired by Google’s Dapper.
OOMs and deadlocks are often diagnosed and fixed through honest labor that pays an honest wage. What keeps us up at night are seemingly impossible corruption errors. Some of these occur between replicas (i.e. replicas don’t agree on a common checksum of their contents). Others are visible when system invariants are broken. These kinds of problems have been rare, though we found one during our stability code yellow.
CockroachDB uses a bi-level index to access data in the system. The first level lives on a special bootstrap range, advertised via gossip to all nodes. It contains addressing information for the second level, which lives on an arbitrary number of subsequent ranges. The second level, finally, contains addressing information for the actual system data, which lives on the remaining ranges.
Addressing records are updated when ranges split and are rebalanced or repaired. They are updated like any other data in the system, using distributed transactions, and should always be consistent. However, a second level index addressing record went unexpectedly missing. Luckily, Ben Darnell, our resident coding Sherlock Holmes, was able to theorize a gap in our model which could account for the problem, despite requiring an obscure and unlikely sequence of events, and perfect timing. It’s amazing what a brilliant engineer can intuit from code inspection alone. Also, there ought to be a maxim that in a sufficiently large distributed system, anything that can happen, will happen.
Last, and certainly not least, we waged an epic struggle to tame Raft, our distributed consensus algorithm. In a resonant theme of these technical explanations, we had originally concluded that improvements to Raft that were on the drawing board could wait until after our general availability release. They were seen as necessary for much larger clusters, while the Raft algorithm’s impedance mismatch with CockroachDB’s architecture could simply be ignored for the time being. This proved a faulty assumption.
Impedance mismatch? Yes, it turns out that Raft is a very busy protocol and typically suited to applications where only a small number of distinct instances, or “Raft groups”, are required. However, CockroachDB maintains a Raft group per range, and a large cluster will have hundreds of thousands or millions of ranges. Each Raft group elects a leader to coordinate updates, and the leader engages in periodic heartbeats to followers. If a heartbeat is missed, followers elect a new leader. For a large CockroachDB cluster, this meant a huge amount of heartbeat traffic, proportional to the total number of ranges in the system, not just ranges being actively read or written, and it was causing massive amounts of network traffic. This, in conjunction with lock contention and snapshots, would cause chain reactions. For example, too many heartbeats would fill network queues causing heartbeats to be missed, leading to reelection storms, thus bringing overall progress to a halt or causing node panics due to unconstrained memory usage. We had to fix this dynamic.
We undertook two significant changes. The first was lazy initialization of Raft groups. Previously, we’d cycle through every replica contained on a node at startup time, causing each to participate in their respective Raft groups as followers. Being lazy dramatically eased communication load on node startup. However, being lazy isn’t free: Raft groups require more time to respond to the first read or write request if they’re still “cold”, leading to higher latency variance. Still, the benefits outweighed that cost.
The success of lazy initialization led to a further insight: if Raft groups didn’t need to be active immediately after startup, why couldn’t they simply be decommissioned after use? We called this process “quiescence”, and applied it to Raft groups where all participants were fully replicated with no pending traffic remaining. The final heartbeat to the Raft group contains a special flag, telling participants to quiesce instead of being ready to campaign for a new leader if the leader fails further heartbeats.
Simulation 2. In the left “Naive Raft” simulation, notice near constant sequence of heartbeats, denoted by the red RPCs between Raft groups. These are constant despite the slow trickle of writes from applications. In the right “Quiescing Raft” simulation, the Raft heartbeats occur only in order to quiesce after write traffic.
In addition to other changes, such as Raft batching, we managed to meaningfully reduce background traffic. By doing so, we also directly contributed to another key product goal, to constrain network, disk, and CPU usage to be directly proportional to the amount of data being read or written, and never proportional to the total size of data stored in the cluster.
How did our process and management initiatives fare in addressing the three hypothesized root causes?
Splitting the master branch was not without costs. It added significant overhead in near-daily merges from the master branch to develop in order to avoid conflicts and maintain compatibility with stability fixes. We effectively excluded changes to “core” packages from the develop branch in order to avoid a massive merge down the road. This held up some developer efforts, refactorings in particular, making it unpopular. In particular, Tamir Duberstein was a martyr for the stability cause, suffering the daily merge from master to develop at first quietly, and then with mounting frustration.
Was the split branch necessary? A look at the data suggests not. There was significant churn in the develop branch, which counted 300 more commits during the split branch epoch. Despite that, there was no regression in stability when the branches were merged. We suspect that the successful merge is more the result of limits on changes to core components than to the split branches. While there is probably a psychological benefit to working in isolation on a stability branch, nobody is now arguing that was a crucial factor.
Designating a team with stability as the specific focus, and putting a single person in charge, proved invaluable. In our case, we drafted very experienced engineers, which may have led to a productivity hit in other areas. Since this was temporary, it was easy to justify given the severity of the problem.
What ended up being more important than proximity were daily “stability sync” stand ups. These served as the backbone for coordination, and required only 30 minutes each morning. The agenda is (and remains): 1) status of each test cluster; 2) who’s working on what; 3) group discussion on clearing any blocking issues.
We also held a twice-weekly “stability war room” and pressed any and all interested engineers into the role of “production monkey” each week. A production monkey is an engineer dedicated to overseeing production deployments and monitoring. Many contributions came from beyond the stability team, and the war rooms were a central point of coordination for the larger engineering org. Everyone pitching in with production duties raised awareness and familiarized engineers with deployment and debugging tools.
A smaller team with a mandate for greater scrutiny was a crucial success factor. In a testament to that, the structure has become more or less permanent. An analogy for achieving stability and then maintaining it is to imagine swimming in the ocean at night with little sense of what’s below or in which direction the shoreline is. We were pretty sure we weren’t far from a spot we could put our feet down and stop swimming, but every time we tried, we couldn’t touch bottom. Now that we’ve finally found a stable place, we can proceed with confidence; if we step off into nothingness, we can swim back a pace to reassess from a position of safety.
We now merge non-trivial changes to core components one-at-a-time by deploying the immediately-prior SHA, verifying it over the course of several hours of load, and then deploying the non-trivial change to verify expected behavior without regressions. This process works and has proven dramatically effective.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, the smaller team saw an increase per engineer in pull request activity (see stream chart below).
Stream Chart 1. The stream chart shows pull request changed code lines (additions + deletions) for major CockroachDB components in 2016. The three blue areas at bottom contain the “core” components: gossip, kv, and storage. The vertical black lines show the start and end of the code yellow branch split.
From the graph, you can see that stabilization efforts saw a significant tightening in pace of pull request changes near merge time. These effects can be traced to an increase in “embargoed” pull requests affecting core components, mostly refactorings and performance improvements which were considered too risky to merge to the increasingly stable master.
In hindsight (and in Hacker News commentary), it seems negligent to have allowed stability to become such a pressing concern. Shouldn’t we have realized earlier that the problem wasn’t going away without changing our approach? One explanation is the analogy of the frog in the slowly heating pot of water. Working so closely with the system, day in and day out, we failed to notice how stark the contrast had become between our stability expectations pre-beta and the reality in the months that followed. There were many distractions: rapid churn in the code base, new engineers starting to contribute, and no team with stability as its primary focus. In the end, we jumped out of the pot, but not before the water had gotten pretty damn hot.
Many of us at Cockroach Labs had worked previously on complex systems which took their own sweet time to stabilize. Enough, that we hold a deep-seated belief that such problems are tractable. We posited that if we stopped all other work on the system, a small group of dedicated engineers could fix stability in a matter of weeks. I can’t stress enough how powerful belief in an achievable solution can be.
Could we have avoided instability?
Ah, the big question, and here I’m going to use “I” instead of “we”.
Hacker News commentary on my previous blog post reveals differing viewpoints. What I’m going to say next is simply conjecture as I can’t assert the counterfactual is possible, and nobody can assert that it’s impossible. However, since I’m unaware of any complex, distributed system having avoided a period of instability, I’ll weakly assert that it’s quite unlikely. So, I’ll present an argument from experience, with the clear knowledge that it’s a fallacy. Enough of a disclaimer?
I’ve worked on several systems in the same mold as CockroachDB and none required less than months to stabilize. Chalk one up for personal anecdote. While I didn’t work on Spanner at Google, my understanding is that it took a long time to stabilize. I’ve heard estimates as long as 18 months. Many popular non-distributed databases, both SQL and NoSQL, open source and commercial, took years to stabilize. Chalk several up for anecdotal hearsay.
While proving distributed systems correct is possible, it likely wouldn’t apply to the kinds of stability problems which have plagued CockroachDB. After all, the system worked as designed in most cases; there was emergent behavior as a result of complex interactions.
I’d like to conclude with several practical suggestions for mitigating instability in future efforts.
Define a less ambitious minimally viable product (MVP) and hope to suffer less emergent complexity and a smaller period of instability. Proceed from there in an incremental fashion, preventing further instability with a careful process to catch regressions.
When a system is functionally complete, proceed immediately to a laser focus on stability. Form a team with an experienced technical lead, and make stability its sole focus. Resist having everyone working on stability. Clearly define accountability and ownership.
Systems like CockroachDB must be tested in a real world setting. However, there is significant overhead to debugging a cluster on AWS. The cycle to develop, deploy, and debug using the cloud is very slow. An incredibly helpful intermediate step is to deploy clusters locally as part of every engineer’s normal development cycle (use multiple processes on different ports). See the allocsim and zerosum tools.
Does building a distributed SQL system and untangling all of its parts sound like your ideal Tuesday morning? If so, we’re hiring! Check out our open positions here.
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Is an LLC, S-corp., Limited Liability Partnership, etc. the right structure for your business?
I will help you understand your options and decide which business structure is right for your small business. I will also make sure you know how to ensure that business structure works for you.
Today's business structures are largely designed to provide "Limited liability." This means that by choosing the proper business structure, you can protect your personal and family's assets from a business liability.
But, you must make sure you follow certain steps. Not doing so can put you and your family at risk. For example, mixing your personal accounts and your business accounts, using personal funds for business expenses, not entering into contracts as a representative of your company...these mistakes could potentially be costly.
I can help you understand how to organize and register your business properly and keep the protection it provides you intact.
Though you are driven by a charitable purpose, when setting up your non-profit and obtaining 501(c)(3) status from the IRS, you must approach it as business.
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Many people criticize the female models that are commonly seen on the catwalks they are too thin, most of these criticisms are based on negative thoughts on the way in as they reflect the body image of women before the world, the problem lies in how the rest of women see them, especially girls who had come to these thin models as their example to follow. Most designers come to agencies of models in search of thin women, since many affirm clearly that clothes them better cuelgua to the models that have these features. However, if we look at pictures of models from the late 1950s or earlier, these do not seemed suffer from lack of beauty only by the fact of not having a extremely thin frigura. In 1960, the models were an average of 5? 7 (1.7 m) and weighed about 129 pounds (58,51 kg). Currently the professional models are in an average of two highest inches and weighs about 114 pounds (51.7 kg).
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How many running races are held each year?
I know there are many races held around the world, but are there any governing body that counts races per year? Do they know how many running races per year in the whole world?
Unfortunately, there is not currently a way to mandate and keep tabs on every single running race in existence. This is because small towns, student organizations at colleges and universities, non-profits and even just volunteers trying to raise money for a cause can technically put on a small race whenever or wherever they want, so long as they have support from the city and public servants like police officers to block off streets and emergency medical help just in case something goes awry. So, for this reason, there is no real way to know of every single running road race that is set to take place all over the world.
However, there IS a governmental body or organization that is in charge of governing road races - particularly larger races that attract a bit of a crowd. This organization is the IAAF: the International Association of Athletics Federation. The IAAF, founded in 1912 in Stockholm, Sweden, functions to keep tabs on what races are being held, when they are being held, who is running them, and where they are located. They are the world governing body for all track and field athletics. That's right - not only is the IAAF responsible for making the rules and regulations for road racing, but for track and field events as well.
For distance races, the IAAF sets the rules for which distances are "IAAF recognized." These include the 5k race, the 10k, the 10 mile, the 8k, 15k, 20k, half-marathon, 25k, 30k, and the 100k. The IAAF also host the IAAF World Championships every other year, with a rotating location. Athletes representing counties from all over come to compete in 10 days of various distance running events, track running events, and field events. The 2017 IAAF World Championships were held in Great Britain, while the 2019 World Championships are set to be held in Doha, Qatar.
And while there is no way to track every single racing event that is held, to give you some idea, there are certainly thousands of road races at varying distances held all over the world each year.
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Git, GitHub, GitLab … what is the difference between these three?
Git is a tool, a version control software designed specifically to keep track of the changes made to files over time. This most popular version control system is used to ensure a smooth and efficient software development workflow through Git repositories.
GitHub and GitLab are web-based Git repositories, a central place for developers to store, share, test and collaborate on web projects. Let's take a closer look at GitHub and GitLab and compare each other.
GitHub was launched in 2008 and it is the most famous server for hosting open-source projects versed in Git. It offers free services for open source projects (accessible to the public) and paid tiers for private projects. In 2018, this largest code repository in the world was bought by Microsoft company.
GitHub allows users to develop, share, and contribute to open source projects written in over 300 unique programming languages. It is the central place to build software and collaborate on millions of open-source projects together as a team and share ideas for a better software development workflow. The large companies such as Google, Apple, Amazon host their project on GitHub.
In 2011 was launched GitLab, another web-based Git repository manager developed by GitLab Inc. It’ s a simple yet modern, fully featured Git server used by larger organizations such as Sony, IBM, Alibaba, NASA, and more. Unlike GitHub, it’s free and open source. However, if you want to access more functionalities, you’ll need to use the paid version starting at $4 per user per month.
It’s a lot similar to GitHub but with additional features such as easy import from other popular Git repositories (GitHub, Google Code, Bitbucket, etc.).
The most popular web-based hosting service for Git repositories GitLab has everything GitHub has, but whit extra features and increased control over repositories.
It does not offer detailed documentation for the common Git repositories. It offers a detailed documentation for the common Git repositories on how to export/import data.
It offers an easy-to-use, intuitive UI for project management. It offers more convenient UI allowing users to access everything from one screen.
It offers various third-party integrations for continuous integration and continuous delivery work. It offers its very own CI/CD which comes pre-built meaning users do not have to install it separately.
GitHub has GitHub Enterprise and GitHub.com. GitLab has GitLab CE (open source) and GitLab EE (enterprise), along with GitLab.com (GitLab CE hosted and managed by company).
It is not open source but can host open source projects. The GitLab Community Edition is free and open sourced.
Both GitHub and GitLab are the two most popular and widely adopted repository hosting service. Deciding between GitHub vs. GitLab for your open source programming project depends on the specific objectives you intend to achieve.
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Squids are marine cephalopods (class Cephalopoda, phylum Mollusca) with ten arms and tentacles (at some point in life), secondary armature on their suckers, and lacking the internal shell specific to cuttlefish. This large, diverse group of invertebrates comprise the order Teuthida (sometimes listed as order or suborder Teuthoidea) or, in some classifications, the orders Oegopsida and Myopsida (listed as suborders of Teuthida in some taxonomies). Like all cephalopods, squids are characterized by bilateral symmetry, a prominent head, and a modification of the mollusk foot into the form of arms or tentacles surrounding the mouth, which has beak-like jaws.
Squids belong to the subclass Coleoidea along with octopuses, cuttlefish, and extinct belemites. They differ from octopuses in that octopuses have eight arms and no tentacles, while squids and cuttlefish, at some point in their life cycle, have eight arms and two tentacles. (Tentacles tend to be longer than arms and usually have suckers as their tips only.) The suckers of squids also have hooks and/or sucker rings, while octopuses have simple suckers without secondary armature (O'Shea 2006). Squids differ from the squid-like cuttlefish in that cuttlefish have an internal shell (cuttlebone) on their back. Some squid species lose their tentacles in post-larval stages, and thus the adult only has eight arms (O'Shea 2006).
Squids not only play a key role in the marine food chains—they prey on fish, crustaceans, and other mollusks, and in turn are preyed on by fish and aquatic mammals, such as whales—but they also serve as a popular source of food for humans. Squids also offer aesthetic value, as a popular item in public aquariums and as a focal point in movies and literature.
There are about 300 species of squid, classified into 28 families. Some cephalopods whose common name includes "squid" (bobtail squid, ram's horn squid, vampire squid) are taxonomically different.
The colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) and giant squids (Architeuthisare sp.) are the world's largest invertebrates. Their tentacles are particularly formidable, having powerful suckers and deadly teeth at the ends of the tentacles. The teeth of the giant squid are small, "bottle-cap" shaped circular saws, while the tentacles of the colossal squid wield two long rows of thick, sharp, finger-length screws of protruding bone.
The majority of squid are no more than 60 centimeters long, although the giant squid (Architeuthisare sp.) may reach 13 meters (40 feet) in length. In 2003, however, a large specimen of an abundant but poorly understood species Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni (the colossal squid) was discovered. This species may grow to 14 meters in length, making it the largest invertebrate in the world.
There have been reports of the largest being over 60 feet and weighing over one ton (Vecchione 2006). O'Shea (2006), however, discounts reports of Architeuthisare sp. being 60 feet in length as a myth, noting exaggeration of size by lengthening of specimens—stretching their tentacle arms like rubber bands. He likewise discounts reports of specimens weighing up to one ton. The size of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, considered to be the largest squid, is based on estimates. Giant squids are featured in literature and folklore, with a strongly frightening connotation. Even the adult giant squids are not immune from predators—they show up in the stomach of sperm whales.
Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni also possesses the largest eyes in the animal kingdom (O'Shea 2006).
Squids have two gills, sometimes called ctenidia, and an extensive closed circulatory system consisting of a systemic heart and two gill hearts.
The tentacles are a type of muscular hydrostat and have suckers. If severed, the tentacles do not grow back.
Squid have chromatophores (pigment-containing and light-reflecting cells) embedded in their skin in the outer layer of mantle and they can change color and readily blend in with their surroundings to avoid predators. Squids also have the ability to expel ink if threatened.
A squid's bony structure is internalized. There is a single flat plate structure buried within the soft tissue, referred to as the gladius or pen.
Squids have a specialized foot called the siphon, or hyponome, that enables them to move by expelling water under pressure. Squids are the most skilled of the coleoids at this form of jet propulsion. In this method, oxygenated water is taken into the mantle cavity. Through muscular contraction of this cavity, the spent water is expelled through the hyponome, created by a fold in the mantle. Motion of squids is usually backward as water is forced out anteriorly through the hyponome, but direction can be controlled somewhat by pointing it in different directions, and a typical squid has fins, sometimes more than two (O'Shea 2006). While jet propulsion requires more energy than the means used by fish, and is normally slower, squids rival fish in their speed of swimming (Young et al. 1996).
The mouth of the squid is equipped with a sharp horny beak made of chitin, used to kill and tear prey into manageable pieces. Captured whales, which consume squid, often have squid beaks in their stomachs, the beak being the only indigestible part of the squid. The mouth contains the radula (the rough tongue common to all mollusks except bivalvia and aplacophora).
Squids are exclusively carnivorous, feeding on fish and other invertebrates. Squids usually have two elongated tentacles especially for the capture of food. They are voracious, fast-moving, and fast-growing predators, and can be hugely abundant in productive seas. Most live for just one year, dying after spawning, although some of the giant species may live for two years or more.
Many species of squid are popular as food in cuisines as widely separated as Korean and Italian. In English-speaking countries, it is often known by the name calamari, from the Greek-Italian word for these animals.
Individual species of squid are found abundantly in certain areas and provide large catches for fisheries.
When cooking, it is important to keep the cooking time brief as the flesh tends to toughen if overcooked. The body can be stuffed whole, cut into flat pieces, or sliced into rings. The tentacles and the ink are also edible; in fact, the only parts of the squid that are not eaten are its beak and the internal bony structure.
There are myriads of ways in which squid is eaten worldwide.
Fried calamari is one of the most popular ways to cook calamari in the West. Squid rings are coated in batter and deep fried. They are often eaten as a snack or an appetizer.
In the Mediterranean, squid ink is eaten in a variety of dishes such as paella, risotto, soups, and pasta. Squid ink is also sometimes eaten; Spaghetti al Nero di Seppia being an example.
Bouillabaisse and other seafood stews often contain squid.
In Chinese and Southeast Asian cuisine, squid is a common ingredient in a variety of dishes such as stir-fries, rice, and noodle dishes. It is often heavily spiced.
Whole grilled squid is a common food item in Asia; they are popular at food stalls in Thailand and Japan.
Pre-packaged sun-dried squid and cuttlefish are popular snack items in East Asia, often sold in a shredded form due to its chewiness.
In Japan and Korea, squid (often firefly squid or spear squid) is often made into shiokara (in Japanese) or chotkal (in Korean). Heavily salted squid is left to ferment, sometimes with its innards, for up to a month, and is sold in small jars. This salty, strong flavored item is served in small quantities as an accompaniment to white rice or alcoholic drinks.
Squids are members of the class Cephalopoda, subclass Coleoidea, and order Teuthida, of which there are two major suborders, Myopsina and Oegopsina (which in some classifications are raised to the level of orders). Teuthida is the largest of the cephalopod orders, edging out the octopuses (order Octopoda) for total number of species, with 298 classified into 28 families.
The order Teuthida is a member of the superorder Decapodiformes (from the Greek for "ten legs"). Two other orders of decapodiform cephalopods are also called squid, although they are taxonomically distinct from Teuthida and differ recognizably in their gross anatomical features. They are the bobtail squid of order Sepiolida and the ram's horn squid of the single species order Spirulida. The vampire squid is more closely related to the octopuses than to any of the squid, and is generally placed in its own order, Vampyromorphida, in the superorder Octopodiformes.
Young et al. (1996) recognize orders Oegopsida and Myopsida rather than suborders Oegopsina and Myopsina under Order Teuthida, among other changes.
Okuzumi, M., and T. Fufii, eds. 2000. Nutritional and Functional Properties of Squid and Cuttlefish. Japan: National Cooperative Association of Squid Processors.
O'Shea, S. 2006. Giant Squid and Colossal Squid Fact Sheet. Tonmo (The Octopus News Magazine Online). Retrieved January 21, 2007.
Young, R. E., M. Vecchione, and K. M. Mangold. 1996. Cephalopoda Cuvier 1797. Version January 1, 1996. Tree of Life Web Project. Retrieved January 23, 2007.
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What are the roles of computer in Information System?
Information systems are in use from an ancient time. With the development of computing technology, computers became an important part of today's modern information systems which satisfies speed, dependability etc.
Information systems collect, store and supply data. This is done by using computers. Data can be collected from computer networks or can be inserted by human resources. Software resources can also automate the collection of data (searching and finding best results) which is the most important part.
Data in information systems can be verified using computers. Thus data can be corrected or rejected before going to the processing level which final helps in getting accurate information.
Data in information systems can be processed (sorted, filtered, joined etc.) by computer to finally generate information that is desired, useful, meaningful to human resources or other information systems. Various program takes part in data processing.
Data is everything in information systems. Today's computers can store enormous amount of data. Information can derived from these stored at any time using data processing.
Computer can supply or provide information to human or another information system which can scheduled or manually operated.
Computers can not only provide a long table filled with data in an informative way, but it can also represent data in graphs, charts, images, comparative way that is much more meaningful than a long tabular data sheet.
With time, stored data can turn into obsolete data as might be the data is changing in real time. So it is required to update data as it changes and computers can do this really fast and with ease. Thus all the information provided by information systems will be up-to-date and more precise.
Information in information systems can be general to highly confidential. Though computer systems are not 100% secured but at least they can confirm security at a very high level with comparatively less cost. Computers can secure data with various technologies like access control, data encryption etc.
Computers enable the sharing of information to the next level. Using various network resources, computers enables a system to share information automatically to an application, human etc.
Computers in information systems can turn the system to automate some of the task that generally requires one or more human resources. Such as, generating reports, sending reports in emails etc. Advanced information systems can also use artificial intelligence to automate more by tracking user behavior and interaction with the system.
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A tripod made from wood poles, with a rope and pulley attached, helps you lift weights higher or heavier than you could otherwise. If you hitch the rope to a vehicle, windlass, draft animal or anything that can pull on it horizontally, the tripod and pulley will transfer the horizontal force to a vertical one, so you can use it to lift a heavy object straight up. Use materials that are strong enough to withstand the forces involved depending on the weight you're lifting and make sure everyone is clear in case of accident.
Cut three poles 15 feet long using a handsaw, ax or chainsaw. Choose straight trees of a strong wood such as hickory, oak or ironwood and trim off any branches with a hatchet or chainsaw. Avoid poles with knots or weak spots.
Lay the three poles side by side on the ground and lash them together about 1 foot from the top ends using heavy rope or chain. Set them up and spread the bottoms to form a stable tripod over the object you want to lift. Test the tripod for sturdiness, then lay the poles down again or set up a stepladder so you can reach the lashed area.
Tie a rope or hook a chain around the lashed area and hang or tie a pulley beneath the lashed area. Run a rope over the top of the pulley's wheel so one end is long enough to reach the object you want to lift and the other end is long enough to pull on. Set the tripod up again if necessary or move the ladder.
Attach one end of the rope to the object you want to lift and take hold of the other end of the rope while you're standing on the ground beside the tripod. To raise the object, pull on the rope.
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Whenever I bake cakes, sometimes after peaking, the middle collapses, do you know why?
I think you'll find the following articles helpful to answer your question.
Why do my cakes fall?
There could be a number of reasons your butter cakes are falling; a butter cake is one made with shortening or butter. Among the more common reasons is the addition of too much baking powder or soda, overbeating the egg whites, or removing the cake from the oven before it is done.
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YOUTUBE is now the second biggest search engine on the internet, after Google, with some clips racking up BILLIONS of views.
What are the most popular videos on YouTube?
The American singer-songwriter who once sang in a gospel choir now has her name to the tenth most popular video on YouTube.
Roar has amassed 2.6 billion views. Watch the video here.
Tay Tay takes ninth place in our chart with her high-energy video Shake It Off.
In 2014, when Taylor was dating <insert name of British celeb here> she released the single from her album 1989.
Fans couldn't get enough of the funny vid, which sees Taylor try - and fail - to replicate some tricky dance styles from ballet to break dancing.
The video has racked up 2.53 billion views. Watch it here.
Back in 2015, Maroon 5 released the video for their single Sugar in which the band packed their instruments up into a 1950s style convertible and road-tripped across LA, wedding crashing as they went.
Lead singer Adam Levine headed up the stunt which saw the band set up a temporary stage at each wedding and then perform for a surprised bride and groom on their big day.
Fans of the band lapped up the uplifting video and have viewed it no less that 2.54 billion times. Watch it here.
If we're all honest, Justin has a lot to be sorry for.
The Canadian pop star has been doing a good job of rubbing people up the wrong way for years, so this public apology was long overdue.
So many people were keen to hear the Biebs make amends that they tuned in to see the music video in their billions.
The dance video - which doesn't actually feature Justin at all - has amassed an incredible audience with 2.91 billion views. Watch it here.
Dance mega-hit Gangnam Style has officially crashed down the charts after its reign as the most popular video on YouTube.
The song by South Korean popstar Psy was the website’s most played film clip for a whole five years.
People have watched the video 3.13 billion times. Genuinely staggered. Watch it here - if you really have to.
If you're not a parent, you probably haven't heard of this animated series yet - but it's quite the hit.
Masha And The Bear is a Russian animated TV series, which follows a little girl called Masha and a fatherly bear who always keeps her safe from disasters.
It's been translated into 25 different languages and the English version of Recipe For Disaster episode has now been watched a huge 2.94 billion times. Watch it here.
Everyone's favourite Candian Bruno Mars is up next with his 2014 anthem Uptown Funk.
The Grenade singer performed some of his signature dance moves for the video, all the while being followed around by Mark Ronson on the hood of a car - sinister stuff.
The catchy track well and truly caught on and totted up more than 3 billion views. Watch it here.
Wiz Khalifa's tear-jerker See You Again has been knocked off the top spot, but it's still in a respectable second place.
Part of the soundtrack to Fast & Furious 7, it is a touching tribute to the late Paul Walker who died in a car crash before they had finished filming.
The heartfelt track has now been viewed 3.49 billion times. It hit one billion views in its first six months, and two billion by September 2016. Watch it here.
Ed Sheeran's gushy hit Shape Of You hit topped the charts here in Britain for 14 non-consecutive weeks, so it was only a matter of time before it made a splash on YouTube too.
The flame haired songwriter had originally penned the song with Rihanna and Rudimental in mind, but his record label convinced him to keep it for himself.
In May 2017, just 97 days after its release, Shape Of You became one of the fastest music videos to reach 1 billion hits on YouTube.
It's since racked up 3.41 billion views, earning Ed a respectable bronze place. Watch it here.
This Spanish track, by Luis Fonsi feat. Daddy Yankee, is officially YouTube's most popular song - after racking up its first 2.5 billion views in just six months.
Despacito's most viewed version doesn't include Justin Bieber, depsite the pop sensation jumping on the bandwagon with a remix of the track later on.
The high energy video follows the plight of a particularly attractive young woman as she walks through the streets of Puerto Rico and makes her way into a nightclub where a lot of dancing ensues.
The model in question is actually Zuleyka Rivera, also known as Miss Universe 2006, and people have tuned in 5 billion times to see her strut her stuff. Watch it here.
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Based on the upcoming movie of the same name that will be in theaters on June 4, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is an action adventure in the style of The Legend of Zelda that's targeted primarily at kids, but it is also reasonably entertaining for adult fans of the Potter series. The gameplay and storytelling are solid, if a bit simplistic, but a great number of rough edges mar what could have otherwise been a much more polished game.
Help Harry Potter avoid escaped prisoner Sirius Black in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
It's a safe bet that much of this game's potential audience is already familiar with the storyline from the original novel, or they soon will be when the movie version is released. If you're not, Prisoner of Azkaban recounts Harry Potter's third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a year that is dogged by the feared criminal Sirius Black. Black, the eponymous escaped prisoner, was somehow involved in the death of Harry's parents and he is making great efforts to reach--and presumably kill--young Potter as well. As with all the stories in the Harry Potter series, this one has more twists and surprises than you can shake a stick at, so if you don't already know what's going to happen, you'll be in for some surprises. The game mostly does a decent job of following the original storyline, though some liberties are taken to create new playable sequences. Meanwhile, some events from the book are only touched upon in passing, giving the story presentation a sometimes disjointed and hurried feeling. The game's story works pretty well, but it's better experienced as a companion to the book or movie, rather than as a standalone narrative.
The gameplay in Prisoner of Azkaban has been expanded upon from previous Harry Potter games, primarily because you can now play as not only Harry but also his best friends, Ron and Hermione. You'll progress through the storyline by pursuing basic quest goals that will have you attending particular classes, searching for key items, and helping out those in need. Once all your goals are completed for a given section, you'll have the option of ending the day and moving on to the next chapter or simply roaming around Hogwarts and exploring. The game's basic control scheme lets you map two spells to your action buttons, and a lock-on ability lets you dodge and keep your aim focused on a particular enemy or item of interest. You can switch between the three characters at the touch of a button, although sometimes you'll be limited to just one or two of them as situations dictate.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione each have different abilities that will come in handy as you fight magical enemies and solve puzzles.
Although the basic controls are the same for all three characters, the game does a pretty good job of differentiating between Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Harry is the only one that can do athletic things like leap across chasms or climb up ropes; Ron has the ability to spot secret doorways and other hidden things; and Hermione can squeeze through small spaces that the boys can't. The puzzles in the game are pretty easy, but they make good use of the three friends' unique abilities, and you'll have to switch between characters to accomplish different parts of the same task. The characters all have access to some basic spells, such as the attack spell Flipendo, while other spells are character-specific: Ron can use the Lumos spell, that fans will know from the books, to shine a light on some enemies and items while Hermione's Glacius spell can freeze hotheaded enemies and cool down some puzzle elements. Overall, the spellcasting is functional but not very flashy, and it provides another reason to switch between the three characters to defeat foes and solve puzzles.
There's nothing wrong with Prisoner of Azkaban from a design standpoint--it's a good, if easy, action adventure. The execution leaves a bit to be desired, though, since there are a host of small issues that combine to make the game a little less enjoyable than it could have been. The load times are on the long side, which is unfortunate because you'll run into them a tad too frequently while you're roaming around the school. The visual presentation is a bit rough at times--some enemies perish by simply blinking out of existence, for instance. The artificial intelligence that controls your friends can be a little dumb; sometimes the other characters will fail to follow you around or will shoot you with their spells if you're in the way. Finally, we ran into some fairly minor issues with collision and cutscenes that weren't game-breaking, but they were still disappointing to see in what's otherwise a pretty good game. It seems like the game would have benefited from some more time in development to polish up these slight issues.
Prisoner of Azkaban does a good job of re-creating the school of Hogwarts and its occupants in 3D. You'll travel to various classrooms, the dungeon, and even outside the castle itself, and all of the environments are serviceably crafted with lots of magical set pieces and other characters who are roaming around. A few more small touches would have further brought the backgrounds to life, though; fans of the series may wish that all of the paintings in the castle actually moved, instead of just a few of them. The characters in the game look like cartoon versions of their movie counterparts, so they're not totally identical but still similar enough that everyone will recognize Snape's sneer or the kind, wizened brow of Dumbledore. There's even a nice cloth physics system used to make the three playable characters' robes billow out as they run around. As usual, the Xbox version of the game looks noticeably better than the PS2 game--with better lighting and textures overall--though both games look similar in terms of basic polygonal detail. As a whole, the audio in the game is adequate but not particularly rousing, with appropriate whiz- and zing-style sound effects accompanying your spellcasting, and a nice orchestral score backing up the action. The voice acting is also appropriate to the setting--everybody sounds British--and the voices generally match the personality of their film counterparts (though a few are slightly different).
Hogwarts looks pretty nice, for the most part, in this latest installment of the series.
There isn't a whole lot of material outside of the main story mode in Prisoner of Azkaban. Three minigames that appear throughout the game are also available for play from the main menu--these let you have wizarding duels with other students, race owls, and fly around on a hippogriff. Furthermore, the PlayStation 2 version features a full suite of EyeToy minigames that are surprisingly entertaining. Some of these are similar to the games that appeared on last year's EyeToy: Groove in that your primary occupation is waving your arms around like a lunatic as you try to swat at (and sometimes clap at) moving objects. Other games here are more interesting, though. One game has you match up exploding snap cards while another makes you chase down the golden snitch in the fictional wizards' sport of quidditch as you try to avoid a marauding bludger. If you're into the EyeToy thing, these bonus games actually add some nice extra value to the PS2 version; they are certainly worth checking out. Something similar would have been nice on the Xbox to flesh out the package, since there's no real incentive to play through the story again, but alas, you only get the three minigames there.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a by-the-numbers movie-licensed game that makes pretty good use of its source material without really doing anything too surprising. It's perfect for kids, since the puzzles and combat are both easy enough that youngsters won't have a hard time getting through them. Older gamers won't find it very challenging at all, but that doesn't mean it won't be entertaining while it lasts. If you love the Harry Potter series and think it would be fun in video game form (and you can get past a few rough edges), Prisoner of Azkaban should serve as a nice, interactive way to experience the story once again.
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The Valais ( German: Wallis, is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland in the southwestern part of the country, around the valley of the Rhône from its headwaters to Lake Geneva, separating the Pennine Alps from the Bernese Alps.
The canton is one of the drier parts of Switzerland in its central Rhône valley. Paradoxically, it is also one of most well-watered parts, having large amounts of snow and rain up on the highest peaks found in Switzerland.
The canton of Valais is probably best known for the Matterhorn and ski resorts such as Zermatt or Verbier.
History The Romans called the area Vallis Poenina (Upper Rhône Valley). The Vallis Poenina was won by the Romans after a great fight at Octodurus (Martigny) in 57 B.C., and was so thoroughly romanized that both the Celtic original inhabitants and the germanic Burgundian invaders of the 5th century, became romance language-speaking peoples. According to a tradition which can be traced back to the middle of the 8th century, the Theban legion was martyred at Agaunum (now Saint Maurice) about 285 or 302. From 888 onwards the lands were part of the kingdom of Jurane Burgundy.
Valais formed part of the kingdom of Transjurane Burgundy, which fell to the Holy Roman Empire in 1032. It became part of the duchy of Burgundia Minor, which was held from the emperors by the house of Zahringen (which went extinct in 1218). In 999, King Rudolph III of Burgundy gave all temporal rights and privileges to the Bishop of Sion, who was later styled praefect and count of the Valais and is still a prince of the Holy Roman Empire. The count-bishops then struggled to defend their area against the Zahringen and then the dukes of Savoy, so that the medieval history of the Valais is inextricably linked with that of the diocese of Sion. The Dukes of Savoy, however, succeeded in winning most of the land west of Sion, while in the upper part of the valley (Upper Valais) there were many feudal lords, such as the lords of Raron, those of La Tour-Chatillon, and the counts of Visp.
judicial purposes. In the same century the upper part of the valley was colonized by Germans from Hasli in the Canton of Bern. The locals became German speaking, though many Romance local names still remain. In 1354 the liberties of several of the seven Zenden (Sion, Sierre, Leuk, Raron, Visp, Brig and Conches) were confirmed by the Emperor Charles IV.
By the late 14th Century, the counts of Savoy acquired the bishopric of Sion.
The Zenden resisted his attempts to gather both spiritual and secular power in the valley. In 1375-76, Zenden forces crushed the army of the house of La Tour-Chatillon, and in 1388 utterly defeated the forces of the bishop, the count and his nobles at Visp. The German speaking Zenden spread further into the valley. Starting in 1384 the Morge stream (a little below Sion) was recognized as the boundary between Savoyard, French speaking Lower Valais and German speaking episcopal Upper Valais.
but won them again in 1536. In the treaty of Thonon in 1569, Monthey, Val d'llliez and Bouveret were permanently annexed to the Valais. These conquered districts in the Lower Valais were always ruled as subject lands by the bishop and Zenden of the Upper Valais. On March 12, 1529, Valais became an associate member (Zugewandter Ort) of the Swiss Confederation.
became the separate Rhodanic Republic. In 1810 the Rhodanic Republic was annexed by Napoleonic France as the département of Simplon. Independence was restored in 1813, and on August 4, 1815 the Valais finally entered the Swiss confederation as a canton. In 1845, the Valais joined the Catholic separate league (Sonderbund) which led to what is called the Sonderbund War. 99,000 Swiss Federal troops under General Henri Dufour were faced by 79,000 Separatists, but in the end the Valais chose not to fight.
The wide, glacial Rhône valley dominates the area. There are many side valleys which branch off the main valley. These vary from narrow and remote to reasonably populous and popular. At the head of the Mattertal valley lies Zermatt, a pretty tourist village dominated by views of the Matterhorn (4,478 m). Fifty of the mountains exceed 4,000 m with the highest, Monte Rosa, reaching to 4,638 metres (15,217 ft), and there are numerous glaciers including several of the largest in the Alps.
The Rhône drains almost the entire canton and flows in the main valley from east to west down to Martigny, then in a right angle north to its mouth in Lake Geneva. After the small town of Saint-Maurice, the northern banks of the river belong to the canton of Vaud. However two areas are located on the south side of the Alps and are drained by the Po river: the valley south of the Simplon Pass and the small area south of the Great St. Bernard Pass. The main valley is bounded by the Bernese Alps in the north and the Pennine Alps in the south. Other ranges situated partially in Valais are the Chablais Alps, the Mont Blanc Massif, the Urner Alps and the Lepontine Alps.
Only about half of the total area is considered productive.
There are 143 municipalities in the canton (As of 2009).
Valais is predominantly French- and Arpitan-speaking. The eastern part of the canton (Upper Valais), however, speaks Walliser German. The French-speaking population makes up slightly more than two-thirds of the total population.
foreigners, or about 19.1% of the total population. The largest towns are the capital Sion (Sitten), Monthey, Sierre, Martigny and Brig. There is no major city located in the canton. As of 2000 81% of the population is Roman Catholic, while only 6% are Protestant.
immediately east Saas Fee. Other parts of the mountains of the canton further west are popular as well, such as the more French-speaking resorts near Verbier and the Evolene and Arolla region. The resorts on the north side of the main Rhône river valley are popular, looking out southwards towards the Peninne Alps and still part of the southern slope of the Bernese Alps, such as the family-oriented resort of Crans-Montana. The resorts in the Goms region are slightly less known, yet also receive attention during the summer hiking season and the winter ski season.
the plains. The wine industry of the canton is the largest in Switzerland. There are also a large number orchards in the area, and saffron is also gathered here.
The west part and the most industrial region of the canton is called Chablais. The area is very important for the economy. The lands from the Valais part of Lake Geneva to the town of St-Maurice are located in the Chablais. There are a lot of factories, the most important are the subsidiaries of Novartis and Syngenta, in Monthey. In the town of Collombey-Muraz, there is an oil refinery.
Near Visp there is a large aluminium processing plant. Other metal products and chemicals are produced around Visp and Sierre.
longest land tunnel in the world, the Lötschberg Base Tunnel, is in operation since late 2007, connecting by rail the town of Frutigen in canton Bern, with the town of Visp in canton Valais/Wallis. This is to better allay car traffic in the highly scenic Kandertal, and also to provide faster transport through the Bernese Alps from the populous Mittelland in the north to the southern canton of Valais. Cars may be loaded onto the trains as freight. The old train line still carries traffic particularly road traffic as freight, and has highly scenic sections in both cantons on either side of the old tunnel through the dividing ridgeline, yet is somewhat slower than the new route which has a much longer tunnel section.
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0.999838 |
Is a mailing address the same as a physical address?
In general, a mailing address can often be the same as a street address, but this is not always the case. To understand why, we must first acknowledge that the two types of addresses are often defined and regulated by two separate authoritative entities that generally serve different purposes.
A mailing address, or postal address, is often regulated by postal authorities that are commonly associated with services related to the sending and receiving of mail. For example, in the US this would be USPS. In the United Kingdom, Royal Mail. Deutsche Post DHL Group for Germany and JP Post or Japan Post (日本郵政 Nippon Yūsei) for Japan. These postal authorities can be public government agencies, like the USPS, or privatized companies like Royal Mail, Deutsche Post and JP Post- which were sold off by their governments.
A physical address, sometimes referred to as a street address, is used to describe where a place is geographically located. It often pertains to a geographic location under the jurisdiction of an administrative area or region that has some government function. The physical address should have a set geographic boundary that is recognized and governed by an administrative area. If an address resides in an incorporated area then its municipality is generally responsible for providing some public services, such as law enforcement, public schools, sanitation, water works etc. If an address resides in a rural and/or unincorporated area, then sometimes these services are provided by the governing state, territory, province, county etc. Sometimes certain services are not available at all.
Where a physical address is geographically located will often determine what public and private services it has access to. For example, a rural address may not have access to readily available public transportation or high-speed internet, whereas an address in a metropolitan area likely would.
In the US, it is the job of the US Census Bureau (USCB) to collect and produce data about the people. Both public and private agencies rely on the various datasets produced by the USCB, such as geographic and demographic data, to help make informed decisions. The USCB produces various Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) datasets that are designed for use with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and various mapping projects. TIGER products are spatial datasets used to describe geographic features such as boundaries, roads, address information, water features, as well as legal and statistical geographic areas.
TIGER products are widely used in many US related geolocation solutions, including our own DOTS Address Geocode US service, and are considered a standard when it comes to working with geographic locations and features in the US and its territories. TIGER data, along with other topological geographic mapping datasets, can be used to help geocode a physical address to varying degrees of accuracy.
Mailing address datasets are generally used to help facilitate and ensure the delivery of mail, and they are not necessarily one-to-one comparable with geographic datasets like TIGER. The main reason being that these datasets are intended to serve different purposes. Let’s take USPS ZIP Codes for example. USPS ZIP Codes are not geographic areas. They are a collection of mail delivery routes and they help identify individual post offices and delivery stations that are associated with mailing addresses.
ZIP Codes help the USPS determine the best route for delivering mail. It is not uncommon for a physical address, that is geographically located in one locality, to be assigned to a different locality in its mailing address. This is common for areas where a single post office or delivery station may serve multiple localities.
Here’s an interesting example of an address that is physically or geographically located in one state of the US, but the mailing address has it listed as being in another.
Using Google Maps to inspect the address and the surrounding area, we see that the location is near a state line, but the address is clearly in Colorado and not in Wyoming.
According to Google the physical address is approximately six miles from the Wyoming and Colorado state line. When we investigated other addresses in the area we found that they too had a mailing address that said they were in Wyoming.
When we reached out to USPS to inquire about the addresses they acknowledged that they were indeed geographically located in Colorado; however, their ZIP code is associated with a USPS Post Office located in Jelm, Wyoming and that is the reason why the mailing addresses are for Jelm, Wyoming and not Jelm, Colorado. It may be confusing to base an address’ location on where it’s post office is located, but logistically it makes sense for the postal authority, USPS.
It’s also not uncommon for some rural areas to use general delivery, where mail is not delivered to a recipient’s physical address and it is instead kept at a post office that the recipient will go to and pick it up. If the post office is located in a different locality, then the recipient’s mailing address would be different from their physical address.
Post Office Box (PO Box) and Private Mailbox (PMB) – Many individuals and businesses use PO Boxes and Private Mailboxes as an alternative to their physical address. Postal Agencies like UPS offer PMBs as Personal Mailboxes, and while they do advertise that their PMBs include a street address it still is not the recipient’s physical address.
Centralized Mailboxes – Also known as cluster mailboxes or community mailboxes, are basically a large communal mail box made up of multiple individual boxes clustered together. The mailing address for a centralized mailing box does not have to reflect the recipient’s physical address as each box in the cluster will have its own unique identifier.
Unique ZIP Codes – These are ZIP codes that are assigned to some single high-volume addresses such as universities, government agencies and some large businesses. Postal carriers will deliver mail to the organization’s mail department, and it then delivers the mail to the final destination which may be in an entirely different geographic location.
Military Addresses – Are used to route mail for military mail services, such as the US Military Postal Service (MPS), the British Forces Post Office (BFPO) and the German Armed Forces (Feldpost). Civilian postal carriers deliver mail to military post offices which then perform the final delivery.
For some people, their physical address is the same as their mailing address and when asked for their address they don’t have to worry about which address to give because they are both the same. For others who don’t have matching mailing and physical addresses, some consideration is needed. If the purpose of the address is to send mail to it, then the mailing address should be given. If the address is needed to locate where a place is geographically located, then the physical address is needed.
The answer should be clear but sometimes there are misconceptions and confusion and on the behalf of the party requesting the address. The party asking for the address may simply be unaware that not all mailing addresses are physical addresses and that not all physical address have mailing addresses. If the intent on how an address is to be used is not made clear, then the person giving their address could potentially give the wrong one if the two are not the same. Sometimes the person giving the address will be sure to specifically ask if they want the mailing address or the street address, but the party asking may be unaware of the difference and inadvertently ask for the wrong one.
There can also be some confusing cases when it comes to the terms billing address and shipping address. Likely, the billing address will be a mailing address, but what about the shipping address? Let us suppose that a customer wants to have a package delivered to their doorstep. They want to enter their physical address, but they know that USPS does not deliver mail to their physical address. However, they do know that UPS does deliver to their door, but they are not sure about FedEx. If the site they are purchasing from gives them the option to choose the shipping carrier then that helps, but if it doesn’t then which address do they choose to give? Worse yet, what if the customer is unaware that their physical address is undeliverable?
When businesses and organizations work with addresses it is important to know where they are located and if they are valid and deliverable. Otherwise, they risk making uninformed decisions that can end up wasting valuable resources like time and money and damaging customer relationships. That is why Service Objects provides various address related products to help prevent mistakes and reduce waste. Our services can quickly correct and standardize address to help determine where they are located and if they are valid and deliverable.
Test drive any of our address products with a free trial key and see how we handle these scenarios.
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0.943272 |
Do some usb power adapters supply 6.5 volts?
I took a 12 volt usb car usb adapter apart and wired it to a switch and a panel mounted female usb plug. The power supply is outputting 6.5 volts. This has me worried because I thought USB power was always 5 volts. Maybe once I plug something into it the voltage will automatically change to a the right voltage and current required by the device.
Also, this adapter says it is only compatible with Iphones. Does that mean anything else usb powered would not work?
it hardly supplies any volts because it is used to transfer infromation and data stored on your computer through to it.
. Your adapter is probably not very well regulated. Volts out will probably drop to closer to 5V when you put a load on it.
This is most likely correct, many (if not most) chargers hover a little above voltage when unloaded. Shouldn't be an issue. If it puts out voltage without being connected to an iPhone, then it should work ok with other devices unless they demand something in particular. Some USB charging devices intentionally demand "their" charger so that you have to buy a replacement charger from them. If it charges plugged into a normal USB port without drivers (i.e. all it needs is a USB port with +5 and GND connected) it should work.
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0.992864 |
A functional link to CRLs?
In the ubiquitin-proteasome system, a subset of ubiquitylated proteins requires the AAA+ ATPase p97 (also known as VCP or Cdc48) for extraction from membranes or protein complexes before delivery to the proteasome for degradation. Diverse ubiquitin adapters are known to link p97 to its client proteins, but two recent papers on the adapter protein UBXD7, including one by Bandau et al. in BMC Biology, suggest that rather than simply linking p97 to ubiquitylated proteins, this adapter may be essential to coordinate ubiquitylation and p97-mediated extraction of the proteasome substrate. These findings add to growing indications of richly diverse roles of adapters in p97-mediated signaling functions.
The ubiquitin-proteasome system mediates degradation of misfolded or damaged proteins to ensure cellular protein homeostasis, and selectively removes regulatory proteins in critical signaling pathways. The key step is the posttranslational modification of the substrate with the small protein ubiquitin and extension to ubiquitin chains that serve as a signal for degradation by the proteasome. The ubiquitylation reaction is mediated by a cascade of enzymes, comprising the E1 ubiquitin-activating enzyme, an E2 conjugating enzyme and an E3 ligase that functions in the attachment of the ubiquitin to the substrate (Figure 1). Ubiquitin-binding shuttling factors then deliver the ubiquitylated substrates to the proteasome. The conserved hexameric AAA+ ATPase p97 has emerged as an important player during this step for a subset of client proteins [1, 2]. Unlike other shuttle proteins, which simply bind both to ubiquitin chains and to components of the proteasome, p97 uses the energy of ATP hydrolysis to structurally remodel or unfold its clients, and is believed thus to help extract them from cellular structures, segregate them from binding partners or generate initial unfolded stretches to facilitate degradation by the proteasome. This is required for degradation of proteins associated with the endoplasmic reticulum, with the outer mitochondrial membrane, and with chromatin, and for some soluble proteins [1, 2]. The interaction of the p97 ATPase with the ubiquitylated substrate is mediated by diverse ubiquitin adapters [1, 2], which recognize both p97 and the ubiquitin chain on its client protein. Members of the largest family of such adapters are characterized by UBX and UBX-like domains, which assume a ubiquitin-fold and bind the amino-terminal domain of p97 . They also contain ubiquitin binding domains (UBDs), including the UBA domain, that recognize the client. The domain structures of p97 and its UBD-UBX adapters are schematically illustrated in Figure 2. In a simple linear view, p97-adapter complexes bind substrates after ubiquitylation and then deliver them to the proteasome (Figure 1).
A simple model for the function of p97. A substrate protein (S) is ubiquitylated by a cascade of E1, E2 and the E3 ubiquitin ligase. If the substrate is tightly attached to a binding partner (B) or subcellular structure, p97 binds the substrate via a ubiquitin adapter containing a ubiquitin-binding domain (UBD) and a p97-binding UBX (ubiquitin regulatory X) or UBX-like (UBX-L) domain. Upon ATP hydrolysis, p97 extracts the substrate and delivers it to the proteasome (Pr) for degradation.
Domain structure of p97 and UBX/UBX-L domain cofactors. p97 cofactors are defined by p97-binding domains or motifs that directly interact with p97, and of which the UBX/UBX-like domain is the one that is found in the largest subset. Adapters are those cofactors that also contain a ubiquitin-binding domain (UBD), such as UBA, that links p97 to ubiquitylated substrates. (a) p97 contains two ATPase domains and an amino-terminal regulatory domain that binds cofactors and substrates. (b) Human UBD-UBX/UBX-L adapters comprise the Ufd1-Npl4 heterodimer and the five listed UBA-UBX proteins. (c) Other UBX and UBX-L cofactors are depicted. Not shown is a growing number of other cofactors that bind p97 directly through other domains. aa, amino acid; BS1, binding site-1; M, membrane anchor; NZF, Npl4 zinc finger; OTU, ovarian tumor deubiquitylatiing domain; PUB, peptide N-glysosidase/ubiquitin-associated) domain; SEP, Shp1-eyc-p47 domain; UAS, ubiquitin-associating domain; UBA, ubiquitin-associated domain; UBL, ubiquitin-like domain; UIM, ubiquitin-interaction motif; UT3, Ufd1 truncation 3 domain; VIM, VCP/p97 interaction motif.
This simple view has been complicated, however, by a number of recent studies, including evidence from the Deshaies group that p97 adapters can also link p97 to the E3 ligases that ubiquitylate the client proteins; and in two papers following up these studies, Alexandru and colleagues and Deshaies and colleagues report findings that add to increasing evidence for a central and far from simple role for p97 complexes in orchestrating the regulation of many cellular processes.
The starting point for the recent investigations was a mass spectrometry study by Alexandru and colleagues in Raymond Deshaies' group that revealed a far-reaching interaction network between p97 and a large number of E3 ligases, including cullin RING ligases (CRLs) . Although for simplicity the E3 ligase in Figure 1 is schematically shown as a single entity, many E3 ligases are in fact complexes of several subunits with distinct functions. CRLs are among these multisubunit complexes, and consist of a cullin scaffold (CUL1, 2, 3, 4A, 4B or 5), a RING-domain protein that recruits an E2, and, except for CUL3-based CRLs, a cullin-specific adapter that in turn binds one of many substrate recruitment factors. In cullin-RING E3 ubiquitin ligases, the ubiquitin is directly transferred from the E2 enzyme to the substrate, the role of the cullin-RING being to recruit E2 and target protein and position them appropriately for ubiquitin transfer. Taking into account the different possible combinations of subunits, CRLs constitute up to 240 different ligase complexes that greatly extend the potential substrate spectrum of p97. Alexandru et al. established the functional relevance of p97 binding to CRLs by showing that the degradation of the hypoxia-inducible factor HIF1α, a CUL2 substrate that is constitutively degraded in normoxic conditions, depends upon p97. Indeed, other CRL substrates have in the meantime been shown to require p97 for extraction: these include the mitotic kinase Aurora B and the polymerase II catalytic subunit Rpb1, which are ubiquitylated by CUL3, as well as the replication licensing factor Cdt1, which is targeted by CUL4A .
Importantly, while various p97-adapter complexes associate with different ubiquitin ligases, the UBXD7 adapter (also known as UBXN7, or in yeast, Ubx5) stands out because it is the only adapter to have been implicated in direct binding to CRLs. UBXD7 has now been shown, in parallel studies by the Alexandru and Deshaies groups [5, 6], to bind directly to CRLs through a predicted ubiquitin-interacting motif (UIM) lying between its p97-interaction UBX domain and a UAS (ubiquitin-associating) domain of unknown function adjacent to its ubiquitin-binding UBA (ubiquitin-associated) domain (Figure 2). The UIM motif recognizes the ubiquitin-like small protein modifier NEDD8, whose dynamic conjugation to the cullin subunit of the CRL is required to activate its ligase activity . Thus, mutation of the NEDD8 acceptor site on the cullin, or chemical inhibition of NEDD8 conjugation, both abolish binding of CRLs to UBXD7. And mutation of residues in the UIM domain of UBXD7, which are homologous to residues previously shown to be generally critical for ubiquitin binding by UIMs, also abolished binding of UBXD7 to neddylated CRLs. Interestingly, while transplantation of a UIM from another protein into UBXD7 only partially restored binding of the CRL, swapping NEDD8 for ubiquitin completely restored the interaction , suggesting that the UBXD7-UIM binds Nedd8 and ubiquitin, but that this is not generally true for other UIMs. However, while the UIM and NEDD8 were both required for UBXD7 binding to the CRL, they were not sufficient, suggesting that flanking residues of the UIM make essential contacts with other elements of the CRL complex. This is consistent with the observation that although the NEDD8 unit is identical in all CRLs, UBXD7 binds CUL2- and CUL4-based CRLs preferentially over CUL1 and CUL3 .
What might be the functional significance of UBXD7 binding to neddylated CRLs? In the case of the Cul3 substrate Rpb1 in yeast, the UBXD7 orthologue Ubx5 (and specifically its UIM) is required together with p97 for efficient degradation . This suggests that linking substrate ubiquitylation and p97-mediated extraction may be important for efficient degradation of some substrates. Surprisingly, however, in the case of the CUL2 substrate HIF1α, p97 is required, but UBXD7 is not. On the contrary, Alexandru and colleagues found that UBXD7 depletion in cells accelerates HIF1α degradation . Consistent with this, overexpression of wild-type UBXD7 inhibits HIF1α ubiquitylation, an effect that can be shown to be dependent on the presence of the UIM . These observations suggest that UBXD7 acts as an antagonist of substrate ubiquitylation and degradation. This would not be surprising given the pivotal role of the UBXD7 docking site on CRL in the mechanism of CRL activation by neddylation, which involves NEDD8 and adjacent regions. NEDD8 modification induces conformational changes in the CRL that position the E2 in the vicinity of the substrate and thus promote ubiquitin transfer . Indeed, Deshaies and colleagues mention that UBXD7 binding interferes with recruitment of the E2 Cdc34 to the CUL1 SCFβ-TrCP ligase and reduces substrate ubiquitylation . Moreover, proper CRL activity requires NEDD8 to cycle on and off the cullin, while UBXD7 binding locks the CRL in the neddylated form. The function of a factor affecting such delicately balanced properties may be difficult to interpret because effects may be diverse depending on the experimental conditions.
Alexandru and colleagues propose that inhibition of the ligase may indeed be the function of UBXD7 so that it reduces processivity of ubiquitylation and induces the generation of shorter ubiquitin chains. The short chains may specifically target the substrate to p97-mediated delivery to the proteasome, rather than to delivery pathways involving other adapters, such as Rad23, that tend to bind long chains. In contrast, Deshaies and colleagues propose that UBXD7 may rather act as a sensor. Under normal conditions, the cycling of Nedd8 conjugation and de-conjugation may be too fast to allow UBXD7 binding. However, if the ligase encounters a substrate that is too tightly attached to a subcellular structure or binding partner and ubiquitylation and degradation is coupled, the ligase may stall. This would allow UBXD7 to bind to NEDD8 and then to recruit p97 for substrate extraction. This would introduce an element of specificity and explain why only certain substrates of CRL require p97-UBXD7. What it does not explain is why yet another subset of substrates of CRL requires p97 but not UBXD7, as is the case with chromatin-bound Cdt1, the replication licensing factor, which is targeted by CUL4A . Clearly, further experimental work will be required to test the proposed models and address many more questions regarding UBXD7. In the meantime, it is clear that UBXD7 plays an interesting part in coordinating substrate ubiquitylation with p97-mediated extraction.
The new insights into UBXD7 function add to accumulating evidence that p97-adapter complexes are more multifaceted and their function is more complex than in a simple linear model, where the adapters' sole role is to link the ubiquitylated client to p97 ATPase (Figure 3). One indicator of this complexity is that p97 can associate with several cofactors at a time. An emerging model suggests that a subset of cofactors including Ufd1-Npl4 or p47 constitute major adapters that can define core complexes and may even govern association of additional cofactors specific for particular pathways. One class of additional cofactors comprises targeting factors that recruit p97 to a specific subcellular location. A good example is the membrane protein UBXD8 (also called FAF2, or Ubx2 in yeast) that recruits p97-Ufd1-Npl4 to function in endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation .
A more detailed view of a p97-complex. p97 binds the ubiquitylated substrate (S) through the Ufd1-Npl4 adapter to extract it from a binding partner (B). In addition, p97 is linked to the neddylated CRL-E3 ubiquitin ligase through the UBXD7 adapter, which binds Nedd8 via its UIM and possibly coordinates extraction with upstream ubiquitylation. p97 can also bind one of several deubiquitylating enzymes (DUB) that may edit the ubiquitin chains to control the downstream fate of the substrate.
This cofactor diversity also entails complexity in ubiquitin binding. Cofactors including UBXD8, like UBXD7, themselves contain ubiquitin-binding UBA domains that work in addition to the UBDs in the p97-Ufd1-Npl4 core complex that they associate with. Conversely, there are core complexes with adapters that do not contain apparent UBDs: p97-p37 and p97-UBXD1 are such complexes . It is unclear yet if these core complexes contain additional ubiquitin adapters or whether in these cases ubiquitin binding is mediated directly by p97, which can bind ubiquitin itself, albeit weakly.
An important class of cofactors with clear functional implications are the downstream processing factors that include a growing number of deubiquitylating enzymes . They can either remove ubiquitin chains altogether to recycle the client protein by preventing its degradation, or conversely, they can facilitate substrate degradation by editing the ubiquitin chains to make them appropriate for proteasomal targeting. This suggests that p97 also acts as a relay point in ubiquitin-dependent processes that determines the fate of extracted substrates .
Further important implications for functional versatility can be drawn from the recognition that UBXD7 binds not only ubiquitin but also the ubiquitin-like modifier NEDD8. This raises the possibility that adapters may interact also with other ubiquitin-like modifiers, thus increasing the substrate spectrum of p97 and even further establishing it as a decoding and integration hub in far reaching signaling networks. Examples are the binding of the p47 adapter orthologue Shp1 to the ubiquitin-like modifier Atg8 during autophagy, or the association of p97 and Ufd1 with the SUMO system in yeast [9, 10]. Lastly, several cofactors contain discrete but functionally poorly defined domains, including the UAS domain, which are likely to harbor additional functions that will add to the complexity of the system.
p97 is now established as a key element of ubiquitin-regulated processes. Clearly, ubiquitin adapters link p97 to ubiquitylated clients and thus position its function downstream of ubiquitination. However, it is becoming obvious that there is more to p97 complexes than mere substrate binding and extraction and that they constitute signal integration hubs. Much work lies ahead to understand the individual functions of the adapters, how p97 complexes modulate and coordinate events upstream and downstream of p97-mediated extraction and how this is embedded in complex signaling networks.
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0.99998 |
What does mean 'Expert Translators'?
Expert translators are translators specializing in a certain subject matter. Different than a 'generalist translator', an expert translator will usually work in a single 'vertical'.
Most expert translators will have some kind of certification. A translator certification may come from a variety of organizations. One of the largest translation organizations in the world is the American Translators Association. Organizations outside the United States are also common and their certifications as valuable as those issued within the US.
The education of the expert translator is a controversial subject. While some translation companies will require that the translator has formal education in their field (e.g.: a translator translating engineering documents should also be an engineer) most translation companies will require only substantial experience in their field.
Aside formal education in the area for which they specialize, formal education in language translation programs is also a big plus. Formal education in translation helps expert translators fine-tune their language skills while improving on quality control, terminology management, and other important aspects of the translation business.
It may be counter-intuitive for some that expert translators will regularly decline translation assignments in "easy fields" outside of their specialties. By focusing on their specialties, expert translators are able to keep their knowledge up-to-date and command substantially higher 'per-word' rates for their work.
Therefore, by being picky about what the work they accept they are actually increasing both the job volume and per-word compensation for their work. That's why expert translators have an average income up to twice the earnings of those not specializing in a single vertical.
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0.999356 |
To make ahead: Prepare the recipe through Step 4, then cover the casserole with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 3 days. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until hot all the way through. Top with marshmallows and bake for a few more minutes until the marshmallows have melted.
1 Roast the sweet potatoes: Preheat the oven to 425ºF. Line a baking sheet with parchment and spray it with vegetable oil spray.
Scrub clean and dry the sweet potatoes. Slice them in half lengthwise.
Place the potato halves, cut side down, on the baking sheet. Prick each in several places with a fork and bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until soft. Remove and let rest until potatoes are cool enough to handle.
2 Lower the oven temperature to 375ºF. Butter or coat with cooking spray a 3-quart or 9-x13-inch baking dish.
3 Remove the sweet potato skins: As soon as the potatoes are cool enough to handle, pull off the skins and discard. Transfer the inner flesh to the bowl of a stand mixer bowl fitted with the paddle attachment, or a large bowl.
4 Mash the potatoes: Add 1/4 cup of the butter, orange zest, orange juice, salt and pepper. Mix on low speed in the stand mixer until the potatoes are creamy, but not necessarily perfectly smooth. Taste and add more salt and pepper, if you like. Transfer the potatoes to the buttered baking dish.
Alternatively, mash with a potato masher and beat until creamy with a wooden spoon, then transfer to the baking dish.
4 Bake the casserole: Dot the top of the casserole with the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter. Cover loosely with foil and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until hot.
5 Add the marshmallows: Place the marshmallows close together in a random pattern over the potatoes. Return the casserole to the oven and bake for 5 to 7 minutes, or until the marshmallows melt and brown.
6 Serve: Cool the casserole briefly and serve while hot. Leftovers can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.
Hi Sally! This sweet potato casserole with marshmallows is a staple of our Thanksgiving table for many years now. I have always prepared the purée a few days in advance but due to lots of things going on I was wondering if I could freeze the purée to finish with marshmallows and oven on the big day?? Thanks!
Hi, Isabel! Yes, I think it would be just fine to freeze the puree! Be sure to take it out of the freezer at least the day before to give it time to thaw. If you see any liquid separation, just beat it again with a spoon or a hand mixer until combined. Enjoy!
There are two Step 4 instructions. If you’re making this ahead of time, I assume you’re making it through the first step 4 “Mash the potatoes” and then putting it in a casserole dish to keep it in the fridge until you are ready to cook it. Is that correct?
Hi, Emily! Woops! There shouldn’t be two Step 4’s — that’s a typo! Prepare the casserole through making the puree and transferring it to the casserole dish. At that point, refrigerate it (without marshmallows) and bake the casserole when you’re ready. Enjoy!
I make my sweet potatoes with raisins, brown sugar , finely chopped pecans, and then topped with miniature marshmallows. I place it back in the oven for 5-7 minutes, just long enough to brown them. My mother in law loves them and eats them cold from the refrigerator for breakfast!
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0.99998 |
What do search engines like Google consider to be an entity?
Search engines consider an entity to be a concept that is singular, unique, and distinguishable. An entity could be a person, place, item, idea, or a combination of these.
You may have noticed the Knowledge Graph that appears in Google's search results. The Knowledge Graph includes panels that include relevant information about an entity, and this information is collected from various sources around the internet.
How are entities changing the way that search engines deliver results?
The information that the Knowledge Graph gathers about an entity has changed the way that Google returns search results. For instance, if you typed "find a Starbucks near me" into a search query today, Google would pull from a wide variety of sources to deliver results, including the Starbucks store locator, Yelp, and the Target store locator (because some Starbucks locations are in Target stores). Prior to Google's focus on entities, the search engine would have looked at a much smaller set of pages to compile the search results.
Why are search engines focusing on entities?
Search engines are choosing to focus on entities when delivering search results for a few reasons. First of all, with the increasing number of internet searches being performed on mobile devices, search engines need to provide a single accurate answer to search queries. Mobile users don't have the time to scroll through search results that may not be relevant to what they typed into the search query.
Also, with more searches being performed using voice technology, search engines need to be able to cast a wider net to produce results for more specific searches.
How can you enhance your search engine optimization strategy to account for Google's emphasis on entities?
1. Make sure all of your location data is accurate.
Taking advantage of a listing distribution service will help to ensure that your business is accurately represented in a wide variety of business directories.
2. Ensure that your location data is complete.
Providing complete information about your business, including identities and attributes, will help search engines better understand your business and entity.
3. Think beyond optimizing a Google My Business page for a single location.
Too many businesses focus on optimizing a single location for search engines. To appear in Google's map pack rankings, your business needs to be included in all of the places that Google associates with your entity.
In short, to get a competitive edge with your search engine optimization strategy, take the time to understand how search engines like Google are using entities to deliver more relevant search results. Finding ways to optimize your website for your entity will give you a boost in local search.
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0.993854 |
The novel first appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone magazine in 1971, was published as a book in 1972, and was later adapted into a film of the same name in 1998 by Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro who portrayed Raoul Duke and Dr. The novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is based on two trips to Las Vegas, Nevada, that Hunter S.Thompson took with attorney and Chicano activist Oscar Zeta Acosta in March and April 1971.The first trip resulted from an exposé Thompson was writing for Rolling Stone magazine about the Mexican-American television journalist Rubén Salazar, whom officers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had shot and killed with a tear gas grenade fired at close range during the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam War in 1970.
He had first submitted a 2,500-word manuscript to Sports Illustrated that was "aggressively rejected".
Weeks later, Thompson and Acosta returned to Las Vegas to report for Rolling Stone on the National District Attorneys Association's Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs being held from 25–29 April 1971, and to add material to the larger Fear and Loathing narrative.
Besides attending the attorneys' conference, Thompson and Acosta looked for ways in Vegas to explore the theme of the American Dream, which was the basis for the novel's second half, to which Thompson referred at the time as "Vegas II".
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a novel by Hunter S. The book is a roman à clef, rooted in autobiographical incidents.
The story follows its protagonist, Raoul Duke, and his attorney, Dr.
Gonzo, as they descend on Las Vegas to chase the American Dream through a drug-induced haze, all the while ruminating on the failure of the 1960s countercultural movement.
The work is Thompson's most famous, and is noted for its lurid descriptions of illegal drug use, its early retrospective on the culture of the 1960s, and its popularization of Thompson's highly subjective blend of fact and fiction that has become known as gonzo journalism.
The two needed a more comfortable place to discuss the story and decided to take advantage of a Sports Illustrated magazine offer to write photograph captions for the annual Mint 400 desert race being held in Las Vegas from 21–23 March.
Thompson wrote that he concluded their March trip by spending some 36 hours alone in a hotel room "feverishly writing in my notebook" about his experiences.
The genesis of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is in that notebook.
What originally was a two-hundred-fifty-word photo-caption-job for Sports Illustrated grew to a novel-length feature story for Rolling Stone; Thompson said publisher Jann Wenner had "liked the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication — which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it".
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0.981973 |
Are Online Credit Card Applications Too Easy?
The days when the only way to get a credit card was to visit your bank in person are gone forever. Nowadays, it's even quite old fashioned to apply for a card by mail - it's much easier and quicker to apply online, and in many cases you'll even get an instant decision on whether your application is accepted or not. While this is obviously a great convenience, there is a downside to online credit card applications: they can actually be too easy, and can harm your credit rating.
When you're offered the chance to apply for a credit card online, it's not always clear exactly what kind of customer a card issuer is hoping to attract. Each kind of card is aimed at someone within a range of circumstances, such as having a minimum income, being older than a certain age, or having a certain level of credit score.
In the old days, your bank manager or financial advisor would only offer you cards which you had a good chance of being accepted for, but when you're applying online there's no one but yourself to check if the card is right for you. And, seeing as how applying online is so easy, it can be tempting to just apply anyway and see if you're approved. This can be a great mistake.
Every time you're rejected for a card or other kind of finance, this fact is recorded on your credit file. If you have a lot of rejections on your file and not many acceptances, this can actually make your credit rating appear worse, making it ever harder to have an application approved. Obviously, this isn't a desirable outcome and so how can you avoid it?
The first step is to have a good hard look at the range of cards available with the features you want, whether it's a 0% balance transfer deal, a low APR or interest rate, or a great rewards program. The large number of credit card comparison sites on the internet make this a lot easier than it used to be.
Once you've got a shortlist of cards to apply for, check the small print of the one you think is the best, and make sure that there isn't anything like a minimum salary which makes it impossible for you to be approved. If everything seems okay, then take an honest look at your financial circumstances and application history, and decide whether you think you've got a reasonable chance of being approved.
Only after that should you actually go forward with your application, and you should only apply for one card at once. If your application is rejected, see if that card company offers a similar card with a higher interest rate - the acceptance criteria is likely to be looser on that card and so it may be worth applying for it.
Alternatively, you could apply for a similar card from a different card issuer. Different companies have different ways of deciding whether to approve an application, so you might have more luck elsewhere. What you absolutely shouldn't do is keep applying for similar cards from the same issuer, as the acceptance criteria will be more or less the same, and you'll just keep getting rejected, with all the problems this causes for your credit rating. At this point, you have little choice but to set your sights a little lower and apply for a less attractive card, even if this means you'll have to pay more for the convenience of carrying a credit card.
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0.976289 |
Stephen, You mention Nozick and Hospers. Part of the Peikoff/Schwartz argument is that there is no valid concept the CCD of which is "amount of government". Do you agree with that, and classify Nozick's, Hospers', and Rothbard's political philosophies together on some other grounds?
Ninth, "In practice [schwartz's article] has meant guilt by association and has led to suffocating insularity among ARI affiliated Objectivists." ARI affiliated intellectuals have been working in various capacities with non-anarchist 'libertarian' intellectuals (mostly economists and policy people) for at least the last 15 years. So I don't know what you're talking about. Rothbard and the LP. See previous post. He was a member of the founding committee, along with anarchist Roy Childs. Rothbard was the dominant figure in 70s and 80s libertarianism. Respect for Rand. I take it that respect for Rand means respect for Rand. What's Dave Harriman have to do with anything?
Catching up on the thread... Stephen and Ninth, I think your knowledge of libertarian history is deficient. The first sentence of the wikipedia article on Cato: "The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. Founded as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974 by Murray Rothbard, Ed Crane and Charles Koch." The first paragraph from the History of the Libertarian Party article: "The Libertarian Party was formed in Colorado Springs in the home of David Nolan on December 11, 1971, after several months of debate among members of the Committee to Form a Libertarian Party, founded July 17. [...] This group included John Hospers, Edward Crane, Manuel Klausner, Murray Rothbard, Roy Childs, Theodora (Tonie) Nathan, and Jim Dean." I recognize two anarchist names. If one is worried about sanctioning Rothbard (or other anarchists), one would rightly be wary of groups he helped found.
Ninth, My source for Allison's plans isn't linkable; it's what he said during a presentation about it, and AFAIK it's not been put online. During that presentation, Yaron Brook said that Rand's (and ARI's) antipathy to "libertarians" has always been antipathy towards Rothbardian anarchists. Libertarian = Rothbardian. You ask why Schwartz didn't say explicitly that he meant Rothbard when he wrote about libertarians. In paragraph three of the "Perversion of Liberty" essay: "Murray Rothbard, widely viewed as the father of the movement..." The context of the rest of the essay shows that Schwartz agrees with that view. In the 70s and 80s, wasn't the libertarian movement dominated by Rothbardians and anarchists? Rothbard was a founder of both Cato and the LP, and weren't most of the journals/magazines cited by Schwartz connected to Rothbard? Obviously, the libertarian movement has changed since then. But you can't look at these things out of their historical context. If in 1985 "libertarian" was mostly associated with Rothbard and anarchist friends, it's a safe bet that's who Schwartz was talking about when he criticized libertarians. And, who were the non-Rothbardian or non-anarchists cited by Schwartz? I'm looking at the footnotes now and no names stand out. Reason is cited, but the article is by Rothbard. Brudnoy. If Peikoff associates with people like Brudnoy, but not anarchists, isn't that evidence he means by "libertarian" Rothbardians/anarchists? Why attribute to Peikoff (or ARI) a contradiction when there's a better supported alternative interpretation of what's happening? And an interpretation that's the one the current president of ARI has endorsed, at that! Edit: Lest I be accused of inventing scuttlebutt, my notes on the Allison discussion show that he said those disrespectful of Rand will change their attitudes or find other employment. Not that they will be fired outright. "Respectful" didn't have any implication of them becoming Objectivist. Also, Allison said that he will be there for a number of years and in that time he will be grooming an Objectivist replacement. And, he wasn't going to take the job until Yaron Brook convinced him to.
There's an obvious mistake about half-way through the video, in one of your text graphics. The "Libertarian = Right-Wing" text is targeted at Peikoff, right? But he's attributing that position to the radio host, and Peikoff himself says that it's the wrong definition. And I don't think "Nolan Chart" gets to determine the correct definition of 'libertarian.' The Nolan Chart says so and so... who cares? I don't understand where the snark is coming from in that part. Hasn't "libertarian" become, for many people" a word like "conservative" and "liberal"? A not very clear concept that means to them something like "socially liberal and economically conservative"? Such a libertarian isn't what Peikoff/Schwartz ever had in mind when they talked about sanction, I don't think. I always took it that Rand, Peikoff, and Schwartz meant by "libertarian" "Rothbardian." Weren't all Schwartz's examples of libertarians examples of Rothbardian anarchists? If that's so, then I don't see any hypocrisy going on here. The Kochs own Cato and Charles is an Obejctivist, and Allison has promised to remove anarchists and persons disrespectful of Rand from the Cato payroll. Sounds like Cato moving in an Objectivist direction to me.
Windelband's History of Philosophy was for a long time a must read for Objectivists. I think LP recommends it in his course. It might hold you over for a few months while you wait for ARB to release the LP course. Jones' multivolume History is also frequently recommended.
That's not a good criticism, because it's not a criticism of Rand's theory. Rand says concepts have to be formed on the basis of perception. That's different than saying concepts have to be formed from their referents. A paleontologist forms the concept "dinosaur" by studying fossils, not dinosaurs. Generally, if some trivial observation refutes a philosophical theory, you've not presented the theory correctly. That goes for non-Objectivism, as well.
Previous discussion of TEW on this forum.
What if not all manmade physical objects are property?
Rand talks about language in her book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. She rejects the linguistic turn and any claim that philosophical problems can be solved by analyzing language, so philosophy of language isn't a central concern for Objectivism. I don't know of anything on philosophy of language by other Objectivist philosophers, but perhaps there would be something in the forthcoming Ayn Rand: A Companion to Her Works and Thought. Alan Gotthelf makes some comments about Rand's views on philosophy of language in a draft of one of his papers for that book: Ayn Rand on Concepts.
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0.953252 |
The construction of a meaningful graph plays a crucial role in the emerging field of signal processing on graphs. In this paper, we address the problem of learning graph Laplacians, which is similar to learning graph topologies, such that the input data form graph signals with smooth variations on the resulting topology. We adopt a factor analysis model for the graph signals and impose a Gaussian probabilistic prior on the latent variables that control these graph signals. We show that the Gaussian prior leads to an efficient representation that favours the smoothness property of the graph signals, and propose an algorithm for learning graphs that enforce such property. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed framework can efficiently infer meaningful graph topologies from only the signal observations.
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0.936617 |
Do your children often get excited and restless? He is usually quiet and clever, sometimes it seems that he is very excited and doesn’t sleep well at night. Please be careful that your child may have a caffeine overdose problem.
Many parents are used to drinking a cup of coffee every day, children will develop the habit of drinking coffee.
Coffee: coffee is certainly one of the main sources of caffeine, however, caffeine content will vary slightly depending on the variety of coffee beans and brewing time.
Teas: teas also contain caffeine, which varies depending on the degree of fermentation, type, quality, and soak time of the tea.
Chocolate: the cocoa component of chocolate also contains caffeine, so chocolate products should be eaten in moderation to avoid excessive intake of caffeine.
Other: such as cola, energy drinks, painkillers and other ingredients contain caffeine!
What problems do caffeine cause to young children? Caffeine stimulates the central nervous system of young children and interferes with sleep.
The other is older children, who have problems with restlessness and sleep disorders around the age of three or four, mostly because they drink Coke, eat chocolate biscuits and drink hot cocoa for a long time.Or the effects of eating breakfast cereal (especially chocolate flavored).
Because caffeine enters blood vessels through the stomach and small intestine, it stays in the body for several hours, taking about six hours to remove half of the caffeine.
And young children are still in the development stage, metabolic function is no more than adults, more damage to the body.
Therefore, children under the age of 12 should avoid taking caffeine. Countries in Europe and the United States do not recommend taking caffeine for young children and have not set a safety level. However, Canada has a guideline for reference:.
4-6 years old: no more than 45 milligrams of caffeine a day.
7-9 years old : no more than 63 mg of caffeine a day.
10-12 years old : no more than 85 milligrams of caffeine a day.
If a 4-year-old sips a cup of milk tea or chocolate for breakfast, adds a piece of chocolate-covered toast and eats two chocolate biscuits, the amount of caffeine consumed throughout the day is already far more than two or three times the safe amount.
As for adults, although caffeine has some positive functions, such as helping the body’s smooth muscle relax and contract, making people feel exhilarated, it can also increase the peristalsis of the gastrointestinal tract, stimulate gastric acid secretion, and help defecate.
But people with cardiovascular diseases, gastrointestinal problems, osteoporosis and insomnia should exercise self-restraint.
The safety dose recommended by the EU Food Science expert Committee is 300 mg per person per day. If parents drank a cup of 150cc coffee (about 100mg caffeine) for breakfast, a cup of 500cc tea (about 200mg caffeine) at noon would have reached the daily limit.
Mothers who are still breast-feeding should be careful, which can lead to caffeine consumption in their babies.
To put an end to unhealthy eating, it is basically necessary to start with living habits and eating habits.
While it is common for families with young children to eat snacks or snacks, it is neither healthy nor a necessity.
In general, a rich meal is enough for children to grow up, even to add snacks, should also use natural and healthy ingredients, such as eating fresh fruits and vegetables, make their own biscuits or bread. And do not add chemical additives to flavor, so as not to eat too much caffeine or other unhealthy ingredients.
In addition, but also remind the original habit of drinking coffee pregnant mother, due to the slow metabolism of the human body after pregnancy, excessive caffeine will affect the calcium and iron absorption and utilization of these two important nutrients, for their own and baby’s health; It is recommended to eat more natural and healthy foods.
Caffeine is widely found in more than 60 kinds of plants, such as coffee beans, tea leaves, cocoa seeds and so on. It can also be synthesized artificially and used as the additive of beverage or medicine. Baking chocolates and dark chocolates have a higher caffeine content than plain chocolate. Even people who don’t drink tea or coffee are more likely to get caffeine when they take other food products or medicines.
The caffeine content varies from one ingredient to another. In the case of tea, the key factor that affects the caffeine content of the tea is the soaking time. The longer the tea or tea bag is soaked, the higher the caffeine content is. Therefore, the length of time tea brewing in addition to affecting the flavor is also related to health.
Next Post Is coffee drunk much can you cause breast cancer? Can lactation drink coffee?
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0.999532 |
Opentext lance Livelink 8, un logiciel capable de gérer une base de connaissance multi-utilisateurs en intranet.
Opentext annonce la disponibilité de Livelink 8, son logiciel de gestion de la connaissance (Knowledge management) en environnement intranet destiné à des structures importantes, avec un minimum de 100 postes connectés. Il sera distribué en France par ID France, filiale d’Opentext. Le produit, entièrement traduit en français, intègre notamment les fonctions de gestion documentaire de Basis, racheté à Information Dimension en juin dernier. Livelink intègre plusieurs outils pour gérer les connaissances : gestion documentaire, travail collaboratif, workflow et moteur de recherche dans une base de données. Il n’y a pas de logiciel client spécifique. L’interface est un navigateur courant, ce qui facilite les déploiements.
Contrairement à Notes, Livelink ne nécessite pas de développements, mais ses fonctionnalités sont figées. Les utilisateurs peuvent stocker des informations personnelles et, en fonction des droits qui leur sont attribués, ils peuvent aussi en diffuser à l’échelle de l’entreprise ou des groupes de travail auxquels ils appartiennent. Ces groupes peuvent être définis temporairement en fonction des projets. La licence revient à 6 000 F par poste pour cent utilisateurs et à 2 000 F pour mille utilisateurs.
Plusieurs vocables sont utilisés pour désigner les outils de gestion de l’information dans l’entreprise. Suivant les fonctionnalités, on parlera de groupware, de workflow ou de x management, des termes brillants largement utilisés par le marketing et qu’il convient de confronter aux réelles possibilités.
Tous ces systèmes de travail collaboratif nécessitent pour être efficaces un effort de chacun pour nourrir le système des informations dont il dispose. Comme cette remarque s’adresse aussi à la hiérarchie, l’adoption d’un tel logiciel implique souvent une autre façon de travailler ensemble.
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0.883015 |
What is a reasonable monthly cost for HR and accounting for an early stage startup?
What you spend on Accounting & HR for your startup depends on your unique situation, but given that you have 7 employees and and are pre-revenue…. I’d say ~$600.
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0.999995 |
This essay answers two questions under; conformity, deviance and crime; and stratification, class, and inequality. The first question discusses how sociological theories differ from biological and psychological explanation of deviance while the second compares and contrasts five different theories of stratification in the modern society.
Deviance ha been defined as any behavior that violates the socially acceptable norms and rules, and is often of sufficient severity to necessitate disapproval from the society. According to Clinard and Meier (75), deviance is a wide-ranging concept and many characteristics are employed by different members of the social order in identifying it.
The theories that have been developed to explain deviance include; the sociological, biological and physical explanation theories of deviant behaviors. Clinard and Meier (74), outline the sociological theories of explaining deviance as; the Anomie, Conflict, Labeling, Control, and the Learning or Socialization theories. The Biological and physical explanations of deviance include; biological positivism, phrenology, mental disorders, atavism, somatotyping, heredity, and genetics among others.
According to Clinard and Meier (75), the differences between these two approaches to deviance are seen in the way they explain the different forms of deviance. The sociological theories perceive deviance as being learnt from the environment. For example, a person can learn criminal behavior just like other behaviors by interacting with other criminals in intimate groups within the environment. The biological theory contrasts this assumption by asserting that deviant behavior is caused by biological instincts rather than external environmental forces. In Clinard and Meier’s point of view, the biological theory, assumes that criminals typically posses certain distinctive body types or physical traits (79).
The sociological theories further presuppose that deviance results when there is an imbalance of norms and values in the society. Clinard and Meier (75) emphasize this assertion by listing cultural, social, and economic factors as additional initiators of deviance. An example is in the case of Asian marriages where distant relatives can marry each other. This practice in the African culture will be perceived as deviant, where as in Asia it is acceptable.
The biological and physical explanation of deviance distinguishes deviant behavior as being caused by forces beyond the control or even the awareness of the individual perceived as deviant. In Clinard and Meier’s example, the biologists argue that genetic predispositions often create inborn tendencies to commit deviant acts in individuals. These tendencies are beyond people’s capability to control and are often the cause of deviant behaviors.
According to Clinard and Meier (89), the theories of stratification in the modern society, seek to explain why inequalities exists and why certain social categories are valued more than others. The five theories of stratification are; Functionalism, Marxism, Weberianism, New Right, and the Postmodernism theories of social stratification.
The functionalism theory assumes that stratification is necessary and inevitable, and is meritocratic and fair. Clinard and Meier (93) asserts that the hierarchy that stratification creates allows complex industrial society to function. Marxism theory of stratification on the other hand perceives stratification to be a class conflict, in which case two different classes that have diametrically opposed interests exists. This theory asserts that stratification leads to capitalism, and class polarization and eventually the development of a revolutionary working class. The Weberianism theory of stratification on the hand perceives stratification as being caused by a combination of many factors like, class, status, power, and party, and not on economic position as earlier assumed.
The New Right stratification theory is more similar to the functionalism theory and assumes that stratification and inequality are the end-products of a meritocratic society properly functioning. According Clinard and Meier (96), this theory brings out another category of people, the underclass, who are dependent on the welfare payments. Postmodernism stratification theory on the other hand explains that structures such as gender, ethnicity, and class have declined in importance. Unlike the other theories which emphasizes on the relations of production, this theory perceives the relations of consumption as more important.
In respect to poverty and exclusion, these theories, assert that it is necessary for the poor to exist to enable the society to function properly.
In conclusion, sociologist explains deviant behavior as the result of an interaction with the wrong environment or as a result of unfavorable economic, social, and political conditions. Biologists on the hand perceive deviant behaviors to be caused by personality, genetic, and other biological abnormalities. The theories of stratification have been employed to explain why there exist inequalities in the society. Theses theories explain why poverty and social seclusion persists.
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0.952659 |
What exactly are probiotic bacteria?
In 1907, a Russian researcher named Metchnikoff observed that the people living along the Russian steppes lived longer lives than most Europeans.
He noted they consumed milk products which had been fermented using a lactic-acid producing bacteria (referred to as a LAB).
Eventually, he introduced a theory that aging is caused by toxic bacteria which live in the gut and that supplementation of lactic acid producing bacteria can prolong life.
Metchnikoff wasn’t exactly right about the longevity aspect of probiotic bacteria, but modern studies continue to demonstrate that these microorganisms, which are referred to as probiotic, can have an effect on common digestive dysfunctions and even some chronic GI tract disorders.
Most probiotics bacteria species belong to one of two genuses: Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium.
In the gut, a wide spectrum of bacteria and yeast compose the microflora and many of these are only now beginning to be understood through clinical trials and laboratory research.
Most people are familiar with the probiotic species Lactobacillus Acidophilus because it is commonly added to milk, juice, yogurt and even breads.
Another somewhat well-known species is Bifidobacterium bifidum, which is often simply referred to as bifidus. Both of these common microbes are found naturally within the body in great quantities.
Most probiotic supplement products contain at least one, if not both, of these well-known bacterial species.
Lactobacillus: Commonly used probiotics bacteria in the Lactobacillus genus include L. brevis, L. casei, L. helveticus, L. plantarum, L. reuteri, and L. rhamnosus.
Lactobacillus bacteria make up a major portion of the lactic-acid bacteria because nearly all of these microbes convert lactose and other sugars from food sources into lactic acid. Though they only make up a small portion of the overall gut ecosystem, their work is important and necessary.
Recently, some of these bacteria have had their entire genome sequenced, prompting renewed attention to their probiotic properties and effects.
Bifidobacterium: Lesser known probiotic species in the genus Bifidobacterium are B. animalis, B. breve, B. infantis and B. longum.
Up until the 1960s, all of the Bifidobacterium species were referred to as Lactobacillus bifidus. Since that time, they have become recognized as separate and unique from the Lactobacillus genus.
Mother’s milk contains large numbers of B. infantis microbes which are used to colonize the sterile infant gastrointestinal tract. Bifidobacteria help to regulate the balance of intestinal microflora while also inhibiting the production and colonization of pathogenic bacteria which colonize and infect the mucosa of the gut.
Bifidobacterium are typically sensitive to oxygen exposure, making them most effective in environments without it.
Foods, like yogurt, tempeh and sauerkraut, are naturally loaded with these friendly bacteria, but most food products need to be eaten 3 or more times each day in order to have any real effect on the balance of microflora within the gut.
Most people choose to supplement with probiotic capsules, powders, pills, tablets or drops to assure a standardized daily dose of those bacteria which offer relief from their symptoms.
Reports from individuals who regularly take probiotic bacteria supplements include experiences of improved digestive health, decreases in diarrhea and constipation, elimination of flatulence (gas), less bloating and a decline in abdominal discomfort.
Individuals experiencing symptoms related to more serious intestinal disorders like IBS, IBD, Crohn’s Disease or Leaky Gut also report a reduction in some of their symptoms, particularly abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation and discomfort.
Doctors often suggest probiotics bacteria to their patients who are taking antibiotics to fight infection or illness. Probiotics help to restore the gut flora to a healthy balance during periods of dysbacteriosis. This can occur after antibiotic drugs have killed off many of the good bacteria along with the pathogenic microbes.
Health food shops and online nutritional shops provide a wealth of options for probiotics bacteria products.
When selecting a product, doses are often only effective when containing billions of living cultures, so reading labels carefully is imperative. Some probiotic products need to be kept refrigerated which limits their convenience factor but sometimes increases their viability.
Probiotics bacteria are considered generally safe for almost everyone.
Those who should not take probiotic products include those with HIV/AIDS, people taking immunosuppressant drug therapies (for transplant purposes) and individuals with artificial heart valves.
Hundreds of studies are currently under way in an attempt to understand the mechanism of action of these friendly, beneficial bacteria. New information becomes available each month regarding the specific health effects and the dosage required to achieve those effects.
Probiotic bacteria have been used around the world for millennia to aid in good digestion and bowel function. Through the use of technology and modern knowledge, it may now be possible to fine tune these helpful microorganisms to gain the full benefit of their offerings.
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helping out a friend to find out about starting lawyer salary nowadays, and what sort of progression she can expect once she gets in.
Top lawyers earn more than top doctors, because law is about how much business you can bring in. For the average professional I'm not sure but my gut feel is that doctors earn a bit more, but anyway one must consider that it takes more years of study both undergrad and specialist training to move up as a doctor, lawyers start earlier and at higher pay (currently 5k or so at big firms, more at foreign firms), and no need to study further.
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How do credit unions differ from other financial institutions?
Credit unions only provide services to their members and they are legally restricted as to whom they can offer services by their bond of membership. Changing economic conditions and regulatory interpretations have led to broadening fields of membership and this has created a widening role for credit unions in providing financial services.
Credit unions are mutual organizations. In most cases, their only source of capital are member shares and retained earnings; they do not normally issue stock or other securities. They are governed by their members and voting is on the basis of one vote per person regardless of how much a member has deposited with the credit union. Credit union members own the credit union, use its services and may, through volunteer labor, constitute part of its administration. The Board of Directors is elected from the membership and directors are unpaid. Credit unions view themselves as organized to meet the needs of their members. Consequently, what they maximize is generally more complex than in the case of shareholder-owned for-profit firms.
Credit union culture is one of cooperative behavior. Credit unions view themselves as part of a movement rather than an industry; they see themselves as an alternative from the traditional suppliers of financial services. Most credit unions are part of the Credit Union System that consists of organizations at the local, provincial, and national levels.
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Regina McCrary Brown (known as Regina Havis previously) has been singing most of her life. Being the daughter of "the singing preacher," the late Rev. Samuel McCrary of the Fairfield Four, gospel songs are familiar terrain for Regina. On December 2, 1978, in Nashville, Tennessee, Regina auditioned for Bob Dylan while he was in town for a concert. Five months later, she contributed to Slow Train Coming (1979), and the rest, as they say, is history. Regina also collaborated with Dylan on Saturday Night Live (October 20, 1979), the Grammy Awards (February 27, 1980), Saved (1980) and Shot of Love (1981). Additionally, she toured with Dylan for over 150 concerts from 1979-1981, opening most of these shows (along with other female singers) with a handful of gospel songs. She shared vocals with Dylan on songs such as "Ain't No Man Righteous, No Not One" and "Mary From the Wild Moor." Regina also sang solo at these concerts on songs like "Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man from Galilee" and "Till I Get It Right." And Dylan himself in the liner notes to his 1985 release, Biograph, complimented Regina as he reflected on the gospel tours: "Regina McCrary played with me for a while. She's the daughter of Preacher Sam McCrary from Nashville who used to have the old gospel group the Fairfield Four. Anyway, she would open these shows with a monologue about a woman on a train, she was so incredibly moving. I wanted to expose people to that sort of thing because I loved it and it's the real roots of all modern music but nobody cared." During his 1999 tour, Dylan debuted a number of gospel cover songs, one being "Somebody Touched Me," which he sang on ten occasionsa song that Sam McCrary and the Fairfield Four recorded back in 1953. Today, Regina works as a drug counselor in a Christian ministry and sings for the largest gospel TV show in the USA, the Bobby Jones Gospel show, airing twice on Sundays from Nashville, Tennessee, via cable channel BET.
Twenty years have passed since the recording of Slow Train Coming. How did you become a backup singer for Dylan (along with Carolyn Dennis, Mona Lisa Young, and Helena Springs; and later Clydie King and Madeline Quebecmother of Carolyn Dennis)?
Carolyn Dennis is like my sister, Ive known her since I was 7 years old. She called me and told me about Dylans coming to town and that he was looking for a singer. Shed mentioned me to him so when he got to Nashville, I auditioned for him.
Were you familiar with Bob Dylans music before this?
I knew two or maybe three of his songs. "Blowing In The Wind" and "Lay, Lady, Lay" were the main two songs I knew. But I didnt know who he was.
Do you remember hearing in the national press that hed become a believer in Jesus?
I was hired, then a few months later he announced that he was a born-again Christian, and it hit the papers.
What are your memories of the Saturday Night Live show when you performed a few of those songs for the first time?
That was exciting. My first and only time doing the Saturday Night Live show. I felt privileged to help make history in that part of Bobs life because of the stand that he was taking, and because of the stand that I take in being a born-again Christian. It was an honor to be able to make that stand with him. And also it was awesome just to be able to meet all of the cast.
After Saturday Night Live you opened the show/tour at San Franciscos Warfield Theater with the story about an old woman, her son, and a trainwhere did you first hear that story?
The first time I heard the story was in church. My father, Reverend Samuel H. McCrary was a pastor. They called my father the "singing preacher" because he was one of the original, famous Fairfield Four, a quartet group. He traveled on the road with the Fairfield Four, and he also was our minister. As a little girl growing up to a woman I would hear him at different times tell a story about this woman who had faith in God in spite of her circumstancesshe didnt have money to visit her son who had been hurt at war.
Was it Dylans idea for you to tell this story?
Yes, Carol, Helena and I had rehearsed about five or six songs to open up Bob Dylans show. We rehearsed every day, getting those five to six songs together. And Bob said that his show was ready. When we got to San Francisco, for the first time, I realized how big Bob Dylan was. I didnt, you know, it still hadnt registered to me who he was or what he was about. But when we got off that van at Market Street to go inside of the auditorium [we were overwhelmed by] all the people that were screaming and hollering; women were crying and people reaching for him. I realized then that I was singing with somebody who was very, very, very important to a lot of people.
We walked in and we did sound check. It was about 20 minutes before it was time to go on stage when he said he thought something was missing. He didnt know what, just something was missing. He really didnt feel right about the beginning; the opening of the show.
We were all in the dressing room putting on makeup and I was acting silly when he came into the dressing room to talk to all his backup singers. He said something just didnt feel right, something was missing that he needed to open the show cause he didnt want people to think this music was just a gimmick. He wanted them to know that he was for real about confessing that Jesus Christ was his Lord and Savior. He wanted people to know that this was not a fad, or a phase he was going through. It was for real.
The conductor saw her and he walked to her and asked her if she had her ticket. And she said no, she didnt have a ticket. And he told her, "Im sorry old woman, Im gonna have to put you off." He put her off the train and the woman started to sing as she stood next to the railroad train, "Father, I stretch my hands to thee, no other help I know." Meanwhile the conductor was pulling on the string for the train to start but it wouldnt move.
I said now after I finish telling that story, then Im just gonna go into "If I got my ticket Lord, can I ride?"cause that was the first song that we were opening up with anyway.
Bob Dylan looked at me like I had lost my mind and he left out of the dressing room! I was laughing, and the other women were laughing, we were all laughing. We went on back to getting our make-up on and getting dressed.
Bob came back in the dressing room a few minutes later and he had Spooner Oldham, Fred Tackett, Jim Keltner, and Tim Drummond with him. Im looking out the corner of my eye like, Whats up? And he said, "Tell them that story."
Now Im looking at him kind of funny cause Im thinking, "I was just playing and having fun with him!" But I go on and I tell the story again anyway.
Then he looked at me and he said, "Thats how were gonna open up my show."
And I said, "Oh, uh, I was just playing. I was just playing. I cant do that. I dont...uh-uh. No. I cant do that."
And he said, "You are a professional. Yes, you can."
Fred Tacketts wife is an actress and she was there. I became very nervous and I said "Look, what do I do? How do I do this?"
She said "Well, you play all the characters on stageyou be the narrator, you be the old woman, you be the sons voice when the letters being read. You just do it."
But I still wasnt feeling good about it. I mean, I was nervous. So I called my father long-distance. And I told my daddy, "Daddy, you know how you always told me I was gonna get in trouble with my mouth? Well, guess what?" I told him, "I was playing and acting silly and now Bob says thats how we are gonna open up the show. And I cant do this!"
My daddy said "Yes, you can."
I said "Daddy, Im not a preacher, I cant tell that story."
And he said "You already told it. Now what you need to do is pray before you walk out on that stage and then, if you get nervous, look into the spotlight. Just stare into the spotlight. Inside of that spotlight youre going to find the spirit of God. And youre gonna feel my spirit. Ill be there."
[So with very little planning and no rehearsal] I walked out on that stage and I told that story. The women stayed off the stage while I was telling the story. As I got to the part where the conductor told the old woman to get back on the train thats when the other women started to slowly walk out and get into position. By the time the old woman says, "Conductor, you said if I didnt have a ticket I couldnt get on the train." And the conductor says, "Well, Jesus got your ticket. Come on and get on board"... By that time, the keyboard player [Terry Young] was making a brroomp, brroomp sound with the piano like the wheels of the train beginning to move.
Then I say, "The old woman got on the train and the train started to move." and Id start singing "Yes, I got my ticket Lord."
And the women were already in position at the mic and they came in with "Can I ride?"
Those other five or six songs, did Dylan leave it up to you to decide which songs to do?
Well, we all worked on the songs that we wanted. It was maybe eight songs, and he chose five to six that he wanted.
But the beginning of the show was his way of giving us an opportunity to showcase our talent and also to be able to sing the anointing of the Holy Spirit into the room. And there were many times that people would pay that money to come hear Bob Dylan do "I aint gonna work on Maggies farm no more," and they got "Slow Train Comin." Some people that were there came in high, ready to just rock n roll and they ended up being saved.
I am happy...I am blessed to have not known who he was when I auditioned. Because some people make the mistake of when they meet a person of Bob Dylans caliber, they tend to not see the man. They tend to see the fame and fortune; what hes done and what hes accomplished. Im glad I didnt know all of those things about him because what I saw and who I saw was a man. A man who had an awesome gift from God, even down to his other music. When I got still and I listened to the words to some of the songs that he wrote before I joined him, it was awesome. God has been using him and his songs and his lyrics for a long time. And hes been speaking out against the wrong and standing up for the right for a very, very long time. So when he did Slow Train Comin, Saved, and Shot Of Love he only brought everything that hes been doing to a full circle to let people know that hes been serving a live and a living God, all his life.
Thats what I saw. And thats what I believe. There are lots of people who can sing, but they dont have the anointing of God on them. I can truly say that Bob Dylan has the anointing of God on him and it comes out through the lyrics that he writes. It comes out also because of the way he cares about people.
To you he was an ordinary person, yet so many people view him as someone whos more than human somehow.
Yeah. Thats what I saw. But my father taught me: dont just watch what people say, watch how they live their lives. The walk has to match the talk. I watch that in people, period. And I saw that [consistency] in Bob Dylan. I was glad I saw it in him because for me to be out on the road with him all those years... I couldnt have been out on the road with himI didnt care how much money he was payingif I felt like what he was doing was a lie, especially because it was about God. I couldnt be out there with him if what he was singing about was one thing and then what he was doing off stage was something totally different.
I watched him not only walk the walk but I watched him talk the talk, sing the talk, and write about it. I grew to have a lot of love and respect for him.
Youve just read an excerpt of the interview with Regina Havis. The complete interview appears in On the Tracks issue #18 and is available from Rolling Tomes.
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Suppose there is a contract called MyContract in the file contracts/MyContract.sol, already compiled to build/contracts/MyContract.json, and that there is a development blockchain network running locally in port 9545.
> // Initialize a web3 provider.
> // Load the contract.
> // Instantiate a project.
> // Create a proxy for the contract.
> // Make a change on the contract, and compile it.
To contribute, join our community channel on Telegram where you can talk to all the ZeppelinOS developers, contributors, partners and users.
You can also follow the recent developments of the project in our blog and Twitter account.
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When the gradients of two straight lines are not equal or the product of their gradients is not equal to -1, then these two lines are not parallel. In that situation, it will result in the intersection of two lines.
To find the point of intersection of two lines, we solve the simultaneous equations.
Example 2: Show that the three lines 3x + 5y + 7 = 0, 2x + 4y + 4 = 0, and 4x – 2y + 18 = 0 are concurrent.
To show the three lines are concurrent, we must show that they all pass through a single point.
So the point of intersection of B and C is (-4, 1).
We now substitute this point (-4, 1) in A to check whether the point satisfies the equation 3x + 5y = -7.
Hence (-4, 1) satisfies equation A, which means the line 1 also passes through (-4, 1). So all three lines pass through (-4, 1), hence they are concurrent lines.
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mosque (mŏsk), building for worship used by members of the Islamic faith. Muhammad's house in Medina (AD 622), with its surrounding courtyard and hall with columns, became the prototype for the mosque where the faithful gathered for prayer.
The basic elements of a mosque are a place large enough for the congregation to assemble, especially on Friday, the Muslim sabbath, and orientation so that the faithful may pray facing in the direction of the holy city of Mecca. The wall facing Mecca is called the qibla wall and is marked by a mihrab, which usually takes the form of a decorated niche. In later ages mihrabs became quite elaborate; they are decorated with wooden fretwork in Morocco, with carved and pierced marble in Syria and Iraq, and with lusterware tiles bearing quotations from the Qur'an in Iran.
A mosque usually includes a number of distinctive elements: a mimbar (or minbar), a pulpit that is entered by a flight of steps and stands next to the mihrab; a maqsura, an enclosed space around the mihrab, generally set apart by trellis screens, in which the caliph, sultan, or governor prays; a minaret, a tower, usually built at one or more corners of the mosque, from which the call to prayer is sounded; a sahn, a courtyard, surrounded by riwaqs, colonnaded or arcaded porticoes with wells or fountains for the necessary ablutions before prayer; and space for a madrasa, a school that often includes libraries and living quarters for teachers and pupils.
All the great mosques are resplendent with elaborate decorations, but the prohibition against imitating God's works by creating living forms is always obeyed. Decorations are abstract, and geometric plant forms are so distant from their originals as to be unrecognizable.
An early mosque, the Dome of the Rock (691–692) in Jerusalem, is a unique architectural monument. It follows an octagonal Byzantine plan, with a dome entirely of wood. Domed mosques, however, were not commonly built until some six centuries later. The mosque of 879 near Fustat was built by Ibn Tulun of stucco and brick and ornamented with floral reliefs in stucco.
In the 14th cent. a Persian innovation appeared, in which four iwans—monumental facades with pointed vaults—were arranged around a central courtyard. The arm toward Mecca, wider and deeper than the others, contains the mihrab. A fine example of the form is the Great Mosque (1356) of Sultan Hasan at Cairo. The structure at Córdoba, Spain, represents a departure from the four-iwan style. This hypostyle mosque was begun in 780 and enlarged in the 10th cent. until its prayer hall, with 16 rows of columns and arches, occupied an area greater than that of any Christian church. The Cathedral of Córdoba was built in 1238 right in the middle of the mosque area.
Mosques of Persia inherited the Sassanian vaulting tradition and surface decoration with resplendent ceramics. They thus possess a distinctive character in their pointed onion-shaped domes, lofty pointed portals, and magnificent polychrome tiles. In the 15th and 16th cent. the colonnaded prayer halls were replaced by large, square, domed interiors, sometimes surrounded by lower vaulted side aisles, as in the Blue Mosque at Tabriz (1437–68). This structure, of essentially Byzantine plan, is sheathed with incomparable blue ceramics. The imperial mosque at Isfahan (1585–1612) had four impressive porticoes on the court, and its main prayer hall, crowned by an onion-shaped dome and with a porch having an enormous pointed arch flanked by slender minarets, represents the climax of Persian mosque design.
When the Turks took Constantinople (1453) they used the great Byzantine church Hagia Sophia as a mosque, and later employed it as a model for Islamic religious structures. To the great open plan of Hagia Sophia with its dominant dome they added smaller domes, half domes, buttresses, and minarets and used Persian tiles and rather garish painted decoration for interiors. Thus they achieved at Constantinople such superb monuments as the mosque (1550–57) of Sulayman I, the Magnificent, by the architect Sinan, and the huge Ahmediyeh mosque (1608–14) of Ahmed I.
Indian mosques betray their Persian origin in the prevalence of onion-shaped domes, round minarets, and great portals with pointed arches, although the traditional Persian tile sheathing is largely restricted to interiors. The use of stone and marble for exteriors, however, lends them a solid monumentality rarely seen in other Muslim styles, while colored stones inlaid against the white marble add touches of vivid beauty. During the Mughal dynasty, particularly under the brilliant reign of Shah Jahan (1627–58), mosques of surprising grandeur were erected. Among the finest Mughal examples are the huge mosque with its superb domes and entrance at Fatehpur Sikri (1556–1605); the three-domed Pearl Mosque at Agra (1646–53), famous for its simple plan and delicate inlays; and the Jama Masjid [great mosque] at Delhi, the largest in India.
For a further discussion of the architectural development of the mosque, see Islamic art and architecture; Mughal art and architecture; Moorish art and architecture; Persian art and architecture.
"mosque." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
Mosque is an anglicized French cognate for the Arabic word masjid, which literally means "place of prostration." In the most abstract sense, any private or public space properly prepared for the purposes of performing the five obligatory prayers of Islam (salat) constitutes a mosque. The term mosque, however, is most commonly used to refer to a space which has been permanently or semipermanently demarcated as a place of public Muslim worship.
While many mosques share such common features as a prayer niche (mihrab), pulpit (minbar), and area for performing ritual ablutions, the size, layout, and architecture of any given mosque is usually particular to its own specific historical, social, and cultural context. In many well-established Muslim communities, the largest and most centrally located mosque will often function as the masjid al-jami, or central mosque, where a large number of wor-shippers gather for the Friday noon congregational prayer (salat al-jumʿa) and sermon (khutba). Not unlike their counterparts in other religious traditions, mosques and larger mosque complexes often serve as a primary locus for a variety of communal gatherings and activities, ranging from social-service programs and political rallies to Qurʾan study groups and scholarly lectures.
Creswell, K. A. C. Early Muslim Architecture, revised edition. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1969; New York: reprint, Hacker Art Books, 1979.
Hoag, John D. Islamic Architecture. New York: Abrams, 1977; reprint, New York: Rizzoli, 1987.
"Mosque." Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
Mosque or Masjid (Arab., masjid, from sajada, ‘he bowed down’, Egypt. dial., masgid > Fr., mosquée). The Muslim place of assembly (jumʿa) for ṣalāt. While a special place is not necessary for ṣalāt (Muḥammad built the first masjid in Madīna, not in Mecca), it is certainly desirable, and should be attended where possible. Masjids (masājid) are ‘houses which God has allowed to be built, that his name may be spoken in them’ (Qurʾān 24. 36). Masjids in general have a minaret from which the call to prayer (ādhān) can be made by the muezzin (muʾadhadhīn), a large hall or halls for the assembly, in which a niche (miḥrāb) is placed in a wall indicating the direction of Mecca (the qibla), and in which there is a pulpit (minbar). There may also be a platform (dakka) from which further calls to ṣalāt are made, and a stand (kursī) for the Qurʾān.
The masjid soon became associated with education (see MADRASA), and it also became the centre for administration and justice.
The Mosque of the Prophet (Masjīd al-Nabī) is a mosque in Madīna, the second most venerated in Islam (after Masjīd al-Ḥarām in Mecca). It contains the tomb of Muḥammad, as also of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. The Mosque of the Two Qiblas (Masjīd al-Qiblatayn) is also in Madīna: it is the mosque where Muḥammad turned for the first time from facing Jerusalem for prayer, and faced Mecca instead.
"Mosque." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
mosque. Muslim house of prayer orientated towards Mecca. There are two distinct types: the masjid for daily prayers, and the Great or Friday mosque (masjid al-jámi') for communal worship and addresses given by the imam from a mimbar. Very large congregational mosques may be of the hypostyle type (i.e. with many columns, such as the C8 Great Mosque, Damascus); the four-iwan type, with one vaulted hall as the entrance leading to a large court in the centre of each side of which is an iwan (e.g. Friday Mosque, Isfahan, Iran (C11–C15); and domed mosques, culminating in the centrally-planned mosques with domes or half-domes covering large uncluttered spaces (e.g. the Süleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul, by Sinan (1550–7) ). From C8 mosques acquired at least one minaret, and most modern mosques usually have minarets and domes.
"mosque." A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
mosque a Muslim place of worship. Mosques consist of an area reserved for communal prayers, frequently in a domed building with a minaret, and with a niche (mihrab) or other structure indicating the direction of Mecca. There may also be a platform for preaching (minbar), and an adjacent courtyard in which water is provided for the obligatory ablutions before prayer. Since representations of the human form are forbidden, decoration is geometric or based on Arabic calligraphy.
Great Mosque at Mecca, the mosque established by Muhammad as a place of worship and later extended; it was given its final form in the years 1572–7 in the reign of Sultan Selim II.
"mosque." The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
"mosque." World Encyclopedia. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
mosque XIV (moseak, musketh), XVI (muskay, mosquee). The earliest forms are of obscure orig.; the present form is a shortening (XVII) of mosquee — F. mosquée — It. moschea — Arab. masgid, Egyptian var. of masjid, † sajada worship.
"mosque." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
mosque / mäsk/ • n. a Muslim place of worship.
"mosque." The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
"mosque." Oxford Dictionary of Rhymes. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
The Arabic word masjid means "the place where one prostrates oneself in worship." All that God requires is that a place of worship should be set aside (Qur'an sura IX, 107–108), that it should be a sanctuary (sura IX, 17–18, and sura LXX, 11, 17), and that the direction of prayer should be indicated in some way: "And now verily We shall make thee turn (in prayer) toward a qibla (direction of prayer) that is dear to thee. So turn thy face toward the masjid al-haram (Mecca) and ye (O Muslims), wheresoever ye may be, turn your faces (when ye pray) toward it" (sura II, 144). No mention is made of a building, but every Muslim—both female and male—who has attained majority is bound to observe the five daily salat prayers of dawn, midday, afternoon, sunset, and late evening. In addition, Friday is the weekly day of communal worship (at midday) and incumbent on all adult male Muslims. Finally, salats are performed on the two Eids annually, one at the end of Ramadan, the other after the Hajj.
The first mosque was the house of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina. This was a simple rectangular enclosure containing rooms for the Prophet and his wives and a shaded area on the southern side of the courtyard that could be used for prayer in the direction of Mecca. This building became the model for subsequent mosques, which had the same basic courtyard layout with a prayer area against the qibla wall. An early development of this basic plan was the provision of shade on the other three sides of the courtyard. The roofs were supported by columns made of wood. Several features that were later to become standard features of mosques were introduced at an early stage. The first is the minbar (pulpit), which was used by Muhammad to give sermons; the second is a prayer niche called a mihrab, in the qibla wall. The minaret, a towerlike structure and the most conspicuous feature of mosques in many Muslim societies, has the least liturgical significance. Its purpose of calling the faithful to prayer is now redundant with the advent of electrical public address systems. Like the minaret, the domed mosque is also a later innovation. Thus the primary feature of a mosque is a qibla wall facing Mecca.
In the United States, unlike long-established Muslim societies, a majority of the mosques are housed in buildings originally constructed for other purposes. Thus we have abandoned churches, Masonic lodges, fire stations, funeral homes, theaters, private homes, and warehouses converted into mosques. A survey of 1997–1998 showed that of the nearly two thousand mosques, little more than a hundred were purpose-built. Initially, the poverty of both struggling immigrants and African-American Muslims prevented the believers from constructing mosques designed by architects. A number of crudely designed buildings emerged as mosques in Highland Park, Michigan (1919), Michigan City, Indiana (1924), Cedar Rapids, Iowa (1925), Ross, North Dakota (1926), Quincy, Massachusetts (1930), and Sacramento, California (1941). Many of these mosques were named "cultural centers" of the ethnonational population who built it, exemplified by the Albanian Cultural Center, the Arab Banner Society, the Indian/Pakistani Muslim Association, and the like. Many of these buildings had a hall for prayer but also served as ethnic clubs complete with a social hall for weddings, a ballroom dance floor, and even a basement for bingo!
Although historically the mosque experienced fourteen centuries of stylistic development, it is certainly an architectural novelty in the United States. The thematic and visual characteristics of mosque architecture in America must confront an alien environment, one that has its own deeply embedded historical and visual vocabulary. The response, then, of the architectural characteristics of the American mosque to its context is one of tension, resulting both from religious and cultural paradigms. While the building must respond to its own inner formal determinants (cultural and functional), it cannot ignore its regional setting. The stylistic features of mosques built since the late 1950s in America vary considerably. However, it is possible to identify three basic themes that prevail in the aesthetic content of the buildings. These are: traditional design transplanted from Islamic lands (e.g., the Islamic Cultural Center of Washington, D.C., designed by Abdur Rahman Rossi, an Italian convert to Islam and built in 1957); reinterpretation of historical prototypes (e.g., the Islamic Cultural Center of Manhattan, New York, designed by Michael McCarthy of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill and built in 1991); and finally, innovative, unprecedented mosques (e.g., the Islamic Society of North America mosque in Plainfield, Indiana, designed by Syed Gulzar Haidar and Muhammad Mukhtar Khalil and built in 1981, and the Albuquerque, New Mexico, mosque designed by Bart Prince and built in 1986).
Functionally there are also some distinct characteristics—for example, most of the buildings do not operate strictly as places of worship alone but rather as places of public gathering; therefore many are called Islamic centers. They have facilities for a variety of uses: Islamic school on the weekend, library, conference center, bookshop, kitchen and social function hall, recreation facilities, residential apartments, and sometimes even a funeral home.
Since the American Muslim family is usually nuclear, the entire family turns out for worship, necessitating separate space for women, usually at a mezzanine level. Although women have never been barred from a mosque, lack of separate space prevented most women from going to mosques in traditional Islamic societies. However, in the American context, more and more women are taking their rightful place in the mosque along with their brothers, sons, and husbands.
See alsoIslam; Mecca; Practice; Prayer; Qur'an.
Holod, Renata, and Hassan-Uddin Khan. The Contemporary Mosque: Clients, Architects, and Design Since the1950s. 1997.
Kahrea, Akel I., and Altif Abdul-Malik. "Designing the American Mosque." Islamic Horizon (October 1996):40–41.
Khalidi, Omar. "Approaches to Mosque Design in America." In Muslims on the Americanization Path?, edited by Yvonne Y. Haddad and John L. Esposito. 1998.
"Mosque." Contemporary American Religion. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
Islamic place of worship. The Arabic word masjid, literally, a place of worship, is derived from the verb sajada, to prostrate one's self; the term is to be compared with Nabataean msgd ', a votive stele, and with Ethiopic mesgad, a church or temple. In Islam the mosque is also called muṣallā, a place where one prays (ṣallā ) and more commonly, jāmi ‘ (pl. jāwāmi ‘), a gathering place.
Plan of the Mosque. The normal mosque consists fundamentally of a large open, quadrangular court (ṣaḥn ) surrounded by a colonnaded portico (muġaṭṭā ) supported by several (often many) rows of columns, the passages between which are called riwāq (pl. ’arwiqa ). In the center of the court stands a large basin (mīḍa‘a ) tain for making ablutions (wuḍū’ ). The covered hall on the side facing mecca is generally much deeper, and in the wall on this side is a large ornamented niche called the miḥrāb, which indicates the qibla or direction in which one is oriented during prayer; in front of this the imĀm stands while leading the prayer. In larger mosques there may be several miḥrābs used by different "rites" (madhāhib ; see islamic law). Near the miḥrāb stands the minbar, an elevated seat from which the Friday sermon (khuṭba ) is preached; this was originally a kind of throne from which the ruler or governor might address the people and was therefore reserved, in the earliest period, for only the chief mosques. Attached to the outside wall of the building, often on the corners, stands one or more towers or minarets (manāra, ma’dhana, mi’dhana ), from which the call to prayer is first sounded by the muezzin (Arabic, mu’adhdhin ), within some larger mosques there is also a raised platform (dakka ), near the minbar. From here he repeats the call at two specified points during the Friday service. There is also a seat (kursī ) with a desk for the recitation of the qur’Ān by the qāri ’ (or qāṣṣ ). Within the riwāq along the qibla side there is in some principal mosques an enclosure (maqṣūra ) near the miḥrāb, reserved for the ruler, where he may pray free from any danger of attack. In larger mosques there are a number of apartments (called also riwāq, or zāwiya ), built within the extended riwāq or in subsidiary buildings, set aside for various purposes. These serve for study and teaching, or as living quarters for Qur’ān readers and other personnel of the mosque, or frequently for students and those making a retreat (i’tikāf ), whether simply during the last ten days of ramaḌĀn or on a more or less permanent basis.
Early Mosques. The most important shrine in Islam is the Holy Mosque (al-masjid al-ḥarām ) of mecca that contains in its enclosure the Ka’aba, a rectangular building 40 feet by 35 feet and some 50 feet high, oriented at its corners toward the cardinal points of the compass and containing in its eastern corner the Black Stone, which has been an object of particular cult from ancient times. Around the Ka’aba is a paved area (maṭāf ) where the ṭawāf (see hajj) is made. The Ka’aba was destroyed during a siege in 64/684 (i.e., a.h. 64=a.d. 684), at which time it was already a reconstructed edifice, dating from 608, of alternating courses of stone and wood; the replacement, entirely of stone, was built by ’Abdallāh ibn al-Zubayr.
though it was from the outset a place in which people gathered for many purposes, the mosque rapidly took on the character of a sanctuary and came to be called, as in the most ancient Semitic usage regarding sacred shrines, the House of God (bayt Allāh ), a name originally applied in Islam only to the Ka’aba. A particular holiness was, of course, attached to the Mosque of Medina, where the Prophet was buried; also to that of Qubā, just outside Medina, where he stopped and prayed immediately before entering the city in September 622 (see hijra). Prayer in the mosque and the recitation there of the Qur’ān, especially in the mosque of Medina or those associated with some renowned saint, is considered particularly meritorious. A special holiness too is associated by some with the miḥrāb and the minbar, and visitors or pilgrims will often touch them hoping to receive a blessing (baraka ).
The Friday or congregational mosque (al-masjid al-jāmi ‘) is specifically designated within a community for the common Friday service that every male Muslim who has reached the age of reason is obliged to attend. Originally it was a community function in which the ruler led the prayer and preached the khuṭba; for this reason the number of congregational mosques (early called dhât manābir, i.e., having a minbar ) was restricted. According to some authorities there should be no more than one in a particular town; in fact, according to others there should be no congregational mosque save in the chief cities. With the great increase in the number of Muslims, however, and the universal need that was felt for the weekly community service, there came to be Friday mosques even in the villages; the larger centers may have several, often of considerable size. From the beginning there were many mosques besides the congregational mosques. Numerous local and tribal mosques formed the center of both the religious and political activities of particular groups.
Again, following the ancient Arabian custom of honoring the graves of ancestors and important chiefs and the Christian veneration of the saints, a great number of mosques were built as sanctuaries over the tombs of various saints and heroes of Islam, distinguished for their piety, learning, etc., even though the association of a place of prayer with a tomb was frowned upon by many authorities. Numerous mosques were built in Hijaz in association with events in the life of the Prophet; there and elsewhere other mosques arose in particular commemoration of ‘alĪ and his descendants. The site of the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, where the Dome of the Rock now stands, is linked both by Muslim tradition and by the name given its congregational mosque, al-Masjid al-’Aqṣā (the Furthermost Mosque), with a reference in the Qur’ān and with the life of Muḥammad.
While originally the building of mosques and their maintenance were taken as responsibilities of the government, later many were built and endowed by private individuals as pious works. As a result, the number of mosques reported to have existed at certain times in various major cities, even allowing for considerable exaggeration on the part of the sources, is truly astounding.
The Mosque and Education. Teaching in Islam has always been associated with the mosque, as the primary sciences (‘ulūm ) of Islam are concerned with the Qur’ān, the ḥadīth [see islamic traditions (hadith)] and the law (fiqh ). From early times mention is made of the majlis or ḥalqa (circle) of those who came to hear and receive the instruction of learned men and ascetics who taught and preached there. Teaching was done in all the important mosques, several of which had extensive libraries, and in many of the smaller ones, so that finally the term jāmi ‘ became the equivalent of madrasa (school) and riwāq came to mean a student's living quarters. The ’Azhar Mosque was built in Cairo in 361/972, and in 378/988 the Fatimid Caliph, al‘Azīz, endowed 35 chairs of learning; the lecturers not only received ample salaries, but also were housed in rooms adjacent to the mosque. Scholars were attached likewise to the mosques of ‘Amr and Ibn Ṭûlûn, also in Cairo, and to most of the important mosques throughout Islam. In many of these, stipends (some quite high) were available for students who were given lodging in or near the mosque.
Bibliography: j. pedersen, Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. b. lewis et al. (2d ed. Leiden 1954– ) 3:362–428. For further bibliog., see islamic art.
"Mosque." New Catholic Encyclopedia. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
"Mosque." Encyclopedia of Religion. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
The mosque is a place of worship where Muslims gather to pray. The building is composed of a prayer hall where the mihrab and the minbar are located, very often including a closed court, in the middle of which is found a fountain for ablutions (mida). Mosques often have a minaret (from the Arabic manara), from which the call to prayer is made.
"Mosque." Dictionary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. . Encyclopedia.com. 14 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
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I was in line at Starbucks. Behind me stood a tall, young woman dressed in scrubs. The place was buzzing with its usual sounds of grinding coffee beans, the whir of freshly brewed espresso, and the baristas shouting out names of happy recipients of a morning pick-me up.
I looked down the long line of quiet anticipation towards the register, most people surfing their smart phones or eyeing the new holiday line of coffee mugs.
Move people, I thought. I had been awake less than 10 minutes and stood there, crankily, in my pajamas. The sooner I can get that Venti Americano in my hands, the sooner I can become the lovely pleasant person I want to be.
Just then, a vigorous tap on my shoulder and a voice that immediate pierced me as obnoxious, "Did you want to use the restroom?"
I looked back and short and stalky woman with short gray hair and glasses was standing behind the woman in scrubs and staring inquisitively at me. I can't even remember if I answered verbally, I had no idea what she was talking about. I can say that I at least shook my head, but I quickly turned around and imagined an invisible force field all around me that would keep anyone else from talking to me.
"You going to work, hon?"
I could hear the smile in the young woman's voice as she replied to the old woman's attempt at small talk, "yes I am a nurse."
"Oh. Well I just drove all night from Sedona. I came here to find my ex-boyfriend who just got out of jail. I've been driving all night, thinking about how I'm going to find him. You know, I'm 65 years old, that's a long drive and I'm on my last penny. Do you live here in Santa Barbara?"
"Yes." The smile was fading and there was a quiver of discomfort in her voice.
"Yeah, I'm hoping to find a place to settle down soon. Not here, though, it's way too expensive. And, you know, I'm 65 years old so I can't get no job or anything. My ex boyfriend, he was using drugs you know and..."
I can't continue describing the dialogue, because this is the point at which the words lost content and translated to my ear and what little patience I had as nails on a chalkboard. Her voice rattled on like this for 10 straight minutes, and regardless of her story it all sounded like this: "Me, me me me me, me. Me me me me me. Me." It was, quite possibly, the most annoying and one-sided conversation I have ever heard.
Shut up! I thought. Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! At one point I glanced at the young woman and noted the smile was completely wiped from her face. She looked exhausted. I got stuck in a moment of deep empathy for the poor young woman who probably just wanted to be left alone like the rest of us, and I thought about all the possible ways - from polite to hugely rude - I could get this woman to leave the poor girl alone.
Then, the moment we were all waiting for, "I don't have any money, I just spent it all on gas. Do you think you could be so kind as to buy me a coffee, dear?"
The young woman paused to look down at the gift card that she had nervously been tapping onto the palm of her hand. "If I have enough on here, sure."
Though I was mostly focused on being a mere 3rd in line at this point, I couldn't help but notice that the old woman responded to the kind offering with a prayer. She prayed for herself (of course) but, shockingly, then prayed for the young nurse. She thanked God for people like her that take care of others, and asked God to take care of her.
At long and triumphant last, I made it to the register. After I had ordered and paid, I looked up at the register next to me, where the young nurse was handing the old woman a cup of coffee.
"Have a good day," said the nurse politely as she headed towards the exit.
"Wait," replied the old woman, "where's your coffee?"
Again I saw the nurse pause and look down at her gift card with longing. Soberly she looked up and said, "I didn't have enough on here for both of us." And with that, after waiting in line for 15 minutes on her way to work, she hustled out the door empty handed and without another word.
The room seemed to suddenly quiet and slow down as I became enamored by a grace and patience that I, simply, do not have for others. If I had to walk away that morning without a coffee in my hand, after all that time and soul-sucking conversation, I most definitely would have cried. At that moment I knew that, if I had to choose, I would have chosen me. But the nurse chose the old woman, and something about that pierced me with a longing for that type of grace.
"Venti American for J.J.!" shouted the Barista. As I got up to pick up my coffee I heard a familiar voice to the left of me.
A dark-haired woman wearing a tweed red sweater and black pants lit up with a bright smile and politely replied, "yes I am, are you?"
"No, actually I just drove all night from Sedona. I came here to find my ex-boyfriend who just got out of jail. I've been driving all night, thinking about how I'm going to find him. You know, I'm 65 years old, that's a long drive and I'm on my last penny. Do you live here in Santa Barbara?"
The last thing I noticed as I walked out the door was that bright smile beginning to fade into pained discomfort.
Please stop being dishonest with me because you feel obligated to protect me from the truth. As much as the truth may be difficult for me to hear, it's far less hurtful and destructive than the resulting compound of your elusions and lies.
Friends, partners, family, and co-workers - this means you.
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What is the core feature that separates Microsoft Excel from Microsoft Project when creating project plans?
Microsoft Project has reporting capabilities.
Microsoft Project allows you to add resources to tasks.
Microsoft Project uses a constraint-based scheduling engine to determine the start and finish dates for tasks.
What are the three most common types of constraints you will use on a project?
Gantt chart constraints, timeline constraints, and reporting constraints.
Calendar constraints, task date constraints, and predecessor/successor constraints.
Predecessor/successor constraints, calendar constraints, and (where applicable), resource constraints.
What happens to a task when you link it with the predecessor column?
The start and finish dates change. In addition, the successor column in the linked task automatically fills in.
The successor column in the linked task automatically fills in.
The task stays the same until you modify the start and finish dates manually.
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A spam filter that evaluates email message content to determine the probability that it is spam. Bayesian filters are adaptable and can learn to identify new patterns of spam by analyzing incoming email.. Instead of identifying subject line or headers of the email, Bayesian filter will review the content of the email to prevent or block spamming. Bayesian filtering is the process of using Bayesian statistical methods to classify documents into categories.
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Why are we consuming media differently?
I'm sure you have experienced the annoying situation of someone sitting near you in a movie theater with their eyes glued to their phone. The bright light and incessant scrolling can drive you crazy. Or what about when you're trying to tell a friend a story but they won't look up from their laptop. Do you ever find yourself scrolling through Facebook cooking videos while you're binging a show on Netflix?
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The bridge is painted predominantly green, the same colour as the leather seats in the House of Commons which is on the side of the Palace of Westminster nearest to the bridge, but a natural shade similar to verdigris. This is in contrast to Lambeth Bridge, which is red, the same colour as the seats in the House of Lords and is on the opposite side of the Houses of Parliament.
In 2005–2007, it underwent a complete refurbishment, including replacing the iron fascias and repainting the whole bridge. It links the Palace of Westminster on the west side of the river with County Hall and the London Eye on the east and was the finishing point during the early years of the London Marathon.
The next bridge downstream is the Hungerford footbridge and upstream is Lambeth Bridge. Westminster Bridge was designated a Grade II* listed structure in 1981.
For over 600 years (at least 1129-1729), the nearest Thames bridge to London Bridge was at Kingston. From late Tudor times congestion in trading hours at London Bridge (for road goods and carriages from Kent, Essex, much of Surrey, Middlesex and beyond) often amounted to more than an hour. A bridge at Westminster was proposed in 1664, but opposed by the Corporation of London and the watermen. Further opposition held sway in 1722. However an intervening bridge (albeit in timber) was built at Putney in 1729 and the scheme received parliamentary approval in 1736. Financed by private capital, lotteries and grants, Westminster Bridge was built between 1739–1750, under the supervision of the Swiss engineer Charles Labelye. The bridge opened on 18 November 1750.
The City of London responded to Westminster Bridge and the population growth by removing the buildings on London Bridge and widening it in 1760–63. With Putney Bridge, the bridge paved the way for four others within three decades: Blackfriars Bridge (1769, built by the City), Kew Bridge (1759), Battersea Bridge (1773), and Richmond Bridge (1777) by which date roads and vehicles were improved and fewer regular goods transported by water.
The bridge assisted the expanding West End to the developing South London as well as goods and carriages from the more estuarine counties and the East Sussex and Kentish ports. Without the bridge, traffic to/from the greater West End would have to negotiate streets often as congested as London Bridge, principally the Strand/Fleet Street and New Oxford Street/Holborn. Roads on both sides of the river were also built and improved, including Charing Cross Road and around the Elephant & Castle in Southwark.
By the mid–19th century the bridge was subsiding badly and expensive to maintain. The current bridge was designed by Thomas Page and opened on 24 May 1862. With a length of 820 feet (250 m) and a width of 85 feet (26 m), it is a seven-arch, cast-iron bridge with Gothic detailing by Charles Barry (the architect of the Palace of Westminster). Since the removal Rennie's New London Bridge in 1967 it is the oldest road structure which crosses the Thames in central London.
On 22 March 2017, a terrorist attack started on the bridge and continued into Bridge Street and Old Palace Yard. Five people - three pedestrians, one police officer, and the attacker - died as a result of the incident. A colleague of the officer (who was stationed nearby) was armed and shot the attacker. More than 50 people were injured. An investigation is ongoing by the Metropolitan Police.
In the 1964 Doctor Who serial The Dalek Invasion of Earth, the Daleks are seen moving across it in the 22nd Century.
In the 2002 British horror film 28 Days Later, the protagonist awakes from a coma to find London deserted and walks over an eerily empty Westminster Bridge whilst looking for signs of life.
Westminster Bridge is the start and finish point for the Bridges Handicap Race, a traditional London running race.
William Wordsworth wrote the sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802.
In the finale of the 24th James Bond film Spectre, Blofeld's helicopter crashes into Westminster Bridge.
^ Becky Jones，Clare Lewis (2012). The Bumper Book of London: Everything You Need to Know About London and More... Frances Lincoln. p. 127. ISBN 978 1 781011 03 4.
^ Historic England. "Details from image database (204781)". Images of England. Retrieved 27 November 2008.
^ Walker, R. J. B. (1979). Old Westminster Bridge: The Bridge of Fools. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. ISBN 978-0715378373.
^ Cookson, Brian (October 2010). "Westminster Bridge" (PDF). London Historians. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
^ John Eade. "Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide". Thames.me.uk. Retrieved 28 November 2011.
^ Thames Tideway Tunnel (September 2013). "Tunnel and Bridge Assessments: Central Zone: Westminster Bridge" (PDF). Thames Water Utilities. p. 4. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
^ "Westminster Bridge | British History Online". www.british-history.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-04-01.
^ "London attack: What we know so far". BBC News. BBC. 27 March 2017. Retrieved 27 March 2017.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Westminster Bridge.
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New Westminster is a historically important city in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada, and is a member municipality of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. It was founded as the capital of the Colony of British Columbia in 1858, and continued in that role until the Mainland and Island Colonies were merged in 1866, and was the Mainland's largest city from that year until it was passed in population by Vancouver in the first decade of the 20th Century.
The discovery of gold in B.C. prompted fear amongst the settlers that Americans may invade to take over this land. Without a treaty in place with the Coast Salish people,* In 1859, New Westminster was recommended as the first official capital of the new Colony of British Columbia by Richard Moody, the Lieutenant-Governor, because of its location farther from the American border than the site of the colony's proclamation, Fort Langley. New Westminster, at a defensible location on the north bank of the Fraser River, possessed, according to Moody, "great facilities for communication by water, as well as by future great trunk railways into the interior". Governor Douglas proclaimed "Queensborough" (as the site was initially called by Moody) the new capital on February 14, 1859. "Queensborough", however, did not appeal to London and it was Queen Victoria who named the city after Westminster, that part of the British capital of London where the Parliament Buildings were, and are to this day, situated. From this naming by the Queen, the City gained its official nickname, "The Royal City". A year later New Westminster became the first City in British Columbia to be incorporated and have an elected municipal government. It became a major outfitting point for prospectors coming to the Fraser Gold Rush, as all travel to the goldfield ports of Yale and Port Douglas was by steamboat or canoe up the Fraser River.
The location of New Westminster, at the edge of the forest, necessitated a large amount of labour and money to clear trees and lay out streets, which became a significant burden to the colonial budget when the imperial government shackled the colony with half of the cost of the Royal Engineers. Governor Douglas spent little time in New Westminster and had little affection for the city; and the feelings were amply repaid by the citizens of New Westminster, who avidly supported Colonel Moody's city-building efforts and castigated the governor, who preferred to remain for the most part isolated in distant Victoria. In contrast to Victoria, where settlers from England had established a strong British presence, New Westminster's early citizens were largely Canadians and Maritimers, who brought a more business-oriented approach to commerce and dismissed the pretensions of the older community. Despite being granted a municipal council, the mainlanders in New Westminster also pressed for a legislative assembly to be created for British Columbia, and were infuriated when Governor Douglas granted free port status to Victoria, which stifled the economic growth of the Fraser River city. Moreover, to pay for the expense of building roads into the Interior of the colony, Douglas imposed duties on imports into New Westminster.
In 1866, the colony of British Columbia and the colony of Vancouver Island were united as "British Columbia". However, the capital of the Colony of Vancouver Island, Victoria, located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, was made the capital of the newly amalgamated Colony of British Columbia, following a vote in the House of Assembly. On the day of the vote one member of the assembly, William Cox (one of the colony's Gold Commissioners and a Victoria supporter), shuffled the pages of the speech that William Franklyn from Nanaimo (a New Westminster supporter) intended to give, so that Franklyn lost his place and read the first paragraph three times. Cox then popped the lenses of Franklyn's glasses from their frames so that the Nanaimo representative could see nothing at all of his speech. After a recess to settle the resulting uproar and allow the member from Nanaimo a chance to sort out his speaking notes and his spectacles, on the members' return to the House of Assembly, the Speaker John Sebastian Helmcken (from Victoria) refused to allow Franklyn a "second" chance to speak. The subsequent vote was 13 to 8 against New Westminster.
With the entry of British Columbia into the Dominion of Canada in 1871, as the sixth province, New Westminster's economic prospects improved, but the Royal City would lose out again, this time to the new railway terminus town of Vancouver, when the Canadian Pacific Railway was extended to the shores of Burrard Inlet, even though a spur of the railway did reach New Westminster in 1886. In 1879, the federal government allocated three reserves to the New Westminster Indian Band, including 104 acres (0.42 km2) of the South Westminster Reserve, 22 acres (89,000 m2) on the North Arm of the Fraser River, and 27 acres (110,000 m2) on Poplar Island. A smallpox epidemic devastated the New Westminster Band, reducing the band members from about 400 people to under 100. Many of the remaining Qayqayt were assimilated into other local reserves, such as the neighbouring Musqueam Indian Band. Their reserve on Poplar Island was turned into an Aboriginal smallpox victim quarantine area. For decades, the Poplar Island reserve was designated as belonging to "all coast tribes". In 1913 the federal government seized most of the New Westminster Band's reserve lands. In 1916 the remaining land on Poplar Island was turned over to the BC government. Eighteen years earlier, in 1898, a devastating fire destroyed downtown New Westminster.
In 1991, the New Westminster Armoury was recognized as a Federal Heritage building on the Register of the Government of Canada Heritage Buildings.
New Westminster secured a Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) branch line in 1886, but the completion of the main transcontinental line to Vancouver in 1887 shifted trade to Vancouver where the port was easier to access and never froze, unlike the Fraser River at New Westminster. Nonetheless, New Westminster weathered the loss, and remained an important industry and transportation centre. The local economy has always had a mix of industrial sectors, but it has evolved over the years, moving from a reliance on the primary resources of lumber and fishing in the 19th century, to heavy industry and manufacturing in the first half of the 20th century, to retail from the mid-1950s to the 1970s, to professional and business services in the 1990s, and finally to high-tech and fibre-optic industry in the early 21st century.
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Transform how you experience movies, TV shows, and video games. This Ultra High Speed HDMI cable supports the highest resolutions and refresh rates, and the most immersive viewing experience available, including compatibility with Dolby Vision™. This advanced high dynamic range technology offers unmatched brightness, contrast, and color. To experience it fully you’ll need every link in your viewing chain to be Dolby Vision compatible, from streaming devices such as Apple TV 4K to UHDTV or A/V receiver and your HDMI cable that brings them together.
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If tan(θ) = 5/12 and 0°<θ<90°, what is cot(θ)?
When did the United States emerge as an industrial power in the World?
The United States emerged as an industrial power in the World after the Civil War, also known as the Guilded Age. The culmination of the powers of the North and the South resulted in superior manufacturing, propelling the United States to the top.
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E-Series vs Current Sat+ "PRO"
I have the E-series, 48" on a 75 gallon, 16" deep, low tech. All plants doing well.
I'd like a comparison between the two as well. Seems like they are pretty similar?
I'm not noticing any difference in the ramptimer functions listed, but the E does have a reflector if that matters much.
Assuming the wattage values are accurate the 18" and 24" PRO are slightly under powered compared to the E-series of similar sizes, but in the 2 largest sizes the PRO has more.wattage.
The E-series are all .5" longer then the stated lengths. 18" is actually 18.5" etc..etc..
With power and functionality (stock/no mods) being so close it looks like the PRO is going to be cheaper, but nearly as good and/or in some cases better the the E-series for some uses.
Someone will probably post the IR codes for the PRO, and upload any needed code tweaks soon I'd think. So the the crossfader will work with it too.
Durability/reliability for E vs Pro... who knows. Neither have been out for a terribly long time. The Pro is wider so may have more surface area for heat dissipation, and would probably be easier to Mount a cooling fan on if you wanted to play it safe. The E-series is thicker so that may make up some of the surface area.
Personally with the $20(ish) price difference for now, using standard size aquariums, and faith someone will set up the iaqua crossfade for the PRO... I'd probably go PRO. In most cases I don't think $20 for 4 extra watts on the 18" and 24" E-series will be worth it unless that reflector makes a huge difference, and if the two largest PROs are really more powerful then the two largest E-series and cheaper, that's pretty awesome (assuming currentusa didn't round up).
Is there some functionality difference in the ramp timers, and available modes I'm missing? ...Seem identical.
Anyone else enter the facebook contest for the pro, and notice they closed it then reopened it for an extra 3 days? I had 13 of 53 entries I think (nearly 1 in 4 chance?)... after the 2nd close, 18 of 130... so my odds of winning were cut in about half, and unless they are taking their time on the drawing, I lost... and so did a lot of other people who got in before first deadline, and had better odds before they reopened it... Bummer for us, would have been nice if they gave 2 lights away.
One difference between the E-Series and the Pro is size. The E-Series is a lot smaller, so you get to see more of the surface of your tank. More minimalist. For me, that's worth the extra $20 right there.
Unknown is the difference in electronics between the two, for now. The crossfade controller you mentioned works more smoothly on the E-Series than the Sat+ (not Pro) because there are more steps between light levels on the E-Series. No one has yet reported on the number of steps between levels on the Pro, yet. They might use electronics closer to the E-Series, or they might be using the same (more limited) controller from the regular Sat+.
I am getting higher PAR readings with the Plus Pro on my 55 gallon compared to the E-series. I am trying to talk to Hoppy and find out how accurate his Lux meter is at measuring PAR from LEDs. From what I have read most PAR meters are not very accurate at measuring PAR from LEDs. You need a super expensive photo radiometer.
show 100+ PAR at 12" and I can only get 50. Given that when you have water in the tank the plastic cover on the sensor reacts to the refracted light hitting the sensor and lowers the PAR, I am pretty sure mistergreen mentioned this.
I am trying to talk to Hoppy right now and find out how much higher the PAR would or should be than what his meter is showing.
At 19" on top of my 55 gallon I am getting 35-40 PAR with the pro and 30-35 with the E-series. Almost the same. The real PAR may be double that amount based off of the relationships I have observed.
on top of a 55 or 75 gallon you should definitely be in the high light range.
Any updates on the par levels? I'd also be interested to see the difference in colors or the way the two lights look on one tank if anyone has both of the lights?
What is the difference between the two? I haven't seen any side by side comparisons from anyone who actually has access to both, yet.
hmm that is usually "industry speek" for cheaper parts..
It's the Sat+ series that appears to be having some LEDs die, not the E-Series (technically another company, but obviously related)... or is that what you mean? Sat+ PRO is too new for long term issues like this to crop up. Based on pictures, the LEDs in the PRO look very similar to those in the E-Series.
I had some red LEDs go out in my Sat+ as well, recently. Under a year, fortunately, so they shipped me a brand new light.
PAR charts for the E-Series and Sat+ PRO look neck and neck.
Current is saying that the E-series would be the better option because of better performance, but they look about the same and the E-series gets SUPER hot. Way too hot actually. So Kevin, if you are the one writing under the Current Sponsor account then maybe let Ecoxotic know that overall the heat is too much in my opinion to be a good thing. I know it shuts off if it gets too hot, but people have told me that during the hot summer months in Texas or Southern Cali that their E-series is shutting off every 5 minutes. That is a no go in my book. I advocate for the Plus Pro over the E-series. And since the Plus Pro is newer and you are under a Current USA account why would you advocate for the E-series?? That makes me think the sales are down considering the Plus Pro just came out and you are under a Current account.
Or did you mean the Plus Pro by chance?
No hard feelings guys, just my experience.
I should be getting a Li-Cor meter from BML. They rent them out. That way you can get a really accurate measurement of the PAR within the tank.
Hoppy has informed me that the plastic covers on the sensors do not alter the readings under water and that having water in the tank doesn't do anything either.
The 120 degree angle diodes are what get the PAR to sharply fall away as you get deeper. I suggest putting some 90 degree lenses on your lights.
Bumping this back up. I was looking to run a Plus PRO, but totally forgot about the E-Series till now. If possible I'd like to go with dual E-Series because I can run them at 50% and it would still be overkill for what I need, but I would like to be able to spread the light and play around with a controller.
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0.924041 |
One of the most venerable old axioms of fur trade history is that of Colter's Hell, which may be formulated thus: "After John Colter discovered what is now Yellowstone National Park, he told others of the scenic wonders there. No one believed him, and his listeners derisively dubbed the imaginary place Colter's Hell." No item of Yellowstone history is more widely believed, more universally beloved, and more transparently incorrect.
There was a Colter's Hell in the fur trappers lexicon, which referred specifically to an ancient thermal area bordering the Shoshone River just west of present Cody, Wyoming. The term was never applied historically to the thermal zone within Yellowstone Park itself. It was Hiram M. Chittenden, the esteemed engineer and historian who first suggested this usage in 1895 with the original edition of his book, Yellowstone National Park.
The earliest published reference to "Colter's Hell" is in Washington Irving's version of Capt. Benjamin L. E. Bonneville's journal narrating events from 1832 to 1835. However, note here that this "volcanic tract" with its "gloomy terrors, its hidden fires, smoking pits, noxious streams and the all-pervading 'smell of brimstone'" was located, according to Irving, not on the headwaters of the Yellowstone but on the Shoshone or "the Stinking River" or "the Stinkingwater," originally named on the Clark Map. It was Chittenden in 1895 and not Irving in 1837 who started the legend by asserting vaguely that "the region of ... [Colter's] adventures was long derisively known as 'Colter's Hell'" implying that by "region" he meant Yellowstone Park, the subject of his book. He does not accuse Bonneville or Irving of error, perforce conceding that "this name early came to be restricted to the locality where Colter discovered the tar spring on the Stinkingwater," but he hopefully guesses that "Colter's description, so well summed up by Irving . . . undoubtedly referred in large part to what he saw in the Yellowstone and Snake River Valleys." This is where the misconception got started.
It is significant that no historian prior to Chittenden entertained this misconception. For example, in 1890 Hubert H. Bancroft wrote: "Far east of ... [the volcanic basins on the Upper Madison], on the Stinkingwater Fork . . . is Colter's Hell, where similar phenomenon is exhibited on a lesser scale." It is further significant that in his monumental American Fur Trade of the Far West, the first edition of which appeared in 1902, seven years after the first edition of Yellowstone, Chittenden wrote that Colter was "the first to pass through the singular region which has since become known throughout the world as the Yellowstone Wonderland. He also saw the immense tar spring at the forks of Stinkingwater River, a spot which came to bear the name of Colter's Hell." This is his only reference here to the term, which is a clear if tacit admission that he was in error in the first instance to create the impression that it ever applied contemporaneously to Yellowstone Park. But the impression once created would not down. Like Aladdin's wonderful lamp, the jinni was out of the bottle, and the poetic version of "Colter's Hell" has become a stock item in Western literature.
Colter Monument. Photo by Author.
Defenders of the Colter's Hell mythology are eager to challenge Washington Irving as an authority. True, Irving's Captain Bonneville by his own admission never personally saw the Yellowstone Park area. Also, it is true that geysers are not to be seen today along the Shoshone River. Hence it might be reasoned that the only noteworthy thermal activity in 1807 was likewise confined to the Yellowstone (more particularly, to the upper Madison), and that Bonneville was merely reporting a twisted rumor. But a cold examination of the facts shows that Irving and Bonneville were correct.
First, there is no good reason to question Bonneville's geographical knowledge. While he never saw it himself, Bonneville had quite a crew circulating through the future park as early as 1833 and, in fact, there is reason to believe that the great geyser basin of Firehole River, climaxed by Old Faithful, was discovered that year by one of his own lieutenants (see Chapter VII).
Secondly, although there are no phenomena readily apparent to passing motorists at the bona fide and unmarked Colter's Hell site just west of Cody, the evidence of thermal activity, not entirely extinct now, is abundantly evident to anyone who cares to pause enroute to or from Yellowstone's East Gate. On the Canyon rim downstream from the rocky defile enclosing the Buffalo Bill Dam, there are extinct geyser cones up to thirty feet in height and an extensive crust of fragile sinter. In the canyon floor itself there are bubbling fountains in the river bed, and the same pervasive smell of rotten eggs, (or more scientifically, sulphur dioxide) which assails one's nostrils on the Upper Firehole. (Other related hot springs once existed at the forks of the Shoshone, now drowned beneath the reservoir).
Colter Stone Find Site (Wyoming). Photo by Author.
How very strange that this spot, quite evidently the "Boiling Spring" of Colter's famous route on the William Clark Map of 1810, has been largely ignored since 1895. Campfire writers and lecturers have been so enchanted by the Yellowstone "Wonderland," they never gave thought to this historical-geological feature 50 miles outside of the Park boundary.
Thirdly, Bonneville wasn't the only one who knew about the phenomena on the Stinkingwater. The true identity of Colter's Hell was well understood by other mountain men. In 1829 Joe Meek knew all about steam vents "on the Yellowstone Plains," but he also was familiar with a volcanic tract on "Stinking Fork," previously "seen by one of Lewis and Clarke's men, named Colter, while on a solitary hunt, and by him also denominated 'hell.'" In 1852 the famed missionary-explorer, Father De Smet, cited "Captain Bridger" as the source of his information that, "Near the source of the River Puante, which empties into the Big Horn . . . is a place called Colter's Hellfrom a beaver-hunter of that name. This locality is often agitated with subterranean fires . . ."
Stallo Vinton, early Colter biographer and editor of the 1935 edition of Chittenden's American Fur Trade, paid no attention to Chittenden's footnoted correction of 1902. Rather, he did more than anyone, perhaps, to exterminate the true Colter's Hell and pin the name on the National Park. He accuses Irving of a substantial error in locating "Hell" on the Stinking River. Similarly, he ignores Joe Meek's careful distinction between the Yellowstone and Shoshone volcanic tracts.
In 1863 Walter Washington DeLacy accompanied a party of Montana gold-seekers through the Yellowstone Park area. Although his companions were too absorbed in the search for the precious metal to pay any attention to the scenic wonders, DeLacy, a surveyor by trade, did pay attention and subsequently published a crude but illuminating map of the Park region. Here the principal geyser basin on Firehole River is called "Hot Springs Valley." And far to the east, near the forks of the Shoshone is a "Hot Spring, Colter's Hill." [sic] In 1867 the official map of the Interior Department, by Keeler, apparently reproducing DeLacy's data, also indicates a "Hot Spring, Coulter's Hill." [sic] So the Federal Government, at this early date, gave this official recognition to the clear distinction between the two thermal areas.
Vinton refers to the DeLacy and Keeler maps but he dismisses this further evidence as a mistake. Perhaps his stubborn version of Colter's Hell would have collapsed if he had seen the recently discovered Bridger-DeSmet Map of 1851, in the Office of Indian Affairs. Here Bridger also clearly distinguishes between "Sulphur Spring or Colter's Hell Volcano" on Stinking Fork and an entirely different "Great Volcanic Region in state of eruption" "drained by Firehole River. (See Chapter VIII.) Can we invoke any higher authority than Jim Bridger?
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“The Men Who Built America” is a book & 4-part Mini-Series that air 10-11/12 on the History Channel. It covers the period of time generally referred to as the Industrial Age [late 1860s after the Civil War 1914 WWI] Today’s Entrepreneurs & History Buffs can learn a lot by reading the Book or watching the DVD. Below is a summary.
Episode 1: Vanderbilt & Rockefeller – focuses upon two men & two industries that provided the much of the economic power to start the Industrial Age. It begins at the end of the Civil War, when it looked as though the American experiment with democracy had failed miserably. Out of the ashes of the War Between the States, came a massive increase in industrial strength. The first individual that Episode 1 focuses upon is the “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt. This first captain of industry (or robber baron, depending upon your perspective) started with 1 ship for $100, then build & sold the largest water shipping business to get involved in the railroad industry – which he was as the future of transportation. Vanderbilt became the richest man in America by buying up railroads. At times, he used ruthless means. One notable example involved shutting down the only bridge into New York City when he did not get his way.
Vanderbilt contributed to the rise of the next great industrialist by offering John D. Rockefeller a contract to transport Kerosene on his railroads –which was the only means of lighting at the time. Rockefeller took over other Refineries and was able to eventually corner 90 % of the Oil Refining business in America. When Vanderbilt tried to raise the shipping price, Rockefeller made an agreement with the Commodore’s rival RR – Tom Scott, the mentor of a young Andrew Carnegie.
After this, Rockefeller decided to build a Pipeline to cut out the railroads, so he wouldn’t rely on them any more. Rockefeller then removed his Oil Barrels and caused railroad companies to go broke, leading to one of the worst economic depressions in American history 1873.
– because of it’s use in Bridges & Buildings – focused his efforts on building a Steel empire. Much of Carnegie’s motivation was vengeance for the death of his mentor, Tom Scott, caused by the collapse of the railroad industry. Carnegie held Rockefeller responsible and wanted to supplant him as the wealthiest man in America.
Carnegie saw that steel would be the next major industry to take off after using it in the construction of a 1st Bridge over the Mississippi River in St. Louis. Carnegie Steel literally built the cities of America – as places like New York & Chicago used steel to erect numerous skyscrapers.
Both Carnegie & Rockefeller bought out competitors, and frequently shut them down. The continual drive for higher profits led Henry Frick, Carnegie’s assistant, to cut wages & increase working hours at the largest Steel factory in USA – Homestead PA.
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Katie Price's son Junior shows off rap skills with X Factor's Colton Hayes – as fans hail him 'next Peter Andre' KATIE Price's son Junior raps with X Factor star Colton Hayes in adorable video as fans declare him 'Peter's boy'.
Katie Price's marriage rocked by cheating claims as she discovers Kieran Hayler 'texting girl' from her Pony Club KATIE Price and Kieran Hayler have had a turbulent 12 months.
Katie Price's daughter Bunny wears make-up KATIE Price has revealed her two-year-old daughter has started experimenting with different make up.
Princess thrown off horse in dramatic scenes FOOTAGE has been revealed of Katie Price's daughter Princess being thrown from a horse.
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If you are breeding quail and incubating their eggs it is important to keep a record of the percentage of total eggs hatched because this will help in evaluating incubation and hatch efficiency.
The percentage hatch rate is the percentage of total eggs hatched out.
% hatch rate = number of eggs hatched out/number of eggs set in the incubator.
25 quail eggs hatched out divided by 42 quail eggs in the incubator = 59% hatch rate.
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0.928823 |
Facts: In April, 2010, plaintiff Lohle, age 48, tripped on a plastic strap used to bundle newspapers in front of a Stop & Shop Supermarket. She broke her wrist as a result of the accident. The defense asks the Court to dismiss the complaint on a summary judgment motion.
Plaintiff=s argument: After she fell she looked and noticed the plastic band. She didn't know how long it had been there before her accident. She heard from store employees that the band was from a newspaper delivery. In her forward fall, she hit her knee, wrist and head on the ground. Bundles of newspapers are delivered to the front of the store overnight and carried in by a store employee in th morning.
Defense fails to show when it last inspected the area before Lohle's accident. the store employees do not say when they walked through the area. The Store Manager doesn't say exactly when she actually inspected the area before the accident.
Defense argument: It did not have actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition, nor did it create it.Thus it had no legal responsibility or duty to remove the plastic straps so that they did not pose a danger.
Court Holding: The defense failed to show when the store entrance where Lohle fell was last inspected before her accident. So, the defense failed to establish, in support of its summary judgment motion, that it didn't have notice of the band on the ground and/or that it didn't leave the band on the ground.
The defense summary judgment motion is DENIED.
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0.999985 |
Humor me with a flashback: When I was thirteen I was positive I was going to be the next Emily Dickinson with the romantic idealism of wasting away in our farmhouse attic and writing poetry that would one day be famous. The purpose of this flashback is to offer an anecdote to show I’ve been writing and have wanted to be a writer for a long time. I wrote my first story when I was eight, so writing is a formative experience on my timeline from then to the present. But this reflection isn’t so much about the past as it is about how it informs the present.
I was twenty-seven when I had my first child. A girl. Looking back, I’d only just slipped on my adult shoes: I’d been out of college for three years and just started my professional life as an educator. When she was born, remembering life before her was difficult because it felt like life had just begun.
My Baby Girl: she had attitude from the moment she was born.
I took a year off to be a stay-at-home mom. During that year, I got to know my daughter, and in between being exhausted and enamored, I wrote my first novel. It was a historical romance novel with an amnesia twist. (I know. I know. We all have to begin somewhere. It is in a drawer where it belongs). This milestone provided me the experience that I COULD be a mom, and I COULD write a book.
At twenty-seven, I was pretty sure I had it all together. I don’t remember thinking: I’m changed, but looking back, I see now I began to redefine myself. Maybe some mothers would say the redefinition begins during pregnancy, but in my experience, my shift toward motherhood was relegated to healthy choices and weight gain. I still felt like myself - only, slightly better. It was after Baby Girl was born motherhood began to reshape my identity. It shaved down my edges into a smoother more pliable version of myself. It challenged my perceptions and pushed me to learn and seek new understandings about previously held opinions. I began to understand what it means to be selfless.
As a writer, I am a self-centered person. Let me clarify: I don’t mean SELFISH. That’s different. I mean my focus is centered around whatever is happening in my head. I think most creatives and artists can relate. Becoming a parent insisted I reorient. My time was no longer my time alone.
My daughter took this of me - I was sitting at the computer attempting to write. This was about the fifth time she’d interrupted me.
I continued to write, but it was between things like breastfeeding, working, commuting to and from work, feeding the family, playtime, bath time, book time, and bedtime. And Baby Girl was a strong willed child, so nothing ever went as planned. Thank goodness there were two of us. There wasn’t much time left.
Baby number two arrived four years later. I had my Baby Boy. And I returned to being a Stay-at-Home mom with him. I got to know my little guy, who is so different than his big sister, the epitome of happy and content. I began to write again. This time I completed two romantic suspense novels set in Hawaii. Queried and was rejected.
He was only a week old when I took this picture. He hasn’t stopped smiling.
Then I went back to work, but this time, I worked at the school where my now school-aged children began. My identity hovered around my children, my family, and my work. Writing took a back seat - as usual - but not because I couldn’t. It was because that was my choice. I still wrote, but sustaining any writing was difficult. So, in between new ideas that I’d list in a notebook, I spent ten years writing and rewriting a YA novel, a paranormal romance. Queried and rejected multiple times over and over. I put it away, sure I was never meant to be a writer.
Life twists and turns. I changed jobs and focused on my career as a teacher. It hosted my identity and made me feel validated because it is something at which I excel while my writing faced rejection after rejection. Writing - my writing - was given only the time I provided to my journaling students but somewhere in the mix, I rewrote that YA again, removing all of the paranormal elements. I don’t know why. An exercise perhaps.
Where does the time go? We blink and the distance between events expands.
Suddenly, I have a daughter moving away to college and a son starting high school. Time devoted to them and our family stretches out before me. I’ve heard many mother’s lament the loss of their babies. I feel it. I see pictures of my babies, my children as toddlers, each stage a beautiful dance all the way through. I feel joy and poignant loss. And then I see pictures of myself and think: I don’t recognize you. But I don’t feel lost. In a way, I feel reborn.
I took a leave of absence from teaching this year. As my I transition from a mom of independent children, I’ve had the opportunity to look more closely at myself. The mom duties have changed now, have reoriented from all my time to some of it. I’ve had the opportunity to help my son transition to high school, be available for college freshman woes, but the need for mom has waned significantly other than to be a nag about homework, a taxi and a hug.
And there it was - time. Stretched out like a ribbon wrapped around a gift. I could write again.
So I have. I’ve dug in. I rewrote that YA. It’s independently published. I wrote the second book in the series. It’s Independently published too. I’m revising the third book in the series, and it will be independently published later this year. I completed Nanowrimo this year with 70,000 on a new book and a host of ideas in that notebook. I still have time for my family, they just don’t need as much of it.
What I would tell myself as a young mother now that I’ve lived her reality: Don’t worry about your time. You will get it back. Enjoy every moment of these children - even the difficult parts. It goes so very quickly.
Now, I look in the mirror and think: I know you. I knew you when you were thirteen and thought you’d be Emily Dickinson. I laugh at my reflection and think: There’s time. There’s time.
“Especially with a girl involved.” His words feel like acid burning holes through my confidence. I have no witty rejoinder, no quick comeback to deflect his anger. His mention of what caused the Freak Challenge and now Abby sets me on edge.
“That must have been a pretty nasty reconstruction of your face,” he says.
“Look. I told you that in confidence,” I say.
“Wasn’t my idea,” he says confirming my suspicion. “For some reason, you had the concern of a rather nice girl who was sincerely worried about you. I don’t know what the hell for.” His tone is bored. He pushes some loose asphalt near his foot with the toe of his shoe. I notice differences from the last time we’d spoken. He’s taller, more muscular. His hair is darker and longer. It’s curly now that it’s grown out. He stares at me with those icy eyes that are always so disconcerting.
He said had the concern not have. This is a knife in my chest.
“She shouldn’t have done that,” I say.
“Don’t,” I say and clench my jaw. Anger is a sprite igniting fires inside me. I don’t want his concern even if it isn’t direct. I don’t deserve it.
He mocks me with a laugh and a smirk.
In the act of writing, I don’t think I have ever made a conscious decision when beginning to write a new story about point of view. What I mean by that is, I don’t think I sat down and planned in conscious manner I would be writing in first person or third person, omniscient. I wonder if any writer does? I’d love to hear from them.
In my process, as I mentioned in a previous blog post, new ideas, new characters, often come in snippets, so when I sit down to explore the snippet further, I just write and by write, I mean word-vomit whatever is going on in my mind. I don’t think about the point of view, I just go for it. To review: Point of view is the way a story is written. There are three points of view: first, second and third, but to complicate things third can broken up into two types: third person, limited and third person, omniscient.
First person is when the character writes in a way that places the reader in an intimate place within his thought process, as if reading the character’s journal. The first person perspective uses pronouns like I, me, we, us. Swimming Sideways and The Ugly Truth are written in first person point of view.
Second person is when the reader becomes the character. Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? Those were written in 2nd person and replied on the pronoun you to include the reader as the protagonist of the tale. This isn’t a frequently utilized point of view, however a great example is Freewill by Chris Lynch (A YA Mystery and a Printz Honor Award Winner published in 2001).
Finally, third person is the removal of the audience from the story by placing them outside of the action but providing them with a bird’s eye view. This is done by using pronouns like he, she, them, they. Not a part of the action but witness to it, the audience is afforded the opportunity to understand a character without being connected to them. First person, limited, is when the point of view (narration) never leaves the experience of a single character. We see this happen a lot in YA literature when an author identifies which character she is writing to explore various character’s experiences. Several examples of this third person, limited are Leigh Bardugo’s Crooked Kingdom or Veronica Roth’s Divergent, and an all-time favorite work of fiction - J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Third person, omniscient, then, is when the narration of the story is god-like, and the impact of events and thoughts of characters can be explored at will. Examples include Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.
Want more examples of different POV? Click here.
Writers, then, often grapple with which point of view do I choose? If you google it, the answer is often: whichever one suits your story best. Hah! Thanks for nothing.
If you remember the story of the creation of Swimming Sideways, it was initially a very different story. A paranormal teen romance with angels and demons, the first time I wrote it, it was in third person, limited. I switched back and forth between Abby’s perspective, Seth’s and Gabe’s. The style of the story which worked to keep the reader outside - looking in - and distant made third person a logical choice. When we think about stories that incorporate extensive world-building, this is often the case. Swimming Sideways was revised to a very character-driven story which lost the paranormal elements altogether. When this happened, I made the decision to change the third person, limited view to a first person in order to make it more personal between the character and the reader. Successful? The jury is out.
For me, making the decision as to which sort of point of view to write a story is linked to character and goals. Is the story character-driven or plot-driven? What level of emotion am I building into the conflict (more on conflict in a later post)? The analysis of my goals will often answer the question for me. While, I haven’t found a tried and true methodology to identify which POV to write my stories, I would say that by reading (a lot), I have been given maps to understand POV and successful implementation of each.
Do you have a specific methodology for choosing POV? Comment and discuss below!
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0.999957 |
Обращаюсь к русскоязычным форумчанам из России показать красоты своего края, достопримечательности. Прислать Фото или видео, в которых, по возможности, не коверкая английский язык, доступно о них рассказать.
Если я ошибся, поправьте меня.
More than two million seven hundred twenty thousand one hundred seventy one persons Russian - the basic population of the Russian Federation live in the Samara Region. The formation of the Russian population of the Samara area occurred in the sixteenth - nineteen the centuries for the account of a resettlement from the other places. The first constant settlements in Zavolzhe have appeared after building a fortress Samara on the left coast of the Volga river in fifteen eighty six under which protection there were Russian settlements on Samara Luka. The peasants running to the Volga became founders of these villages in the central districts of Russia. The first Russian villages trebled, as a rule, under the aegis of large proprietors - church feudal lords and merchants - industrialists.
Large and small villages were the earliest Russian settlements in the territory of the Average Volga region. The last population was formed near the strengthened lines and fortified cities. The most widespread type of rural Russian settlements was a village with a small amount of yards. While increasing in number of inhabitants and occurrence of churches rural area was renamed into a village. Names of settlements had a various origin. On an environment the Samara region can be divided into northern and southern parts which natural watershed is the river Samara. In a northern part prevailing soil is the fertile chernozem with clay, limestone and quarts breeds, in a southern part - loam with the same sort.
The basic systems of land tenure in the Samara province is tryokhpolie, prevailing in northern and northern parts of the province, and a refalse system extending in its southern parts.
Traditional instrument of labour was a plough, a heavy wheel plough - caban, a horse plough and a frame harrow. The heavy plough to which were put three-four, and sometimes five steams of an oxen, was available only in an economy of prosperous peasants, the horse plough was more universal and thus equally well overturned and loosened the earth.
The basic agricultural crops in territory of the Samara were the rye, oats, buckwheat, barley, peas, and also flax and hemp (for clothes manufacturing).
In the twentieth century there was a number of settlements where a down - knitting craft has been extented. Rod weathing of furniture and house utensils has been developed in the Samara province.
The Samara province is known for the house carving which has had especial development in northern areas.
The traditional national suit of Russian settlement of the Samara province prior to the beginning of the twentieth century represented three ethnographic groups: northern, southern and average.
The main element of a North Russian complex of Russian national suit is a sundress in a combination to a shirt, a headdress and a short breast clothes which has had various names (epanechka, korotyona, pyoruskry).
Today`s inhabitants of the Samara region remember different stories of our settlements and carefully store a sacred precept of our ancestors: to live in peace consent and respect."
Lampada and Юрка like this.
“Golden Ring” of Russia. Photoreport.
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0.967155 |
Add The New Yorker to the list of notable media victims of Ryan Lochte's sensational story about being held at gunpoint in Rio. On Monday, the magazine printed a cartoon on Monday depicting a tongue-in-cheek suggestion for tracking down the alleged perpetrators (e.g. the individual who had stolen all those medals, the cartoon implied). But on Friday, The New Yorker issued a follow-up cartoon to wipe the proverbial egg from its face — and the admission is actually quite charming.
Here's what went down: Last Saturday night, a group of U.S. men's Olympic swimmers, Ryan Lochte, Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger, and Jimmy Feign, went out together to Club France in Rio, a popular nightlife scene for Olympians during the games. On Sunday morning, reports surfaced alleging that the swimmers were robbed at gunpoint by men posing as cops. Lochte even went on Today and described the stick-up in dramatic and vivid detail.
However, the story didn't pan out. Apparently, instead, Lochte was vandalizing a bathroom of a gas station and in retaliation, an armed security guard pulled his gun trying to get the men to leave, according to sworn statements by Lochte's teammates.
Officials got suspicious when a variety of details didn't add up. According to the New York Times, it started with a disputed time frame: Lochte claimed the group left the club at 4 a.m., but security camera evidence showed that the true time was almost two hours later. Cameras also contradicted the story, since the group seemed to be unfazed and joking with one another when they returned to Olympic Village after their night out.
The final straw was when the wild-goose chase the authorities were on wasn't turning up the people the swimmers had made up. There was not only no trace of the fraudulent policemen Lochte described, but also no sign of the cab driver who would have seen the whole thing.
Like many other members of the media, Bustle included, The New Yorker fell for the tale. In the beginning of the week the magazine published a sketch by Benjamin Schwartz wherein the cartoonist boldly takes the Olympians side and portrayed a potential clue to finding the alleged perpetrator(s) — a bit of a brave move to be backing up the reality TV star who popularized his bro-ish catchphrase "Jeah."
This topic is especially sensitive for Brazilian officials since the Rio Olympics has been under particular scrutiny due to lapsed security in the city during the Games.
Lochte has since publicly apologized in an Instagram post. Some estimate the incident will cost him millions in endorsement money.
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0.963497 |
The light system in a projector may seem trivial; shine a light on or through an imaging device, and look at the results on a screen. What’s the big deal?
The big deal is that photons (light particles) are notoriously difficult to control. Trying to get them to go where you want is a lot like trying to herd cats. You also have to cope with lamp life, and uniformity issues. As a result, projector engineers spend a lot of time struggling with light source problems.
Consider the size of the light source itself. You may know the special property of an ellipse; if you put a radiating source at one focus of an ellipse, the radiating beams that hit the ellipse are reflected so that they come together at the other focus of the ellipse (see diagram below). This effect is used to concentrate the light from a lamp onto a lens or other optical device, so that as much light as possible is delivered to the imaging engine, and from there to the screen. If your source is bigger than a single point, however, not all the beams originate precisely at the focus, and they are likely to end up missing the other focus point. Also, the wider the ellipse–meaning a greater distance between the two focal points, then the larger the beam spot will be at the second focus.
Stray light can cause a number of problems at this stage, as well as in other parts of the projector along the light path. First, light that is not funneled through the optics ends up striking other surfaces inside the projector. This can result in reduced brightness at the screen, and increased heat in the projector. Some light may even escape through openings in the case, creating annoying and distracting light leaks.
The other problem is that the stray light may well find its way back into the optics, and end up striking the screen in places where it should not. This can reduce the overall contrast of the image, because instead of showing solid black when needed, the stray light will turn the black to gray.
One key element of controlling the light beam is to reduce the size of the light source. The ideal source would be infinitely small without any loss of brightness, or luminance (the amount of light produced). Unfortunately, practice can’t measure up to theory.
Until recently, most projectors relied on metal halide lamps that use a spark across a gas-filled gap to create the light. The gaps are typically 2 mm or larger. These can have color and luminance stability problems. They also tend to deposit materials such as tungsten on the walls of the lamp during operation, resulting in reduced brightness starting early in the useful life.
Now, most projectors use Ultra High Pressure (UHP) arc lamps invented by Philips. These use an arc in a pure mercury vapor under high pressure. The arc gap can be 1.3 to 1.0 mm across, creating a much smaller light source. This results in much greater lighting efficiency; a 100 watt UHP lamp in a projector can deliver more light to the screen than a 250 watt metal halide lamp. This advantage increases as the imaging panels get smaller; we’ll get to the panel issues in a bit.
UHP lamps range from 100 to 200 watts, with useful lifespans ranging from 3,000 to 6,000 hours. To prevent reduced light output, small amounts of oxygen and halogen are mixed with the mercury vapor, and these help remove tungsten deposits from the lamp’s walls, and redeposit them back on the electrodes. The result is a lamp that maintains almost all of its initial brightness up until the day it fails.
The pattern of the light output can vary as the shape of the arc electrodes change over time. The glowing plasma between the electrodes can also change rapidly. As a result, you can get areas on the screen that are brighter or dimmer than the rest. Some of these problems can be addressed by optics. Philips has also developed a way to modulate the power pulses that are applied to the arc that results in a more stable light output.
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0.999986 |
What makes a cardinal different from a bishop?
While being named a cardinal does not make a bishop or archbishop fundamentally different than he was before—namely, he is not ordained to a new level of Holy Orders—it still comes with a number of responsibilities and privileges.
Papal electors: The most noted responsibility of a cardinal of the Catholic Church is to convene in a conclave in the weeks following the death or resignation of a pope. After a series of initial discussions, all the cardinals less than 80 years old seal themselves into part of the Vatican, gathering daily in the Sistine Chapel to cast a morning and afternoon vote. They vote in ordinary cases until a candidate receives a two-thirds majority of the votes. At that point, given the candidate accepts, he ceases to be a cardinal and becomes the pope.
Part of the clergy of Rome: Cardinals are considered to be part of the clergy of the Rome. This dates back to the days, more than a thousand years ago, when it was the priests of the Diocese of Rome who elected their bishop (the pope).
Possession of a titular church: As part of the clergy of Rome, every cardinal is given a scroll during the consistory at which they are named cardinal. The scroll contains the title of a church in Rome. While that church still has a pastor and its own administration, the cardinal keeps a special bond with the parish, offering Mass there, visiting and giving financial support.
Representative of the pope: A cardinal can be called upon to represent the pope at certain important, official events, such as those particular to a nation or a religious order.
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0.945988 |
What are some good ways to speed the game up. I find that some 3-4 player games take 4 hours or more. It seems like noone wants to piss off anyone else so they dont attack.
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0.9924 |
The Martian equivalent of Lake Vostok, perhaps?
I just read this news a little while ago. Wow.
Apparently these instruments are the only ones that have been able to detect this buried southern polar lake, so this conclusion needs to be replicated independently before we get too excited.
If it can be replicated, though, there are some crazy implications here: Could some kind of life survive in the sort of brine this "water" must be? Are space agency planners already thinking up missions to go drilling? Will they be able to do so, or will any such missions be blocked by those who want no Earthly bacteria contaminating possible Martian ecologies?
If the top is ice all the way through, they could build a rover with an drop-drone on a cable with a (radioactive decay) powered "melting-head".
The cable needs to be heated too, to keep sliding down / or is released from the drone itself (probably easier).
Sounds much more doable than a similar mission to Europa.
When S2 passed by the black hole at a distance just 120 times that of the Earth from the Sun, it reached an astonishing orbital velocity of 8,000 km/s. That corresponds to about 2.7% of the speed of light.
Very cool on both counts. Personally I'd rather see a mission to Europa. Much more water there means, I think, much higher chance of finding something particularly interesting. Realistically a mission to Mars to check the lakes is probably a better choice, though, assuming we can confirm there's actually liquid water there.
An icemelter mission to Mars would make a good "field test" of the concepts needed to complete a similar expedition on Europa.
The only problem: I dont see another way than using a nuclear heater to power the melt down.
Anything powered electrically or mechanical would require a huge (mobile) platform. (cost) Might only be viable when humans can land there and operate the drill.
But having a nuclear probe left behind is probably not the nicest approach, possibly contaminating the site.
It's only a little nuclear. And we've left RTGs all over the place already.
Heh. True. RTG tech is pretty well developed at this point.
Clearly what we really need is a high-powered orbital laser platform that burns a hole in the southern polar ice cap, which a specially-designed rover can then crawl down and back up again to transmit its results.
I see no way in which this plan could go wrong.
Well, we'll already have a giant laser pointed at that location.
Breaking the icecap itself would be improper.
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0.979441 |
Have you ever used a drone? It is a small device handled through a remote control, which can be extremely useful in various situations. There are so many ways to use such a gadget, and since people all around the world are quite creative, this tiny machine is nowadays present in a wide array of industries or activities. In the United States and not only, the remote control helicopter is very popular for organizations that control air traffic, the film making agencies and also for professional photographers. Even if initially, the original use of drones was dedicated to military activities, such as supervision or spying, their functionality has expanded a lot. Currently, a remote control drone can be used both for professional purposes and for hobbies, depending on the model, brand and specifications. Taking into consideration that there is no method of monitoring the devices usage, there are plenty of businesses, companies, farmers and private institutions that take advantage of these gadgets to streamline their activity.
Given the fact that the main feature of such a device is that it is operated remotely, by the means of a controller, drones are generally used for remote sensing. They can carry specialized equipment which can perform a wide variety of functions, in multiple fields: agriculture, archeology, geological supervision and so on. Farmers, for instance can use remote control drone to supervise their animals while these are away gazing. Other features and capabilities quite efficient in the agricultural industry are: measuring the height or area of crops, calculate distance, detect the temperature on the ground or the presence of water and also send emergency responses. Furthermore, archeologists can also attach cameras on the flying gadget, to have an overview of their sites. As a matter of fact, surveillance has not disappeared at all from remote control helicopter’s job description. Commercial airlines often use these devices to check for clear paths, while other organizations may even use it to fly security cameras (designed to catch lawbreakers) above a certain area. Firefighting institutions also use drones to monitor fires, locate venues and create a fire map. Personal spying is another potential use of this small flying object, less popular though.
In addition to all these, probably the most common and best known way of using a remote control helicopter is for making films and photography. The rule according to which using such a device was allowed in photography, video and filming was issues in 2014. Today, ranging from wedding photography companies to cinema directing agencies, all these use drones to reach greater performance and perfect shots. Aerial footage is actually amazing, providing unique pictures. Everybody is fascinated by the original and beautiful images a camera attached to a flying drone can capture. Experts have speculated the opportunity, so they included these gadgets in their daily activity, especially since these can also help them reduce costs considerably. They are easy to maneuver and do the job almost alone, delivering excellent results without a lot of efforts.
For more details about remote control drone or remote control helicopter, please click on these links!
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0.950535 |
Will Boston ferns come back if put outside for winter in an area where freezes occur?
Boston ferns will not usually handle freeze damage well. However, you can put them into dormancy by placing them in a sheltered area ( a cool, dark place) like an attached garage, a closet or a basement. Water only once a month, but water it thoroughly when you do. It will look dead, but in the spring, take it back out and it should regrow fine.
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0.999974 |
Is it true that people get more rational when they have more time to make decisions?
Intuitively this would make sense. And if so, it partly explains Fred Goodwin's willingness to pay back the £2.7 million lump sum he's received from his pension pot, in return for bumping his annual pension income back up from £555,000 to £703,000.
This is a rational decision on the face of it, because it equates to an annuity rate of about 5.5% - which, although it's a level which should be available in the marketplace, is better than the 4.4% he is getting on the whole pension.
In which case, why did he take the cash in the first place? This is the phenomenon of hyperbolic discounting - where people overweight the value of cash or other benefits now, compared with the future. Time discounts, of course, are perfectly rational in themselves - but people discount more sharply in the current year than if they are pre-committing themselves for future years.
Decision-making under time pressure - people don't have time to work out the consequences of their decisions and calculate which is the proper rational decision.
Additional counterparty discount - the fear that the party offering the money will not be around in the future - while you know they are here now.
Fear of confiscation - very applicable in Fred Goodwin's case!
Indeed, the last point must be the dominant one in this case. Taking the cash up front is probably the most rational thing he's done, and returning it seems - on the face of it - a bit crazy. What if Harriet Harman gets her way and his whole pension is taken away in a month? He'd be a lot better off with the extra cash in the bank.
Of course, he undoubtedly has plenty of other resources - as CEO of a bank you get plenty of compensation other than pension - so he may not care about this too much. But I have to wonder - is Fred Goodwin quite as sensitive to regulatory and political risk as Goldman Sachs apparently is?
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0.959912 |
Björk was born Björk Guðmundsdóttir on 21 November 1965 in Reykjavík, Iceland. She is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, actress, record producer and DJ. She mostly writes her own songs. She is best known for telling people how she feels with emotions and for her unique voice. She sings mostly in English but sometimes in Icelandic.
Her career started with singing Tina Charles' 1976 hit song "I Love to Love" in a school recital, and a recording of her singing the song was sent to the RÚV radio station. The recording was nationally broadcast, after that, Björk was offered a recording contract. Her self-titled début album, Björk, was recorded and released in Iceland in December 1977. Before embarking on a solo career in 1993, Björk was the lead singer of alternative rock band The Sugarcubes, which is called as "Iceland's biggest rock band". Since then, she has received consistent critical praise for her innovative vocal and compositional approaches, musical experimentation, and art direction, and is recognized as one of the best singer-songwriters of her generation. Her albums reached the top 20 in the Billboard 200 chart.
Björk has won five BRIT Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, one MOJO Award, three UK Music Video Awards, 21 Icelandic Music Awards and, in 2010, the Polar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in recognition of her "deeply personal music and lyrics, her precise arrangements and her unique voice". She has also been nominated for 14 Grammy Awards, one Academy Award, and two Golden Globe Awards. She was included in Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. She won the Best Actress Award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival for her performance in the movie Dancer in the Dark.
She has a son and a daughter, Sindri and Isadòra. She lives in New York City, but also owns a home in Reykjavík.
Björk was in the 2013 television documentary When Björk Met Attenborough with Sir David Attenborough.
Björk (1977) - Her first album, most songs are a mixture of covers translated into Icelandic.
Gling-Gló (1990) - A jazz album where she sings mostly in Icelandic. The only album that was made by Björk Guðmundsdóttir & tríó Guðmundar Ingólfssonar.
Telegram (1996) - Remixes from Post.
Selmasongs (2000) - Soundtrack album of Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark.
Greatest Hits (2002) - Collection of the best tracks of Björk chosen by audience.
Family Tree (2002) - Mini compact disc boxset of rare and unreleased works.
Live Box (2003) - Collection of music from each album's live shows.
Drawing Restraint 9 (2005) - Music from her movie with her former husband Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint 9.
Surrounded (2006) - Dual Disc boxset of most of her old music, remastered in Surround Sound.
Bastards (2012) - Remixes from Biophilia.
Vulnicura Strings (2015) - Acoustic, instrumental version of Vulnicura.
Vulnicura Live (2016) - Live concert version of Vulnicura.
↑ Pareles, Jon (30 January 2015). "Sometimes Heartbreak Takes a Hostage". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 25 March 2015.
↑ Music, in; Science; July 26th, Television; Comments, 2013 4. "Björk and Sir David Attenborough Team Up in a New Documentary About Music and Technology".
This page was last changed on 11 February 2019, at 20:23.
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Do non-practicing entities behave like patent trolls?
A new study by Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun and Scott Duke Kominers, entitled 'Patent Trolls: Evidence from Targeted Firms', found that non-practicing entities (NPEs) generally behave opportunistically, resembling the typical behavior of patent trolls. After a careful evaluation of the companies targeted by NPEs in litigation, the circumstances that surround NPE litigation, and the impact of litigation on the targeted companies' innovative activity, the researchers concluded that non-practicing entities target companies on the basis of ex ante expected profitability, preferring 'suits with high probability of payoff against firms with deep pockets'.
The researchers first described 'a parsimonious model of an innovative economy in which NPEs endogenously arise as patent trolls', due to the combination of a number of factors (heterogeneity in innovation quality across the agents, commercialization costs, imperfections in the legal system of IP enforcement). In such model, an agent that seeks to maximize profits acts on the basis of a comparison between the expected profitability of litigation, on one side, and of commercialization, on the other. Low-type innovators, therefore, commonly choose to litigate; as their expected profits from litigation depend upon the likelihood of obtaining compensation from the alleged infringer, and the extent of such compensation, the model predicts that 'targeted firms should be those cash-rich enough to fund payoffs and those most likely to settle or lose the case for any reason (even if they have less cash)'. The model implicitly discloses the risk that some meaningful inventions may not be brought to the market, where the expected profitability of litigation is higher than that of commercialization, or, conversely, where the probability of being sued acts as a deterrent.
To validate its theoretical model, the study primarily examined data on NPE behavior from PatentFreedom (and firm-related data from several other databases). The researchers found that non-practicing entities, as expected, commonly target companies with high levels of cash balances, or which had a recent positive cash shock (steep increase in cash holdings, compared to the previous fiscal year). A one standard-deviation increase in these indicators correlates, respectively, with an 11% and a 2% increase in the likelihood of being sued by an NPE. Considering that the unconditional probability of being sued by NPEs is 2.18%, such findings indicate a five-fold increase of the risk of NPE litigation in the case of higher cash levels, and a two-fold increase in the case of positive cash shocks. Non-practicing entities also target conglomerate firms regardless of the source of the cash levels (e.g. even where the cash revenues are not derived from business segments related to the infringing patents): the study found that 'profitability in unrelated businesses is almost as predictive of NPE infringement lawsuits as is profitability in the segment related to the allegedly infringing patent'.
As predicted by the theoretical model, NPEs prefer targeting companies against which they have a higher ex ante likelihood of winning (or, conversely, that have a higher ex ante propensity to settling). Thus, litigation blossoms if the targeted company is already engaged in a number of other litigation events unrelated to intellectual property (a one standard-deviation increase corresponds to a 1.67% increase in the likelihood of NPE litigation), but is deterred by the presence of a large legal team (0.5% decrease). The validated model combines the potential proceeds with the probability of success to determine the expected profitability of NPE litigation. Thus, expected profitability positively correlates with high cash levels, small legal teams, and preexisting litigation events.
Evaluating the impact of NPE litigation, the researchers found that the companies that lost against non-practicing entities in court experienced a subsequent significant reduction in R&D expenditure and inventive activity (in terms of post-litigation patenting activity and citations to their marginal post-litigation patents), concluding that 'it really is the NPE litigation that causes this decrease in innovation' in the United States. The small amount of the damages awarded in NPE litigation that flows back to end-inventors (estimated at 5%) does not affect this conclusion, as it constitutes an insufficient incentive for innovators to carry out inventive activity under the threat of NPE litigation.
The scholars validated these findings by comparing them to results obtained from a poll of practicing entities, and concluded that they 'are not just reflections of general characteristics of IP litigation'. The study, however, could not take into consideration informal patent assertions by NPEs (usually in the form of demand letters), due to the lack of reliable data on the phenomenon. While the researchers note that 'it is widely believed that informal patent assertions has been in decline recently, and is projected to decline further', a comparison between informal and formal (in court) assertions (as well as between successful and unsuccessful formal assertions - although undeniably subject to the uncertain attribution of settlements to either category) would help further distinguish between the different patterns of behavior that emerge even within the supposedly homogeneous group of non-practicing entities.
Hot off the press is Intellectual Property Enterprise Court: Practice and Procedure by Angela Fox, a partner in the London-based IP firm of Jenkins in which she practises as a solicitor advocate and trade mark attorney.
Intellectual Property Enterprise Court: Practice and Procedure provides a reference for all litigators and practitioners seeking to make the best use of the court’s unique streamlined procedures for the cost-effective resolution of intellectual property disputes involving UK or Community IP rights.
Since my copy of the book has only just arrived, I've not had a chance to feast on it yet, but I look forward to doing so. The law is stated to be current to April 2014 and the book opens with some kind words from Mr Justice Birss and Judge Hacon -- the two members of the judiciary who between them have shaped the IPEC and made it what it is today, a thoroughly modern, effective and relatively affordable forum for resolving small IP disputes, as well as for resolving bigger disputes in a smaller way.
Bibliographic data: hardback, xlv + 545 pages. ISBN: 9780414028685. Price £165 or £175, depending on whether the book has been published or not when you order it. Book's web page here.
PwC's 2014 Patent Litigation Study has now been published online. You can read it in full here. The study's main thrust is summarised in its subtitle: "As case volume leaps, damages continue general decline". The study, which is limited to US litigation, is only 30 pages long, and isn't too challenging to read.
The report is not a snapshot of contemporary conditions but rather a reflection of trends, since it analyses a database of 1,985 US District Court cases handed down since 1995 and recorded as having reached final decisions at summary judgment and trial, as recorded in two Westlaw databases -- US District Court Cases and Combined Jury Verdicts and Settlements -- as well as in corresponding Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system records. It thus bridges the coming into force of the America Invents Act, a series of major rulings from the US Supreme Court and the emergence of the non-practising entity (NPE) as both a business model and a force in patent litigation (NPEs have a 25% success rate in US patent litigation as against 35% for businesses that work their own patents, though this figure obviously doesn't take account of the "successes" achieved by NPEs in securing cash settlements without the need to go to court).
Thanks are due to Chris Torrero for providing the link.
Public investment in higher education research: the Australian government wants patents, not publications!
A few days ago, the Australian Minister of Industry, Hon. Ian Macfarlane, suggested (here) that public investment in higher education research should be linked to the number of patents granted to each University. The Minister said: ‘[w]e might think about realigning block grants to commercial outcomes, and awarding them to universities not on the basis of how many papers they’ve had published, but actually on how many patents they’ve had registered’. He declared that a similar change ‘is not rocket science’, and would simply align Australia’s approach to that of several other countries.
An interesting piece by Kim Carr (shadow minister for higher education, research, innovation and industry), published on the Guardian on 8 August, observed that ‘[s]cience research grants awarded on the basis of patents is patently wrong’. Carr noted that the objective of research is not commercialization, but the pursuit of new knowledge, free of any predetermined instrumentalism. Such curiosity-driven process, he added, does not align well with patent law: ‘excellent research doesn’t necessarily end in a patent, and where it does, genuinely useful patents can take years – often decades – to be realised’. The article also mentioned other issues, including those related to cost, attribution, and opportunity (e.g. companies in fast-evolving technological sectors may choose to rely on other industrial and commercial strategies to gain a temporary competitive advantage, in the brief period of time between invention and technological obsolescence). Carr concluded that, if the Australian government is interested in fostering the national economy and creating jobs, it should focus on ‘providing incentives for researchers and their partners who are trying to commercialise inventions’, expanding the R&D Tax Incentive scheme, and creating an environment where research and commercialization can easily interact.
Aside from the arguments analysed by Carr, the proposal of the Australian Minister raises several other tangential issues. First of all, it is readily apparent that criteria linked to the number of patents granted would not apply across the whole field of academic research, thus causing potential disparities in the allocation of public financing in different research sectors. Even restricting the applicability of the patenting criteria to scientific research susceptible of commercialization (and I suspect that it would be difficult to agree on an appropriate definition and limitation, considering how the density of patentable innovation changes, sometimes even dramatically, in different scientific areas), the grant of a patent would not attest to the overall significance and scientific quality of the underlying research (nor would allow its evaluation from a cost/benefit perspective). As the assessment of novelty and inventiveness for patents has a mere lower threshold, which excludes the tailoring of the reward to different levels of such constitutive elements, scientific research would be subject to the same system, and to its well-known traps. Thus, rather than incentivizing high quality research, the Australian proposal could potentially deter similar efforts, promoting low quality research, which would achieve the best prospect of attracting public spending with the lowest initial investment. The alternative would again force the government, upon implementation of the new system, to look into methods of creating a hierarchy of the commercializable research outcomes, perpetuating the issue that it intended to resolve.
Another significant issue concerns the temporal mechanics of the system. Paradoxically, in light of the considerable amount of time that elapses between the filing of a patent application and the granting of a patent, the proposed change would provide a time-delayed reward that could prevent any researcher whose work has not yet produced commercializable results (e.g. young scholars, theoretical scientists, etc.) from having access to the financial means necessary to carry out the kind of research that Macfarlane wishes to encourage. In other words, the allocation of financial resources would not be tailored to the research potential of a researcher, nor to the results of its most recent work. Long-term research projects would be similarly penalized, as would be collective research efforts, or ambitious research projects whose outcome may generate just a few patents, albeit of greater significance.
A third range of questions is raised by the unique structure and fabric of the scientific research carried out by publicly funded bodies, which cannot be reduced to a mono-dimensional, commercially or industrially-driven venture. While a private company necessarily evaluates its research objectives in terms of potential returns in a short to medium term (with the exception of larger companies which may risk significant investments in a long term perspective), one of the essential roles of Universities and other bodies financed by public spending is to engage in an all around research that first ventures into unexplored territories, pursuing theoretical hypothesis or abstract ideas, and later spreads into a number of more selective, concrete ramifications that finally lead to the attainment of practical, commercializable results. It is generally only the terminal path of this multidimensional research that leads to the filing of patent applications, as the prior steps do not usually provide researchers with all the elements needed to fulfill the statutory requirements for patenting. Discouraging the pursuit of long-term, exploratory, visionary research would probably reduce the need for public spending, but would also greatly contribute to the decline of scientific research and innovation. The trade off may not be worth it.
There are several other aspects that would deserve a more in-depth discussion (e.g. peer-review or patent examination, linking public investments to the number of patent applications filed, the role of patent lawyers in the process, the effects of rejection, etc.) - you are welcome to join the debate and share your point of view, ideas or comments!
Under the Agreement between the European Union and the Kingdom of Denmark on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters of 13 August, Denmark has told the European Commission that it is to implement Regulation 542/2014 amending Regulation 1215/2012 as regards the rules to be applied with respect to the Unified Patent Court and the Benelux Court of Justice (the "Brussels I Update Regulation").
Denmark originally opted out of the EU's Brussels I regime for recognition and enforcement of judgments but, following Denmark's recent referendum vote in favour of ratifying the Unified Patent Court Agreement, implementation of the Brussels I Update has become necessary.
The course centres on a patent infringement & validity case study from pleadings, via the case management conference [this is the bit which this blogger gets very excited about, since case management is the best way of bringing cases on quickly and in a highly focused manner -- but only if handled properly] and culminating in a mock trial. All participants will get hands on experience in the necessary skills to litigate in the IPEC with feedback from experts in the field (including PALs [patent attorney litigators, that is], solicitors and patent barristers). Our tutors will also cover the practice and procedure necessary to handle such litigation. Judge Hacon has agreed to give a guest speech. The course consists of two parts: a preliminary day at CIPA on 2 September 2014 followed by a residential three days at Missenden Abbey [this sounds a bit like a religious retreat ...] from Thursday 18 to Saturday 20 September 2014. The course is expensive intensive but so is litigation. It is aimed at those both with and without previous experience and provides an invaluable opportunity to acquire or sharpen one’s skills.
Further details are available from the CIPA website here.
Readers of this weblog may be aware that on 10 July the UK Intellectual Property Office published a report, researched and authored by me, entitled 'Exploring Perspectives of the Unified Patent Court and Unitary Patent Within the Business and Legal Communities'. The report is accessible here and there's an audio recording of the launch event, kindly hosted by CIPA (the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys), here.
The report discusses the views of 28 interviewees -- consisting of representatives from patentee companies, solicitors and patent attorneys -- concerning a range of issues concerning the new UPC/UP system, including the procedural and cost rules for the new court, and the all-important fees issues for the UP.
One particularly interesting issue that came up in the conversations I had with interviewees concerns the all important opt-in/opt-out question. It was noted that while businesses are concerned about the risks of opting-in their entire portfolios -- with the possibility of revocation across all UPC member states a clear worry in their minds -- virtually all businesses are considering opting-in at least some patents in order to test the new system and to avail themselves of centralised enforcement. In this respect, some patentees are considering opting-out their most valuable patents (to avoid the central revocation possibility), while others are focused on identifying and opting-in their 'strongest' patents (to take advantage of centralised enforcement). Few, however, seem willing at this stage to opt-in everything. For this reason, it is likely that for the early part of the UPC's life there will be a two-tier patent system, with cases involving UPs and opted-in European patents (EPs) heard at the UPC, and cases involving opted-out EPs heard in the national courts in line with the current fragmented system. The following question, therefore, arises: how will patents be perceived within this two-tier system?
From the interview data I collected, it's clear that a small number of interviewees fear that an opted-out patent will be perceived as weak, and thus open to attack by competitors via the national route. By contrast, will an opted-in patent be automatically perceived as being strong i.e. of high quality, and thus less vulnerable?
It is not possible at this stage to answer these questions; yet, the fact that these concerns exist aptly illustrates that the coming into force of the UPC is likely to have (unintended) consequences that are difficult for businesses to predict -- or plan for -- at this stage. If any readers of this weblog have any insights to add on this issue, feel free to post comments to this blog, or alternatively to email me at [email protected].
Do please help Luke if you can!
When EP practitioners speak about inescapable traps, they usually refer to situations where the patentee in an opposition is faced with the problem that features added in the examination procedure extend beyond the subject-matter of the documents as originally filed (Art 123(2) EPC) but cannot be removed without extending the scope of protection (Art 123(3) EPC).
Very few people speak about a far more frequent sort of inescapable trap: the clarity-disclosure trap (sometimes appearing as enablement-disclosure trap as well). This unpleasant trap is set when somebody objects that an expression in a claim is unclear and the trap snaps if the pitiful applicant has no disclosure in the documents as originally filed which could serve as a clarifying limitation.
The decision T 2231/09 is an example of such a trap. The application relates to an image processing algorithm wherein a certain parameter is derived from a subset of pixels in a region (whereas the prior art used all the pixels in the region). Four years of search and examination at the EPO did not reveal any problems with the word "region". The application was then refused on the grounds that the subject-matter of the claims lacked novelty or did not involve an inventive step over the prior art.
The patentee appealed the decision, waited further four years and was then summoned to oral proceedings before the Technical Board of Appeal. The board raised objections on the clarity of the expressions "region" and "subset of pixels" for the first time in the annex to the summons. As a clarifying definition of these expression was missing in the documents as filed, all the attempts of the patentee to overcome this clarity problem were doomed to fail.
Apparently, the claim was considered sufficiently clear in the US, in JP and in China, where the patent was granted.
I cannot help to feel uncomfortable about this course of procedure and about the fact that a potentially valuable intellectual property right was completely lost as a consequence of a minute (if any) imprecision of the draftsman many years ago. The discretionary decision of the Board of Appeals whether or not the ordinary language expression "region" is clear is final and cannot be reversed by a higher instance It is therefore clearly problematic if it is introduced ex officio in the ex parte appeal procedure.
"I and others posted some comments at the time; I mentioned the equivalent course run by the Nottingham Law School at Nottingham Trent University for Trade Mark Attorneys. The Law School now finds that there are places free on a trade mark attorney’s Basic Litigation course in September, which it is able to offer to patent attorneys. The course has been accredited by IPReg and would run from Monday 15 September until Friday 19 September 2014. Anyone wishing to take advantage of this opportunity (or two courses dedicated to patent attorney students and scheduled to take place in January and June next year) should follow this link".
"Inventor says HDB infringed patent for clothes-drying rack" is the title of an article in Singapore's Today Online, here, which tells the story so far with regard to a patent infringement action brought by Mr Yiap Hang Boon, a 54-year-old inventor, against the Housing and Development Board (HDB) for infringing his patent for a clothes-drying rack. The HDB denies infringement and is seeking to revoke the patent, which was granted ten years ago.
Mr Yiap, who is not represented by a lawyer, appeared to have difficulty conveying his points yesterday.
Justice Chan Seng Onn interjected during his opening statement, saying he could not understand the latter’s “mumbo jumbo”. The judge also sought visuals for a clearer idea of the alleged infringements.
The invention itself, illustrated above, is of quite a low-tech nature. It is regrettable that the patentee should find it difficult to convey his points, and that the judge should have difficulties understanding it. With a specialist intellectual property court and firm pre-trial case management, these difficulties can be reduced, if not actually eliminated. As it is, the judge -- with degrees in Engineering and Industrial Engineering -- is at least in theory better equipped to hear low-tech infringement cases of this nature than are many others.
Managing Intellectual Property magazine, which this blogger founded back in the 1990s and for which he still has a soft spot, is running a conference, titled the "European Patent Reform Forum", in two European venues this autumn. On 9 September the Forum comes to Munich, Germany, and on 11 September it shifts to Paris, France. The significance of both venues, as well as a few words about the programme, can be found on my earlier Katpost here, together with details of registration discounts for readers of that weblog.
• What should be learnt from current German practice?
• When will/ won’t the ECJ be able to review issues of law pertaining to patents?
• The new Swiss patent court – how does it work?
This blogger is unable to attend, though he'd very much like to do so -- and while some of his friends are on the programmes (the cast of speakers is a little different, reflecting the fact that the host cities are in different countries, they are not in a position to do any real-time speed-blogging. Accordingly, if any of our readers are likely to be there and would like to write up a note on one or more of the sessions, for publication on this weblog, can they please email me at [email protected] and let me know.
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The Indian Civil Service (ICS) for part of the 19th century officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was the élite higher civil service of the British Empire in British India during British rule in the period between 1858 and 1947.
Its members were appointed under Section XXXII of the Government of India Act 1858, enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The ICS was headed by the Secretary of State for India, a member of the British cabinet.
At first almost all the top 1,000 members of the ICS, known as "Civilians", were British, and had been educated in the best British schools. By 1905 5 per cent were from Bengal. In 1947 there were 322 Indians and 688 British members; most of the latter left at the time of partition and independence. Until the 1930s the Indians in the service were very few and were not given high posts by the British. Wainwright notes that by the mid-1880s, "the basis of racial discrimination in the sub-continent had solidified". At the time of the birth of India and Pakistan in 1947, the outgoing Government of India's ICS was divided between India and Pakistan. Although these are now organised differently, the contemporary Civil Services of India and the Pakistan Civil Service are both descended from the old Indian Civil Service.
The competitive examination for entry to the civil service was combined for the Diplomatic, the Home, the Indian, and the Colonial Services. Candidates had to be aged between 21 and 24, which gave everyone three chances for entry. The total marks possible in the examination were 1,900. Successful candidates underwent one or two years probation in England, according to whether they had taken the London or the Indian examination. This period was spent at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, or the School of Oriental Studies in London, where a candidate studied the law and institutions of India, including criminal law and the Law of Evidence, which together gave knowledge of the revenue system, as well as reading Indian history and learning the language of the Province to which they had been assigned.
The civil services were divided into two categories - covenanted and uncovenanted. The covenanted civil service consisted of only white British civil servants occupying the higher posts in the government. The uncovenanted civil service was solely introduced to facilitate the entry of Indians at the lower rung of the administration.
British control of the Indian Civil Service remained after the First World War, but faced growing difficulties. Fewer and fewer young men in Britain were interested in joining, and distrust of such posts among Indians resulted in a declining recruitment base in terms of quality and quantity. By 1945 Indians were numerically dominant in the ICS and at issue was loyalty divided between the Empire and independence.
The finances of India under British rule depended largely on land taxes, and these became problematic in the 1930s. Epstein argues that after 1919 it became harder and harder to collect the land revenue. The suppression of civil disobedience by the British after 1934 temporarily increased the power of the revenue agents, but after 1937 they were forced by the new Congress-controlled provincial governments to hand back confiscated land. The outbreak of the Second World War strengthened them again, but in the face of the Quit India movement the revenue collectors had to rely on military force, and by 1946-47 direct British control was rapidly disappearing in much of the countryside.
At the time of the partition of India and departure of the British, in 1947, the Indian Civil Service was divided between the new Dominions of India and Pakistan. The part which went to India was named the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), while the part that went to Pakistan was named the "Civil Service of Pakistan" (CSP). At the time of Partition, there were 980 ICS officers. 468 were Europeans, 352 Hindus, 101 Muslims, two depressed classes/Scheduled Castes, five domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians, 25 Indian Christians, 13 Parsis, 10 Sikhs and four other communities. Most European officers left India at Partition, while many Hindus and Muslims went to India and Pakistan respectively. This sudden loss of officer cadre caused major challenges in administering the nascent states.
Nirmal Kumar Mukherjee, who retired as Cabinet Secretary in April 1980, had been the last Indian administrative officer who had originally joined as an ICS (in 1944), while the last ICS officer to retire in Pakistan was Agha Shahi, also of 1944 batch, who retired as foreign advisor to president in 1982. The last recruited batch of the ICS was in October 1944.
Dewey has commented that "in their heyday they [Indian Civil Service officers] mostly run by Englishmen with a few notable sons of Hindus and even a fewer Muslims were the most powerful officials in the Empire, if not the world. A tiny cadre, a little over a thousand strong, ruled more than 300,000,000 Indians. Each Civilian had an average 300,000 subjects, and each Civilian penetrated every corner of his subjects' lives, because the Indian Civil Service directed all the activities of the Anglo-Indian state."
Speaking in the House of Commons in 1935, former British prime minister David Lloyd George said of the ICS that it was "the steel frame on which the whole structure of our government and of our administration in India rests".
This page was last modified on 2 January 2016, at 11:14.
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Can fish lower the risk of cancer?
This is the most common question that is being asked by most people. Few studies have showed that having fish in our diet will reduce the risk of different cancers.
Fish that contains omega-3 fatty acids can show great results because it contains anti-inflammatory fatty acids. Such types of fish include salmon, mackerel, cold, herring, black cod and sardines.
But few studies have revealed that the more fish you have, the worse the condition is. You need to be conscious about mercury, a contaminant present in many types of fish.
But, in general eating fish containing Omega-3 fatty acids every week is good for protecting against different types of cancer.
Few reports revealed that eating fish may protect against liver cancer. And, the more you consume the fish, the less is the risk of getting cancers, including breast and colon. The omega-3 fatty acids present in fish old are called EPA(eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA(docosahexaenoic acid). Certain studies have defined that these fats interfere colon cell function and may hinder inflammation.
There are certain evidences for increased fish consumption and a reduced risk of breast, prostate and rectal cancer; and between higher n-3 to omega-6 (n-6) FA ratio and a reduced risk of breast cancer.
So, try to consume more fish to avoid the risk of getting cancer.
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what is Data Acquisition Data acquisition is the processing of multiple electrical or electronic inputs from devices such as sensors, timers, relays, and solid-state circuits for the purpose of monitoring, analyzing and/or controlling systems and processes. Data acquisition instrument types include computer boards, instruments or systems, dataloggers or recorders, chart recorders, input modules, output modules, and I/O modules. Computer boards are self-contained printed circuit board with full data acquisition functionality; typically plugs into a backplane or motherboard, or otherwise interfaces directly with a computer bus. Instruments or systems are fully packaged with input and output, user interface, communications capability, etc. They may include integral sensors. Data loggers and data recorders are data acquisition units with instrument functionality with specific capability for data storage. May be for general purpose or application-specific data acquisition. Chart recorders generate real-time plots, graphs or other visualizations of data. Input modules are devices (module or card) configured to accept input of sensors, timers, switches, amplifiers, transistors, etc. for use in the data acquisition system. Output modules are devices with specific functionality for output of amplified, conditioned, or digitized signal. I/O modules have both input and output functionality. Digital or discrete I/O includes on-off signals used in communication, user interface, or control. Common form factor for data acquisition devices include IC or board mount, circuit board, panel or chassis mount, modular bay or slot system, rack mount, DIN rail, and stand-alone. Common device specifications to consider when searching for data acquisition products include differential analog input channels, digital I/O channels, sampling frequency, resolution and accuracy. Common signal inputs available for data acquisition products include DC voltage, DC current, AC voltage, AC current, frequency, and charge. Sensor inputs include accelerometer, thermocouple, thermistor, RTD, strain gauge or bridge, and LVDT or RVDT. Specialized inputs include encoder, counter or tachometer, timer or clock, and relay or switch. Transducers and excitation are also important to consider when searching for data acquisition. Many products have integral sensors or transducers. These sensors can have voltage or current excitation. Common outputs for data acquisition products include voltage output, current output, frequency output, timer or counter output, relay output, and resistance or potentiometer output. Considering the user interfaces available is important when searching for data acquisition products. User interfaces available include no display, front panel and display, touch screens, hand-held or remote programmers, and computer programmable. Host connection choices include direct backplane interface, RS232, RS422, ST485, USB, research 1394, GPIB, SCSI, TTL, parallel, Ethernet, modem, and radio or telemetry. The transmission rate of data is important to consider. Many products are web enabled for web addressing. Common applications for data acquisition products include general lab or industrial, environmental, vehicular, marine, aerospace or military, seismic or geotechnical, weather or meteorology, and medical or biomedical. Additional specifications to consider when searching for data acquisition products include application software, memory and storage, network specifications, filter specifications, amplifier specifications, and environmental parameters.
Fpga-based data acquisition system for a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner.
FPGA Implementation of Real Time Data Acquisition System Using Micro blaze Processor.
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Could one construct a cipher that is secure for friendly parties to use but insecure for hostile parties?
Consider the situation of a nation state (Blue) at war with another nation state (Red). Blue wants to deploy a secure cipher that blue currently can not break, but they are considered that Red could reverse engineer the cipher and use it to secure Red's communication (Red is unable to develop it's own secure cipher).
How have governments in the past approached this problem?
How could one design such a cipher?
I have been working on an incomplete (maybe impossible) formulation of such a system. I know that asking is "my cipher secure" questions is frowned upon, but I hope my outline below is free of enough implementation details that it will not be seen in such a light. It is more of a "is my cipher possible" question.
Here is my formulation of a backdoor cipher.
Assume a function $g$, takes as input a integer $s_i$ and outputs a cipher $c_s$. That is, $g$ generates ciphers based on a seed $s$.
The cipher $c_s$ has the property that if one knows $s$ one can decrypt all messages encrypted with $c_s$. Thus, the cipher is safe for Blue to use since Red doesn't know $s$ and can't learn $s$ from $c_s$, but if Red attempts to use $c_s$ Blue can decrypt all their communications.
While in principal this would work it would not satisfy our scenario above because the backdoor is so blatant and easy to remove. Red could just alter the cipher to not append the encrypted form, $publicKey_s(key)$, of the key.
Instead a more subtle approach would be to create a function $g'$, which still takes $s$ but produces both a cipher $c'_s$ and a function $v_s$.
The cipher $c'_s$ has the property that some of its keys are insecure and some of its keys are secure. The function $v_s$ produces only secure keys.
Blue can generate and distribute many secure keys using $v_s$.
Best case, Red doesn't realize that some keys are weak and some are strong and thus assumes that Blue would never use a cipher that Blue could break. Red trusting in this uses $c_s$ for secret communications.
Even if the vulnerability comes to light, Blue communication are still secure and Red still can't generate strong keys. Nor can Red use captured keys that were generated by Blue because Blue remembers generating them.
Question: Is this scheme is remotely possible, if so what math could be used to construct it?
I wrote this up as "Imagining a Secure Backdoor Cipher".
Mathematically, it can probably be done. There has been research into trapdoor block ciphers. See, e.g., A family of trapdoor ciphers by Rijmen and Preneel, and follow-up papers.
In practice, though, the problem statement is not realistic. The assumptions are just not realistic. Today, there's no reason why Red would be limited to using Blue's ciphers. Instead, Red could just use any well-vetted cipher, like AES. There's no reason why Blue should assume that Red will use Blue's ciphers; that's just not how adversaries are likely to behave given the current state of the public literature. So while your problem statement might have been relevant and interesting to ponder 40 years ago, when there was no public literature on cryptography ... today, it is irrelevant.
The design of DES might give some insight into the problem. The NSA altered the S-box of DES. Many people thought they planted a backdoor. It wasn't until later that differential cryptanalysis was independently discovered by Biham and Shamir that people realized that the NSA actually made DES stronger.
So the lesson to learn from this is: clearly the NSA knew about differential cryptanalysis and were some of the only people who did (IBM says they knew about it too). NSA really could have designed the S-box to be weak against a differential attack, but strong against all publicly known attacks. Only until differential cryptanalysis was discovered would anyone have known DES was weak.
The basic method uses pairs of plaintext related by a constant difference; difference can be defined in several ways, but the eXclusive OR (XOR) operation is usual.
So, construct your S-box so that the differences are not XOR. Choose some other difference function and hope no one figures out what function you used. You could probably do a similar thing with linear cryptanalysis.
In all reality though, you'd probably be better off using a standard cipher in an insecure protocol. For example, the padding oracle attack is fairly practical and could be hard to spot, especially if you took the idea and put it somewhere else in the protocol (not in the padding).
In the asymmetric encryption context I think something can be done in this direction with a double trapdoor function. I studied few examples of them in the past and briefly you can build up an encryption scheme with a "local" trapdoor and a "global" one.
If you keep the secret for the global trapdoor for you you'll have a sort of escrow key allowing you to decipher all ciphers made under this encryption scheme. The local trapdoor is used by users to communicate among them.
As noted on an other answer, this is interesting only for an accademic point of view. There is no reason that someone would use such cryptosystem knowing that someone out there has an escrow key.
It may looks like off-topic.
But there exist hardware solution today.
In the early years, both Soviet and USA used reverse engineering to get the scheme of crypto-system. Military standards today are too closed. What we use called a civil standard, and it is open. So reverse engineering seems unnecessary.
it is the hardware analog of a one-way function.
Crypto-system may be manufactured that way to maximum complicate reverse engineering task.
When Red get Blue's crypto-system, they may try to use it like a black-box for encryption, but they can't get the full crypto-scheme and can't clone this black-box.
In this sight, Red make mistake with one "s-block" and their encrypted message will be easily broken by Blue.
Such malicious circuit with "PUF shield" may stay like tiny trust-trigger for Blue against Red.
In case A, almost all ciphers can be strengthened by weaving in another cipher with its own key. The cipher doesn't have to be all that strong of itself to radically smash-up the break against the original cipher. (Consider for a moment Enigma, which was quite breakable. Now consider gzip-base26-Engima. The cipher power is now absurd as compared to the original and the original attacks don't work at all.) Stacking is weak in the modern case, but weaving is much more terrible. If we broke out within the rounds of one block cipher into another one and back into the block cipher with the block state encrypted, strange things happen.
In case B, Red has only to reroll the dice on all large constants in Blue's cipher, constructing a variant likely to have a different backdoor key that is unknown to anybody.
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged encryption backdoors key-escrow or ask your own question.
What is the best way to put a backdoor in an encryption system?
What would a backdoor in symmetric key cipher look like?
Can I construct a feasible stream cipher out of HMAC and a secure hash algorithm?
What is wrong if you use a key in a Caesar cipher that is greater than 26?
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What is the solution to stopping government tyranny when it comes to food freedom?
What is the solution to stopping government tyranny when it comes to food freedom? I suppose this is a timeless question. I believe it comes down to freedom. So in order to have true food freedom in this country/the world, what do we have to do? Is true food freedom even possible?
For as many of us to exercise our food freedom in as many ways as possible wherever we are and to promote food freedom as a given, an inalienable right, as much as we are able. To fight for our rights and not give up.
Here's an example that bugs me; the recent event at Quail Hollow Farm where the owners just assumed some dumbass martinet from who knows what agency had the authority to come on their land without a warrant and demand they destroy food. That American citizens have so much forgotten their origins and rights as to even for a moment think it is ok for someone to come onto their land and order them around PISSES ME THE HELL OFF!
Well said. I'm a firm believer in the second amendment, very firm. HOWEVER, I don't believe that a violet confrontation is the answer. I'm friends with a former Polyface Farm apprentice, and he spoke of an indecent when he was there. The story goes that some food police Nazi came to Polyface and was going to come back to do something (who knows, a seizure of product?). Anyway, Joel Salatin and some friends/neighbors/customers got together with all their guns and just waited. Keep in mind this is Virginia, and it's a different place. On the other hand, I recently herd Joel making the point to build a good relationship with your local government/governor/politicians because they have to power to send in the people with the guns, and if they really wanted to, they could remove you and your family from your land at anytime. An interesting contradiction if I've ever herd one. We certainly do live in interesting times.
They can only remove you if you let them and then perhaps only your corpses. How much do we value our freedom? Not much, it seems.
Yes. There are some interesting arguments. The American Revolution was violent. Not many people would make the argument that winning our freedom was a bad thing. I recently herd a few people from other westernized European countries that think America is very lucky. Why? Because we have the right to freedom of speech, but more importantly, we have the right to keep and bear arms to assure all of the other amendments are upheld. Are we really using our right to keep and bare(sp?) arms to uphold the others?
We're "lucky" only because a lot of other people were willing to die to give us this "luck." Europe could have had the same "luck" as they also have had revolutions and changes in the form of government.
Wow, I'm sounding so right-wingy tonight!
I often times have "discussions" about the 2nd Amendment and why it is placed second. I agree that it is there to defend the 1st and all of the others against all enemies both foreign and domestic. Some of my more liberal friends think it is odd that I staunchly defend the 2nd Amendment and am what some consider a "leftie." It's all about We The People preventing tyrannical government. I do think we are heading in that direction at present. I fear that there will be violence and I mean real violence. The food police are as much as part of that tyranny as the police departments beating up Occupy people. I do believe that the violence will come from the police. I am trying as hard as I can to not sound political and it is difficult at best but the food police represent government tyranny at the grandest scale. Party affiliation makes little difference these days anyway. I am not opposed to making a profit and business in general but I am opposed to our government being owned lock, stock, and barrel by corporations and banks.
"What is the solution to stopping government tyranny when it comes to food freedom?"
No politics please. You cannot paint a portrait with one color because there is plenty to blame all round, people (cheaper and more food mentality), corporations (profits), governments (money talks).
Put seeds in peoples hands and ideas in their heads.
The government is following the demands of Monsanto, Monsanto the demands of McD's, and McD's, the (unconscious) demands of the people. Satisfy the real needs of the people and the whole thing unravels. It's just a numbers game, we need to unplug more & more people. The system is in it's death throes... it will exhaust itself. Demonstrating a viable alternative must be the bulk of the work, as Mollison pointed out.
I'm not opposed to political action at state or local levels, the federal level is too far gone. For example, a citizen-initiative ballot measure demanding labeling of GMO in California would be a hugely strategic move - It is doable, and it is a big enough market that it would have effects far beyond CA.
I moved this thread from Farm Income as it not concerned with farm income. This subject is pushing the envelope of being political which often results in volatility.
These days there is much unrest concerning the direction the world is heading. I Thank You in advance for not suggesting violence as a means to an end.
The history of food is replete with examples of working people producing the food and the people in charge locking it up. Food is a key resource, with wars fought over it since before recorded history. Our world has developed an interdependency on food: wheat and corn grown in the US feeds hundreds of millions around the world. The US economy is dependent on those food exports. This means the US is dependent on BigAg to produce more food, hence BigAg and its methods are tolerated and promoted by the gubmint. BigAg is seeking control of the food, the gubmint is happy to help them. A people that are self-sufficient in their own food production are less dependent on the government. More food production by the people for their own use decreases government control over those people. While our backyard food production should be welcomed for freeing up more food for export, it is the loss of control that gains a gubmint's attention. Locking up the food is the tactic of choice used to maintain control of the people.
The task at hand is to remove outside influence on the food we eat and the food we produce ourselves. The solution must be found in education. Inform the people: what's in the food, where is the nutrition, how are their kids being affected, what impact do the methods have upon the Earth. Armed with information, people will make choices which will be heard and felt by McBurgers and BigAg. This would translate to a change in policy and legislation, but it won't be overnight. We can have our freedom, but we have to take it. Inaction as a result of ignorance will promote Business as Usual. Remove the ignorance with education.
Very well stated Ken and right on the money. I have been working at educating the "people about the evils of industrialized petrochemical farming for over two decades. The process is worse than having a root canal. The propaganda machine that was established a very time ago by BigAgra has been an effective tool in maintaining complacency among the population while lobbyists buy legislation that has literally become repressive bordering on tyrannical. The issues are more insidious as this incident in Nevada bring to light. The continual assault on small family farms and legislation designed to prevent small producers from viably competing in the marketplace is a serious problem that needs to be addressed in a much more forceful manner. I have been very careful about fomenting any debates about this since joining permies.com. It hasn't been an easy task to say the least. I am militant when it comes to protecting the food chain and have been discovering information for some research papers I wrote on the decline in the general health of the American population back in the 70's even before the GMO's appeared. Doing my best to follow the rules here has certainly tempered my vitriolic rants against the likes of the king of poison food Monsanto. I do agree with you about foreign exports with the exception of corn which only provides a minuscule percentage as human food. This discussion is one that will only see some daylight if we as consumers demand labeling from our legislators. Then we can regulate what we choose to put in our bodies as nourishment. Until that happens we are at the mercy of BigAgra and laws continually being passed further destroying the biodiversity that the earth depends upon. In my less than humble opinion the survival of our species and a whole host of flora & fauna depend upon us to stop the insanity as quickly as possible. Just because geneticists can splice Shrimp Genes into a corn plant doesn't mean that they should for any reason. This is an area where I have spent much study but the thread began with the question of stopping the food police. It does have the overall effect of the protection of private property from such government tyranny by forceful means if necessary. The Revolutionary War was a very long time ago but was a result of a tyrannical empire literally forcing people to colonize this continent by expatriation of "undesirables" in Great Britain. Somewhere along the way complacency allowed such repression to be entrenched in laws that allow such draconian actions as happen in Nevada.
Don't forget water as an instrument of control. I've seen it first hand hungry thirsty people are easy to control or direct. But hungry thirsty people can do unspeakable things to others. We're not within a castle's keep but it appears that we are coming under a governmental seige limiting our access to food and in the future water.
I note that the public outcry regarding specific instances of regulatory heavy-handedness has resulted in strategic retreats.
There is no "one thing" that can be done. And I don't like the gut response of getting a gun. It is inherent in democracy that the will of the majority as expressed in law is in tension with individual autonomy - every law or regulation ever made cramps *someone's* style, laws are made specifically to constrain behavior. As times and attitudes change, so do laws and regulations. Unfortunately, you can't turn a juggernaut on a dime. Just keep in mind that this juggernaut is composed of your fellow citizens, including your friends, relatives, and neighbors. No matter how frustrating and even unfair democracy can be, it's still better than the alternatives.
Things we know that work on the local level are publicity and ordinance amendment, as is being done for city chicken and front yard gardens. At the state level, it requires getting to know your legislators and learning how to work with them. The smaller the state, the easier this is. It's a good deal more difficult at the federal level, and unfortunately some of the worst abuses arise from there, as the raw milk and medical marijuana folks are experiencing.
The two things that I do are 1) keep up with the implementation of the organic standards law - the Organic Consumer's Association and the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund are great resources for this and 2) learn about the farm bill, which should really be called the federal food policy bill - it is renewed about every five years, and is incredibly important, as evidenced by the millions of dollars spent in lobbying fees - I posted an educational link a couple days back in this forum.
I'd never suggest grabbing the gun first, but I would suggest having a gun.
Government needs direction from the people, apathy has placed us in this position we are in now. We have allowed the weeds to take over the garden and it's time. Time to invest the effort and sweat needed to get rid of the weeds.
Robert Ray wrote: Don't forget water as an instrument of control. I've seen it first hand hungry thirsty people are easy to control or direct. But hungry thirsty people can do unspeakable things to others. We're not within a castle's keep but it appears that we are coming under a governmental seige limiting our access to food and in the future water.
I have been adding my voice to stop Keystone XL and the Fracking of the Marcellus Shale because of the poisoning of those watersheds and gigantic aquifers. It seems as if the goal is to poison all of the land and water in a majority of the US.
jacque greenleaf wrote: I note that the public outcry regarding specific instances of regulatory heavy-handedness has resulted in strategic retreats.
I do not want to get in a debate about this. I have been a member of OCA for a long time along with FCLD. My references about defending my property has everything to do with the 2nd Amendment. It is not a "gut response" a get a gun. I have owned firearms all of my life. These "judgments have nothing to do with my family, friends and neighbors. The policies people are fighting against have nothing to do with local level "ordinances" and everything to do with corporate controlled federal policy.
Sorry Dave, I didn't mean to imply anything about your response. I live with guns, and I know that owning them does not necessarily lead to the when-you-have-a-hammer-everything-looks-like-a-nail issue. Still, I think the first reaction to these kinds of problems should be who can we talk to, why is this the way it is, and what can I do to change things. A look around as to what can happen when people give up on talking makes me super-nervous. The food freedom issues that we see in the media are infuriating, but talking about weaponry is way premature, in my opinion.
I am beyond super nervous. I am terrified. As I mentioned in my first post I have been doing my best not to make political comments here at permies until this topic was presented. The politics in play are very dangerous indeed and can easily lead to violence but it is also true that military style tactics have been used by federal agencies against family farmers for no valid reason other than to instill fear. On that note they have been successful. I have absolutely no trust in any legislative body from federal to local. They are all doing the bidding of those with the money to reelect them and care little if at all for We The People. These are very scary times.
Oh yes, as the reaction to the OWS protests show, we're getting to "them" alright, and there will be more reaction. Gandhi would say that now is exactly the time to continue being more reasonable people than "they" are.
It's the "getting to them" part that makes me suggest real violence is coming to a neighborhood near all of us. The oligarchs will not give up without a stiff fight.
H Ludi Tyler wrote: Wow, I'm sounding so right-wingy tonight!
I just want to look at Ludy's right turn one more time. ----------------------------- The problems I've seen discussed in this thread so far could be largely dealt with with one important change in American farm policy.---- But it's a huge one.---- Farm subsidies need to be completely abolished. All of the lobbyists, chemical companies, financiers and other parasites rely on the system of subsidies to keep things going. Eliminate the subsidies and you eliminate the lifeblood of everything that's wrong with American agriculture.
I often see reference to American farms somehow feeding the world. In fact cheap American produced food does more harm than good when sent abroad. It has made agriculture a nonviable enterprise in places which don't have subsidies. Other than during famine relief it would be better if American grain were not shipped abroad.
As a function of population and quantity of farmland Canada, Argentina and Thailand are much greater contributors to world food security. The one grain where the US is far ahead of everyone else in exports is corn. The production of all of this corn is destroying American farmland while destroying the livelihood of many small foreign farmers. And this is accomplished at the expense of the American taxpayer.
The mythology that America's farmers are saving the world from famine is simply untrue. They are contributing to the break down traditional farming practices throughout the third world thus perpetuating a culture of dependence.
Dale, I agree. Nearly three decades ago, when I was in grad school, I attended a small seminar featuring a noted food researcher and participant in the Green Revolution. A serious thinker, he was coming to grips with the effects that his life's work was having on indigenous food systems and poor people. I'll never forget him saying that when he was in grad school in the early 50s, he and his cohorts were on a mission to feed hungry people, and if someone had tried to convince them that growing more crops could destroy communities and would not alleviate hunger, they would have thought that person was actively evil.
At the time, I am sure all of us in the room were focussed on less-developed countries, but the indigenous food systems in the US have been decimated as well.
Read the current issue of Permaculture Activist (#82) if you want to hear about young commercial farmers who are fully aware of what they are up against and are still undaunted.
It only takes one generation to completely destroy traditional farming knowledge.
It might be interesting to note where the corn we export winds up. It is not directly food. It is fed to cattle just like here. I agree that ending farm subsidies would be an excellent start but it won't fix the problems associated with petroleum based monoculture. Not by a long shot. The amount of grain produced is counter productive in many ways including the fact that it is an unhealthy food choice. Humans are built to digest grains. The suggestion that ending farm subside will suddenly save family farms is just not a complete picture. Farm subsides were a bad idea from the beginning but so are open pollinated GMO plants. Merely ending the subsides won't get them out of our fields. The system is broken and it goes way beyond the subsides.
It would level the playing field considerably. And it would drain the financial coffers of the enemy. In any war you want the high ground and you want your enemy to exhaust their resources. This will not guarantee success to every small farm but it would certainly allow the better ones to prosper.
They say that in order to replace something, a viable alternative must be present. It would create a situation which would allow a better model to be created.
I guess it is not just me, just found info on the CA ballot initiative for mandatory labelling of GMO. As stated earlier, I believe this is one of the most powerful political actions we can possibly take right now on the food tyranny front, at least for those of us in the US.
It bypasses corrupt legislators and lobbyists, as they are not representing the will of the people. Public opinion overwhelmingly supports labeling of GMO and California citizens are way ahead of much of the nation in education on GMO issues. And the california market is big enough to force the hand of food manufacturers.
I intend to work towards this initiative locally through the election in 2012, and also asking people out-of-state to support the initiative, as it will surely have a ripple effect outside the state.
This week the grassroots Committee For the Right to Know, a wide-ranging coalition of consumer, public health and environmental organizations, food companies, and individuals submitted the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act to the State Attorney General for title and summary, prior to circulation as an initiative measure for the November 2012 election.
Genetically engineered food is usually plant or meat product that has had its DNA artificially altered in a lab with genes from other plants, animals, viruses or bacteria, in order to produce foreign compounds in that food. This genetic alteration is experimental, and is not found in nature.
The risk of genetically engineered foods is unclear, and unlike the strict safety evaluations required for the approval of new drugs, the safety of genetically engineered foods for human consumption has not been adequately tested, the group said.
Recent studies show that genetically engineering food can create new, unintended toxic substances and increase allergies, cancer risks and other health problems, especially for children.
Experts agree that by labeling genetically engineered food, we can help identify foods that cause health problems, the committee said.
“Because the FDA has failed to require labeling of GMO food, this initiative closes a critical loophole in food labeling law. It will allow Californians to choose what they buy and eat and will allow health professionals to track any potential adverse health impacts of these foods,” says Andy Kimbrell, Director of the Center for Food Safety.
The two most common genetically engineered traits are the expression of an insecticide in the tissue of “Bt Corn” and the expression of a compound in “Roundup Ready Soy” which enables high doses of Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer to be sprayed while the plant survives.
As much as 85 percent of corn in the U.S. is genetically engineered. BT Corn is currently regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency as an insecticide.
Fifty countries including the European Union and Japan have laws mandating that genetically engineered foods be labeled, but the United States does not have such a requirement.
Public opinion polls indicate that over 90 percent of California voters support the labeling of genetically engineered foods.
Efforts to enact labeling laws in Congress and the California legislature have been blocked by big food and chemical company lobbyists. This measure will take the issue directly to the people to decide whether genetically engineered foods should be labeled.
The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act was carefully and specifically written to avoid any unnecessary burden or cost to consumers or producers. California voters are expected to have the chance to vote on the initiative in November 2012.
The full text submitted to the attorney general can be read below.
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I agree that ending the farm subsidies would level the playing field. Conventional Ag farmers are barely making it, WITH the subsidies. Sure, all conventional ag is based on petroleum, but unless we find some benign source of energy, conventional ag will continue to suffer. However, the farm subsidies, under our current practices, will never be eliminated. One of the main problems is how the farm subsidies are financed. Tom Vilsak (Ag Secretary) likes to say that the American tax payer doesn't really contribute that much to the subsidies. Well, the money is created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, and then loaned to US Government, and then given out as farm subsidies. With "free money" there is no incentive to end the subsidy, therefore in my opinion, it will continue indefinitely until our monetary policy is fixed. I know this is a whole different ball of wax, and I've simplified the issue, but these issues are all interconnected. I've gained a lot of insight into this problem with the responses from everyone. It won't be a simple solution, but I do think that education is the best thing I've herd of. Knowledge is power after all. After listening to Paul's podcast with Geoff Lawton, Geoff believes education is also the fundamental problem. At least that's what I got out of it.
Chris Stelzer wrote: I agree that ending the farm subsidies would level the playing field. Conventional Ag farmers are barely making it, WITH the subsidies. Sure, all conventional ag is based on petroleum, but unless we find some benign source of energy, conventional ag will continue to suffer. However, the farm subsidies, under our current practices, will never be eliminated. One of the main problems is how the farm subsidies are financed. Tom Vilsak (Ag Secretary) likes to say that the American tax payer doesn't really contribute that much to the subsidies. Well, the money is created out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, and then loaned to US Government, and then given out as farm subsidies. With "free money" there is no incentive to end the subsidy, therefore in my opinion, it will continue indefinitely until our monetary policy is fixed. I know this is a whole different ball of wax, and I've simplified the issue, but these issues are all interconnected. I've gained a lot of insight into this problem with the responses from everyone. It won't be a simple solution, but I do think that education is the best thing I've herd of. Knowledge is power after all. After listening to Paul's podcast with Geoff Lawton, Geoff believes education is also the fundamental problem. At least that's what I got out of it.
The National Debt is the interest We The People pay for the money created by the Fed. It does cost us money and lots of it. That doesn't include the deficit. Tom Vilsack is a Monsanto Man and trusting anything that comes out of his mouth is folly. The problem has nothing to do with energy. It has everything to do with farming methods. The entirety of the industrial farming model is based on petroleum. Suggesting that we need a benign energy source suggests that the industrial farming model is the only option. Perhaps I am misinterpreting your statement. Industrial Monoculture is how we got to this point from a farming standpoint. Subsidies were originally started because some European countries were subsidizing their farmers to compete with our gigantic agriculture. Those days are over unless Monsanto et al makes further headway in getting more GMO crops introduced in Europe. Once the giant food corporations began getting subsidies the flood gates were opened and shutting them will take a monumental effort but it can be accomplished with perseverance. There are already benign fuels available that require no petroleum whatsoever.
Dave Bennett wrote: The problem has nothing to do with energy. It has everything to do with farming methods. The entirety of the industrial farming model is based on petroleum. Suggesting that we need a benign energy source suggests that the industrial farming model is the only option. Perhaps I am misinterpreting your statement.
Yes, you are misinterpreting my statement. You contradicted yourself. You say the problem has nothing to do with energy, and the industrial farming method is the problem. The two are synonyms. Industrial farming only exists because of the cheap energy we have access to (petrol). Energy is the biggest limitation on any farm, human, solar, petrol, wind, heat, whatever. So yes, energy is a huge part of the problem. Without our cheap petroleum, industrial farming wouldn't be possible. I didn't suggest that we need a benign source of energy. I said that UNLESS we do find one, then industrial Ag will not exist in 20,30,40,50 years.
Dave Bennett wrote: Those days are over unless Monsanto et al makes further headway in getting more GMO crops introduced in Europe. Once the giant food corporations began getting subsidies the flood gates were opened and shutting them will take a monumental effort but it can be accomplished with perseverance.
Subsidies are not over. The 2012 farm bill will have just as many subsides, not structured in the current way they are now, but subsidies will be abundant.
Dave Bennett wrote: There are already benign fuels available that require no petroleum whatsoever.
Not sure if it helps or not but you can start by not contracting with them. Don't ask for permission for something that should be a right to begin with. I grow food and I eat food just like people have been doing for thousands of years. I don't need permission from a nanny to do it.
Christian McMahon wrote: Not sure if it helps or not but you can start by not contracting with them. Don't ask for permission for something that should be a right to begin with. I grow food and I eat food just like people have been doing for thousands of years. I don't need permission from a nanny to do it.
I am not sure who you are responding to and what "contracting" are you talking about?
Contracting would be applying for a permit, license, or other permission. I am responding to the thread title. "What is the solution to stopping government tyranny when it comes to food freedom?" It's my position that if you ask for permission then it can be denied. You would be giving up a natural god given right to eat what you want by simply applying for permission.
I was under the impression that the problem in Nevada involved some of the "guests" paying for the meal at that farm. When you sell food you have to get a permit from the health dept. There are also many instances of the USDA just showing up with their storm troopers and taking animals etc. without notice or any valid reason for that matter.
I did read a bit about the incident in Nevada. I guess they were contacted about their BBQ. The government said they didn't have a permit so they applied for one. Then they went ahead before the inspector said it was OK. They were denied the permit and everything went downhill from there. Now I ask you. Did our ancestors ever consider asking for permission from the government to eat dinner? I seriously doubt it.
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Spring is here and the first insects begin to fly in the garden.
Usually there are bees, wasps, bumblebees (both black and black-yellow striped), butterflies, orange ladybugs, beetles and sometimes fireflies, in summertime, and praying mantises.
This give me the inspiration to make three funny insects.
A ladybug on a four-leaf clover. I made the first one on August 2008, when ladybug on a leaf was not a common theme.
A bumblebee on a white flower.
nooo la lucciolina che si illumina per davvero!! :DDD amooo!
Lo scarabeo *__* mi hai dato un'idea fikissima, so già come farlo, con le iridescenze metalliche :D grazie!
la lucciola *__* sarà mia!
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Travel by ferry to visit the best destinations in Scandinavia.
In summertime, Sweden is often referred to as “The Land of the Midnight Sun” due to the sun barely setting. With long days there is an abundance of time to explore Sweden’s vast wilderness, boasting pine and birch native forests the stretch on forever, crystal-clear lakes, and snow-capped peaks in the north, Sweden possibly has the cleanest air in Europe.
In the winter, when the snows come, the country comes alive with a wealth of winter sports, from snow-shoeing to cross-country skiing and from dog sledding to snow-mobile rides, an ideal destination for the adventurer in you.
First stop Copenhagen, one of the coolest Scandinavian destinations, compact, gritty, edgy, diverse and liberal, everything you want in a modern European capital. Surrounded by sea and split by a number of lakes, Copenhagen has a chilled out waterside vibe that will you captivate you.
Denmark is recognized around the world for creating some of the most extraordinary culinary delights and it has more Michelin-starred restaurants than the rest of Scandinavia combined, it’s like fine dining was invented on these shores.
Impressive, secluded, mysterious, off the beaten track, remote to outsiders are just some of the ways to describe this incredible country. It’s remarkable considering how close it is geographically to the heart of Europe. Most people know little more than the capital, Oslo and the famous fjords but there is so much more to explore.
Norway by car is a perfect way to experience the mighty Atlantic seaboard, inspiring fjords and spectacular mountain scenery. There are so many exciting routes you can take to tour this amazing country and get there with Stena Line Ferries.
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