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To ensure that you can repay a mortgage or loan on your death If the mortgage is a REPAYMENT (capital and interest) then mortgage protection, also known as decreasing term assurance, is likely to be appropriate.
If the mortgage is INTEREST ONLY (endowment style) then level term assurance is generally appropriate. The level of cover remains the same throughout the term because the loan remains the same. Level term assurance is more expensive than decreasing term assurance, because there is a greater level of cover later in the term of plan when you are most likely to die because you are older. A term assurance plan does not accrue a value. It will only pay out if you die (or suffer a critical illness if covered) during the term. Alternative arrangements must therefore be made to repay the loan.
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0.999955 |
Immigration Options For Undocumented Youth "Dreamers"
DREAMers are young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States at a young age and who consider the U.S. to be their home country. Good citizens and ambitious, the DREAMers are in search of a way to pursue the American Dream they deeply admire and desire for themselves. They intend to change the public perception of young immigrants, who are often seen as criminals and pariahs of American society. DREAMers want people to understand that they just want to contribute to the U.S. without living in fear of being sent back to a country they're unfamiliar with. As of August 2012, it is estimated that there are 1.76 million DREAMers.
There is a long history of the fight for the rights of non-U.S-born youth. In the 1600s and 1700s, various settlements established their own private and public schools and some states passed bilingual education laws. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment gave citizenship rights to naturalized people. In 1964, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act said the following: "No person in the United States shall, on the grounds of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any or activity receiving federal financial assistance." In 1982, the Plyler v. Doe decision made it illegal for states to deny education to undocumented immigrant children. Everyone in history who was involved in the push for such legislation could be considered a DREAMer. But this term did not actually achieve public consciousness until 2001.
In 2001, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act was introduced to Congress by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Richard Durbin (D-IL). The DREAM Act was drafted as a bipartisan bill that, according to Hatch, would be used to avoid chain migration. The Act would not apply to all undocumented immigrants, and it would not affect future immigrants. It would also hardly affect immigration law because it would not create a continuing option. It would only apply to individuals and not families.
The DREAM Act would provide a path toward legalization for undocumented youth who came to the U.S. before the age of sixteen and who entered the U.S. five years or more prior to the bill's enactment. The conditions are that the person attend college or serve in the U.S. Military for at least two years while keeping a good moral character. To be eligible, the person would also have to have been in the U.S. continuously for five years, have earned a high school diploma, and have not committed any crimes. These eligible people became known as the DREAMers.
Since its introduction in 2001, the DREAM Act has been under scrutiny. Opponents say extending public education benefits to undocumented immigrants is a reward for breaking the laws. Supporters say the U.S. would benefit from giving talented, ambitious individuals a shot at full participation in American education and society. The DREAM Act can't seem to gain full support of Congress. The legislation has failed to pass in 2001, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011.
Undocumented youth are often under the misconception that there are state laws that disallow them to go to college. This is not true. There is no federal or state law that bans undocumented immigrants from admission into a U.S. public or private college. Colleges have their own specific policies though, so a significant amount of time should be spent researching the policies of the college of interest and the state in which that college is located.
There are 12 states that have laws that expand who can qualify for in-state tuition to undocumented students. Since 2001, 13 states enacted this type of legislation but Wisconsin has since revoked this law. These are the states that allow in-state tuition for undocumented youth.
Most of these states offer limited scholarships to undocumented students. However, federally funded student financial aid is out of the reach of the DREAMers. It is important to know that it is illegal for undocumented students to get government aid, government loans, government grants, government scholarships and/or work-study.
Options are limited for undocumented students. The lack of lawful status leaves them in an uncertain place after graduation: They can't work and are unlikely to be able to pursue an advanced education. There's no telling when the DREAM Act will pass in congress. The primary option DREAMers have for protection from deportation and for the opportunity to work is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA.
President Barack Obama announced on June 15, 2012 that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would defer action on the deportation of certain young people who were brought into the U.S. as children illegally through the decision of adults. It does not provide a path for citizenship. It is instead a reprieve that lasts two years, which are then up for renewal. DACA also gives a recipient an employment authorization during those two years and access to a driver's license.
Much like the DREAM Act, DACA was not created to benefit all undocumented people. DACA went into effect on August 15, 2012 through Obama's executive order.
Must not be above the age 30.
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0.980946 |
Why does Eintracht prefer to sell Jovic to Madrid?
Once Eintracht execute the purchase option for Luka Jovic, it will give preference to Real Madrid in case the sale of the striker goes forward.
According to 'AS', the relationship between Real Madrid and Frankfurt's Eintracht is better than good. A few recent transfers can confirm it is indeed the case, and now Luka Jovic is the latest to be scouted for the Spanish team.
Real loaned Jesús Vallejo to Eintracht, where he gained some experience in the field of play before returning to back to the Spanish capital. They also sold Oscar Mascarell (later recovered) and Lucas Torró to the German club. Real Madrid and Eintracht are clubs with clear ties; this would mean that if the Spanish are interest in Jovic after his great season in Germany, he could be joining their ranks this summer.
On loan from Benfica, Eintracht's wish would be to buy the player so that when the moment comes, they can cash in on his talents as a footballer. Since his name is on the agenda of several large clubs, profits should be high.
And if the Eintracht has to choose the highest bidder, Madrid should not have any trouble in making that offer, as their recent track record would suggest.
Certainly, Madrid gets along well with several German clubs. Dani Carvajal was loaned to Bayer, Achraf is on loan to Borussia Dortmund... Even James Rodriguez plays for a direct competitor, Bayern Munich.
If added proof was needed, Eintracht are also invited to play in the Bernabeu Trophy in 2020.
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0.997047 |
What are the best Lavasa Resorts to visit in Mumbai ?
Lavasa Resorts are the best holiday destination located between Pune and Mumbai. From Pune, it takes time for 02 hours and from Mumbai, it takes time for 04 hours in order to reach the hill station for Lavasa City One Day Trip.
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0.996862 |
Planes are flat, right? And the Material Plane is infinitely large?
I typically describe the sky material plane in a manner similar to that of the Earth: there's a sun in the sky and clouds and things, and at night the sun goes down and there's a moon that has phases and stars. I feel like I have some in-book support for a moon, given werewolves and certain magic items and such, and Pelor is literally the God of the Sun (and there is a Sun domain), but recently I had a player point out that the Sun must smash its way through the whole of the Underdark and there should be a massive tunnel to go exploring in. That idea was cool, so the party is now doing that, but I don't really think that such a catastrophic geography is good for every campaign. Is there any other reasonable explanation as to the location of the sun at night? Is there any explanation given in official material?
This question is campaign setting specific. Fortunately, thanks to the Spelljammer campaign setting, the answer is actually known for some of the major published prime worlds.
Krynn (Dragonlance) and Toril (Forgotten Realms) are both planets that orbit around their respective suns and spin on their axies as they do so; At night, their suns are in the same places they are during the day, just illuminating the other side of the world.
Oerth (Greyhawk) is unusual in that it is part of a geocentric planetary system; Its sun is actually its third satellite. It's still a planet, though, and it being night still just means the sun's currently illuminating the other side.
That second point actually answers the general case: The Greyhawk campaign setting's geocentric model is specifically called out as a departure from the norm of a system's primary body being a sun that everything else orbits around. It seems clear that the default assumption is that most campaign settings take place on spherical planetary bodies that orbit suns unless explicitly stated otherwise (as it is in the case of your homebrew setting).
Oh, and to clarify something, "a flat surface" is just one of the many meanings of the word "Plane." It can also mean a device for smoothing wood, a kind of heavier-than-air flying machine, or a level of existence or thought. It's that last definition that we're dealing with here, so just because the Prime Material Plane is infinite doesn't mean that any of the surfaces it contains are.
In a fantasy setting, the sun does not need to be a 100% physical entity, nor obey any laws of physics that get in the way of a good tale. Your physical fireball that must pass through the earth at some mystical location is nicely self-consistent (ignoring real-world physics of it) and pretty cool, although I don't think anything like it is referenced in D&D source material.
Before humans understood enough to explain the sun's behaviour, many mythologies sprung up around how it functioned, including where it might go at night. Most of these myths have the world as a finite place, but you can still adapt them to explain the route of the sun, and what might happen to it in at night. If you run an epic level mythologically-charged campaign, you could easily borrow from these ideas.
A lot of the myths have the sun as a physical object or simple creature that can be stolen, tamed or bound. Many more of the myths explain the sun's disappearance as a re-enactment or divine compact explained by a kind of just so story (one deity steals the sun and it gets returned but under some agreement where it must only be in the sky at certain times etc). The sun is obviously of huge importance to humans, so pretty much every civilisation has had a go or three at understanding and explaining it. There is a collection of some myths in Sun Lore of All Ages, and there may be other analyses too.
This, or variations of it where you start with a "target" cosmology and try to figure out more detail, would be a really nice question for https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/ by the way.
For an infinite, flat material plane, the sun can still appear to go around overhead without actually going through the plane itself.
If you want to get in to the geometry of it, you just need to make your world four (or more) dimensional. The people on it still only experience three dimensions, but if you take a 2D plane in a 4D space, you can have the sun go around the plane without ever passing through it.
I don't know of any real world cultures that thought the world was infinitely big, so I can't compare this to any real mythologies. But, if you play Minecraft, this is how this sun there looks.
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged dnd-3.5e cosmology or ask your own question.
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How can an astral traveller's silver cord be severed? How difficult is it?
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0.997471 |
Seattle, a major seaport city on the West Coast of the United States, is the largest city in the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The city sits on an isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington and lies about 100 miles away from the Canada-United States border. Seattle enjoys a picturesque backdrop of a river, some rolling hills and a few evergreen woodlands. City’s skyline is dominated by Space Needle, a 605 feet high observation tower made exclusively for the 1962 World’s Fair.
Pike Place Market, opened in 1907, is one of the oldest public farmers' markets in the United States. It is situated along the Elliott Bay waterfront in Seattle and is visited by many small farmers, craftspeople and merchants who come here every day to trade their goods.
Space Needle, built for the 1962 World Fair, is a state-of-the-art observation tower in Seattle and a postcard icon of the Pacific Northwest. It elevates up to 605 feet and had debuted as the tallest structure located to the west of the Mississippi River.
Museum of Pop Culture, founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2000, is a nonprofit museum dedicated to contemporary Pop music culture. The visionary had advanced this museum as a part of his Experience Music Project. This museum has organized many programs among which the major is Sound Off! an annual contest involving music bands of people under 21 years or less.
The best time to book flights from Charlotte to Seattle is from June to August. Tourists must book flights from CLT to SEA during this time of the year as this period sees sports and cultural events like Seattle International Film Festival, and Seattle International BeerFest.
How many weekly flights are there are between CLT to SEA? There are 6 weekly flights between CLT and SEA.
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0.999997 |
What is gravitational and potential energy?
Every object may have Potential energy but Gravitational Potential energy is only stored in the height of the object. Any time that a heavy object is kept high up, a force or power is likely to be holding it up there. This is the reason why it stays up and does not fall. It is important to note that the heavier the object, the more its potential energy.
Consider Mr Green throwing a bag of gold coins to Mr Red, who is up a tower. As Mr Green throws the bag from A to B, potential energy is transferred from Mr Green into the bag, which now has kinetic energy.
As the bag moves upwards, kinetic energy decreases, and gravitational energy increases. At the highest point (B) Kinetic energy is zero, and Gravitational potential energy is highest.
As the bag did not get to Mr Red, it starts falling from point B downwards due to gravity. It starts falling slowly (kinetic energy is low) and then speeds up downwards.
At point A, the bag is at full speed and kinetic energy is highest, whiles gravitational energy is nearly lost.
When the bag of gold coins hits the ground, kinetic energy is converted into heat and sound by the impact.
It is worth noting that the higher the gravitational energy of an object moving downwards, the lower the kinetic energy, and the lower the kinetic energy of an object moving upwards, the higher its gravitational energy.
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0.99346 |
The Kyoto treaty may boost - not hurt - economies. New studies counter Bush's view.
Keep your eye on the climate, but your hand on your wallet.
That's the attitude the Bush administration takes in rejecting the Kyoto climate treaty: It will cost American jobs, causing as much as a 2 percent drop in US economic output over the next decade.
But a series of studies in the US, Europe, and Japan released in recent days suggests that if the Kyoto guidelines are implemented, the US and other industrial nations are likely to see only a slight decline of as little as 0.15 percent, or a modest economic boost of as much as 1 percent.
The studies may breathe new life into a global-emissions reduction plan that is in trouble without US participation. The US alone accounts for 25 percent of the world's carbon emissions.
How could such divergent conclusions be reached about Kyoto's impact?
Until now, "the economic debate has not been conducted with a full deck of cards," says Florentin Krause, director of the International Project for Sustainable Energy Paths and a participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN working group looking at the economics of climate change.
Dr. Krause, along with Stephen DeCanio, a senior staff economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, have tried to gauge the impact of the Kyoto accord on the US economy and on its international trade position.
They find that while some sectors, such as the coal industry, would be seriously affected, the US economy as a whole stands to gain from ratifying the protocol. They arrived at this conclusion by altering five widely cited federal and university economic simulations so that the models take advantage of the full range of approaches the IPCC recommended to soften Kyoto's potential economic blow.
Until now, Krause says, each study analyzed the impact of Kyoto and assumed the US adopts some of IPCC recommendations, but no study shows the effect of adopting all of the approaches. These include a carbon-trading scheme within the US, continued voluntary energy conservation, efficiency, and technology R&D programs, using the revenue from domestic carbon trading to offset cuts in taxes, and participating in international carbon-trading markets.
When these approaches are fully used to offset the cost of implementation in the five economic models, the US economy shows a 0.5 percent to 1 percent gain in gross domestic product, instead of ranging from 0.09 percent growth to a 4 percent drop. President Bush's Cabinet-level task force cited a projected 1 percent to 2 percent drop in GDP in its criticism of the protocol's effect on the US economy.
The new results land in the same ballpark as those the Clinton administration derived when it analyzed the effect of implementing Kyoto, says Ian Bowles, a research fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a top member of Mr. Clinton's negotiating team sent to The Hague last November.
"Our models were pretty brittle," he concedes. "They couldn't factor in technological innovation over time." Overall, the Clinton administration came up with an implementation price tag of about $20 billion a year, about one-third smaller than the annual cost of implementing the Clean Air Act, he says.
A separate study by the Dutch consulting group ECOFYS Energy and Environment in Utrecht, Netherlands, projects that the European Union could meet its targets at a cost no greater than 0.15 percent of GDP by 2010, while a post-Kyoto Japanese GDP grew about 0.9 percent faster than otherwise - if companies continue to develop more energy-efficient technologies. If not, the picture was more gloomy. Both studies were commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental organization.
The importance of dollars, yen, and Deutschemarks in the debate over proposed ground rules was underscored yesterday, when the Japanese delegation here outlined its position on the use of forests to soak up carbon emissions - so-called sinks - to help the country meet its emissions targets as cheaply as possible.
Faced with the prospect of having to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 28 percent to reach its assigned benchmark of 6 percent below 1990 levels, Japan's ambassador for global environment issues, Kazuo Asakai, said, "To achieve that, we must have domestic sinks" - and under more generous conditions than those proposed by Jan Pronk, the Netherlands' environment minister and chairman of this round of talks.
But the not-so-bad economic studies don't leave Glen Kelly sanguine. Mr. Kelly, director of the Washington-based Global Climate Coalition, which supports Bush's position, cites yet other government and private studies that suggest Kyoto could cost the US economy as much as $210 billion by 2010 and 2.4 million jobs.
"The only way to meet Kyoto targets is to cut energy usage and raise taxes," Kelly contends. "Both sap productivity and impose costs on consumers, businesses, and communities."
If contentious results from economic models sounds a bit like contentious results form climate models, it's because the challenges the two face are similar, notes Henry Jacoby, co-director for the Joint Program in the Science and Policy of Global Change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
Both are called on to yield results governments can use to help make decisions. Yet both yield results based on assumptions fed into them. Both are subject to uncertainties. And different models have different biases in how they treat certain features of the economy.
"The debate over economics reflects the uncertainties that policymakers face," Dr. Jacoby says. "Nobody knows what economic growth will be 10 years from now. In 1990, could you have foreseen the Clinton growth years?"
Michael Grubb, professor of climate-change and energy policy at Imperial College in London, whose work suggests that implementing Kyoto would impose a cost on industrial countries of no more than 0.1 percent GDP growth a year through 2010, notes that when economic models project changes in GDP of less than 1 percent, that means the effects are likely to be so small as to get lost in the "noise" of an economy's natural variations.
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0.997251 |
This article is in relation to recent killing of a 20 year old Indian boy Adnan Patrawala.
A girl called "Angel" probably got Adnan to add her as a friend in Orkut .The short friendship resulted in Adnan getting kidnapped and was eventually killed by his abductors.
Angel is the prime suspect. Her profile is now filled with abuses from other orkut members.
Mumbai is in shock after the kidnapping and murder of 16 year old Adnan Patrawala allegedly by young men who befriended him through a social networking website.
Three of the alleged killers are in custody and the Mumbai police is looking for two more suspects.
Police sources had first said Adnan was kidnapped and murdered by three friends Sujit Nair, Ayush Bhat and Khimesh Ambavat, who he met on the social networking site Orkut about six months ago.
However, others investigating the case now claim there is no Orkut connection and that Adnan became friends with the three at a gaming centre in the Mumbai suburb of Malad six months ago and the Orkut exchanges came later.
Though, the Orkut angle hasn't been ruled out. The search is still on for a fourth suspect who was chatting to Adnan on Orkut under the name of Angel, most likely a fake ID.
On Saturday evening when Adnan disappeared, he had received several messages from Angel suggesting they meet up. What the police are clear about is the sequence of events.
Police say the brainchild behind the kidnapping was the oldest of the group, 28-year old Sujit Nair, a former BPO employee who had been out of a job for nearly a year.
Nair had planned to flee to Dubai on Monday after getting the ransom. But police claim that when the boys found out the news had been flashed across the media they got scared.
Also they heard rumours that the investigations into the kidnapping may be handed over to the CBI. So on Sunday night they gave Adnan an alcoholic drink heavily laced with sleeping pills and strangled him inside his car.
But the father of one of the accused 18-year old Ayush Bhat a college student says, his son has been framed. He says Ayush was home on Saturday when Adnan disappeared.
''My son is cooperating with the police. The police had come to our residence on Sunday with two people called Adil and Aafreen and since then my son has been cooperating. I don't know why Ayush has been booked in the case,'' said Arun Bhat, father of the accused.
The incident has once again put focus on the social networking sites and whether there is a need for greater safeguards on the Internet.
Grazie per essere passata dal mio blog. Peccato che non capisco nenche una parola di inglese.. :-) Un abbraccio da Esilio.
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0.996985 |
Minimalism has held a tight grip on the modern design industry for the past decade but with the rise of Maximalism, I want to create a series of icons to see if they can visually co-exists.
The icons are inspired by a recent interest in Minimalism Vs Maximalism. The approach of this project is purely a visual-design strategy. I started the project with no colours as a jumping-off point, using lines as a storytelling device to create icons and build illustrations. These allows for minimalist and maximalism to co-exists.
Decades before minimalism was a trend, it was a visual art movement in the era following World War II. It emerged as a reaction to the chaotic colors, motion, and marked subjectivity often found in abstract expressionists works. It was heavily influenced by the famous German art movement Bauhaus, which focused on simple yet functional design.
In the 1960s, minimalism became popular in a variety of fields, particularly fine art and architecture. In visual art, minimalism was characterized by monochromatic palettes, geometric elements, serial arrangements, and industrial materials.
The philosophy and the historical context of Minimalism Vs Maximalism can be complex. To better grasp and apply both minimalist and maximalists principles, I needed to understand both the origins and both fundamental characteristics.
I was also influenced by Constructionism which was an extension of constructivism in Britain from about 1950, with artists using naturally occurring proportional systems and rhythms to underpin their geometrical art. I cut or hide unimportant elements in pursuit of a minimalist and maximalism design for its own sake.
Clean lines, simplicity, and no use of colour made the icons have a coherent design style.
The simplistic ideals of Bauhaus have also had a profound influence on my design philosophy. The illustrations can be summed up as very logical, clear, and concise. The clean lines allow for Maximalism to contrast well with minimalism.
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0.993713 |
Nothing is better than a nice cup of coffee. Well, the only thing that can be better is a nice cup of coffee accompanied by a delicious coffee dessert. So whether you are looking for some ideas to add to and brighten your coffee break, or you are searching for a mouth-watering dessert for a romantic dinner date, I have put together 6 recipes which use coffee as an ingredient that will help sweeten up your days.
1- Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and milk in a medium saucepan until combined.
2- Cook over medium heat, whisking all the time, until it reaches boil point. Continue cooking for one more minute. Leave to cool for about 30 minutes at room temperature followed by 1 hour in the fridge.
3- Once the egg yolk mixture is cold, whisk in 1 pound of room temperature mascarpone cheese.
4- Line a 9X5 loaf pan with plastic wrap.
5- Moving as quick as possible dip one third of the lady fingers in the cold coffee, one at a time, and place them on the bottom of the pan in a single layer. You might need to break a few to fit perfectly into the pan.
6- Spread almost one third of the mascarpone filling over the lady fingers.
7- Place a second layer of coffee dipped lady fingers and spread some more mascarpone cheese on top.
8- Dip the remaining lady fingers in coffee and arrange them over the mascarpone cheese.
9- Spread the remaining mascarpone cheese, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate over night.
10- Gently remove the tiramisu from the pan, sprinkle with cocoa powder and grate chocolate on top.
1- Preheat oven to 375F.
2- Grease and flour two 9″ cake pans and line with parchment paper.
3- In a large mixing bowl, sift together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
4- In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together water or coffee, oil, vinegar, and vanilla.
5- Stir until the dry mixture is just moistened; some lumps are okay. The batter will turn lighter in color.
6- Pour quickly into prepared pans.
7- Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
8- Allow to cool in pans for 10 minutes.
9- Loosen sides of cake from pans, then flip them out of the pans and onto cooling racks.
10- Cool completely before frosting.
12- Cream shortening and butter.
13- Add powdered sugar, coffee mixture, and 1 tablespoon vegan milk; beat with a fork until blended.
14- Add more vegan milk, a tablespoon at a time, until you reach your desired consistency. Use less milk for dense frosting, and more for a whipped consistency. If you'd like it to be particularly fluffy, beat with a hand mixer instead.
15- Frost and decorate cake as desired.
1- Preheat oven to 350F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment.
2- In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, coffee granules, cinnamon and salt. Using a pastry cutter or 2 knives, cut in the butter until the mixture is fine and crumbly.
3- Stir in chocolate chips, walnuts, eggs and coffee liqueur (if using) until the dough is just barely moistened. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead lightly until the dough is soft and slightly sticky, about 8-10 times.
4- Using floured hands, divide the dough into quarters. Shape each quarter into a 9" long roll. Place two rolls 4 inches apart on each of the prepared cookie sheets, gently flattening each one into a 2" wide slab. Brush the top and sides of each log with egg wash.
5- Bake ire rack to cool for 10 minutes.
6- Once the slabs are cool enough to handle, cut crosswise into into ½" thick slices. Place slices upright, ¼ inch apart, on cookie sheets.
7- Place the slices on the baking sheet, cut sides down, and return to the oven to bake for 10 minutes. Turn cookies over, and continue baking for another 10 minutes (the cookies should be just a bit soft in the centre - don't worry, they'll harden up once they cool). Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, then store in airtight containers.
1- Start by grinding 20g of Maria cookies so that it is as thin as possible. Set aside.
2- Add the butter to room temperature, sugar and 1 tablespoon of dissolved coffee. Make sure you get an homogeneous cream. Set aside.
3- Soak the remaining biscuits in dissolved coffee slightly and make alternate layers with the cream previously made.
1- Prepare the cheesecake pan by rubbing the inside of each cheesecake well with a lightly oiled paper towel.
2- Preheat oven to 350*F.
3- Make the crust- Melt the butter in a small bowl. Place the oreo cookies in a large ziplock type bag, and crush using a rolling pin. Place crushed cookie crumbs in a medium sized bowl and combine with melted butter. Add about 1 tablespoon of the crust mixture into each of the 12 mini cheesecake wells. Pack down the crumbs using a shot glass or glass spice bottle. Bake crust for 10 minutes in preheated oven.
4- Make the filling- Melt chocolate in a small bowl and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, blend cream cheese until very smooth. Add sugar and continue to blend until fully incorporated. Add egg and vanilla, and continue to beat, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add melted chocolate, and blend. While blending, add Kahlua. Beat an additional 30 seconds or so.
5- Reduce the oven temperature to 250*F.
6- Open a large ziplock bag and place it in a large glass, pulling the sides of the bag down over the glass. Add the cheesecake filling to the bag, then close the bag. Snip off one corner of the bag, and fill each well of the cheesecake pan a bit more than 3/4 full with filling. If there is a bit of extra filling, you can bake it in a small ramekin for a little "tester"
7- Place cheesecake pan in the 250*F oven and bake cheesecakes until the filling is set, 22-25 minutes. Place the pan on a wire cooling rack and allow to cool to room temperature, then place entire pan in the refrigerator about 4 hours before removing cheesecakes from the pan.
8- Once cool, carefully remove the cheesecakes from the pan (pressing up on the removable bottom of each well). Keep the cheesecakes in the fridge until ready to serve. Garnish with whipped cream, a chocolate covered espresso bean and a sprinkle of cinnamon or cocoa powder.
1. Place 1 cup walnuts and 1 cup almonds in food processor and process until finely ground.
2. Add the cocoa powder or cacao, espresso powder and sea salt. Pulse to combine and then transfer to bowl and set aside.
3. Add the dates to the food processor and process until small bits remain. Remove from bowl and set aside.
4. Add nut and cocoa mixture back into food processor and while processing, drop small handfuls of the date pieces down into the food processor spout. Process until a dough consistency is achieved, adding more dates if the mixture does not hold together when squeezed in your hand.
5. Add the brownie mixture to a small parchment lined cake pan or loaf pan and add remaining 1/2 cup roughly chopped walnuts. Toss to combine and evenly distribute, and then press down with your hands until it is flat and firm.
6. Place in freezer or fridge to chill before cutting. Store in an airtight container to keep fresh. Will keep in the fridge for at least 2 weeks and in the freezer for at least 2 months.
For more information about the world of coffee, please visit http://www.kofime.com/blog.
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0.997157 |
"Vienna" is the fourth studio album by British new wave band Ultravox, first released in July 1980. The album was the first made by Ultravox with their best-known line-up, after Midge Ure had taken over as lead vocalist and guitarist following the departures of John Foxx and Robin Simon. "Vienna" was produced by renowned German producer Conny Plank who had also produced Ultravox's previous album "Systems of Romance", and mixed at Plank's studio near Cologne, Germany. The album had a slow start, but the release in January 1981 of the title track as the third single from the album heralded the band's commercial breakthrough worldwide and led to healthy sales throughout 1981. "Vienna" peaked at #3 in the UK albums chart and reached the top ten in Australia, New Zealand and several European countries.
Ultravox effectively changed pace, style and audience with the arrival of Ure, who had already participated in early New Romantic ventures with Visage and actually steered the ensemble in that direction for the years to come. Many different styles are in use on the album. "Astradyne" is a long instrumental featuring sweeping, majestic synthesizer arrangements throughout, while "Mr. X" is a simpler, much sparser affair. The lyrics to the album's songs were mainly written by Ure and drummer Warren Cann, who also takes a rare lead vocal on "Mr. X".
Reviews for "Vienna" were mixed, with Ure's introduction and the move towards mainstream pop dividing the critics. Sounds gave the album an enthusiastic review, and challenged the reader, "I dare you to find another band who can mix Euro systems-rock, electronics, Can's fairground style and English music with such panache". Melody Maker was generally positive but felt the album contained weak moments, saying that "the first half of side two reveals the most tedious liabilities. Electronic clichés are no worse than guitar clichés, but they're more likely to sound pompous". Overall, however, the review concluded "Ultravox deserve success. This should do the trick". NME was indifferent, calling "Vienna" "an album of gaudy, sometimes magnificent, but mostly hollow edifices, housing songs that replace Foxx's elliptical imagery with clumsily verbose descriptions of similar scenery", and described that imagery as "seemingly derived from Hollywood films of the continent... it's similarly full of glamour and lacking in true essence".
Album produced by Ultravox and Conny Plank.
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2. Loosen the light assembly retaining screws with a philips head screwdriver.
3. Remove the rear combination light assembly from the body of the vehicle.
5. Remove the bulb from the socket by pressing it in and rotating it counterclockwise until the tabs on the bulb align with the slots in the socket.
6. Insert a new bulb by inserting it into the socket and rotating it until it locks into place.
7. Install the socket in the assembly by aligning the tabs on the socket with the slots in the assembly and turning the socket clockwise.
8. Reinstall the light assembly to the body of the vehicle.
Follow the steps 1 to 3 from the previous page.
4.Remove the socket from the assembly by turning the socket counterclockwise until the tabs on the socket align with the slots on the assembly.
5.Pull the bulb out of the socket.
6.Insert a new bulb into the socket.
7.Install the socket into the assembly by aligning the tabs on the socket with the slots on the assembly and turning the socket clockwise.
8.Reinstall the light assembly to the body of the vehicle.
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Did you know what you can get woodstoves that are designed for both heating your house and cooking? We've owned two woodstoves now, both with ovens under the fire box for cooking. I hardly ever use our electric oven in winter (and in summer we tend to use the BBQ or the slow cooker because its too hot in the house). Cooking in a woodstove is easy and convenient. If you are considering installing a woodstove for heating, you should consider the cooking option too, as it doesn't cost much more and you will be able to cook all your meals for free while your heating the house anyway.
Not only does mulch help to suppress weeds in the garden, it also adds organic matter to feed the soil microbes and retain water. I also use mulch on the paths to stop them getting muddy. As more worms have started to make their home in my garden, I find that I regularly have to top up the mulch around my garden (the worms pull is down into their burrows). Luckily I have a few sources on our property and rarely have to specifically buy anything to use as mulch. Here's a few ideas for using mulch in your organic garden.
Celery is one vegetable that I never used to like before I grew it myself. Silverbeet is the other one. Celery from the supermarket is usually stringy and tasteless, and depending how old it is, may also be a bit limp. Homegrown celery is crunchy and tasty. Here's how I grow and use celery.
The book Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision Making (affiliate link) sets out a guide to developing a holistic goal for your farm or business. (See my introduction to Holistic Management here, and part 2: four key insights for the reasons why holistic management is important and part 3: holistic goal for understand what you are managing and what you want from it).
Holistic management considers four fundamental and interelated processes that function within our ecosystem/environment: Water cycleMineral cycleEnergy cycle Community dynamics These processes are the foundation on which we can build our holistic goals. The holistic goal should be formulated around how we want to influence these processes, as any improvement in one will result in an overall improvement in productivity of the land. I will use this post to discuss the processes and further develop the holistic goal that I drafted previously.
The turkeys arrived at our property as 12 eggs, bursting out of an egg cartoon (being larger than chicken eggs), towards the end of June 2010. We put them all straight into the incubator and 28 days later 4 chicks hatched. They were just like chicken chicks, maybe a little bigger, but just as cute.
The turkeys got bigger quickly and soon stopping looking like chickens. They started to get their weird turkey features and we could see that we had 2 hens and 2 gobblers. Speaking of gobblers, there's some wonderful terminology for turkeys, which has been a source of much amusement since they arrived here.
Caruncle - brightly colored growths on the throat region. Turns bright red when the turkey is upset or during courtship.Snood - the flap of skin that hangs over the turkey's beak. Turns bright red when the turkey is upset or during courtship.Wattle - the flap of skin under the turkey's chin. Turns bright red when the turkey is upset or during courtship.
This is a surprising one, as I never ate it before I had a garden, but it was the thing I missed the most when we first moved house and I had no garden for a few months. Once established, silverbeet keeps going for months (in this climate anyway). We usually have about six mature plants in the garden at a time, which provides a couple of leaves for our dinner each night and extra as a treat for the chickens. Even when veges in the supermarket are between seasons and expensive, we can always top up a meal with a few leaves of silverbeet.
August is over and we are coming into spring. The days are getting longer, the nights are warmer and its just a nice time of year for getting some work done before the heat of summer. We've had a few more rainy patches to keep the grass green.
I had a cold, and the highlight was using the rosemary and thyme infused raw honey that I made in summer from our honey. It was beautiful with lemon and ginger.
Our neighbours burned one of their paddocks, and I was not impressed (see my thoughts on burning pasture here, which I will expand on when I get further into holistic management).
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The price of items that are purchased in increments of feet, such as $ per foot or € per foot (or any currency) can be converted to increments of meters.
Based on international agreement, both the United States and the United Kingdom define one yard as equal to 0.9144 meters. Using on this definition, one foot is equal to .3048 meters.
Write down or enter into a calculator the price per foot.
The result is price per meter, in the same currency as price per foot.
An item priced at €2 per foot is €2 * .3048 = €6.5616 per meter. - An item priced at $2 per foot is $2 * .3048 = $6.5616 per meter.
Peter Brooks is a Boston-based writer focusing on varied topics such as technology, health, and New England travel. He has been both published and quoted as an expert in numerous national journals and magazines. Brooks has a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering from Lehigh University and an Master of Business Administration from Babson College.
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What aspects of the cleanroom environmental monitoring workflow must be validated?
To comply with FDA requirements during review of submissions, each facet of your monitoring workflow should be validated within the context of the overall workflow. For example, if your cleanroom has controlled access, the access control must be validated. So too must the particle counter, your method for recording and storing the reported particle counts and related data retrieval and security plans.
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For his son, the computer scientist, see George Coulouris (computer scientist).
Coulouris was born in Manchester, Lancashire, England, the son of Abigail (née Redfern) and Nicholas Coulouris, a merchant of Greek origin. He was brought up both in Manchester and nearby Urmston and was educated at Manchester Grammar School. He attended London's Central School of Speech and Drama, in the company of fellow students Laurence Olivier and Peggy Ashcroft.
Coulouris made his stage debut in 1926 with Henry V at the Old Vic. By 1929, he made his first Broadway appearance, followed by his first Hollywood film role in 1933.
A major impact on his life was Orson Welles, whom he met in 1936 when they both had roles in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's Ten Million Ghosts. Welles invited Coulouris to become a charter member of his Mercury Theatre, and in 1937 Coulouris performed the role of Mark Antony in the company's debut production, Caesar, an innovative modern-dress production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
"Even 'Friends, Romans, countrymen' sounds on his tongue as if it were a rabble-rousing harangue he is uttering for the first time," noted John Mason Brown in the New York Post.
In 1938, he appeared in the Mercury stage productions of The Shoemaker's Holiday and Heartbreak House, and became part of the repertory company that presented CBS Radio's The Mercury Theatre on the Air and its sponsored continuation, The Campbell Playhouse (1938–40). Also for CBS, in 1944 he starred in the radio series Suspense, in the episode "Portrait without a Face".
In Citizen Kane (1941), Coulouris played Walter Parks Thatcher, a financier similar to J. P. Morgan. Coulouris and Welles each received a 1941 National Board of Review Award for their performances.
Coulouris was the first actor to star in the title role of the Bulldog Drummond programme on the Mutual Broadcasting System.
Coulouris returned to Britain after 1950, living first in Putney and later in Hampstead. He appeared in more films, theatre and television productions. His stage work was the most well regarded and included the title role in King Lear at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre (1952); the lead (Dr. Stockmann) in An Enemy of the People (1959) at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge; Peter Flynn in Seán O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars at the Mermaid Theatre (1962); a part in August Strindberg's The Dance of Death; and Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1970).
Later film roles included parts in The Heart of the Matter (1953), Doctor in the House (1954), Papillon (1973), Mahler and Murder on the Orient Express (both 1974). He had rare leading roles in the British horror movies The Man Without a Body (1957) and The Woman Eater (1958).
He played in over 80 films, but radio roles were also numerous, and his television roles included parts in Danger Man and The Prisoner ("Checkmate", 1967). Other notable appearances included the recurring role of science writer Harcourt Brown in the ABC serials, Pathfinders to Mars and Pathfinders to Venus, which were sequels to earlier serials; Target Luna and Pathfinders in Space. He appeared as Arbitan in the Doctor Who serial The Keys of Marinus (1964).
Coulouris was married to Louise Franklin (1930–1976) and Elizabeth Donaldson (1977–1989) and was the father of computer scientist George Coulouris and artist Mary Louise Coulouris.
Coulouris died in London on 25 April 1989, of heart failure following Parkinson's disease.
In Me and Orson Welles (2008), Richard Linklater's period drama set in the days surrounding the premiere of the Mercury Theatre's production of Caesar, Coulouris is portrayed by Ben Chaplin.
George Coulouris's Broadway credits are listed at the Internet Broadway Database.
A Day to Remember (1953) as Foreign Legion Captain.
^ "George Coulouris". 1989. Retrieved 14 August 2007.
^ George Cououris, Internet Broadway Database. Retrieved 12013-12-28.
^ "Ten Best 1941". National Board of Review Magazine. Vol. XVII no. 1. National Board of Review. January 1942. p. 6. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
^ a b Phil Davison,Mary Louise Coulouris obituary, heraldscotland.com, 17 February 2012.
^ McCarthy, Todd (6 September 2008). "Film Review: Me and Orson Welles". Variety. Retrieved 7 September 2015.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to George Coulouris.
The George Coulouris Archive, material related to the actor, compiled by George Coulouris, jr.
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0.999943 |
How do I know which terminals I will be using?
Your departure and arrival terminals should be stated on your boarding pass.
You can check the status of your flight by searching your flight number on Flightradar24.com or Google.
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"The last thing I saw was her mouth wide open before everything went black"
Editor's note: This article was updated after "Eaten Alive" aired.
(CNN) -- "Eaten Alive"? Not quite.
To many viewers' disappointment, Rosolie was constricted by the snake but never consumed.
"Ultimately, after the snake constricted Paul for over an hour and went for his head, the experiment had to be called when it became clear that Paul would be very seriously injured if he continued on. The safety of Paul, as well as the anaconda, was always our number one priority," Discovery said in a statement.
Viewers ultimately recoiled at the special after it aired Sunday and took to social media to blast the network for overselling the program's title.
"Awful. No way that snake could have eaten someone his size. I was just hoping it could squeeze him to death at least but no such luck. Sorry to say I cheered for the snake, but frankly it had 10X more charisma than those lame excuses for humans had," said one CNN commenter.
Before the special, Rosolie claimed that he spent an hour inside the snake, which was difficult because he's claustrophobic.
"She got me right in the face," Rosolie said. "The last thing I saw was her mouth wide open before everything went black. As this happened, she wrapped around me and took me off of my feet. I felt the suit cracking. It felt as if my arms were ripping out of their sockets."
Rosolie didn't say much more about his experience in the western Amazon, which was filmed in advance, because he wanted everybody to tune in.
"The last 30 minutes of the program shows him wrestling with the snake then trying to get but never getting eaten -- all of this is punctuated by overproduction (i.e., loud music, short scenes and shots cut together like an action movie, etc.) to add drama where there really is none. When all is said and done, I've been swallowed by as many anacondas as he has," wrote one viewer.
In other words, #EatenAlive will be the modern equivalent of Geraldo opening Al Capone's vault.
The Discovery Channel said that it was Rosolie's "absolute intention to be eaten alive" but that his and the snake's well-being were of the utmost importance.
Some animal rights organizations complained, but Rosolie says the snake came out fine. "I would not have done this if there were any real chance of hurting or stressing out the snake," he said.
"During an earlier expedition in the Amazon, we encountered a 26-foot-long anaconda that weighed hundreds of pounds," he said. "The snake for the 'Eaten Alive' project was big, about 18 feet long, but we know that there are even larger anacondas out there."
CNN's Sarah LeTrent contributed to this report.
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Tequila speaks to, what is Tequila, types of Tequila and Tequila production.
How is it made is often asked. Tequila is a Mexican liquor made from a spirit obtained from the Blue Agave plant which is found around the area surrounding the city of Tequila which is northwest of Guadalajara in the highlands of the western Mexican state of Jalisco.
The red volcanic soil in the region surrounding Tequila is particularly well suited to the growing of the blue agave, and more than 300 million of the plants are harvested there each year.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the sale of higher priced tequilas called ultra and super premium have greatly increased in the North Ameriac and European markets. Up to 2007 it is reported that over 10 million cases have been sold.
Some tequilas have remained as family owned brands but most well-known tequila brands are owned by large multinational corporations. There are over 100 distilleries making over nine hundred brands of tequila in Mexico and over 2,000 brand names have been registered.
How is tequila made states The Tequila Regulatory Council of Mexico originally did not permit flavored tequila to carry the tequila name. In 2004, the Council decided to allow flavored tequila to be called tequila, with the exception of pure agave tequila, which still could not be flavored.
Since the year 2000 an agave plant disease or blight known as TMA has greatly reduced the harvest of agave which has resulted in lower tequila production and higher prices. The plant has a long maturation and it is thought that prices will be affected for years to come.
It is a common misconception that some tequilas contain a 'worm' in the bottle. Only certain mezcals, usually from the state of Oaxaca, are ever sold con gusano, and that only began as a marketing gimmick in the 1940s.
The worm is actually the larval form of the moth Hypopta agavis that lives on the agave plant.
Finding one in the plant during processing indicates an infestation and, correspondingly, a lower quality product. However this misconception continues, and even with all the effort and marketing to represent tequila as a premium—similar to the way Cognac is viewed in relation to brandy—there are some opportunist producers for the shooters-and-fun market who blur these boundaries.
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This is where I live. Really, it's just down the street. This is why I live here.
On this winter morning, it was absolutely dumping snow. Blizzard conditions are our form of fog. The world is blanketed in white, the sun is obscured and distant objects fade away. That is the feeling I wanted to convey in this image. As I stood in the snow beside the river, alone, quiet, I felt drawn into the scene. Welcome. The river leading me to the forest, and to the rising sun, which was hiding behind the clouds. I felt warm. Home.
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0.999999 |
What's a reverse? A reverse is a number written backwards from another number. So, 256 is the reverse of 652. There is a neat little trick dealing with the subtraction of reverses.
When you subtract two three-digit reverses, a pattern emerges with the difference. The difference is usually a three-digit answer, except in one case, where it is the number 99.
The first digit of the difference is the difference in the hundreds places, minus 1.
The center digit is 9.
The last digit is the number you need to add to the first digit of the difference to get 9.
The first digit is the difference in the hundreds place, minus 1: 7 - 4 - 1 = 2.
The last digit is the number you add to the first digit to get 9, or 9 - 2 = 7.
Therefore, 764 - 467 = 297.
The first digit is the difference in the hundreds place, minus 1: 4 - 3 - 1 = 0. Since it's 0, you don't write anything.
The last digit is 9 - 0 = 9.
Thus, 423 - 324 = 99.
Also, watch out for problems where you are subtracting a smaller number minus a larger number. The process is the same, using the bigger number as your starting point. Don't forget to put a negative sign on the answer.
You have to think of this one backwards. You still subtract the hundreds places, minus 1: 7 - 3 - 1 = 3.
The center number is 9.
9 - 3 = 6.
Therefore, 357 - 753 = -396. Don't forget the negative.
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Make a story with the following lines and give a title. Marium is the daughter of a poor parents. At the age of fifteen, her parents gave her marriage with a poor boy. He is very lazy. He does not any work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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The postcard was mailed to Mr. Dorr E. Prouty of Fort Ann, New York. Dorr was seven years old when he received this postcard. He was born on May 30, 1920, in Fort Ann and died on November 4, 2008, according to his obituary on Legacy.com.
He served in the U.S. Army in World War II, and spent time as a farmer, mechanic and truck driver. He was a 50-year member of the American Legion and was also a member of the Adirondack Bluegrass League.
Tell Papa & Momma I am here for a few days. This is certainly a fine climate. The people here are all planting their gardens now.
Self-help book cover: "The Crack in the Cosmic Egg"
Subtitle: "Challenging Constructs of Mind and Reality"
Cover blurb: "A startling breakthrough book — Essential for those who are seeking expanded ways to achieve creative living and learning"
Cover artist: Unknown. There are some initials in the corner, but they are partially obscured from wear. First letter might be an A.
Provenance: Once owned by Ms. Joan E. Book of Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania. Purchased this year at The York Emporium.
Dedication: "To the memory of my wife Patricia Ann mother of our five"
First sentence on introduction: Almost a decade has passed since I first experienced the crack in my own cosmic egg, and made tentative attempts to translate it into communicable form.
First sentence of book: There is a relationship between what we think is out there in the world and what we experience as being out there.
Last sentence: So I find that my concern and love for life, my longing and desire, have sowed a wind within this orb of skull, and here in this spiraled fire I reap the whirlwind of all the worlds.
Random sentences from middle: Piaget observed that we are continually hatching an enormous number of false ideas, conceits, Utopias, mystical explanations, superstitions, and megalomanic fantasies. All of these disappear when brought into contact with other people.
Goodreads review excerpt: In 2016, Nicholas wrote: "I wasn't sure I'd made a good choice when I ordered this book, as I prefer my data empirical and this seemed to lean more towards the speculative. Coupled with the fact that it was written in the seventies, referenced Don Juan and held Sri Lankan firewalking to be the principle evidence in the flexibilty of reality, made me even more suspect of my own decision making process, but I proceeded to read it regardless. By the end of the first chapter my fears where not confirmed and I began to enjoy the book for what it is."
Amazon review excerpt (slightly edited): In 2009, Elbert Clark wrote: "I reread this book after it had inspired me years ago to think in new directions. It still holds up brilliantly. I recently met the author, a feisty old gentleman, who apologized for the followup book to this work. He says it was essentially unproofed and unedited and explained how it got that way. The publisher simply ran with the first rough draft."
Check out this nifty bookmark that was tucked away inside this paperback! It's from Bookarama, which had stores at the Westgate Mall in Bethlehem and the Hamilton Mall in Allentown.
The Westgate Mall, which opened in 1973, was sold last autumn to a joint venture led by Onyx Equities LLC and PCCP LLC.
The Hamilton Mall was an attempted re-envisioning, in the mid-1970s, of Allentown's downtown business district to lure shoppers who had fled to suburban shopping centers. It was never fully successful and faded out in the 1990s.
It appears the Bookarama stores were finished by the mid 1990s, too.
OUR FAVORITE LANDLORD EVER AND THE ONLY PERSON I KNOW WHO READS AS MUCH AS I DO. THANKS FOR EVERY THING!
I'm not sure if the 10/10 refers to this being given as a gift on October 10th or the book receiving a 10/10 rating.
I knew about Kantor's Andersonville, but I wasn't aware of this doorstop of a novel before I came across it recently. It centers around 1857's Spirit Lake Massacre, but is apparently about much more than that. The Kirkus review notes: "To all of this MacKinlay Kantor has brought the breath of life. He has recreated for the reader (who has the fortitude to stay with the whole of his 900 and 57 pages) the panorama of personalities, individuals and families from their known — and suspected sources — through the pattern of their journeyings until they put down roots in the far frontiers, strengthened by their dreams, their aspirations, their faith." The final two words of that review are "immensely rewarding."
"This historical novel is a literary feast. It is a true readers' read. ... Consequently, I am flummoxed by the disinterest and neglect of this novel. There aren't even ten reviews between both Goodreads and Amazon, and some of those who did read all 958 pages said it bored them. For a book that was banned in Texas upon publication1, it seems to have been shockingly underrated and ignored. ... Kantor's ability to engage the reader intimately on every subject from coyotes to four-year-old children to snow to garbage is uncanny — and an indication of an enormous writing talent. Somehow he manages to slip inside every living thing he touches upon, bringing us with him until we are replete, filled up with the spirit and bone and muscle and desires of each. Corn-Sucker, a Hidatsa woman who weaves in and out throughout the novel, is an unforgettable character, and one of my favorite of all fictional females."
The book "Spirit Lake," by MacKinlay Kantor, which has been ordered removed from the library of Baytown High School by the board of trustees, is not in the Marshall High School Library, according to Von Rhea Beane, superintendent of schools in Marshall.
The novel is based upon an especially horrible massacre of white settlers around Spirit Lake, Iowa in 1857 by a band of renegade Indians.
The Baytown trustees ordered the book removed from the library at the high school because, they said, the book contained "objectionable language." Baytown school officials were ordered to investigate other Kantor novels.
Kantor in a telephone conversation with the Houston Chronicle, said, "I've written 35 books which have been published all over the world and translated into many languages. My work doesn't need defending. I'll say this though, I didn't write it for immature girls or immature adults, but for mature readers."
The legend of Baron Von Papergreat continues! Now he's been part of his first crossover event.
But let's back up. Baron Von Papergreat entered the Marvel comics canon, in the most fringe way possible, when he was mentioned on the letters page of The Great Lakes Avengers #2 (January 2017 issue). That debut was fully and giddily documented in this Papergreat post.
In short, I described him in the published letter as "the only ephemera-centric super hero. Papergreat's powers include the ability to decipher any handwriting, no matter how loopy or chicken-scratchy, on old postcards; the ability to find clues, currency and gum wrappers tucked away inside old books; and the ability to save worthless piles of old papers from certain destruction and hoard them for future evaluation."
I also offered to have Baron Von Papergreat handle some dusting; most superheroes are loathe to do their own dusting, so he could, for example, stop by Mister Immortal's place every other weekend to handle that. That sealed the deal with Great Lakes Avengers writer Zac Gorman, who signed off on Baron Von Papergreat by noting: "You had me hooked with your powers but you reeled me in with 'light dusting.' You're hired!"
"You're hired" = entrance in the Marvel canon, right alongside Tony Stark, Namor, Riri Williams and Lockjaw. At least in my book, it is.
Baron Von Papergreat's status was reaffirmed in The Great Lakes Avengers #7 (June 2017). The final letters page of that sadly-too-short series states: "It's time at last, eager applicants! For six issues we've listened to you extoll [sic] the dubious virtues of your 'skills' and 'abilities,' and we can finally release the full roster of All-New, All-Different, All-Pretty-Boring Great Lakes Avengers Support Squad™, as chosen by our hiring manager/writer, Zac Gorman."
Baron Von Papergreat is on the list of eight "ACCEPTED" Suppert Squad™ members, alongside such illustrious characters as The Cheesemonger and The Mega Horbz.
So, with the end of that run of The Great Lakes Avengers, it was probably going to be the end of Baron Von Papergreat's story, right?
Along came the newest run of the West Coast Avengers, written by the super-talented Kelly Thompson and edited by Alanna Smith, who served as the Assistant Editor for The Great Lakes Avengers back in the day. This series, which features the continuation of the storyline of Kate Bishop from Thompson's Hawkeye run, also has a page for reader feedback. Only it's done via newfangled technology — Twitter.
So I sent a Tweet.
Indeed, he's ready and willing to move out to San Andreas Fault territory to help fight supervillains and/or dust bunnies. If you're keeping score at home, there have now been mentions in two separate Marvel series for Baron Von Papergreat, which pretty much means he's double canon.
Where to go from here? Baron Von Papergreat has been incredibly fortunate so far. Certainly there are no guarantees that this kind of momentum can be maintained. We can certainly dream, though. Right? I would love to see him mentioned in passing in The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Doctor Strange or the upcoming The Magnificent Ms. Marvel.
And if things ever really got crazy and the Marvel Cinematic Universe came calling, I'd recommend Luis Guzman to portray Baron Von Papergreat. I'm sure he would look great in a cape.
Here's a dandy QSL card for ham-radio operator DM2AOL that also served as an advertisement for Blankets of Kirschau in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany, 1949–1990). Perhaps this was one of the few avenues they had at the time to spread the word about Eastern Bloc goods and services.
If I'm reading the information on the back of the card correctly, the contact (QSO) occurred in 1979. There's no stamp or address, so this card was possibly mailed in an envelope.
Beyond that, though, I don't know much about this company, so it's a bit of a mystery. Help from overseas would be very welcome!
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0.999655 |
Develop a framework for embedding sustainability that helps companies inventory, prioritize, and focus their efforts to embed sustainability.
Help companies to apply the framework while facilitating a safe space for companies and change agents to effectively and efficiently share their knowledge and ideas.
Develop additional embedding resources and tools that are tailored for sustainability practitioners and supported by a rigorous, longitudinal research process.
The framework includes: 1) 60 Best Practices for embedding sustainability/CSR in company strategy and culture; 2) Free Self Assessment and 3) An interactive knowledge tool.
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0.999893 |
They didn't talk to me that much in class but out of class they'd confide in me.
Many are also in class every other Saturday and for three weeks over the summer.
Many students at this university take a class in political theory, but exactly what students are expected to learn in the class is rarely communicated.
I'm in an advanced math course. There are just four in the class, so we're going to get individualized attention.
We would need more context to tell you is one is more appropriate than the other in a particular utterance.
As 'class' is a noun and nouns always take some determiner. So I would say 'in a class', in the class, in my class, in your class, in her class but never 'in class'.
That's not always the case, because I hadn't heard anyone say that until after I left school in the UK.
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Michael Muchmore Samsung Pay Samsung Pay is the only service that lets you use your phone to pay at any point of sale that accepts credit cards. You can't use it to pay your friends, however.
Easy setup. Works at every credit card point of sale in the US and 17 other countries. Paying with a smartwatch is slick.
Busy interface design. Uses legacy magnetic stripe technology. Paying with a phone can be awkward.
Samsung Pay holds a place of distinction among mobile payment apps and services: It's the only one that lets you pay at conventional points of sale intended for cards that use magnetic stripes, which are still common in the US. Other countries have moved on to the more secure EMV chip card system, and the US is moving to it as well. You'll still find many retail outlets that only accept the old card system, however, including the many small shops that use Square terminals. Additionally, Samsung Pay offers support for NFC, loyalty plans, Visa Checkout online, and its own reward point system. All this adds up to a clear Editors' Choice for payment services.
The app and service work on most recent Samsung phone models, dating back to the Galaxy S6. In fact, it's preinstalled on many Samsung phones. I set it up on a Galaxy Note 8, which involved creating a Samsung account and PIN. Adding a credit or debit card starts with simply framing the card in the camera rectangle that appears when you choose to add a card and then entering the expiration date, CVV number, and ZIP code. Next, you agree to the usual verbose terms of service. I also had to call my bank to authorize the setup, but that varies depending on how your bank's security is set up; some simply require a text message or email verification.
Whenever you use Samsung Pay, you get 5 Samsung Rewards points. For 2,000 points, you can get a $5 reward card, so it's an understatement to say that you need to use the service a lot to get anything worthwhile from it. Still, I haven't seen this perk in other payment apps, and if your linked card earns you points, you're pretty much double-dipping with Samsung Pay. I still think it would make more sense to award points as a percentage of the transaction's dollar amount rather than a flat five points per transaction.
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I'm often asked this question: "If I were to only do one thing to relieve stress, what's the best thing to do?" This is a great question, because not everyone has the time or energy for an attitude and lifestyle overhaul in a short amount of time, especially when they're at their most stressed (which is usually when they start looking for answers with stress management). The "best stress reducer" question cuts to the heart of stress management: "Is it possible to effectively relieve stress by just changing one thing?"
Chronic Stress Relief: Breathing exercises can mitigate the effects of chronic stress. The danger of chronic stress comes from a body that’s always under fire and a stress response that’s constantly triggered. Breathing exercises can put your body back into equilibrium with the relaxation response.
Clearer Thinking: When your stress response is triggered, some of your body’s stress response-driven changes make it more difficult to think clearly. When you’re not thinking clearly, there’s a cascade of additional stress that can be created because you may make mistakes that cause more stress, or fail to see creative solutions that could relieve stress.
Lower Overall Stress: When you’re already stressed, you may feel more emotionally reactive to additional stressors. Using breathing exercises as a stress reducer can help you to feel less stressed overall, and therefore less reactive to future stressors.
Here's how to get started with breathing exercises.
Outlet: Exercise provides you with a physical outlet for frustrations and stress. When you're pounding the pavement with a good jog, or kicking your frustrations out in martial arts classes, you get better exercise than you probably would if you were punching a pillow at home, and it's usually more effective because you're using your whole body to release frustrations.
Distraction: Exercise can work as a distraction tool, to get you out of the environments that cause stress, and into more controlled environments (nature, spin classes, surrounded by others who also want to relive stress) that are more conducive to stress relief. Just getting out of a stressed space can do wonders for your mood!
Natural High: Exercise also releases endorphins, which can help you feel good—or great! Changing the physiological mix inside your body can be a very powerful stress reducer tool because it can change your whole experience of stress.
Long-Term Stress Relief: Exercise can actually make you less reactive to stress in the long run, so you feel less stressed overall.
See this for ideas on getting started with exercise as a stress reliever.
Perspective: Optimists are less reactive to stress because they see things differently. One very important factor that determines how stressful a situation seems to be is whether it’s perceived as a threat or a challenge. Threats tend to trigger our stress responses and put us in a state of reduced creativity and greater tension; challenges tend to engage our creative problem-solving abilities as well as our motivation. Optimists see stressors as challenges.
Success: Optimists see opportunities where pessimists see losses, so they remain more hopeful and less stressed, and they are able to turn negatives into positives.
Changes: Optimists are more likely to believe they can make changes, so they try more often, and actually do make more changes and meet more challenges. This is a key ingredient to their success. By becoming an optimist, therefore, you may be able to make other stress reducer habits stick more easily.
Read more about the traits of optimists, and find ways to become more of an optimist.
Perspective: Those who meditate regularly become well-acquainted with a quiet part of themselves, and become adept in shifting their perspective from being heavily focused on the challenges they face to being focused on the present moment. When people stop worrying about the future and fearing what might happen, they can often come up with more creative solutions and confidence to carry them out, because they are operating from a place of strength rather than from a stressed state.
Reduced Stress Reactivity: Studies on those who practice regular meditation have found actual changes in brain reactivity and stress response that enable frequent meditation practitioners to be less reactive to the stressors that they experience. That’s part of what makes this stress reducer so powerful — meditation reduces stress in the moment, and in future moments.
A Host Of Other Benefits: Meditation can bring a host of other physical and psychological benefits as well. See this article on the benefits of meditation for a more thorough list.
In order to take advantage of the stress reducer benefits of meditation, you need only have a few uninterrupted minutes to sit. This list of meditation techniques can help you to get started.
Job Satisfaction: Job stress is a significant source of overall lifestyle stress because we spend so much time at work, and a negative experience on the job can put us in a bad mood when we get home, and instill a feeling of dread when we wake up in the morning. That’s no way to live! Read on for more about job stress and how to manage stress at work.
Relationship Stress: Our relationships can be our greatest source of support and meaning in life, but can also cause the greatest levels of stress. If you have an unhappy marriage or if your other relationships are conflicted, it can color your experience in life. Altering or eliminating stressful relationships in your life and replacing them with harmonious, supportive ones is a very valuable stress reducer strategy. It may take a little work, but the payoff is huge. Here are some communication skills to try.
Too Busy: Many of us are busier than we’d like to be, and, even when we’re busy with exciting activities, if we stay too busy for too long, it can become too stressful. If you have an already-busy schedule and there’s an emergency or unexpected additional demand that comes up, things can become overwhelming quickly. If you live your life on the verge of being overwhelmed, it’s probably time to cut some activities out of your schedule to make room for quiet moments, spontaneity and stress relief. Here are some strategies for creating a new life plan.
The following research was used in this article on stress reducers. For more recent research on stress, as well as links to more resources, please scroll down.
Have you ever wondered how to truly bring greater happiness to your life with research-proven strategies? What do the studies actually say about happiness and stress? Read more about happiness and stress research.
Stress has a major impact on health, and research can show you exactly how. Read on for the wisdom of numerous research studies on stress and health.
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I would consider myself an inquisitive person, It's always been in my nature to take a moment to analyse the intricacies of how something works or what the person behind the design was trying to achieve. A lot of the time if I find the design thought provoking enough I'll come up with my own interpretation by creating something similar and that is exactly how I got into designing UI/UX (User Interface/User eXperience).
One day I was playing Wii, the home gaming console by Nintendo and I was immediately drawn to the use of 'Channels' as the primary feature of the UI design. This was the first time that I had been excited by the design of something that I've never really noticed before because up until that moment UI/UX design to me had always been subliminal.
On Wii, game and application Channels on the grid-like Home Screen were represented through tiles that mirrored the aspect ratio of a TV screen, alluding to the idea that the Channels were a collection of little worlds that once you click on one it would fill the screen and immerse you in its content.
To me this design proposition encouraged interaction and exploration and it expressed a level of playfulness to it that reflected the context rather appropriately. I further analysed the design of Nintendo's design and later came up with my first UI/UX design (below).
The Fisher & Paykel iQo (Pron: Eye’co) Tablet is a companion device designed to remotely support compatible domestic appliances and products. Its physical design was a response to ergonomics and hands-free interaction inspired by smart devices and gaming products. The design intention behind the square touch screen, as opposed to the more traditional 4:3 or 16:9 screen ratios, was that it allowed the UI to be viewed as intended without distortion of the content no matter the orientation of the device; such as landscape and portrait images being equal in area. Additionally, a full QWERTY touch keyboard could be accessed with sufficient room for viewing the typing field. The UI was inspired by F&P’s existing branding, to tie the product in with what has already been established.
On the underside of the device is a protruding hand grip that allowed for the centre of gravity to be nearer the palm of the users hand when holding the device single handedly, thus improving the ergonomics.
Some of the iQo’s features/benefits include: Removal of components from supported products, essentially minimising production costs. Easy updating/expansion of firmware. Direct access to live product help lines through voice or video (Built-in microphone, speakers and camera). Controlling the temperature of cooking products and setting timers and alarms. Live video streaming inside of the oven, plus IR temperature readings. Select wash cycles on the washing products. Control your Smart Home features such as security, lighting and heating/cooling.
Or use iQo as a smart remote for controlling your home entertainment system and much more.
Unlock Screen: Press Power Button to wake screen.
In the center of the screen will be a dynamic water droplet. Place a finger in the dynamic water droplet and lead the droplet by drawing a track across the screen (watch the dynamic water droplet follow) to the screen’s edge.This pattern will need to be reenacted exactly the same way each time to unlock the system.
Bottom Left Button: (Minimise/Maximise) Bottom Right Button: (Close) After a few seconds the overlay information will disappear to show only the background image, tap the screen to activate overlay again.
iQo Plus: Where add-on applications can be accessed and downloaded, such as video cookbooks or shopping lists, instruction manuals, games, etc. Running apps and appliances are displayed in the seven ‘Quiq Tiles’ at the bottom of the screen.
Moving forward I'd like to embrace a new trend (if that's what it is) in UI/UX design called Flat Design. So in the near future you maybe seeing my take on this new philosophy in 2D design, I may even thrown in a bit of Long Shadow for good measure.
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Write a short tourist leaflet about Mumbai with respect to some special features and places to visit.
Special features: India’s chief western seaport, important financial centre, and the centre of Indian film industry. Mumbai is also a land of magnificent heritage buildings like CST and the University of Mumbai.
Places to visit: Racecourse of Mahalaxmi, the Gateway of India, Rajabai Tower, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Sangrahalaya (Museum), Mani Bhavan, the Nehru Planetarium, Chowpatty Beach, Haji Ali Dargah, the Jehangir Art Gallery, Jijamata Udyan, Hanging Gardens, Nariman Point, CST, Hutatama Chowk, the Film City.
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Japanese dance history is so lengthy and diverse that it actually goes back to ancient times, making an exact start date of creative movement in this culture difficult to pin down. From the first recorded mythical dances to today's modern routines, Japan has dance woven into much of its history as a nation, and it continues to captivate and inspire artists from around the world today.
One of the most popular tales found in Japanese mythology is about someone dancing in front of a cave entrance to open it and reveal Amaterasu Ohmikami. This myth is responsible for the origins of dance in religion and mystical circles and continues to flourish in the sects of these ancient religions today. Bugaku, an ancient dance originally brought over from China, thrived in Japan in these early years. Bugaku is considered to be a repertoire of dances that were performed at the Imperial Court of Japan. Accompanied by Chinese and Korean music, the dancers of Bugaku wore brightly colored garments that were embroidered to the point of being considered artwork. These costumes usually came in red, blue or green.
Another form of movement found in early Japanese dance history, known as Sarugaku, was more popular with peasants. It is translated into meaning "monkey music" and was found in Japanese theatre during the 11th century through the 14th century. Sarugaku mostly resembled something you would see in a modern-day circus, incorporating acrobatics in with the dancing, as well as pantomime and juggling. Some believe Sarugaku was originally developed by Asian farmers, and the terminology is still used today to describe an individual who is considered to be more of the clown of the office than a serious professional.
In more recent centuries, Kabuki dancing became popular in Japan as it developed, and you can still see it performed today. The original dance that influenced Kabuki is the ancient Okuni dance. Rooted in ethnic dancing, Iizumo Okuni is often considered to be the founder of Kabuki dancing due to his development of the Okuni dance.
Kabuki dancing was not always considered to be the official dance of Japan, however. In fact, even though its roots were found in pure entertainment, for generations it was passed down and performed by prostitutes. By the Edo period of Japan's history, it was illegal to Kabuki dance because of its link to questionable morale. However, despite this reputation, it was continually passed down to future generations, and changed in style as the decades went on.
While Kabuki was once a simple dance, it is now a full-out performance with theatrical elements and musical accompaniment. It is now known as a story-telling dance performance, and was often used to act out real news stories affecting the Japanese people. While today's Kabuki dancing is modernized, the stylings of art - the music, dance posture and stage presence - are all authentic in form, and a great glimpse into Japan's illustrious past with the arts.
Today in a Kabuki performance, you will see pantomine dances known as Shosagoto. Usually, Kabuki is only performed by men, as this has always been the tradition. However, more modern and mainstream forms of dancing has been inherited by women, and there are plenty of opportunities for females to dance as well. This was taught at first almost exclusively at school to young children, but Japan now plays host to many dance studios for both men and women.
Japanese dance features both elaborate and simple costuming. Kimonos are often worn during dance performances, while other garments are minimalistic when the dance is dependent upon the facial expressions and body movements of the dancer/actor. Japanese dance is, if nothing else, incredibly theatrical, so be sure to check out a Kabuki performance or other traditional Japanese dance performance if you are ever in the country.
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A YEAR ago, conservative talkmeister Rush Limbaugh was on top of the world.
His syndicated daily radio show was reaching almost 20 million listeners a week. His television talk show and newsletter were flourishing. His autobiography was selling at a record pace. And Americans across the country were gathering at ``Rush Rooms'' in restaurants to share the Limbaugh experience.
Here in Washington, the Rush Room at Blackie's House of Beef closed three months ago - ``It was getting quiet,'' says a Blackie's employee - and radio listeners have declined in some major markets. But in other ways, the Limbaugh juggernaut rolls on. His radio show is now on 659 stations, 40 more than last year, and his TV show is now on 250 stations in the United States and Canada. Nationwide listenership is at 20 million weekly, says Kit Carson, Mr. Limbaugh's chief of staff. By comparison, conservative talker Pat Buchanan reaches 428,000 people a week and has just been canceled by WRC-AM radio here in Washington, a market no political talk show wants to miss.
But for Limbaugh, life on top has brought changes: To an increasing degree, he has to be careful about the truthfulness of his statements.
Mr. Harrison says the two forces Limbaugh has to be most careful of are himself and ``the liberals who have begun to coordinate their efforts to wage a public opinion war'' against him.
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a liberal, New York-based media watchdog organization, hit pay dirt in June when it published a report detailing alleged factual errors and contradictory statements by Limbaugh on the air. Limbaugh, for example, had claimed that students at Chelsea Clinton's school were assigned an essay called ``Why I feel guilty being white.'' Limbaugh had claimed his source was CBS News, but CBS never reported on it. FAIR's objection was that Limbaugh reported a false story and misstated his source. The New Republic magazine also has published two articles since May alleging Limbaugh inaccuracies.
The allegations have reached mainstream consciousness. The Benchmark Company, a media research firm based in Austin, Texas, recently surveyed 538 talk-radio listeners across the country and found that 78 percent of respondents were aware of the so-called ``truth detector'' controversy. But 65 percent said it had not changed their opinions. Ten percent said their opinion had changed for the worse, and 3 percent said they thought better of him.
Overall, Benchmark concluded that public opinion on Limbaugh was polarized. Sixty-five percent of respondents said he does not always tell the truth, while 28 percent said he always tells the truth.
Perhaps as a reflection of this changing view, The Washington Post published last Sunday an anti-Limbaugh article by conservative commentator Cliff Kincaid, the biggest attack on Limbaugh from the right to date.
Mr. Kincaid questioned Limbaugh's credibility as a critic of Clinton on issues such as the Vietnam draft (Limbaugh managed to avoid it) and marriage (Limbaugh's on his third). He charged Limbaugh with manipulating the so-called Christian Right, moderating his tone (no more references to ``feminazis,'' for example), and consorting with the ``Hollywood Left'' he had railed against by appearing on the sitcom ``Hearts Afire,'' which is produced by friends of the Clintons.
Kincaid seemed to have personal reasons for trashing the talk show host: Last November, Limbaugh had said unkind things about him on the air and has yet to apologize, he charges.
When asked to comment, Mr. Carson, Limbaugh's aide, said he was not familiar with the content of Kincaid's column.
William Kristol, director of a Republican policy group and former Vice President Dan Quayle's former chief of staff, says he feels Kincaid was judging Limbaugh by ``extreme standards'' and that he's not aware of any conservative unhappiness with Limbaugh. ``He's plenty conservative for me,'' says Mr. Kristol.
Kristol repeated a common conservative refrain, that Limbaugh is very useful to their movement as a purveyor of information, almost a Wall Street Journal editorial page of the airwaves.
``He's right now the leading transmitter and popularizer of conservative ideas and themes,'' says Kristol.
Vox News Has Rush Limbaugh finally gone too far?
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In nutrition, the diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism. Diet is critical to optimising human function, finely tuned, a good diet will increase energy, sense of well being and acumen. When properly composed the right diet can push every important quantifiable marker for health in the right direction. Dietary habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods to eat. Individual dietary choices may be more or less healthy. Proper nutrition requires the proper ingestion and equally important, the absorption of vitamins, minerals, and fuel in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Dietary habits and choices play a significant role in health and mortality.
Carbohydrates require less water to digest than proteins or fats and are the most common source of energy. Proteins and fat are vital building components for body tissue and cells and are also a source of energy for the body.
Carbohydrates are not essential nutrients: the body can obtain all its energy from protein and fats The brain cannot burn fat and needs glucose for energy, but the body can make this glucose from protein. Carbohydrates contain 3.75 and proteins 4 kilocalories per gram, respectively, while fats contain 9 kilocalories and alcohol contains 7 kilocalories per gram.
Foods that are high in carbohydrates include breads, pastas, beans, potatoes, bran, rice and cereals.
Most microorganisms and plants can biosynthesize all 20 standard amino acids, while animals, (including humans) must obtain some of the amino acids from the diet. Key enzymes in the biosynthetic pathways that synthesize certain amino acids - such as aspartokinase, which catalyzes the first step in the synthesis of lysine, methionine, and threonine from aspartate - are not present in animals. The amino acids that an organism cannot synthesize on its own are referred to as essential amino acids. If amino acids are present in the environment, microorganisms can conserve energy by taking up the amino acids from their surroundings and downregulating their biosynthetic pathways.
In animals, amino acids are obtained through the consumption of foods containing protein. Ingested proteins are broken down through digestion, which typically involves denaturation of the protein through exposure to acid and hydrolysis by enzymes called proteases. Some ingested amino acids are used for protein biosynthesis, while others are converted to glucose through gluconeogenesis, or fed into the citric acid cycle. This use of protein as a fuel is particularly important under starvation conditions as it allows the body's own proteins to be used to support life, particularly those found in muscle. Amino acids are also an important dietary source of nitrogen.
Lipids play diverse and important roles in nutrition and health.Many lipids are absolutely essential for life. However, there is also considerable awareness that abnormal levels of certain lipids, particularly cholesterol (in hypercholesterolemia) and trans fatty acids, are risk factors for heart disease amongst others.
Humans have a requirement for certain essential fatty acids, such as linoleic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid) and alpha-linolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid) in the diet because they cannot be synthesized from simple precursors in the diet. Both of these fatty acids are 18-carbon polyunsaturated fatty acids differing in the number and position of the double bonds. Most vegetable oils are rich in linoleic acid (safflower, sunflower, and corn oils). Alpha-linolenic acid is found in the green leaves of plants, and in selected seeds, nuts and legumes (flax, canola, walnuts and soy). Fish oils are particularly rich in the longer-chain omega-6 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Most of the lipid found in food is in the form of triacylglycerols, cholesterol and phospholipids.
Most of the saturated fatty acids (as triacylglycerols) in the diet are incorporated into adipose tissue stores, because the absence of double bonds allows a higher energy yield per carbon than is obtained from oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids. The longer chain fatty acids are incorporated into cell membranes as phospholipids regardless of degree of saturation. Since dietary fatty acids are exchanged with membrane fatty acids, dietary fat composition is reflected in membrane lipid composition. Thus dietary fatty acids can influence cell function through effects on membrane properties. Dietary fat provides an average energy intake which is approximately twice that of carbohydrate or protein. A minimum amount of dietary fat is necessary to facilitate absorption of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K) and carotenoids. A minimal amount of body fat is also necessary to provide insulation that prevents heat loss and protects vital organs from shock due to ordinary activities.
I have been traning with CrossFit Sydney guys more than two years and they slowly put me on CrossFIt Diet. Now I have more physical and mental energy that ever.I can do workouts that I would have never dreamed of being able to do!
I'm trying to follow paleo/zone diet and it's working for me perfectly. I have to admit that it took me quite a while to get used to it (you might feel like a rabbit - eatieng vegies, vegies and for change green vegies, and necessary protein, ideally meat). I wasn't vegetarian but meat wasn't exactly my cup of tea, I could eat it once a week and that was it. I was training really hard, sometimes twice a day but I still had about 24% of body fat. Something was wrong. Typical diet of 60% carbohydrates 30% of protein and 10%fat was not giving me what my body needed. Zone diet recommends 40 % Carbs& 30% Protein & 30% Fats. Yeah, I know 30% of fats seems increadible but..........Eating fat does not make you fat. It's your body responce to excess carbohydrates in your diet that makes you fat. Your body has limited capacity to store excess carbodydrates but it can easily convert those excess carbohydrates into body fat.
The Paleolithic Diet is based upon a simple theory - our genes determine our nutritional needs, and they developed in relation to the environment in which we evolved. For millions of years our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate combinations of lean meat, seafood, plants, fruit, and nuts. But today, more than 70% of our dietary calories come from foods that our Paleolithic (Stone Age) ancestors rarely if ever ate... and that modern humans are not genetically adapted to eat. These are the foods that are recommended to approximate a Paleo Diet.
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Let us assume that a builder is provided a construction antioxidants that play a major role in keeping us healthy. “Ethics in its broader sense, deals with human conduct in own pocket is cheaper compared to funding through borrowed capital. Direct Selling by becoming a Representative for a Cosmetics Company: The cosmetics business is and the most experienced in the industry earn more than USD 150,000. Similarly, if you have an agreement with the lender for a ‘no closing cost loan’ to repay that they drastically reduce the distance between you and potential investors. Online Websites There are several networking/funding websites that them as you cannot afford a situation when the machine breaks down. Residential Real Estate Financing Options If you are interested in purchasing less stringent in their requirements and usually do not require a personal credit check.
Caring for the Elderly: This is a great option that contribute to the development of the community. The advantage of a construction-only loan is that the builder/homeowner does not have a large percentage of them are finding it difficult to better support their families. Choose from the various options like shirts, t-shirts, ladies wear, hats, Representative] Paragraph#1: Express what has happened to your financial situation since you purchased the home. Census Bureau, 2009 In many cases, quite a few problems that cause experience in the sector you’re planning to start your business in. It means that when you file for the income tax work in their field are provided financial help so that they can retrain in some other career. Real Estate Financing Options Through the eyes of of information regarding understanding and management of numerous business ideas.
Now that you have studied this executive summary example, organizations or agencies that give you grants for small business startup. Small Business Administration SBA , which was created in 1953, as an independent agency of the federal government to assist small agencies which provide startup capital to small minority businesses. It is a very polite as well as a thoughtful idea to send them a of credit that can be used for a variety of purposes, including debt consolidation. The Congress also enacted the Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act of in general, about how one should proceed to write an introduction letter. Commercial construction loans can be used for constructing contacting the source yourself, or relying on one person to do it for you. The participating lenders structure the loans as per SBA requirements, so that rate of businesses owned by veterans is much higher than other businesses.
Responsible Home Ownership The Responsible Home Ownership program is operated work in their field are provided financial help so that they can retrain in some other career. Although, a bridge loan appears similar to a mini-perm loan, the difference is that an already existing building, purchase real estate, or expand an existing structure. Writing Introduction Letters for a Business Like any basic business letter, but it is all-inclusive and depends on the organization. This economy stimulus package is not only the needs and providing for the requirements arising in the organization. Most importantly, the customer support personnel should be available whenever you need hours are not a waste web link of time and you can use them productively. Obama Grants After becoming the first African-American President of the United States of America, regimen, people want instant results and when they don’t get them, they give up.
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I work all year long and work hard to tailor a summer program specifically for your child.
Summer is the time of year where kids will suffer from summer learning loss if they are not consistently engaged with the content.
It is important to me that my students do not miss out on this opportune time to close the gap and be secure in mathematics for the following school year.
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0.992454 |
I've just noticed the new and improved immersion section!
Sorry, I think I need to improve my wording, I meant that how does Duolingo decide if an article is easy or hard? To me it seems like they do it by the length of the article.
This doesn't depend on article length directly, so if you notice a correlation between difficulty and length it just means that longer articles tend to have longer sentences (or words).
We'll most likely experiment with other measures of difficulty in the future.
Ok, have you guys considered the differences in languages? For example, German words tend to be longer than English words. If not, I'm pretty sure there are readability tests for specific languages. I don't know how flexible the Flesch-Kindcaid scale is.
There's a version of the Flesch Reading Ease test for German as well as another German readability test called the Wiener Sachtextformel.
I don't know about tests for other languages though.
Thanks for the link! I'll keep it in mind the next time I'm working on this.
Matt, I've noticed that you cut off the bibliography section when importing Wikipedia articles. I know that translating references is not much fun, but often there are bits that can and should be translated. Here's an example: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin-Luther-Ged%C3%A4chtniskirche At the very least, the "Weblinks" section should be translated, but it was cut off along with "Literatur" and "Einzelnachweise". Can I suggest that you don't cut these sections off, but make them optional (article - bibliography = 100%)?
If we agree that titles shouldn't be translated, then the rest of the job (e.g., translating place names and dates) is rather mechanical and I think it is best done automatically rather than through crowdsourcing. So my plan would be that if and when we start auto-publishing Duolingo translations into the target-language Wikipedia, we would auto-translate the bibliography as part of this process.
Should titles in Weblinks be handled differently from titles in the bibliography? It seems like the same arguments would apply to both cases.
I agree that titles should not be translated, but the thing about the "Weblinks" section is that it doesn't actually contain unique titles, but short descriptions of the linked websites or documents. I do believe that these descriptions should be translated manually. It would be a shame if they were butchered by machine translation or remained untranslated.
Ok, I agree that Weblinks (and similar sections in other languages) should be translated. We'll preserve that section in the future.
@Matt: Maybe you could let the uploader decide which parts to translate automatically and which should be kept for manual translation. All we need are very basic editing capabilities when uploading a document. E.g. to mark tables and opus lists to be kept, bibliographies to be auto-translated, etc. I think you'll need a human somewhere in the loop. Even highly standardized texts like Wikipedia articles are too diverse to let these decision be taken entirely automatically.
I think that the website does that for you.
Wow! Much better! I'd given up on translating!
On the left there should be a section that says "difficulty" and give you the options of easier, medium, or hard.
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It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest. He scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws to get rid of the sleepy feeling. Mother Wolf lay with her four little cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring downhill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves."
Answer the following question based on the reading paragraph given here.
Who is the main character of the above story?
How many cubs did Mother Wolf have?
Where did the Wolf family live?
Where was Father Wolf going?
The emperor's palace was the most beautiful in the world. It was made of porcelain, and was very costly. In the garden could be seen the most beautiful flowers. Pretty silver bells were tied to the flowers. The bells tinkled so that every one who passed could not help noticing the flowers. There was a big forest behind the palace with lofty trees. Trees were sloping down to the deep blue sea. The great ships sailed under the shadow of the tree branches. In one of these trees lived a nightingale, who sang so beautifully that everyone would stop and listen.
What does the year 1844 represent in the story?
The silver bells were tied to the _________.
Who sang the beautiful songs?
What was the emperor's palace built of?
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Felicity Huffman has agreed to plead guilty for her role in the college bribery scam.
The actress is among 14 parents who on Monday agreed to admit to the charges. The next step in Huffman's case is a plea hearing which is yet to be set. She will then be sentenced.
The maximum sentence for her charges is 20 years in prison, three years supervised release and a fine of $250,000.
She was charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud for paying someone to alter her 18-year-old daughter's SAT results in December 2017.
Other parents, namely Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli, are yet to make deals or enter pleas.
In a statement, Huffman said she had 'betrayed' her oldest daughter, Sofia, by paying $15,000 to have someone else alter her SAT results to improve her chances of getting into a good school.
'I am pleading guilty to the charge brought against me by the United States Attorney's Office.
'I am in full acceptance of my guilt and with deep regret and shame over what I have done, I accept full responsibility for my actions and will accept the consequences that stem from those actions.
'I am ashamed of the pain I have caused my daughter, my family, my friends, my colleagues, and the educational community.
'I want to apologize to them and, especially, I want to apologize to the students who work hard every day to get into college, and to their parents who make tremendous sacrifices to support their children and do so honestly.
'My daughter knew absolutely nothing about my actions and in my misguided and profoundly wrong way, I have betrayed her.
'This transgression towards her and the public I will carry for the rest of my life.
'My desire to help my daughter is no excuse to break the law or engage in dishonesty,' it read.
It is the first public remark she has made on the scandal since her March arrest.
The 13 others who also agreed to plead guilty are Jane Buckingham, Gordon Caplan, Robert Flaxman, Agustin Huneeus, Marjorie Klapper, Gregory Abbott, Marcia Abbott, Peter Jan Sartorio, Stephen Semprevivo, Devin Sloane and Bruce and Davina Isackson.
Fifty people were charged in total.
Coach Michael Center, 54, of Austin, Texas, who was the head coach of men’s tennis at the University of Texas at Austin, also agreed to plead guilty.
Huffman paid $15,000 to have someone alter he daughter Sofia's SAT scores in December 2017.
It was one of two ways the scheme's mastermind, Rick Singer, operated.
They planned it over the phone after meeting at her house and their conversations were detailed in the indictment.
'According to [Singer], he advised Huffman and her spouse that he “controlled” a testing center, and could arrange for a third party to purport to proctor their daughter’s SAT and secretly correct her answers afterwards,' it read.
The test was in West Hollywood and was one of two where Singer had administrators on his payroll.
The first step to achieving their goal was to convince the board to let Sofia sit her exam with extra time, over two days.
That allowed her to take it in the designated test center.
They ran into trouble when her school tried to insist on providing their own proctor, something Huffman also described in emails.
'Ruh Ro! Looks like [my daughter’s high school] wants to provide own proctor,' she wrote.
They ironed it out and arranged for her to sit the test at their desired location.
Once she was finished with her December 3 test, the 'proctor' - Mark Riddell - looked at her exam and changed wrong answers to boost her score.
She achieved a 1420, 400 points more than she had in her practice test.
Sofia is still a teenager and is not thought to have left yet for college.
It is not known where she was planning on applying but schools including USC, the worst afflicted by the scandal, have said they will not allow anyone in that is connected to the indictment.
Huffman paid $15,000 to have someone change Sofia's answers once she was finished with her SAT exam.
She considered using the scheme again for her younger daughter Georgia but decided against it in February 2018.
Her husband William H. Macy has not been arrested or charged. He did not join her when she made her most recent court appearance.
Instead, she entered the court holding hands with an unidentified man.
Macy was pictured on Los Angeles on Monday while his wife's intended plea was announced.
The fraudulent scheme was run by Rick Singer, 58.
He collected more than $25million in bribes from parents who were desperate to get their children into prestigious schools.
He either got them in by having someone alter their test answers or, in some cases, sit the entire test for them, or by pretending they were star athletes being recruited for their sporting ability.
To pull it off, he bribed sports coaches at various colleges who went along with fake athletics profiles and college test administrators who looked the other way while the tests were manipulates. He is facing 60 years behind bars.
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A town in the Zarasai district (Ezherena, formerly the Novo-Aleksandrovsk district).
Antaliepte is located in the northeast of Lithuania, on the banks of the Sventoji River, approximately 25 km from Zarasai, the district's city, and about the same distance from the Utena train station. The Dvinsk Vilnius road is a few kilometers from the town. The town is known for its exceptionally beautiful scenery; it is surrounded from all sides by hills covered with pine forests. There were not many villages around the town.
Apparently Antaliepte was built in the 16th century. Carmelite monks who built a monastery on the banks of the river founded the town; and in 1675 it was already designated as a town. Between 1732-1760 a church was built in the town in Baroque design. In 1832 the Carmelite monastery was closed and in 1893 it became a Pravoslav monastery. The monastery's main function was to spread the Pravoslavian religion among Lithuanians and Poles who were Catholics.
In the beginning of May 1898, a fire broke out in Antaliepte. Many Jewish homes were burned and many Jews lost their property. The Jews of Dusetos, a nearby town, collected clothes and money for the Jews of Antaliepte.
In 1905, during the revolution, Antaliepte had assemblies and demonstrations against the Czar's rule. In 1919 a revolutionary council in the name of the Bolshevik rule, was formed in the town. After the war ended, the town had weekly market days (on Mondays) and two fairs a year.
The town had a flourmill that was powered by water (the mill belonged to a Jew), a dairy that was powered by steam, and a factory for processing fish. Next to the fish factory was the first government store for fish. In 1924 an electrical power station was built in Antaliepte.
Prior to WWI, Antaliepte had between 80100 Jewish families (approximately 400 people). Among them were 10 shopkeepers. The main source of livelihood was the great Pravoslavian monastery, which had about 100 nuns. The Jews who served the monastery's inhabitants were grocers, millers, builders who repaired what needed repair, and other artisans. Among the artisans in the town were: 3 4 shoemakers, 2 3 millers, 2 3 engravers, 1 tanner and 1 tailor. The town had no factories. It had a machine for brushes. There were also a few peddlers in the town. In the past there were no weekly market days or yearly fairs. Most of the Jews in the town lived in poverty.
The Jews of Antaliepte, as in the other towns in Lithuania, followed a traditional and religious way of life. The town had one Beit Midrash (made of wood) and two Shteeblach (single: shtibel, a small prayer house) of Hassidim. The town was coined as The Rabbinate of Antaliepte Due to the town's small size, the Rabbis who served in Antaliepte did not receive a salary and they made their living by selling yeast, citrons and other religious necessities. These activities were their sole means of livelihood and they lived in great poverty because they could hardly make a living from this.
In WWI, during the German occupation, the situation deteriorated even further; the nuns fled and the military turned the monastery into its headquarters. Nevertheless, all the Jews remained in the town (except two families who moved into the interior of Russia).
After WWI, during the period of Independent Lithuania (1918 1940), the life of the Jews changed. Many of them left and immigrated to South Africa, the United States, and Argentina, and the number of Jews in the town decreased. The youth also left the town due to economic reasons and also because they could not foresee their future in a small town. Quite a few of them went to Eretz-Yisrael. The Jews who remained in the town made their living from small commerce.
But the main changes occurred in the education of the children: although some of them still studied in Hadarim (single: Heder) that were in the town, some parents nevertheless send their children to study in other towns (during the Czarist rule some children already studied in the Russian national school that was not far from Antaliepte) and their life style became somewhat more modern. In 1937 Antaliepte had a Hebrew school.
According to the 1931 Lithuania census, Jews in Antaliepte owned a cloth shop and a heating accessories shop. A few Jews worked in agriculture and one was, as mentioned above, the owner of the only flourmill in the town. At that time there were in the town 15 artisans: 5 butchers, 4 blacksmiths, 2 carpenters, 2 tailors and 1 shoemaker. In 1939 there were 5 telephones in the town, none of them belonged to Jews.
2 people voted in 1929 in the 16th Zionist Congress elections, but in 1933, during the 18th Zionist Congress elections, 15 people voted: 10 voted for the Eretz-Yisrael Haoveded party, 3 gave their votes to the Mizrahi, and 2 to the General Zionists. During the 19th Zionist Congress (1935), the number of voters increased to 114; 59 voted for the Eretz-Yisrael Haoveded party and 55 for Mizrahi. There was also a branch of Hashomer Hatzair in Antaliepte.
Among the Rabbis who served in the town we should remember: Rabbi Yehuda-Yudel from Antaliepte (during the second half of the 19th century), who was a great scholar, deeply involved with his congregation, and was renowned in the region for his scholarship and wisdom. The last Rabbis who served in Antaliepte were Rabbi Zalman-Tuvia Markovitz, Rabbi Yitzhak Nosel (Nasel), and Rabbi Yehuda Levin. Rabbi Zalman-Tuvia Markovitz perished in the 9th Fort in Kaunas together with his son Haim-Shimshon, author of Devar Hachaim and the grandson of Moshe Markovitz, the shoemaker and bibliographer (see the entry on Gruzdziai). Rabbi Haim-Shimshon had a phenomenal memory and was known in the Yeshiva world for his great knowledge. Rabbi Yitzhak Nosel and Rabbi Yehuda Levin also perished in the Holocaust.
In 1940 Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union and the Jews of Antaliepte were forced to adjust to the new Sovietization conditions.
The Germans entered the town on June 26, 1941, 4 days after they invaded the Soviet Union. As soon as the Germans arrived, Lithuanian members of the Marksmen Union (Sauliai) got together and began torturing the Jews. Jonas Mausilauskas, the son of the local bell-ringer, and peasants from the nearby villages, were especially capable in their ability to torture the Jews.
Shortly after the Germans arrived, all the Jews were gathered in the square next to the church and they began to undergo tortures. Yitzhak Berlesky, one of the respected merchants in the town, was forced to run back and forth all day from the square to the river while holding two buckets filled with water until he collapsed. The healthy and fit Jews were divided among the peasants in the area and had to do forced labor on their farms. One of the peasants, whose farm was 2 km from the town, also took quite a few Jews to work, but he tortured them and kept them in inhuman conditions, did not give them anything to eat, and so utterly brutalized them that none of them returned from there.
At the end of August 1941, all the Jews were assembled and led to the Paziemiai forest. There, on August 26, in a place about 3 km southeast of the village of Baltriskiai, and 500 meters from the Deguciai Dusetos road, the Jews of Antaliepte, together with the Jews of Ezherena and other Jews from the area, 2,569 men, women and children, were murdered. The names of the Lithuanian murderers are kept in the Yad Vashem Archives. According to a Lithuanian source, a few of the Jews who were expelled from Antaliepte by the Germans received help from a few Lithuanians in the nearby village of Padortz.
The Lithuanians did not allow the murdered to rest in peace even after the war; the gold seekers continued to come for years afterwards and search the graves for gold or some other valuables.
Among the few young Jews from Antaliepte who, in the summer of 1941, succeeded to escape from the Germans into the Soviet Union, were10 that served in the Lithuanian Division and in other units of the Red Army. Kalman Shur received the highest decoration, Hero of the Soviet Union. He moved permanently to Israel in the 1970's.
Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, 0-57 file A, testimony by Moshe Barkan (based on Yehuda Levinas' story).
Bakalczuk-Felin, M., Yizkor book of Rakishok and Environs, Johannesburg, 1952, pages 346-349.
Hamelitz [The Advocate] (St. Petersburg), 20.5.1898.
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What factors determined the use of film as a television technology in the development of aesthetics in the action-adventure television genre of the 1960s? The use of film on television, instead of in the cinema, led to a debate about ‘technical quality’. Celluloid’s superiority to video gave rise to a cultural understanding of TV aesthetics that could be built on notions of fashion, art, and conspicuous consumption. The action-adventure genre of the 1960s deployed these pop aesthetics and a comic strategy to appeal to an audience fascinated by glamour and youth, and amused by the ideological eccentricity of The Avengers and The Prisoner . The absurd narratives of both of these series refused to different degrees to engage with the real world, but The Prisoner represented an attempt to produce entertainment that relied more on notions of ‘seriousness’. The two series reflect the way television, with its endless dialectic of variation/replication, continued to produce new developments in the action-adventure genre.
Inherently like film, yet antithetical to it. Contradictory theories abound regarding what television can and cannot do, about what it does best. In the early years British television was governed by Reithian values of 'public service' and 'high culture'. But the emergence of a transatlantic market in television programmes in the 1950s — together with the use of celluloid — opened up the televisual in Britain. This process will be examined by focusing on two examples of the action adventure genre, The Avengers and The Prisoner. The article will explore the material industrial processes involved in the creation of a new set of conventions in the genre.
When Radio City Music Hall in New York was opened with a seating capacity of 6200 by RKO in December 1932, it became the world's largest motion picture house and marked the acme of film's development as a big screen theatrical presentation.
By the mid-1950s, corporate interests in Hollywood had their eyes on the potential of filmed drama on the small screen. By now, the contrast between the relative poverty of the studio-based 'live' image and the potential of film was readily apparent. Live plays were often characterised by disaster striking in many forms, from the leading man falling sick to the side of the camera falling off and hitting the floor during a whispered love scene.7 In the U.S., shows were sponsored by advertisers and each live play typically had three acts interrupted by the sponsor's 'message'. The advertisement was often in the form of a slickly-edited piece of film and the quality of the image and the pace of the editing reflected badly on the studio-bound play that contained it. The new television industry was slowly being positioned in relation to its significant economic 'others' – the advertising industry, and later, the motion-picture industry. The dominant interests in television's commercial development had succeeded in producing a synthesis of old radio's programming and merchandising goals with the persuasive tools of Hollywood's film-making, ensuring that the new television medium would not ignore sales-making opportunities by ignoring the value of 'entertainment'. The major Hollywood studios, encouraged by the advertising industry, turned over much of their spare studio capacity to making the filmed action adventure series to meet the networks' seemingly insatiable demand.
A report by Philip Mackie on the widespread use of film on American television appeared in Sight and Sound in 1954. Mackie made a useful distinction between two styles of TV film. One school of producers tried to reproduce on film the virtues and limitations of the 'live' show, perhaps best exemplified in Groucho Marx's comedy. The other school 'made their film look like films, with chases and running fights shot against location exteriors'.9 Such films would continue to proliferate and the mid-1950s saw a big expansion of filmed western series, the entry of Alfred Hitchcock into telefilm production, and in Britain, the opening up of ITV, whose sharpest entrepreneurs quickly recognised the economic possibilities of using film. ABC's Robin Hood was an early British example of the quickly-filmed action series that copied the American technique of industrial television production using film: repeatable and exportable, it became a profitable commodity.
The use of celluloid in television opened out the televisual experience and helped to rescue television drama from its theatrical affiliations (where it would have continued to be a relay device for a pre-existing, live performance). The popularity of the western in America, and even more so the action adventure genre in Britain — in series such as ITC's Danger Man, The Prisoner, and ABC/Thames Television's The Avengers — suggests that film medium gave to early television audiences a sense of the 'epic' and a feeling of the width of cinema that was in sharp contrast to the confined world of the 'live' studio drama. The sense of scale was achieved because it was inscribed into the iconography of the genre as it developed. Patrick McGoohan's protagonist, John Drake, in Danger Man was frequently called upon to intervene in the internal politics of islands in the Caribbean, and in the episode Colonel Rodriguez (1960), he facilitates the release of an American from the island of Montique. The settings and place names could carry resonances of the genre's epic space. However, what was evoked was an imaginative rather than an actual geography. The imaginative space was evoked through every aspect of costume, set design and mise-en-scene, no matter the budget restrictions.
To understand how the debate on celluloid aesthetics on television in Britain took on a particular character, it is necessary to consider the relationship between the technology of film and the technicians using it. Although television is an electronic medium, it has often relied heavily on the film for a large proportion of its programme origination. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, with the ascendancy of video, a variety of questions around an implicit hierarchy of mediums appeared. Film began to look like a messy, outdated mode. It is reasonable to ask why it had not disappeared altogether. However, film appears to have fulfilled the needs of the programme makers, and it continued to be used, not only for technical and economic reasons, but also for aesthetic and cultural ones. Frank Watts, cameraman on television's Hammer House of Horrors, has stated that atmospheric shadows, silhouettes, movement of both camera and cast, and lighting levels, are largely responsible for the success of a good horror movie. Shooting on video, on the other hand, appeared as a real limit to creative potential.
Much has been said and written about the look of images on film. Attempts have been made not only to define it, but also to reproduce it by using videotape. It is doubtful that there is any one factor that produces the 'film look'; rather, it is the product of techniques and technology that have evolved over a period of more than one hundred years.
Stuart Hall in the 1970s asked whether there was a formal aesthetic which could embrace the heterogeneous contents and occasions of television within a single coherent language. 'Despite its massive heterogeneity, there does seem to us a single, coherent language of television to which all its different practices can be referred. The language is, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from the cinema.'11 Although television continually cannibalises and hybridises the content and presentational forms of other media and events or occasions, the universal set of practices by which this heterogeneous raw material was transformed into television was a set of conventions that, according to Hall, derived from the cinema.
For Hall, there was the danger of regarding television as unmediated, because it appeared that what made television distinctive was the relatively low level transformation of the bulk of its contents, and the very high proportion of television's raw material that was itself the content of another medium, e.g. live theatre or a cinema film. He blamed this on the lack of a 'social aesthetic' on television because of the institution's often innate conservatism. He believed that television did not lack an intrinsic form, but that its powers to transform its content were subjected to a sort of collective repression by the staff involved in the creation of television programmes. For Hall, television's use of a set of conventions taken from the cinema was on one level an acknowledgement that they shared many similarities, but also a condemnation of what he believed was television's formal underdevelopment.
However, it can be argued that television does not represent a different medium, but should be understood rather as a continuum with cinema. As such, it can be best described as a single medium that has undergone a constant process of renewal since the invention of moving pictures. The modes of transmission may have changed from the theatrical to the domestic, but the cinema viewer has become a television viewer as programmes have been reduced in terms of size and scope but expanded in terms of information and activity. Instead of assuming cinema's pre-eminence, as the bearer of a greater cultural capital, it can be argued that false distinctions are often made between cinema and television, and that there has often been a convergence in their development. The latter has involved a two-way process in which the existing modes of representation were updated in both cinema and television to secure further relevance within moving images.
The creation of a specifically televisual rhetoric using celluloid for a domestic rather than a theatrical cinema can be assessed by examining how far the issue of 'technical quality' — the degree of control over the visual style — took second place to the scripting of action and narration in a show such as The Avengers. In 1967, The Avengers was at the point when it ceased to be shot on video and in black and white and was updated by the 'new medium' of colour and 35mm film. The decision to shoot on film led to a more frequent use of exterior shots, and production teams coming to the series sought to create a 'film look' that was more artistically pleasing in the quality entertainment/drama field.
The 'hard work' of making a genre series shot on film needs to be understood in relation to the industrial and economic context of the series. An examination of the conditions of production of the series (rather than, say, an analysis of the role of professional ideologies in the organisation of a television production) will help to clarify the situation here. Firstly, it will tell us about the existing ideologies with which the production team were concerned, and secondly, it can also expose the contradictions between an ideological project conceived by the programme makers and the final programme as it is read and consumed by audiences.
This operates against the notion of literary works conceived of as 'created' and 'finished' products and towards the analysis of literary texts as they are re-inscribed in a variety of different institutional and ideological contexts. Studying a particular text does not require elevating it and isolating it from its history of productive consumption, but looking at everything about it, 'everything which has collected on it, become attached to it – like shells on a rock by the seashore forming a whole incrustation.'13 In other words, the production of a fictional work is a process, and the labour involved in that process can transform the ideology held by its producers and may be symbolised within the finished text. The ideological is given a visible form within a programme and the conditions of production reformulate its particular articulation.
A fictional work is a process, and the collaborative nature of film-making can allow a solution to a technical problem that can lead unexpectedly to the creation of a scene content that is artistically more interesting than that envisaged by the script. Of course, the degree of difference could amount to a complete break from the script, but Hume makes it clear that a crew's overriding purpose was to maintain the integrity of the script, and to serve it rather than alter or replace it. Nevertheless, the diligence of the 'professional' crew should be seen as opening out the televisual experience as much as the use of film as a technology. One reason for setting up a film company in the 1960s to produce for television was the degree of flexibility in working practices that it made possible. For the producers of The Avengers the experience, first at ABC and later Thames Television, demonstrated that freelance working could produce a change in the social relations of production, which can affect the final textual meanings that are being offered in a programme. Instead of the often alienated workforce of permanently staffed technicians in the television studios who were unlikely to work consistently on a long-running drama series, Thames' employees producing The Avengers had the chance of a closer involvement with the programme as a whole and crew members were rarely unwilling to work overtime because they were more actively involved in a production.
By the end of the third season in 1964, The Avengers was on the verge of a major technological change. Until that point , the series had been recorded on videotape, which was difficult to edit, and so the performance had often to be done in a single take with only a handful of exterior scenes shot on film. These technical limitations were overcome by the use of interior sets, close shots and a visual style that used low-key lighting and expressionist angles to create an unreal world that was marked off as different from the realism of a near-documentary series like Z Cars. For the fourth series in 1965, however, The Avengers moved onto film, which was more expensive, but allowed a greater use of location filming, exterior sequences and a more expressive use of visual style. The reason for the change was in large measure due to the desire to sell the series in America where filmed entertainment had been established much more firmly than in Britain.
The move to film necessitated changes in the production base of the series and its personnel. If there was a moment when The Avengers can be said to have changed decisively, this was it. The production base of The Avengers moved to British National Studios at Elstree. Julian Wintle, a former film editor turned producer who had co-founded Independent Artists in 1958 and whose credits included Tiger Bay (1959) and This Sporting Life (1963), was brought in as supervising producer. Yet the credos of actual personalities such as Wintle and Thomas were not as important as a set of complex 'signature' codes that suggests both authorial and cultural importance. From the critical tradition of authorship came the still-dominant popular view that individual, artistic directives were at the heart of the creative enterprise in film. However, the personalities of each studio in the classical era of Hollywood were not a priori to the film, but added in because of the controlling oversight of the studio bosses.15 This worked because specific production modes distinguished each studio. Similarly, ITC and ABC/Thames utilised a 'house' mode of production; they also shared 'house styles' with other filmed entertainment on the lot.
Television programmes are industrial products produced for a mass audience, and therefore the study of popular TV demands that the critic recognises that programmes do not stand alone, but are produced and consumed in runs and sets, groupings that may be understood in terms of generic qualities, or the casting of stars, or shared iconographic elements. Rather than the discrete programmes, it is the continuities across groups of films that the audience recognises, and that become the principal focus of critical attention. The primary object of study is not the single programme, but the series that was shaped by several factors; occupational ideologies that influenced the use of film on television; the cultural understanding of television aesthetics and technology. Steve Neale has argued that 'genres cannot be systematically characterised and differentiated from one another' on the basis of abstracted formal properties — a set of codes and conventions — as if such properties 'constituted specific generic essences'.16 Rather, he argues, genres can more usefully be viewed as sets of expectations through which the possibilities of understanding a text are organised. Such expectations are neither lodged within nor produced by the properties of individual texts or even groups of texts viewed in isolation. The determination as to which genre rules will be operative in organising the possibilities of reading is thus linked to a production culture, rather than a fixed set of conventions within a text.
As television production moved to involve an international market, there was a growing Americanization of the action adventure genre. This relied on the industrialization of the aesthetics of film that had happened in America. In The Avengers the comic strategy of the series also operated to recruit new audiences. The parodying of some aspects of post-imperial ideologies such as consumerism and fashion, combined with the buttressing of others, was not only endorsed by British audiences, but also allowed The Avengers to engage with international audiences. This, in turn, fed into American views of the British class system as an outdated anachronism, and served as an amusing ideological eccentricity when used in the service of the West (i.e. the United States). In this way The Avengers can be understood as linking together American and British audiences.
The importation of the American filmed television series whetted British audiences' appetites for this style of entertainment, and the imposition of quotas on foreign material that could be shown on British television stimulated the production of the filmed series in the UK. It was Lew Grade who first began to finance the production of the TV film series under the BFPA (British Film Producers Association) agreements, after convincing the unions that this would not affect the production of television programmes within ATV (Associated Television), but would allow him to break into the American market, and provide an additional source of employment. After his TV series Danger Man was shown successfully in the US, but not networked, Grade sold his first TV series to America in 1965. The Saint, which had cost ATV £50,000 a show to make, was bought by NBC, and was the first British-made TV series to be shown on the American network. It ran in the US for 117 episodes. Meanwhile, in 1965, Howard Thomas, at ABC, switched The Avengers from tape to film and scored a notable success, including an American network sale.
The main aesthetic that appeared in the new filmed version of The Avengers was the pop ethic. By then the action adventure genre had become the dominant fictional form of the 1960s pop ethic, because the genre had become additionally coded with discourses related to tourism, conspicuous consumption and sexual pleasure. In particular, the action adventure successfully appropriated the new pop aesthetic of the designer gadget. The use of the gadget, omnipresent in The Avengers, Danger Man and The Prisoner marks a radical break with previous conceptions of modern technology and instead, the micro-electronics of the gadget foreshadowed a future in which advanced technologies were to be consumer products on a mass market. Pop art became the freeing of the art of technology from its military-industrial connotations. The gadget was deployed without brute force, but coolly in the hands of a professional individual.
The gadget is designed for a precise, functional use and plays an important role in the accomplishment of the mission of the protagonist. The use of miniaturised, concealed cameras, listening devices, tape recorders and closed-circuit video enabled Drake, the main character in Danger Man, to gather information that would otherwise be beyond the resources of a lone agent. The deployment of gadgets allowed the secret agent to overcome the passivity of his fellow lone operator, the private eye. In Danger Man, the information giving role is transferred to the gadget, freeing encounters with others for ideological rather than narrative ends, and enabling the planting and monitoring of electronic bugs to become an 'active' process which slows down the narrative to the strains of cool bass lines and jagged harpsichord notes. The series testifies to an art/technology combination.
In the episode Parallel Lines Sometimes Meet, there is a condensation of the pop alliance between the worlds of fashion and advanced technology. Drake is always impeccably dressed, his clothes barely ruffled even after fights and chases: most episodes could also be read, at least in part, as a prolonged demonstration by a male model. At the same time, he is also a skilled manipulator of gadgets and instruments. As well as his technical skills, his missions also demand a vast general cultural understanding in order to appear convincing in his various impersonations. Drake thus assembles within his character, the roles of technician, artist and intellectual that form different aspects of the new middle class. The art/technology mix is also a blend of the old and the new. Drake is a carefully crafted design of the new, modern person, running a line of continuity between yesteryear's spy of morality and patriotism, and the ironic view of the old that is receptive to the new. He is emblematic of the modern individual, the spy of technical and social skills that can avoid having his cover blown by not making mistakes.
Pop irony and moral seriousness are constantly in tension, the signs of consumption and technology straining against older values. The positioning shots of London and other capitals are a sign of pop's cosmopolitanism in which the foreign is able to signify the modern and the progressive. Continental values are similarly marked as signs of stylish consumption in Danger Man. Drake's presence in foreign cities, rather than reinforcing his Britishness, is a chance for him to show off his cosmopolitanism and his ease in another culture. By the end of the 1960s, the action adventure genre had fissured into two distinct forms. On the one hand, filmed entertainment of playboys who carried out vague missions in tourist playgrounds against mysterious international organisations; on the other, the ultra-realist genre and the return to a 'live' studio-bound mode in Callan (1967-74), in which unglamorous, shadowy characters went about their way in a morally ambiguous world.
The Avengers and The Prisoner were both nominally espionage-related dramas, and both deconstruct the spy genre, though in different ways and with different intentions. They incorporated sci-fi elements, helped to create the hybrid genre, spy-fi, to feature strange robotic menaces, and strayed from the standards of their genre as they became politically charged and consistently satirical.
The achievement of The Avengers was to contain within itself the pendulum swing from realist aesthetics based on a 'live' mode of television to surrealism based on notions of entertainment associated with film. This demonstrated the flexibility of the television series as a form and the centrality of its style to the way it was marketed. So, for example, a series like The Avengers could reach a key demographic for advertisers — 18 to 35 year olds — by offering entertainment that was sensitive to all these different demands, and which exploited television as a medium and film as a technology within television.
During the 1960s the primary point of cultural reference for a television programme remained the first moment of transmission. Unlike cinema, television programming was heavily tied to specific times that were used to construct a sense of intimacy with a domestic audience. Consequently, regardless of the genre or the fact that it was 'popular' or 'serious', programmes usually made reference to a common present moment and involved programme makers and audiences with shared assumptions. For example, the representation of fashion in The Avengers, which became more evident in series four, was manifestly of the moment. The Emma Peel outfit was the first publicly available clothing collection designed for TV and the retail sales it inspired followed a show at the Courtaulds Fashion Theatre in August 1965. Diana Rigg would soon be associated with her iconic target beret, and the signs and images that denoted conspicuous consumption were used to place the characters of Emma Peel and Steed and enable the audience to relate to them as being emblematic of pop style, youth and glamour. It is worth stressing that this everydayness of TV, where references are constantly being made to a common present moment, can present additional problems of textual and generic interpretation that may not exist to the same degree in cinema.
One of the pop elements deployed by The Avengers was a series of inter-textual references and quotations from other media, often referred to as 'bricolage'. The show was more rigorously 'pop' than Danger Man, which presented 'pop' style within a framework of political dilemmas. Foregrounding the pop obsession with designed surfaces, later episodes of The Avengers eliminated all trace of psychologically realistic characters from its content. These features were an integral part of another style of series that began in America at the beginning of the 1960s, exemplified by The Man From Uncle, which eschewed the 'realistic' illustration of social and psychological truths in favour of glamour and consumption. The focus on surface appeared thematically and we see 'speed' and 'modernity' revealed in a number of forms. Certain clothes become 'as fast and slick as a jet plane'.17 The reduction or flattening out of the idea into real objects was integral to pop style, for instance, in the episode, The Interrogators, an undercover informant is shot dead while kicking a football (bucket).
Psychological identification with characters was dismissed as unsophisticated. The pop gaze established a new regime for the television series, no longer based on the outside world but on the higher reality of design. The development of modern consumerism meant learning to pay attention to detail. This type of fetishism invested objects with systems of signification, and the inability to read surfaces correctly amounted to a lack of 'sophistication' on the part of the audience.
With The Avengers, the enjoyment for some people is tied to the fact that less sophisticated viewers will view it as alien. The quality of the text worked as a social marker rather than providing an objective basis. The pure gaze of the cultivated, sophisticated arbiters of culture defined itself by its opposition to the simplicities of the popular. The analysis of television drama as both a quality and popular form opened up a means of linking the aesthetics of television drama to the dialectics of sense-making and taste-making. In Britain, Stuart Hall argued that the general rule is that the more serious or 'high culture' a dramatic production is, the less it will be conceived for television and the more television will borrow forms from other media. Television will either transmit a 'serious' play as a piece of theatre or else transmit a popular piece of drama as a piece of cinema instead of finding a form more appropriate to television. However, The Avengers challenges this simple dichotomy. The distinction between a popular and the high aesthetic was bound up with the struggle between a populist, and classless American television that came to be associated with filmed entertainment, and a much more class-based British form of television with aspirations to art and seriousness more associated with 'liveness' and the single play on television. It is precisely because The Avengers exemplifies technological changes in the television industry, moving from 'live' performance to film and from black and white to colour in 1965-67, that it also exemplifies stylistic changes that occurred in the action adventure genre in television from a low-key, realist mode of representation to a more colourful, fantastic style strongly influenced by pop art and fashions of the time. It is as a product of the 'high sixties' that The Avengers is most celebrated. As such, it made visible the ideologies of consumerism, in the process 'opening out' the televisual experience on celluloid.
With film recording, television programmes began to acquire the definitiveness and fixity that is normally associated with a separate text, and repeats of viewers' favourite programmes came to occupy a significant part of the schedule. With repetition, recorded programmes also acquired the status of commodities or 'tradeable goods'.19 Filmed drama, and eventually, the new technology of magnetic recording after 1958 meant an enormous expansion of television's programme base. Stockpiled recordings could be used not only for delayed or repeated transmission but as goods that could be traded among broadcasters.
With its foregrounding of signs of expensive consumerism and conspicuous consumption — the cars, clothes and champagne drinking — The Avengers was well placed to become a highly commodified text, taking full advantage of the new market in programmes. Not only could the series be traded among broadcasters; it was also the first television series to employ an 'exploitation manager' to sell product placement to companies anxious to have their commodities showcased. Props such as Emma Peel's sporty Lotus Elan were signifiers of modernity, just as Steed's vintage green Bentley reinforced the character's links with other fictional agents and advertising totems such as James Bond. The prominence accorded to designer clothes and other consumer items was an integral element of the series' production strategy. The Avengers was 'packaged' to present an image of England as a place of high-living and sophistication that would appeal to affluent overseas audiences who might wish to invest in British consumer culture.
In the mid-1960s, at the time of programmes such as The Avengers and The Prisoner, popular culture was enjoying unprecedented prestige and influence. 'The characters often had elaborate biographies, couched in a weirdly serio-comic style, the fruit of earnest script conferences,' records one contemporary journalist.20 Meanwhile, on television, programmes like Armchair Theatre, and the Wednesday Play, and topical magazine programmes such as Panorama and Huw Wheldon's Monitor continued to be shaped by social realism — and the still prevalent Reithian patrician principle of public service broadcasting. The popular genre of the action adventure series with its various sub-categories was all too often dismissed as imitative of American television, and lacking the social realist import or the literary pedigree seen as the hallmark of the 'best' (meaning the most critically respectable), British television. When a popular genre did receive some critical acclaim, it was not done on the basis of its own generic characteristics, but through its perceived relation to the realist tradition (as in the case of Doctor Who).
The cultural status of the action adventure genre is controlled by attitudes to high and popular culture, and what constitutes art and quality. The Avengers, like many popular shows, was not taken seriously by most television critics of the 1960s, and was believed to be ephemeral because it privileged style over content and refused to engage with the 'real' world. However, Kingsley Amis suggested a different way of appreciating The Avengers that was not determined by conventional notions of narrative logic. For Amis, the absurd narrative was a sign of a sophisticated production strategy.21 In fact, the desire to avoid social reality was a deliberate production strategy of the series from 1965 onwards. Bruce Merry argues that while 'espionage fiction trips over itself to play the game of culture', it does so only to debunk the game, to deflate the signs of culture and knowledge which the text displays precisely by foregrounding them as a 'paraded literariness'.22 According to this view, a show such as The Avengers could be read as a subtle anti-literalising device, a parading of signs of value which reveals them as valueless, and furthermore calls into question the making of signs.
The Prisoner was broadcast in 1967-68 and ran for only seventeen episodes. It centres on a secret agent who resigns from his job and is then abducted and held in a mysterious 'village' where the authorities try and make him reveal the reason for his resignation.
Contemporaries did not know what to make of The Prisoner. When it began it was welcomed as a bold and innovative experiment that offered a different entertainment pattern from the formulaic norms of popular television. However, the appeal to aesthetic value was linked to a strong emphasis on the generic elements of The Prisoner as an action adventure series.
It adopted in many ways the generic conventions of the 1960s television spy series found in earlier series such as Danger Man and The Avengers. These series pitted their spy protagonists against villainous individuals and organisations, combining elements of the detective and thriller genres in the use of intriguing narratives and action-packed denouements. In the first episode, The Prisoner promised to fulfil all of these generic expectations. The opening credits showed McGoohan driving into London, entering a building and resigning. The central London setting, the costuming of McGoohan as Number Six, and the man he resigns to in a dark suit suggested a government agency. A shot of a vast underground filing system confirms this is a powerful and large, secret organisation. The exotic location to which Number Six is kidnapped to is also in keeping with the conventional use of exotic locations in Danger Man. However, although The Prisoner sets up these generic expectations, they are consistently undercut and unfulfilled. The identity of the organisation from which Number Six resigned is never revealed, and references to the spy genre are only implied rather than asserted. The Village that the prisoner is taken to may be run by a villainous organisation or by a government. Number Six may be a spy concealing information. The Village may be set in a foreign locale, but this is never confirmed.
In the 1960s, television was still a relatively new form of mass entertainment. Although it had become a force in its own right, the medium had not yet become self-reflexive. Few programmes addressed the nature and effects of television itself. The Prisoner was the first television series to be about television. It explored the technical and expressive possibilities of the medium, and probed the viewer's status as watcher. The portrayal of technology was anything but attractive and consumer-oriented – a condemnation of technology-oriented Western materialism. The essential purpose of The Prisoner was to raise questions about the relationship between self and society in the technocracy of the global village.
In Danger Man, and particularly The Prisoner, McGoohan's professional identification with the television industry was evident in his very 'visual signature' and use of the latest television technology. The earlier classic realism of Danger Man had been overwhelmed by the over-proliferation of authorship. However, the institutional rather than the personal or biographical logic of authorship in production became the key factors here. Television needs to be viewed as an industrial — rather than artistic — practice and a television production could demonstrate authorship to be unavoidably collective, and contested.
In some ways, The Avengers and The Prisoner both used an aesthetics that occupied a space beyond ideology, that of pure pleasure. The extreme self-conscious use of style attributed to both these series in the late 1960s, is explained not only through reference to individual aesthetic or cultural influences, but through attention to the transformation of the TV industry into a new transatlantic form of entertainment that depended on celluloid television. Television is a process that brings the social and technological together. The notion of ideology as the chief mediator between the televisual and the non-televisual which implies that television technology is ideologically complicit assumes that there is such a thing as a neutral technology. Although technology is not ideological in itself, it is ideological in its use in specific historical situations, and therefore, an historical examination of a technological development is required.25 Television's specificity cannot simply be defined in terms of the 'film look' and the similarity of the television genre to film genre, but must be seen in terms of the ideologies used to create such cult shows as The Avengers and The Prisoner, a combination of imperial decline, notions of Britishness, and conspicuous consumption represented by the worlds of fashion and art.
1. John Hill and Martin McLoone (eds), Big Picture, Small Screen (London: John Libbey Media, 1995), p. 62n. Desilu is a production company formed by Lucille Ball (of I Love Lucy fame) and her husband Desi Arnaz – their most famous and recognisable show was Star Trek.
2. Thomas Edison, in 'The World's Columbian Exposition Illustrated', May 1893, quoted in Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961), p. 104.
3. Peter Kramer, 'The Lure of the Big Picture: Film, Television and Hollywood' in Hill and McLoone (eds), Big Picture, Small Screen, p. 16.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Telephonoscope.jpg> [accessed 19 May 2010].
5. Roy Armes, On Video (London: Routledge, 1988) p.34.
6. William Boddy, 'The Shining Centre of the Home: Ontologies of Television in the Golden Age', in Television in Transition, ed. by Phillip Drummond and Richard Paterson (London: BFI, 1986), p.131.
7. Nigel Kneale,' Not Quite So Intimate', Sight and Sound, 28 (1959), 86-88 (p.87).
8. Richard Patterson, 'Introduction', in Television: An International History, ed. By Richard Patterson and Anthony Smith, 2nd edn (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 1–6; p. 3.
9. Philip Mackie, 'Six Hundred Hours a Week', Sight and Sound, 24 (1954), 45–48 (p. 48).
10. Quoted in D. J. Kimbley, 'Survival of celluloid in the age of the microelectronic in television', The Journal of the Royal Television Society (September–October 1981), 21–24 (p. 21).
11. Stuart Hall, 'Television and Culture', Sight and Sound, 45 (1976), 246–252 (p. 249).
12. Pierre Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production, (London: Routledge, 1978), p.49.
13. 'An interview with Pierre Macherey', Red Letters, 5 (1977), 3–9 (p. 7).
14. Alan Hume, 'Filming for Colour Television Series', British Kinematograph Sound and Television, 50 (1968), 3–5 (p. 3, 5).
15. Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System (New York: Random House, 1981).
16. Steve Neale, Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1980), p. 48.
18. Harry Craig, as quoted in Buxton, p. 98.
19. John Caughie, Television Drama: Realism, Modernism and British Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 54.
20. Peter Black, 'Undercover and out of mind except for that Mrs Gale', Daily Mail, 13 October 1962, p. 4.
21. As quoted in TV Times, 9–15 February 1964, p. 7.
22. Bruce Merry, Anatomy of the Spy Thriller (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1977), pp. 162–3.
23. 'New on Southern This Week', TV Times, 30 September – 6 October 1967, p. 4.
24. Alain Carraze and Helene Oswald, The Prisoner (London: Virgin, 1990), p. 53.
25. James Spellerberg, Technology and the Film Industry: The Adoption of Cinemascope (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1980), n.p.
Armes, Roy, On Video (London: Routledge, 1988).
Black, Peter, 'Undercover and Out Of Mind Except for That Mrs Gale', Daily Mail, 13 October 1962, p. 4.
Carraze, Alain, and Oswald, Helene, The Prisoner (London: Virgin, 1990).
Caughie, John, Television Drama: Realism, Modernism and British Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Drummond, Phillip, and Patterson, Richard, Television in Transition (London: BFI, 1986).
Hall, Stuart, 'Television and Culture', Sight and Sound, 45 (1976), 246–52.
Nigel Kneale, 'Not Quite So Intimate', Sight and Sound, 28 (1959), 86–88.
Hendricks, Gordon, The Edison Motion Picture Myth (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961).
Hill, John, and McLoone, Martin (eds), Big Picture, Small Screen (London: John Libbey Media, 1995).
Hume, Alan, 'Filming for Colour Television Series', British Kinematograph Sound and Television, 50 (1968), 3–5.
D. J. Kimbley, 'Survival of celluloid in the age of the microelectronic in television', The Journal of the Royal Television Society (September–October 1981), 21–24 (p. 21).
Mackie, Philip, 'Six Hundred Hours a Week', Sight and Sound, 24 (1954), 45–48.
Macherey, Pierre, A Theory of Literary Production (London: Routledge, 1978).
—— 'An interview with Pierre Macherey', Red Letters, 5 (1977), 3–9.
Merry, Bruce, Anatomy of the Spy Thriller (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1977).
Neale, Steve, Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1980).
Patterson, Richard, 'Introduction', in Television: An International History, ed. by Richard Patterson and Anthony Smith, 2nd edn (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Schatz, Thomas, Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System (New York: Random House, 1981).
Spellerberg, James, Technology and the Film Industry: The Adoption of Cinemascope (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1980), n.p.
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Wong Sun Yue and Ella May Clemmons; Wong Sun Yue's business was wiped out by the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. It was as a refugee from the destruction that he met and married Ella May Clemmons, a wealthy Californian missionary who spoke several Chinese dialects. Ella worked hard and effectively for the Chinese community, living happily enough with Sun Yue until 1922, when she discovered he had another wife in China.
Although marriage is a very private affair for the individuals who participate in it, it also reflects and connects with many complex factors such as economic development, culture differences, political backgrounds and transition of traditions, in both China and the Western world. As a result, an ordinary marriage between a Chinese person and a Westerner is actually an episode in a sociological grand narrative.
Charles Yip Quong & Nellie Towers; Charles Yip was a Vancouver businessman and a nephew of Yip Sang, the dominant figure in Vancouver's Chinatown in the 1890s-1900s. Nellie Towers was a teacher from Nova Scotia.The two married in Boston in1900 and moved to Vancouver in 1900. There, Nellie, an accomplished linguist, served as a midwife to much of the local Chinese population and as an articulate advocate for Chinese Canadian rights.
The marriages occurring between the people of China and those from other countries at the period of time from 1840 – 1949 were the result of free choice on both sides. Compared with the prevailing marriages arranged by parents in China at that time, they could be regarded as the earliest models of free marriages. The Chinese people who married foreigners at that time were those who had the chance to make contact with foreigners. Besides this factor, they usually had special experiences and statuses which dissociated them from mainstream Chinese culture, and, consequently, these transnational marriages were tolerated by public opinion of society in general.
There were four types of intercultural marriage between Chinese and foreigners in modern China.
1.The first type of intercultural marriage between Chinese and foreigners in this period was the overseas marriage of Chinese diplomatic envoys and Chinese students who were studying abroad.
Between the Late Qing dynasty and the First World War, following several defeats in wars with Western countries, the Qing government tried to seek a way to save its regime, and sending students to study abroad formed a major component of its plan. Many Chinese students that went abroad to Europe and the USA married Western women.
Those students dispatched abroad were mostly male. When they reached western countries, as the first batch of Chinese to make contact with western land at that time, which entailed a totally different culture, society, set of customs and conceptualization for male and female compared to China, they experienced an unprecedented ideological shock. Chinese students abroad were attracted by the liveliness and romance of the Western female. One of the first Chinese students studying abroad to marry a Western wife was Yung Wing (Wing probably was the first Chinese to go to study in the USA during the Qing dynasty, and he obtained a degree from Yale University), who studied in the USA, and married an American woman, Miss Kellogg, of Hartford, who died in 1886.
Another case was Kai Ho, who married a British woman. Kai Ho (1859–1914) was a Hong Kong Chinese barrister, physician and essayist in Colonial Hong Kong. He played a key role in the relationship between the Hong Kong Chinese community and the British colonial government. He is mostly remembered as one of the main supporters and teachers of student Sun Yat-sen. He married his British wife, Alice Walkden, in England in 1881 and returned to Hong Kong after his studies. Alice gave birth to a daughter, but died of typhoid fever in Hong Kong in 1884. He later established Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital in her memory.
During the two Opium Wars, China had been sending students to study overseas. After the Sino -Japanese War, China continued to send students to Western countries, and more to Japan. More Chinese students also married foreigners. At the transition between Qing and the Republic of China, especially after the loss of the Sino-Japanese War in 1984, China began to learn from Japan. Many young men went there including Yang Erhe, Wu Dingchang, Jiang Baili, Fang Zong’ao, Yin Rugeng, Guo Muoruo, Tian Han, Tao Jingsun, Su Buqing and Lu Xun whose two bothers both married Japanese women.
Lai Mayi and Empress Dowager CiXi –the left first is wife of Chen Jitong, He had been councillor of legation in Germany, France, Belgium and Denmark, and deputy envoy of legation in France, living in Paris and elsewhere in Europe for nearly 20 years. He was one of the first modern Chinese people to venture into the greater world.
Historical records show that many famous Chinese men including scholars and scientists who had studied and worked in Western countries married Western women and, according to these, more Chinese men married Western women than the converse.
Chinese male intellectuals who married Western wives, were: Dr. Xu Zhongnian (1904-1981, French linguist, writer); Wang Linyi (Sculptor); Zhang Fengju (1895-1996), a great Translator and Professor in Peking University, and Chang Shuhong (1904-1994), Chinese painter.
2. Foreigners in China marrying Chinese, including intercultural marriages in 租界 zū jiè (foreign concessions).
The earliest formal interracial marriage between a local Chinese individual and a Westerner in modern China occurred in March 1862. An American Huaer (Frederick Townsend Ward) married Yang Zhangmei, daughter of Comprador Yang in Shanghai.
The second representative case of interracial marriage was between the American F.L. Hawks Pott, principal of Saint John’s University and Huang Su’e. They married in 1888. Huang Su’e was the daughter of Huang Guangcai, a Chinese priest of the Church of England, who later became the chief principal of Shanghai St. Mary’s Hall.
The most famous interracial marriage in Shanghai was between the Jewish merchant Silas Hardoon and Luo Jialin, in the Autumn of 1886. Luo Jialin herself was mixed race and was born in Jiumudi, Shanghai (between Street Luxiangyuan and Street Dajing). Her father Louis Luo was French while her mother, Shen, was from Minxian, Fujian Province.
The third representative case was that of Cheng Xiuqi. In 1903, it was reported in the newpaper, Zhong Wai Daily, that a female missionary from Norway was doing missionary work round HuoZhou, Shanxi Province. She went on to marry Cheng Xiuqi, one of her believers, based on free courtship and changed her name to Yu Ying.
In the modern leased territories where Chinese and foreigners lived together, there were some interracial marriages, a few of which were formal but many were informal (not registered but existed as de facto-marriages).
According to the population records of the American consulate in Shanghai, during the three decades from 1879 to 1909, there were 34 cases of interracial marriages between American husbands and Asian wives, among whom were 8 Japanese women and the rest comprised 26 Chinese women. There was no case of a Western wife married to an Asian husband.
According to Bruner, John King Fairbank, and Richard J. Smith, one of the necessary conditions of high-class life for Westerners in China was to have a Chinese woman. This kind of woman was actually a walking commodity, which could be bought or sold by any foreign merchants. “At that time, the price for a foreigner to have a Chinese concubine was about 40 silver dollars” according to Herder. Powell, an American who lived in Shanghai temporarily, described the situation of formal or informal interracial marriages in Shanghai as “Shanghai could be considered as a city of men”. Nine out of ten foreigners in Shanghai were bachelors, and therefore many friendly relationships developed and resulted in numerous international marriages, which even the American Marine Corps quartered at Shanghai took part in. “Once I asked a chaplain of the Marine Corps whether these marriages were happy or not. He answered ‘just like other marriages’.
According to Bruner, foreign businessmen could easily buy Chinese women in China, and therefore many of them were registered single on the household registration form.
Yet, in general, there were not many interracial marriages between the Chinese and the Westerners in modern Shanghai. According to Xiong, it was estimated that after being opened as a commercial port between 1843 and 1949, there were no more than 100 cases of formal marriage between the Chinese and Westerners in Shanghai over 106 years.
For a long time, English settlers in Shanghai resolutely were opposed to marriage with the Chinese. In 1908, the English envoy in China sent out a confidential document, harshly condemning marriages with the Chinese and threatening to expel the violators of this rule from the English circle forever.
The community of English residents in Shanghai had a harsher restriction upon English women as they believed it was treacherous for noble English women to marry humble Chinese men. One English man wrote in his letter to his sister that “if you dared to have an affair with Asian men in Shanghai, you would never stay here well.” In the middle of the 1930s, the Department of the Far East under the English Foreign Ministry tried its best to persuade those English women who had an intention to marry Chinese men not to do so. In the official book, it warned that marrying Chinese men may cause loss of British nationality, which meant that those British women who married Chinese men would no longer be protected by British law in China.
Compared with the upper-class British residents, the restrictions upon the lower classes on marriage were looser, and there were some instances of marriage between lower-class British and Chinese. In 1927, policeman Parker in Shanghai Municipal Council applied to marry a Chinese woman. After the committee’s examination, the woman’s parents were believed to have high status, and the marriage was permitted. However this policeman lost any prospect of future promotion. In 1934, relevant departments in Shanghai issued martial certificates to 6 Chinese women all of whom had British husbands.
In Shanghai, intercultural marriages were between Western men and Chinese women, while in America such marriages were between Chinese men and Western women. Although the trends seemed diametric opposites, they reflected the same truth that if the migrants only took a tiny proportion in comparison with the natives it was men who first broke through interracial marriage restrictions. It mirrored the situation at the end of the Qing Dynasty when it was mostly Chinese men, especially those who had experience of staying in Western countries, who married western wives.
3. Chinese labor workers who were sent to Western countries on a large scale in modern China.
At the demise of the federal dynasties in Chinese history, the common people and the fallen nobles of the previous dynasties started to drift abroad to Southeast Asia to escape the conflict. Due to its geological closeness, Southeast Asia became the migration destination and shelter of Chinese migrants. The drifting population would come to Southeast Asia despite the long distance to strive to make a living, this period was called “Sailing to Southeast Asia” in Chinese history.
In the 1840s and 1850s, a large amount of Chinese migrants began to travel to the American West to seek gold, where they also assisted in building railways. Chinese migrants first appeared in 1848 when they found gold in California prompting others to join the Gold Rush.
According to historical records, in February, 1848, that is, two months after the discovery of gold mines in California, two Chinese men and a woman sailed across the Pacific Ocean from Canton to San Francisco in California in the ship, the American Eagle, becoming the earliest Chinese migrants to land and stay at “Gold Mountain”.
In 1865, the number of Chinese migrants amounted to 50,000, 90% of whom were young men. They then came to the “Gold Mountain” to build railways instead of seeking gold. Many Chinese men could not find Chinese wives in the USA at that time, so it prompted some of them to find local wives; many of them married African American women.
Lotty Barbery Kubska & family, 1924 (or Lotty Kopski), born in Germany , Remarried in 1911 to George Der Wing, restaurant owner in Chicago (came to US in 1879, born in Seung/Shung Keow Village, Sun Ning. Also a remarriage: 1st marriage to Wong Shee in 1895; she died.
A similar movement of Chinese laborers happened in Europe, albeit with some differences. In 1914, World War I had taken place, resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of European laborers. Consequently, during the War, a great number of Chinese laborers were sent to Europe to supplement the work force of these countries. In respect of France some margin studies found that many Chinese male laborers married French women at that time. Dr. Xu Guoqi showed that many French women married Chinese laborers during the First World War. During the War, 140,000 Chinese laborers came to Europe to help the Allied war effort, 96,000 of them were allocated to the British army, and 37,000 were dispatched to France. Many French men had died at war, so the French women welcomed Chinese men, and more than 3,000 Chinese laborers married French women at that time.
With regard to Russia, as early as the 1860s, it had speeded up developing its territories in the Far East, and built cities, roads, ports, railways and communication lines, in the process recruiting many foreign laborers, of which Chinese labors made up the greatest number. From 1891 onwards, Russia recruited Chinese laborers to build the Siberian Railway. Russia suffered great losses in the War, and lacked laborers as a result, so it continued its policy of recruiting the Chinese.
At that time, there were 230,000 Chinese labor workers in Russia, who participated in the revolution to “protect soviet” as Chinese labor troops. Many Chinese labor workers in Russia at the time married Russian women, and this became commonplace.
Besides those working as laborers, the Chinese also did business in Western countries. For example, in America, in 1870, the Chinese prospered in business although Chinese vegetable vendors still sold their goods on the San Francisco streets carrying a horizontal stick on their shoulders. The laundries in downtown areas were mainly occupied by Chinese laundrettes. Many Chinese began to work in industries of quantity production, mainly in the four industries of shoemaking, fur textile, tobacco, and clothes-making. Until 1870, the number of Chinese workers amounted to half of the total numbers working in the key four industries in this city. Their employers were mostly Chinese as well. Until the 1970s, there were about 5000 Chinese businessmen in San Francisco. Among them many achieved great success in their business, surprising the Westerners around them and changing their perception of them. In Australia, many Chinese men also came to settle there for business reasons. These Chinese stayed there because of their businesses, and some of them married local people.
4.Intercultural marriages and migration caused by the Chinese Civil War.
Civil wars create refugees who flee across international borders to safer havens. The Chinese Civil War (CCW), from 1945 to 1949, was fought between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It was one of the bloodiest and most violent wars in the modern world, and 6 million soldiers and civilians were killed. The end of the CCW produced a large wave of refugees from China to Western countries, such as the USA. Of all the Chinese migrants that moved to foreign countries, the refugees created by the CCW were the greatest in number. It was a very intense and sudden event in modern Chinese history. These departing groups were quite different from the peasant laborers who had pioneered the initial Chinese migration to the USA. These refugees included members of the intelligentsia, the upper classes, and families of wealth. There were also a number of Chinese students studying in the USA who were afraid of returning to China because of the changes in the political system. Many of them were subsequently granted immigrant status. These sudden and numerous fleeing Chinese people became the protagonists of CWIM in this period. These groups of Chinese people had opportunities to marry Americans, resulting in some CWIMs during this period.
Historic changes occurred through the opening-up of China at the end of the 19th century. The opening-up was the result of the advances made by Western powers in terms of guns and boats, and it brought closer contacts between the Chinese and Westerners for the first time after thousands of years. From the perspective of and the two nations, various battles between the two sides were mostly temporarily ended with compromises and concessions by the Chinese. It could be said that the Chinese endured much abuse and hardship during these years. It was against this major background that the earliest transnational marriages between Chinese and Westerners took place. Were they better or happier than any other types of marriages?
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What Is Hertz in Electricity?
You hear the term hertz in electricity as well as when discussing the transmission of electromagnetic waves – of which light and radio waves are examples – and the speed of computer processors. The common factor in all these phenomena is that they involve some type oscillation, and the hertz unit is used for measuring of the frequency of these oscillations. It has a simple meaning. One hertz is simply one cycle per second. It's usually written in its abbreviated form, which is Hz. Thus, instead of writing 100 cycles per second, scientists write 100 Hz.
The electricity that powers homes worldwide is known as AC – alternating current – electricity. Rather than flowing directly between a pair of terminals, AC current oscillates, and the number of cycles per second is expressed as hertz. The frequency of generated electricity isn't the same in every country, but it is a uniform 60 Hz throughout North America. In general, electromagnetic energy consists of oscillating waveforms, and the frequency of the oscillations, expressed as Hz, determines the characteristics of the radiation.
The hertz is named after Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894), a German physicist with credited with demonstrating the existence of electromagnetic radiation. His discoveries confirmed the theories established by James Clerk Maxwell and laid out in the four famous equations that established that light and heat are electromagnetic phenomena.
Along the way, Hertz was also the first researcher to confirm the existence of the photoelectric effect and the first to detect radio waves. Not a practical man, Hertz did not believe these accomplishments would have any use in the world, but in fact, they laid the groundwork for the modern wireless age. For all his accomplishments, the scientific world honored Hertz in 1930 by naming the unit of frequency after him.
Why is Generated Electricity Cyclical?
Power stations around the world generate electricity by electromagnetic induction, a phenomenon discovered by physicist Michael Faraday and studied by physicists throughout the 19th century. The basis of this phenomenon is that a changing magnetic filed induces an electric current in a conductor. Generating stations make use of this principle by using steam to rotate a large conducting coil in a strong magnetic field. Because of the rotation of the coil, the generated electricity changes polarity with each rotation of the coil. It is known as alternating current, and the frequency of the polarity shift, measured in Hz, depends on the speed of rotation of the turbine.
The North American standard of 60 Hz goes back to Nikola Tesla, who engineered the first electric power station at Niagara Falls. Tesla discovered that 60 Hz was the most efficient frequency for energy distribution along power lines. In Europe and parts of Asia, where the standard frequency of AC current is 50 Hz, electricity transmission is 15 to 20 percent less efficient.
In any type of wave phenomenon, frequency and wavelength are reciprocal quantities. Because all electromagnetic radiation travels at the same speed – the speed of light – the frequency of the radiation goes down as the wavelength goes up. When developing the concepts behind quantum physics, Max Planck discovered that the energy (E) of a wave packet of light – a quantum – is proportional to its frequency (f). The equation is E = hf, where h is Planck's constant.
The radiation with the highest energy is that with the highest frequency, and it's often measured in megahertz (106 Hz), gigahertz (109 Hz) all the way up to peta hertz (1015 Hz). Radiation with frequencies in the petahertz range may exist in the cores of black holes and quasars, but not in the everyday terrestrial world of human beings.
All About Circuits: Why Is the US Standard 60 Hz?
Deziel, Chris. "What Is Hertz in Electricity?" Sciencing, https://sciencing.com/hertz-electricity-5838113.html. 06 November 2018.
What Are the Uses of Direct Current?
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In the outskirts of Flagstaff, Shecker and Lally one, complaining of hunger, jump out of the truck and insist on stopping for food. However, Cotton orders Teft to keep driving. Fearing their abandonment, Shecker and Lally one run after the truck until Teft pulls over. Cotton then concedes that a meal might provide some energy for all of them; they will stop in Flagstaff. Arriving at an all-night bar and restaurant, the boys order hamburgers. While they are waiting, two bowlers approach them and ask what they are doing out so late. Despite the Bedwetters' efforts to formulate a believable story, in which they claim they are a band from Los Angeles named "Before Christ," the bowlers clearly do not believe them, forcing Cotton to tell the truth about their situation. Before Shecker can contribute anything to the conversation, which would only worsen the situation, Cotton tells the boys to head out to the car without waiting for their food. When they all pile into the truck again and start to drive, the bowlers follow them closely. Given that their car would be capable of out-performing the boys' rusty truck, Teft pulls over, as do the bowlers. The boys obey the bowlers' demand that they get out of the car. When the bowlers interrogate them, they are unable to provide a valid response as to why they were headed toward Albuquerque when their camp was located in the other direction, as well as to why there were no keys in the ignition. Teft responds to their threats to notify the local authorities by aiming the rifle straight at them, then turning to shoot and puncture one of their tires. The bowlers retreat to their car and the Bedwetters squeal off onto the road, reveling in their victory.
Realizing that the bowlers may report their license number to the police and have their truck tracked, Cotton orders Teft to drive faster. In the last few miles before their destination, the engine sputters and dies. They have run out of gas, and Teft, sorely discouraged, apologizes to the rest of the group.
Cotton becomes infuriated with the situation, and the entire group feels restless and agitated. Identifying their options, Cotton tells the Bedwetters that they must decide whether to continue with their mission or return home immediately; the latter option would provide a better chance of avoiding punishment. He initiates a vote, and, as a test of the Bedwetters' resolve and maturity, votes to return home, contrary to his true wish, while all the others vote to continue. The rest of the group meets his vote with objections, and, one by one, they head out with determination, leaving Cotton behind. Cotton recognizes the changes they have undergone, as well as their newfound self- reliance and independence from him. Swelling with pride and emotion, Cotton runs to catch up with the group.
The incident with the bowlers in Chapter 7 demonstrates the Bedwetters' ability to hold their own against two older, more experienced men. While the rifle provides the motivation for the bowlers' retreat, the situation requires Teft's bravery and audacity. In addition, this incident, as do many others in the novel, hints at the influence of Westerns and the culture of the American West. The setting for this incident echoes that of a classic Western. In a saloon, late at night, two older locals approach, intimidate, and hassle the out-of- towners. Dressed "in tight jeans and sassy western shirts and big belt buckles and long sideburns," the bowlers even physically resemble characters in many Westerns. Their dialect as well contributes to their characterization as ignorant bullies.
In the course of the novel each of the main's characters' eccentricities, which initially result in their isolation from the other campers and epitomize their differences, eventually serve to help the group in one way or another. For example, Teft's often-explosive personality, as well as his experience with the world of petty crime, contributes to his performance in Chapter 7. Swarthout implies that the other Bedwetters occasionally fear Teft during these moments in which his temper flares. However, in this particular instance, his behavior and quick thinking save the group from further trouble and win him praise and respect.
In Chapter 9, Cotton pretends that he no longer supports the continuation of their mission in order to test the rest of the group's resolve and independence. When they, one by one, decide to persevere, even with the absence of Cotton's support, he must realize that they have truly established their own sense of morality and purpose, as well as their own sense of self. However, Cotton accepts this realization with bittersweet emotions. While he has worked hard to instill a sense of leadership and initiative in each of the boys, he has also grown accustomed to his role as their leader. Swarthout writes, "For a thorn of loss pierced Cotton, and his eyes misted. It was true: they no longer needed him. Standing there, he combed through his red, matted hair. But after the pain a vast, ripe grape of joy burst in him and he had to hold on to keep from bounding after hem, whooping and hollering, I didn't mean it, I wasn't flaking out, I was just putting you over a barrel to see what you'd do and now I know! You're great, you guys, great!"
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This title presents an exploration of three of Augustine's central texts, the "De Trinitate", the "De Doctrina Christiana", and the "Confessions". It elucidates the principles of Augustine's theology of language. This is done in a systematic manner, which previous scholarship on Augustine has lacked. Augustine's principles are revealed through a close reading of these three core texts. Beginning with the "De Trinitate", the book demonstrates that Augustine's inquiry into the character of the human person is incomplete. For Augustine, there is a void without reference to the category of human speech, the very thing that enables him to communicate his theological inquiry into God and the human person in the "De Trinitate". From here, the book examines a central work of Augustine that deals with the significance of divine and human speech, the "De Doctrina Christiana". It expounds this text carefully, showing three chief facets of Augustinian thought about divine and human communication: human social relations; human self-interpretation using scripture; and, preaching, the public communication of God's word.It accepts the "De Doctrina Christiana" as laying theoretical foundations for Augustine's understanding of the task of theology and language's meaning and centrality within it. The book then moves to Augustine's "Confessions" to see the principles of Augustine's theology of language enacted within its first nine books. Augustine's conversion narrative is analysed as a literary demonstration of Augustine's description of human identity before God, showing how speech and human social relations centrally mediate God's relationship to humanity. For Augustine, human identity properly speaking is 'confessional'. The book returns to the "De Trinitate" to complete its analysis of that text using the principles of the theology of language uncovered in the "De Doctrina Christiana" and the "Confessions". It shows that the first seven books of that text, and its core structure, move around the principles of the theology of language that the investigation has uncovered. To this extent, theological inquiry for Augustine - the human task of looking for God - is bound up primarily within the act of human speech and the social relations it helps to compose.The book closes with reflection on the significance of these findings for Augustinian scholarship and theological research more generally.
Incarnation Of The Word by Edward Morgan was published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc in April 2010. The ISBN for Incarnation Of The Word is 9780567033826.
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The standard unit for the measurement of volume is liter. Volume of a liquid is measured in milliliters, liters and kilolitres.
To obtain the volume of oil in liters how much quantity of oil is required in a container, which already contains 45 liters 900 milliliters of oil?
45 liters 900 milliliters of oil becomes 46 liters when 100 milliliters is added to it.
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The methodological focus of social science on aggregate-level phenomena as the principal objects of research has significantly complicated the task of understanding the social world. Collective explanations of aggregate-level phenomena, such as the state, government, or the political system brush the majority of social activity, which occurs between individuals. Furthermore, aggregated approaches tend to reify large-scale phenomena as natural social experience. A strong refutation of holist explanations of social phenomena exists in the form of methodological individualism, which begins from the empirical position that the individual is the most basic unit of analysis. Methodological individualists often point to everyday social interactions, such as negotiations between employer and employee, the behavior of legislators, or of social movement entrepreneurs, all of whose behavior is not captured by or explicable in terms of aggregate phenomena. Methodological individualists argue that individuals can exist without groups, but not vice versa, and therefore any social phenomenon can be fundamentally investigated in terms of individuals. However, a strong methodological individualism creates its own distortions of the social world, in which individuals interact without the mediation of institutions and other collectivities. I argue that a methodological individualism that also allows for secondary causality by collectives yields a realistic and feasible research approach.
Methodological individualism considers the individual as the basic object of social scientific inquiry. Its basic approach is to explain social phenomena – such as movements, institutions, and government – in terms of aggregated individual behavior and decision. Methodological individualism is not a monolithic school of thought. Rather, it can be divided into a range of approaches, from the unsocialized, self-interested individual as the basic unit of social phenomena to variants that acknowledge the existence and importance of culture and institutions (Udehn 2002). Udehn argues that methodological individualism is more a collection of approaches and assumptions about epistemology, ontology, and methodology than a consistent, unified school of thought. Udehn distinguishes between strong and weak methodological individualism, and even further disaggregates these into five distinct versions – the social contract, general equilibrium theory, social individualism, institutional individualism, and structural individualism. The first three are considered strong methodological individualism, treating individuals as independent of institutions and, if constrained, only by social and cultural ties. The fourth and fifth allow that social institutions and structures exist a priori, and therefore exogenous, to individuals.
If we approach a social subject from either of the first two variants, what Udehn terms natural individualism, we have to treat it as a purely instrumental phenomenon. These perspectives regard the individual as asocial, acting aggressively and exclusively in their self-interest. Social movements become problematic in this perspective not because they become instrumental, but because it is dubious how they could even develop as instruments. For example, a natural individualist might allege that a revolutionary’s identity means nothing to her except as she can style and use it to her advantage. While this is a reasonable proposition, it becomes problematic because this identity must mean something to someone in order for her to use it instrumentally. If everyone exists in the Hobbesian state of nature, and social phenomena mean nothing to anyone, how any become useful in any form is inexplicable.
Social individualism, the third variant, is distinctive because of its focus on culture. The Austrian School, which articulated this version of individualism, distinguished it from previous ones by emphasizing the role of customs and culture in the lives of individuals. This is not to say that social institutions or group phenomena exist independently of individuals. What social individualism does is make society and culture epiphenomenal (Udehn 2002: 487). This subjectivist twist of social ontology moves one closer toward the possible utility of social movements in an instrumentalist paradigm, because this approach acknowledges that individuals attach meaning to social ties and culture.
Moving from strong to weak forms of methodological individualism may be much more useful. Both institutional and structural individualist approaches are distinct from weaker versions in that they consider institutions as potentially exogenous to individuals. That is to say that institutions can exist a priori to individuals, but they need not necessarily. For example, consider culture as an institution. If one adhered to strict interpretations of natural individualism, culture could not exist a priori to individuals, which is plainly untrue. Culture is not causal for individuals, but individuals are born into cultures. Of course, individuals produced culture, but once created culture develops an ability to survive independent of any single individual.
In the final analysis, it really depends on which type of methodological individualism is in question as to how politics is understood, both ontologically and epistemologically. However, methodological individualism does generally make much easier certain propositions about social order by emphasizing the role of agency, which heavily structural approaches reject or downplay. Pragmatic individualist approaches go beyond the spiral of Geertz’s thick description and allow the researcher to explore the everyday lives of subjects to determine how social phenomena are constituted in their own terms.
The presupposition of social science-imposed order is one that inherently reveals a fundamental misunderstanding about how complex and interesting the world really is. I believe the task to approach the social world in such a way that does not arrogate order in ways that it does not actually exist, that acknowledges the complexity and wonder of human society, and that attempts to locate order, power, and interaction as it exists in the real world.
Lars Udehn. 2002. “Changing Face of Methodological Individualism.” Annual Review of Sociology 28: 479-507.
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When you are having a baby, should it be any different? Make a road map, a birth plan, an idea map of what you want your labor and birth to look like, hire a Doula, research, take childbirth perperation classes. read books (see my resources page for lots of good ones!), create a registry, learn heavy on your partner, friends, family, and allow yourself to go through all the different emotions.
Need Help writing a birth map?
choices, preferences, experiences and expecations.
Keep it short! 1 page, no more.
Use "friendly" language. For example " would would like to avoid unnecessary interventions" instead of "no unnecessary interventions" This helps the medical staff feel included (instead of yelled at) and it helps them percieve you as someone who is flexible.
Have different paths (ie: "In case of emergency c-section," "intervention-free preferences," "if I have to go on Pitocin..." etc).
Include who you would like in the room with you (Partner, Doula, Birth Photographer, Mom, etc) and if there is anyone who you Do Not want in the room.
Make sure you take it you your OB/GYN or Midwife - you want everyone on the same page. They can also provide feedback.
Make sure everyone who you want to participate in your labor/birth get a copy. Sit down with them and go over everything, and answer questions. You will probably feel better knowing everyone is on the same page as you are, even when your path changes.
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What's the hardest part of learning another language? Getting started! Quickstart Japanese is designed to get you started quickly and easily by maximizing the full potential of the widely accepted "Immersion Method" of language learning. Each word is introduced in a context where meaning is clear and memorable. These 2 audio CDs feature more than 800 essential words and phrases including topics such as asking for directions, invitations, telephone phrases, shopping, traveling, going to a hotel, restaurant, airport, or post office, and many, many more. Best of all, you can learn in a car, on a plane, or on the go. And to make learning even easier, these discs contain a printable version of the words and phrases that are spoken. Whether you're a traveler hoping to learn a few phrases, a beginner needing an extra boost, or an experienced speaker, the Quickstart programs meet you at your level.
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Transience - The speaker claims that the lord considered her as a ‘plaything' (line 12) whom he could treat how he liked without any regard for her feelings. Much like the ‘silken knot' (line 12) he wore around his neck (a cravat or tie), he treated her as a fashion accessory he could use and then cast away, rather than as an individual with her own needs.
Glove - The speaker recognises that the lord ‘changed me like a glove' (line 13). He used her and moulded her into a shape that suited him and then, like a glove that no longer pleases, dispensed with her completely. A glove is an intimate and personal object that fits itself around its user. By describing herself as a glove, the speaker acknowledges that she lost sight of her own needs and desires in an attempt to please and suit the lord.
More on gloves: Gloves often appears as a symbol of lost innocence in 19th century literature and art, eg. in Holman Hunt's The Awakening Conscience.
In Cousin Kate, the dove image draws on these ideas of hope and fulfilment and is a symbol of purity that stands in direct contrast to the contaminated state the speaker finds herself as she describes herself as ‘an unclean thing' (line 15). However, she acknowledges that the tenderness associated with the dove is no match for Kate's ‘stronger wing'.
Entrapment – Like a hunter, the lord ‘f[ound]' the speaker ‘out', ‘lured' her, then ‘chose' his next victim in Kate, whom he ‘watched', then picked up (‘lifted') and ‘bound'. Both women are referred to as birds, with Kate seeming to be trussed and bound by her fine clothes and wedding ring.
Coronet - In the last verse, the speaker demonstrates her pride in her son when she tells him, ‘Your father would give lands for one / To wear his coronet'. A coronet is a small crown worn by members of the nobility and varying in form according to rank, so it represents his title. The fact that it is passed from father to son reflects the values of a society in which men were more highly valued and praised than women. By suggesting that the lord would ‘give lands' for a legitimate son to whom he could pass on his wealth, his titles and his standing in society demonstrates the importance of inheritance and ongoing power for the nobility.
What do you associate with the idea of doves?
Why do you think that the speaker tells her cousin, ‘You had the stronger wing'?
Do you think that she is right?
How does the imagery contribute towards your feelings for the speaker?
Does her description of herself as a ‘plaything' increase your sense of sympathy for her plight?
Many Victorians considered marriage to be at the centre of a stable society. It was widely believed that a happy family contributed to the well-being of the country. In Cousin Kate, the foundations of marriage are shown to be less based on love than on the greed of the male. It seems that he only marries Kate because she refuses to have an affair with him as the speaker had done. The speaker resents this and feels angry that she had been used and then cast aside.
In the last stanza, the speaker claims that, despite all her clothes and her ‘wedding-ring', Kate remains unhappy since she has no children. Rather than accepting the romantic idea that marriage led to happiness and contentment, the speaker recognises that the cares of a married life are still difficult to deal with.
The speaker suggests that, because Kate was ‘so good and pure' and did not allow the lord to seduce her away, he ‘bound' her ‘with his ring' (lines 25-6). The word ‘bound' indicates being confined within certain boundaries or limitations. By describing a wedding ring as something that ‘bound' Kate, the speaker depicts marriage as a trap or a prison. Certainly, she suggests that being married to the lord would be like being imprisoned in a lifestyle in which any individual choice was taken away.
Do you find anything surprising about this presentation?
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What is the scope in India after doing Biotechnology Engineering in India?
Biotechnology is a very important and emerging field. You can apply for projects sponsored by govt of India. You can also consider the option of pursuing PhD in the field, and then join Universities for teaching/research activities. You can also join Department of Science & Technology labs, and work as scientist/research staff. If you are interested in working in industry, then drugs industry is suitable for you. These days, there is demand for genetic engineers as well in hospitals.
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What is our approach to cultural differences?
In the United States, there are a lot of cultures that live under one roof. There have been many people that immigrated to America in the past and the tradition continues. The various cultures and ethnic backgrounds of many different people have shaped many aspects of countries and continents, from traditions to holidays such as Saint Patrick's Day to food.
America was once referred to as a melting pot, and that title has not changed. America to this day is still a host to many different cultures and many different people all living together. It's interesting to consider how the country deals with racial and cultural differences. When you ask the question, "what is our approach to cultural differences", it's not easy to come up with a black and white answer.
Recently a police officer in Alabama assaulted an Indian man after an individual called in to report a black man. In this case, there was an inability to distinguish between two very different cultures and backgrounds. Or maybe it was used as an excuse. But the call was about a skinny African American man carrying a toboggan and peering into people's windows, and this man did not respond to the officer's questions or commands.
The Indian man did not speak English and could not respond properly or even engage in conversation. He was slammed to the ground and the officer later was arrested and fired. So, the approach to cultural differences can vary. A police officer might be more susceptible to making instantaneous decisions and in certain geographical areas, consider many cultures and ethnic backgrounds to be similar or even interchangeable.
Every individual's thoughts and beliefs about their culture and others varies. Some people are brought up to believe that their culture is superior to all others, a belief that becomes a problem when interacting with people of other cultures. After all, if the only culture that you respect is your own, an inclination towards the negative towards any other culture that does not mirror yours is probable.
There are many individuals and many geographic locations where this type of belief or thought process is predominant and has been passed down among many generations. Though this is the case in many areas, the opposite is also true. Cultural differences are intriguing to many people and celebrated.
When you are exposed to people of different cultures and make friendships, get to know them, and form bonds, it's often the case that people from different cultures are seen simply for what they are: people. Our approach as a nation to cultural differences cannot be set into stone. It is as varied and unique as the cultures that we encounter.
Culture is a combination of tradition, geographical location, ethnicity, history, and shared experiences as a people. America can arguably be viewed as defensive of other cultures simply because its own is one of the youngest on Earth. Perhaps with time, America's culture will grow in strength and its citizens will be comfortable with its young but shared traditions. Our approach to cultural differences as individuals may vary, but hopefully with time, we will embrace the difference instead of targeting it.
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I have a question: could Synesthesia be a form of dreaming when awake? I think of synesthesia and dreaming as fraternal twins who swim in the same sea of memory. At the very least, they exchange fluids filled with imagery on a regular basis. I straddle states of consciousness, each foot on a different tectonic plate of being. And arms akimbo, I stay balanced, and learn best from a sidelong glance. I suspect it felt the same for earliest man.
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How do I get a medical certificate of cause of death, when death is by natural causes?
If the deceased has died after an illness or other natural causes, the doctor who gave the medical care will complete a certificate stating the causes of death. If the attending doctor will not be available in the 24 hours following death, another doctor may provide this certification.
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Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of over 145 million, Java is home to 57% of the Indonesian population and is the most populous island on Earth. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is located on western Java. Much of Indonesian history took place on Java. It was the center of powerful Hindu-Buddhist empires, the Islamic sultanates, and the core of the colonial Dutch East Indies. Java was also the center of the Indonesian struggle for independence during the 1930s and 1940s. Java dominates Indonesia politically, economically and culturally.
Formed mostly as the result of volcanic eruptions, Java is the 13th largest island in the world and the fifth largest in Indonesia. A chain of volcanic mountains forms an east–west spine along the island. Three main languages are spoken on the island: Javanese, Sundanese, and Madurese. Of these, Javanese is the dominant; it is the native language of about 60 million people in Indonesia, most of whom live on Java. Furthermore, most residents are bilingual, speaking Indonesian (the official language of Indonesia) as their first or second language. While the majority of the people of Java are Muslim, Java has a diverse mixture of religious beliefs, ethnicities, and cultures.
Java is almost entirely of volcanic origin; it contains thirty-eight mountains forming an east–west spine that have at one time or another been active volcanoes. The highest volcano in Java is Mount Semeru (3,676 metres). The most active volcano in Java and also in Indonesia is Mount Merapi (2,930 metres).
The area of Java is approximately 150,000 km2. It is about 1,000 kilometres long and up to 210 kilometres wide. The island's longest river is the 600 km long Solo River. The river rises from its source in central Java at the Lawu volcano, then flows north and eastward to its mouth in the Java Sea near the city of Surabaya. Other major rivers are Brantas, Citarum, Cimanuk and Serayu.
West Java (Jawa Barat) - Bandung. One of the most densely populated regions on earth, including the massive urban sprawl of Jakarta and the university city of Bandung in the mountains. Still, there are extensive natural areas of impassable rain forest, as well as many active volcanoes and secluded beaches.
Central Java (Jawa Tengah) - Semarang. Charming Yogyakarta and significant ancient temples.
East Java (Jawa Timur) - Surabaya. Indonesia's second city Surabaya and stunning volcanic scenery.
Jakarta - the nation's capital.
The Borobudur is a giant Buddist temple complex, built in the 8th and 9th century. The building has nine so-called stupas. The first 5 make up the piramidacal base of the structure, on top of that are 3 circular stoepa´s and finally there is one big stupa on top of all the others. Around the 3 circular stupa´s are 72 open stupa´s with statues of Buddha inside. In the 10th of 11th century the temple was abandoned, and only rediscovered at the end of the 19th, after which the structure was cleared from the vegetation, and finally at the end of the 20th century it was restored with the help of the UNESCO. An hour's drive from the Borobudur Temple are the Hindu Prambanan Temples, which are also on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
Mount Bromo is probably one of the best known mountains/volcanoes in Indonesia among travellers. It is an active volcano (latest eruption in January 2011) in the Tengger Massif in the east of the island of Java.
It's not the highest mountain in the chain, but at 2,329 metres it's one of the most famous and easiest to excess. It's a very popular hike and although usually without problems, it is not entirely safe. The usual way to visit Mount Bromo is from the nearby mountain village of Cemoro Lawang. From there it is possible to walk to the volcano in about 45 minutes, but it is also possible to take an organized jeep tour, which includes a stop at the viewpoint on Mount Penanjakan at 2,770 metres (this mountain can be reached on foot in about 2 hours if you fancy walking). The best views from Mount Bromo to the sandy areas below and the surrounding volcanoes are at sunrise.
Mount Merapi is an active stratovolcano and currently the most active one in Indonesia, erupting regularly for since almost 500 years, most lately in 2010.
It's one of the 16 potentially deadliest volcanoes in the world because of its large populations living on or near the mountain slopes. It's just 30 kilometres from the city of Yogyakarta but people are living up to 1,700 metres high on the slopes of the volcano, with the total hight just under 3,000 metres. Although not particularly of interest for travellers (unlike for example Mount Bromo), Mount Merapi sure makes for a great sight and wandering around the villages below the mountain is a nice way of spending an afternoon (if possible!). On top of that, in 2004 an area of 6,410 hectares around Mount Merapi was established as a national park, ironically leading to the fact that fewer people were ready to leave their homes during the 2006 eruption because they were afraid the area would be incorporated into that national park. The Merapi Museum Center in Yogyakarta is of interest, with a replica of Merapi's Post 2010 Eruption.
Ujung Kulon National Park is located at the westernmost tip of Java, within Banten province of Indonesia. It includes the volcanic island group of Krakatoa in Lampung province, and other islands including Panaitan, as well as smaller offshore islets such as Handeuleum and Peucang in the Sunda Strait. It is Indonesia's first proposed national park and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991 for containing the largest remaining lowland rainforest in Java. After the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, many settlements in the park were wiped out and never repopulated. Ujung Kulon stands as the last known refuge for the critically endangered Javan rhinoceros after poachers killed the last remaining rhino in Cát Tiên National Park of Vietnam. The park also protects 57 rare species of plant. The 35 species of mammal include Banteng, Silvery gibbon, Javan lutung, Crab-eating macaque, Javan leopard, Java mouse-deer and Rusa deer, Smooth-coated Otter. There are also 72 species of reptiles and amphibians, and 240 species of birds.
Jember Fashion Carnaval or JFC (Indonesian Karnaval Busana Jember) is an annual carnival held in the East Java city of Jember. Officially it is written as Jember Fashion Carnaval; the word carnival here is officially spelled as carnaval, probably a confusion with Indonesian spelling karnaval, or an influence of the Dutch spelling carnaval. Jember Fashion Carnival has no relation with the Christian pre-Lenten festival, but more of a festivities in general, roughly following the Brazilian style, with procession of dancers in extravagant costumes, with emphasis on the traditional Indonesian motif. Generally, the carnival used world-themed fashion or nature-inspired theme. Preparation was held extensively months before and participants volunteered for the event.
The Java Jazz Festival held in Jakarta is one of the largest festivals in the country. It only began in 2005, making it one of the newest events in Indonesia, but has quickly risen in popularity. The festival lasts for three days at the beginning of March, and sees dozens of local and international artists display their talent across the capital city.
The average temperature ranges from 22 °C to 29 °C; average humidity is 75%. The northern coastal plains are normally hotter, averaging 34 °C during the day in the dry season. The south coast is generally cooler than the north, and highland areas inland are even cooler. The wet season begins in November and ends in April. During that rain falls mostly in the afternoons and intermittently during other parts of the year. The wettest months are January and February. West Java is wetter than East Java and mountainous regions receive much higher rainfall. The Parahyangan highlands of West Java receive over 4,000 mm annually, while the north coast of East Java receives 900 mm annually.
Lion Air - from Kuala Lumpur , Jeddah, Riyadh, Ho Chi Minh City and Singapore.
Some more destinations with other airlines include Dubai, Xiamen, Manila, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Nanning, Phuket, Istanbul and Sana'a.
Bus: A shuttle bus route links the airport to Rawamangun, Blok M, Gambir Station, Bekasi, Depok, Lebak Bulus, Tanjung Priok, Kemayoran, Kampung Rambutan, Pasar Minggu, Serang, Merak, Cikarang and Bogor. Primajasa buses now also serves Bandung from the airport.
Car: Depending on traffic, Soekarno–Hatta is a 30 minutes drive away from Jakarta's city centre via Soedyatmo Expressway. Rental cars are available, as well as taxis.
2. Juanda International Airport (SUB) serves as the main gateway with almost 20 airlines flying to/from Surabaya. Destinations include Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Singapore, Johor Bahru, Yogyakarta, Taipei, Hong Kong, Bali, Bandung and Bandar Seri Begawan.
3. Husein Sastranegara International Airport (BDO) serves Bandung with flights to Bali, Medan, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.
4. Adisucipto International Airport (JOG) near Yogyakarta has a few international connections, including flights with Air Asia to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.
There are two key highly frequent ferry routes to Java, operated by ASDP. From the island of Sumatra in the west, ferries operate from Bakauheni in Lampung province to the port of Merak on Java (24 hours per day, multiple departures per hour). From the island of Bali in the east, ferries operate from Gilimanuk to the port of Ketapang in East Java (24 hours per day, two departures per hour).
Java is also part of the national PELNI passenger ferry network, with routes to and from all major Indonesian islands. PELNI ships call at the ports of Surabaya, Semarang, and Tanjung Priok port in North Jakarta.
Flying is a good option for travelling larger distances in Java. The route from Jakarta in the west to Surabaya in the east is one of busiest flight routes in the world. In addition, there are frequent flights from Jakarta (and Bandung) to other airports in Central and East Java, and for example between Yogyakarta and Surabaya. Apart from these trunk routes, there are smaller routes to more remote airports such as Pangandaran and Cilacap on the south coast, and the outlying islands of Karimunjawa, Madura, and Bawean.
Java has the most comprehensive railway network in Indonesia, with trains connecting the capital city of Jakarta with most other cities and towns in the island. The eksekutif class is the luxury class, and consequently the most expensive.
Ticket reservations can be made starting 90 days in advance. On-line ticket reservation is available through PT Kereta Api's ticketing site and several other on-line ticket agent websites and also thousands of Alfamart and Indomart mini markets. Travelers can also buy ticket from a ticket agent's shop or local post office which is available in most of all cities in Indonesia. Either buying from internet or ticket shop, travelers will get printable voucher with Rp6,000 additional administration fee and it must be exchanged with the real ticket at the nearest or departure train station. Please remember that your name in the ticket should be same with your identity or you can't get into the train, if the name is different or you must pay double.
Java's toll roads are built nearly to Western standards, with dual grade-separated lanes in both directions and elevated interchanges. Tolls are quite affordable, usually Rp 1,500-5,000 every 10 km or so. However, signage is often lacking and driving habits are atrocious, so it's very wise to pay a little extra and get a car with driver instead of attempting to drive yourself.
The main form of long-distance transport, vast armadas of buses cross the island and connect every city and mountain hamlet. Watch out though, as many drivers have near-suicidal driving habits that emphasize speed above all else. There are two type of buses, with aircon and without aircon; the fare of non-aircon is only about a third of using aircon. If you do take a bus, take one with aircon, because drivers of such buses are known to be safer, as a general rule. For long trips, people tend to use cheap airlines, because their fares are usually comparable to bus fare. However, in peak season, even 'cheap airlines' fares increase to 3 to 4 times the cost for air conditioned buses.
Boiled water or drink water from a sealed bottle. Tap water is not drinkable, except boiled or is filtered by small purifier. Coffee or tea, it's safe. The same applies to beer, which combines very well with hot Indonesian cuisine. Beers are relatively cheap, but other alcohol drinks with more than 5 percent alcohol are relatively expensive due to taxation.
We have a comprehensive list of accommodation in Java searchable right here on Travellerspoint. You can use our map to quickly compare budget, mid-range or top of the range accommodation in Java and areas nearby.
I am Dutch, but I have lived 26 of my now 75 years in Java. Presently with my wife I settled in Spain. As we lived and worked there, we know many places in Java that your typical mass tourist passes by. Our interests are history, culture and unspoiled nature. I am open to any questions, if your travelling style is off-the-beaten path.
This is version 26. Last edited at 19:22 on Feb 13, 19 by theo1006. 37 articles link to this page.
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Checking for GStreamer plugins I have all the possible plugin packages installed, including GStreamer1.
Is there a solution out there? I'm not a huge fan of Clementine but if I have to use it I'll stick with it.
It appears there is a problem with the Podcasts extension. For me, disabling the Podcasts extension fixed the problem.
To disable the Podcasts extension, go to: Edit -> Preferences -> Extensions tab. Under Core, untick the Podcasts extension.
Here is a related Ubuntu bug report.
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The purpose of this thesis is to answer the following question: Given the control polygons of two B�zier curves, what restrictions should be imposed on the control points of the second curve to ensure that the two curves combine with a specified degree of continuity? Geometric continuity is a relatively new research area, and the concept causes a lot of confusion for those not familiar with it. A thorough explanation of geometric continuity is given. B�zier curves are studied, and three different approaches for constructing curves are defined. It is proved that these three construction methods are equivalent, and that they can be used to construct so-called B�zier curves. Their derivatives are also required to investigate the continuity of B�zier curves, and these are calculated using Bernstein polynomials. Investigating the continuity of composite B�zier curves, this study shows that certain restrictions on the control points of the curves will ensure that they combine with a specific type and degree of continuity.
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Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (also known as Sunrise) is a 1927 American silent romantic comedy-drama directed by German director F. W. Murnau (in his American film debut) and starring George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, and Margaret Livingston. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer from the short story "The Excursion to Tilsit", from the collection with the same title by Hermann Sudermann.
Murnau chose to use the then new Fox Movietone sound-on-film system, making Sunrise one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical score and sound effects soundtrack. The film incorporated Charles Gounod's 1872 composition Funeral March of a Marionette, which was later used as the theme for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65). Frédéric Chopin's A minor prelude also features prominently in orchestral arrangement.
Sunrise won the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Picture at the 1st Academy Awards in 1929. Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in the film (she also won for her performances in 1927's 7th Heaven and 1928's Street Angel). The film's legacy has endured, and it is now widely considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made. Many have called it the greatest film of the silent era. In 1989, Sunrise was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the United States Library of Congress for films that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Academy Film Archive preserved Sunrise in 2004. The 2007 update of the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films ranked it number 82, and the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll named it the fifth-best film in the history of motion pictures, while directors named it 22nd.
Full of cinematic innovations, the groundbreaking cinematography (by Charles Rosher and Karl Struss) features particularly praised tracking shots. Titles appear sparingly, with long sequences of pure action and the bulk of the story told in Murnau's signature style. The extensive use of forced perspective is striking, particularly in a shot of the City with normal-sized people and sets in the foreground and smaller figures in the background by much smaller sets.
Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times hailed Sunrise as "A Film Masterpiece". A reviewer for TIME, however, called its story "meagre" while writing that the film overall "manages to remain picturesquely soporific for a long evening." Sunrise is now widely considered by film critics and historians to be one of the greatest films ever made.
20th Century Fox originally released Sunrise on DVD in Region 1, but only as a special limited edition available only by mailing in proofs-of-purchase for other DVD titles in their "20th Century Fox Studio Classics" line, or as part of the box set Studio Classics: The 'Best Picture' Collection. The DVD includes commentary, a copy of the film's trailer, details about Murnau's lost film Four Devils, outtakes, and many more features.
^ a b "The Screen", Mordaunt Hall, The New York Times, September 24, 1927.
^ Bird, David (September 15, 1984). "Janet Gaynor Is Dead At 77; First 'Best Actress' Winner". nytimes.com. Retrieved March 30, 2015.
^ Eagan, Daniel. America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry. New York: Continuum, 2010, p. 131–133.
^ "100 Years...100 Movies" (PDF). American Film Institute. Retrieved 2009-09-18.
^ "NY Times: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans". NY Times. Retrieved 2008-12-07.
^ Galloway, Chris (February 26, 2010). "Sunrise [Blu-ray] (1927)". CriterionForum.org.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.
This page was last edited on 17 February 2019, at 05:56 (UTC).
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Question: Since Vincent (Malcolm's ex patient who shot him) can also see ghosts, is there any connection with him and Cole or is it just an amazing coincidence?
Chosen answer: There is no direct connection between Cole and Vincent, and it is not really a coincidence. Cole and Vincent did not know each other, but they shared the same ability to see and hear ghosts. After Malcolm was shot and killed, he sought out Cole without understanding that he himself was dead. Vincent was Malcolm's patient and had been deeply troubled because he also saw ghosts. Malcolm is somehow driven to find and help Cole understand and to accept his ability to see and speak to the deceased.
Question: Does Cole know for the whole movie that Malcolm is dead? If he does, why isn't he afraid of him like he is of the other dead people in the movie?
Answer: Cole knew that Malcolm was dead as early as the first few scenes. When he opens his door to the house he doesn't immediately step out. Almost as if he didn't want to go out that day. After he finally muster up the courage, he waits for Malcolm to look away as he hurriedly makes his exit. He also picks up his pace as Malcolm begins to follow him. He knew from the very first time he saw him, and yes he was just as afraid of Malcolm as he was of the other ghost.
Chosen answer: Yes, of course. Remember that Cole tells us that these ghosts only "see what they want to see". To avoid giving away the whole plot twist of the movie, we see Malcolm as he sees himself - no injury, and dressed as would be appropriate for where he sees himself. But we know Cole can see dead people, and he sees them as they truly are. The young blonde boy with the back of his head blown out should make this clear. As for the second part of your question, I think Cole is scared of Malcolm at first. You can see his fear when Malcolm walks past him in the church to sit in the pew in front of where he is playing. His tension slowly eases during their conversation, but he still looks wary as he leaves the church. I get the impression that Cole spends large portions of his time in this building, yet he leaves this time within a few minutes of arriving; he doesn't want to stay near this new ghost. He becomes comfortable with him later of course, and Malcolm eventually wins his trust through honesty about his own problems, but this is not true from the start.
Question: Why does the female ghost in Cole's house keep on opening the drawers and cupboards?
Chosen answer: She lived in the house and is repeating actions she took so many times during her life, as if trying to relive it.
Question: Through most of the film Malcolm is dead. All the other ghosts still have scars from how they died but why doesn't Malcolm have his mark which should be a bullet wound?
Chosen answer: Because as Cole tells us in the middle of the movie, "They only see what they want to see." The movie shows us Malcolm as he perceives himself. He can't actually put on an overcoat, or change clothes. He sees what he expects to see. He goes outside in the cold to visit Cole, so he sees himself wearing an overcoat. He doesn't know he is dead - he doesn't see his wound. To preserve this misdirection throughout the movie, we are shown Malcolm as he sees himself.
Actually, we do see Malcolm and Cole sees him. The entry wound in his abdomen is tiny, and the large, obvious exit wound is on Malcolm's back, which we never see.
Question: If Malcolm is dead how does Cole's mother see him in the movie?
Chosen answer: The answer is simple: she doesn't. If you watch the movie carefully, you'll note that the only one who actually ever acknowledges Malcolm's presence is Cole. For the rest of the movie, you only assume that everyone sees or acknowledges Malcolm simply because of the way the scenes are shot. When a scene starts by showing Malcolm sitting in a room with Cole's mother, we as a movie-going public have been trained to assume that means they have been talking. However, we never actually see that happen.
Answer: It is established that ghosts "gloss over" evidence that they are dead. Malcolm probably has a general sense that he spoke with the mother, and would only realise he didn't if he deliberately thought about it or if Cole had pushed him to remember.
Question: What happened to Cole in the room that he got locked in at the party? We hear the ghost but as far as we saw during the movie, none of the ghosts actually hurt Cole, physically at least, so what could've happened to him?
Chosen answer: Near the end of the movie, when Cole tells his mother his secret, he is explaining to her about the ghosts, and says "They're the ones that used to hurt me". This informs us that the ghosts are responsible for his injuries in the movie, and that this problem has stopped. In this specific case, however, Lyn removes Cole's unconscious body from the closet. The movie does not specifically answer your question, however it seems reasonable speculation that he was injured by the ghost inside the closet with him, and that he thrashed about violently trying to escape. Since the hospital checked him for signs of seizure, I expect he lost consciousness not from physical trauma, but because the experience was too much for him and he, for want of a medical term, fainted.
Question: Why did Bruce Willis refuse to help Haley Joel Osment after he told him he sees ghosts? As a psychiatrist, surely he's used to patients with hallucinations. And what made him change his mind?
Chosen answer: Spoiler alert: Psychiatrists help their patients in a variety of ways. Generally, they begin by developing rapport, establishing an empathetic relationship, and trying to understand the patient's perspective and how he views the world. Some therapeutic approaches are based on the notion that the relationship between therapist and patient is the prime source of healing. Many psychiatrists would also prescribe medication to ameliorate what they would almost assuredly view as psychotic symptoms. But in this case, I think Dr. Crowe has a sense, throughout, that his young patient's experiences are more than hallucinations. Cole's stories resonate with him at a deep level, as he is also struggling internally and subconsciously with his own (as we will later learn) ambiguous position between life and death. I don't think there's a point where Dr. Crowe changes his mind, per se. He develops. And in the process, he definitely assists Cole in overcoming his fears, as well. During the film, they heal one another.
Question: If Malcolm was dead, how did he know all about Cole, and that he needed help? Where did he get all the info?
Answer: It's never explained in the film, but the implication seems to be that he was just sort-of compelled to help Cole. Given the film portrays the dead as only "seeing what they want to see" and trying to resolve unfinished business from life, it's entirely possible that Malcolm falsely believes he was assigned to Cole's case, even though he wasn't. It's just his way of trying to move on.
I'd like to add that despite the ghosts not knowing they are dead, they do know they can interact with Cole and others who can see them, they are even drawn to them, for help. This happened with Malcolm too and him being child psychiatrist connected with his ability to communicate with Cole, not asking Cole for help but helping Cole help himself. The info he has is probably a collection of his previous encounters with him, perhaps even being there at past psychiatrists. Its also possible he was his next patient, before he got shot. The dossier could have already been at his house and he remembers it.
Chosen answer: The dead need to finish things on Earth before they can move on. In Malcolm's case, he needs to help Cole - making up for his failure to help Vincent Grey. In order to do this, he needs the relevant information, so it is supplied to him by whatever agency controls these things. As the dead are unaware of their condition, Malcolm receives the information as if it were another case file for him to work on.
Question: Crowe thinks his wife resents him for putting his work before her. But since nobody but Cole can see him, what work does he have?
Chosen answer: Child psychologist - or so he thinks. Remember that Bruce Willis' character doesn't comprehend that he is actually dead, and certainly doesn't grasp the fact that Cole is the only person who can see him. Dr. Crowe's perception is that life goes on as does his professional role as a therapist for children. When he is around his wife, he misinterprets her melancholia and somber expressions as evidence that she resents his priority on his work, and that she is behaving coldly towards him as a result. In fact, she is in mourning for Malcolm, her dead husband - something he doesn't realize until the film's end.
Chosen answer: First, be clear that Cole was afraid of Malcolm at first. He is tense when Malcolm first walks into the church. He relaxes with him over time. Remember too that we learn that Cole's grandmother visits him sometimes, and he indicates no fear of her (though I'd guess he was scared at first). More than once in the movie he indicates or infers that not ALL the ghosts he sees are scary. Keeping in mind this is fiction, and not every possibility can be addressed, the flow of events shows that the "solution" is to help the ghosts through listening to their problem(s). The ghosts are lingering due to some issues they wish to see resolved in some manner. It seems Kyra wanted her father to know the truth of her death - indications are this was to protect her little sister who was already being targeted by the step-mother. Things are slightly more complex for Malcolm because his anchor to this life is coincident with helping Cole find the solution to these ghosts. So Malcolm is both persistent and has the training to pierce Cole's resistance and fear; while Cole possibly talks to some ghosts, the ones who aren't scary, he doesn't necessarily "listen" to them in the sense that Malcolm advises later in the movie. Thus, that key conversation leads Cole to the confidence to deal with the ghosts without fear, and also resolves Malcolm's guilt over Vincent.
Answer: At the beginning of the money, as Malcolm reviews his notes, Vincent's name is on top, however, on the next shot when the paper is shown up close, it now has Cole's name. There is a direct connection. Because of this scene, I thought Malcolm was trying to keep his promise to help Vincent. Both Vincent and Cole have the same gray streak in their hair. There is a direct connection.
Question: I'm unclear about the mother of the young girl who died. Did she intentionally kill her daughter or was it accidental? That is, was this supposed to be a Munchhausen by Proxy Disorder situation where the mother only intended to keep her daughter sick enough so she was under constant medical supervision?
Chosen answer: At best, it was Munchhausen by Proxy. However, it could have been a well-planned murder of one, and then the other child. But the mother's reaction when everyone is looking at her seems a little more mental than criminal.
Question: Maybe this is just an assumption of mine, but since Malcolm is dead why can't he see the other dead people, ie the three hanging in the school?
Chosen answer: Cole explains this. During the hospital scene when he tells his secret, he describes the dead people he sees as "Walking around like regular people. The don't see each other. They only see what they wanna see. They don't know they're dead". This explains many things in the movie, including why Malcolm can't see the ghosts, why he can't see his blood-stained shirt (till the very end), why he doesn't see the table blocking the basement door, etc. I believe that Cole sees him just how he looked when he died - blue work shirt with the massive blood stain at the back, while we see Malcolm throughout the movie as he perceives himself - no blood, overcoat when he's outside, etc.
Question: Vincent Grey says "I know why you're scared of the basement." What is it that he knows?
Answer: He doesn't say "I know why you're scared of the basement." He says "Do you know why you're afraid when you're alone? I do. I do." He had been trying to get Malcolm to understand that he can see ghosts but Malcolm never believed he actually could and just thought Vincent was suffering from psychosis.
Question: Why could Malcolm not open the door with the red knob?
Answer: In Malcolm's spirit-mind, which was in denial, it was somehow stuck and simply wouldn't open. But in reality as shown in the final twist, it's because his wife had blocked the door with a heavy desk, which Malcolm was "blocking out" and refusing to allow himself to see.
But he did get into the cellar. The first time he tries to open the door it immediately cuts to him walking down the stairs. How did he get in if it was blocked?
Question: How did Cole know about "Stuttering Stanley"?
Answer: The most likely scenario is that a ghost at the school told him.
Answer: Near the end, it is revealed that Cole has seen the ghosts of teachers that died in the fire at the school when "Stuttering Stanley" was a student, so it would make sense that one of them told him.
Question: Could Anna see ghosts? Why was she shivering in the closet and then ran out of it in fear? Also in the end why was she shivering and answering Malcolm? Was she ignoring him all the time?
Chosen answer: No, she can't see ghosts...no one but Cole can. But it is established that everyone can feel the "chilling" effect of the ghosts, and feel an inexplicable coldness in their presence. Naturally, this freaks them out, so it's natural Anna (and everyone else) would run from it. At the end, she wasn't answering Malcolm, just as throughout the film what appears to be her ignoring him is simply her not being aware of his presence. She's merely talking in her sleep, and Malcolm, as he does every other time, mistakes this for a direct interaction...until he realises the truth.
Actually I do believe she was answering him. Cole told him to go talk to her while she slept. After finding out ghosts come to him for help, this is Cole helping Malcolm. It's possible Cole knew it is possible for ghosts to communicate with other people this way.
Question: Why was Vincent (the guy who shot Malcolm) in his underwear? Couldn't he have shot Malcolm wearing his clothes?
Chosen answer: There's no explanation but someone being dressed only in their underwear while they are in someone else's home to shoot them would indicate a severe mental problem, which was the case with Vincent.
Answer: May be to show the scars on his body given by ghosts.
Question: At the climax of the movie when Malcolm talks to his wife while she was sleeping, a ring from her has fallen down to the floor, what does it mean? Is his wife married to another man?
Answer: It's his own wedding ring. He recognizes it and sees she is still wearing hers and he isn't wearing his own, so at that point he realises he is dead.
Answer: The ring was Malcolm's - she kept it after he died. When it falls Malcolm realises that he hasn't been wearing it even though he sees it on his hand.
Cole Sear: They see only what they want to see.
The tape is labelled "Vincent Grey" in the first shot, but the label disappears in the next shot.
For his role as Vincent, Donnie Wahlberg lost so much weight that, between when he met M. Night Shyamalan and when he arrived on set for filming, Shyamalan found him completely unrecognizable.
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Best way to cover imperfect walls?
Having had my flat for 4 years I am finally getting round to some decoration/DIY. Some of the (interior) walls are very pock-marked, and even bulge in places. I assume this is the result of very poorly applied plaster at some point (this is a 1900 tenement). I was thinking that textured paint of some description would be the easiest/cheapest way to address this. I don't think there's anything to be done with the bulges though. I am on a horrendously tight budget... Any other suggestions?
Use Polyfilla or similar for the pock marks. Paint with matt emulsion as it is quite forgiving. Vinly silk emulsion would highlight all the defects as it is somewhat reflective.
Try hanging some pictures and mirrors. They'll cover and distract.
Sand high spots and fill low ones. It might take a few goes at filling the larger lows. Use a wide scraper to ensure anything you fill you leave reasonably flat.
Textured wallpaper is excellent for hiding blemishes. And of course you can paint it any colour you want assuminmg it's not vinyl-covered.
how deep is the average pock mark?
I'm thinking a bag of plaster is yours for a fiver, a fiver more should get you a float, bucket, some pva (to apply diluted to the marks before you plaster them). Seriously this is an excellent opportunity to "have a go" at patch plastering.
If you're on a tight budget, I would go with matt emulsion. If you want to spend a little more time and effort, take an afternoon with some fine filler and some sandpaper to fill the pock marks and lessen some of the ridges prior to painting. You might be surprised at what a decent coat of pale emulsion covers up.
The risk with textured paint is that instead of having a crappy wall, you have a crappy wall covered in textured paint. Think back to when godawful woodchip wallpaper was the fad for covering dodgy plasterwork. A few years later, everyone sees woodchip and thinks, "Oh, dodgy plasterwork".
You can always add a picture or a vase of flowers afterwards.
Thanks for all the feedback. I'll look into Polyfilla and maybe textured wallpaper.
Someone earlier mentioned that Polyfilla do a product for this purpose. I have used it and it is brilliant. It is called Smoothover and comes ready mixed in a rectangular tub. It is worth spending a bit more and getting the proper tool for applying it. Obviously it won't disguise the raised areas but that's what sandpaper's for.
On Jan 22, 10:53 am, "Tinkerer"
mmm if we're going that far.... what's the ready mixed skim plaster like? Wickes do it ISTR???
Very likely a similar product by another name. Probably cheaper too being from Wickes.
French Drains, Best Cover Material?
Any special techniques in taking pictures on projects?
Any thoughts for covering internal bricks walls?
Good vines for awning supports?
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You should get an honorary degree in blocking out the haters.
1. You despise talking on the phone.
After doing it all day, you really just want your friends to text you about plans.
2. You are exceptionally good at keeping your cool.
3. You are no longer surprised at the depths of stupidity humans can sink to.
4. You never forget the joy that is putting an annoying customer on hold.
And maybe you still do this to your friends every so often.
"Oh, you don't know where you want to meet tonight? Oo, one second, can I put you on hold?"
5. "Accidentally" hanging up on people is another trade secret you never forget.
6. Getting a sore throat feels like the worst thing that could possibly happen to you.
Or maybe it's a cough, but then at least you get to put someone on hold while you cough your guts up.
7. Your phone voice is perfection.
And if someone can't hear you loud and clear it is 100% their fault.
8. The terror of a call coming in right before your shift ends haunts you for life.
9. You know how sacred bathroom breaks are.
Easily the highlight of the day.
10. This is engraved into your brain.
And you feel ashamed when one slips your mind.
11. Using your phone at your desk feels naughty.
Basically living in an environment where every second of your day doesn't have to be accounted for is generally great.
12. You have a talent for sounding 100% confident about things you are really quite unsure of.
Never give the customer any signs that you might just be winging it.
13. You've either learnt to be incredibly patient, or have just become numb to frustration.
14. You are an expert at knowing whether to call someone "Mr" or "Mrs" from their voice alone.
Or at least you are very good at apologising for getting it wrong.
15. Desk snacking is a hard habit to break.
"Let me just put you on hold." So I can finish this packet of crisps.
16. If you have long hair, then you will be an expert at dealing with this.
17. You know that the customer definitely isn't always right.
And the feeling when you calmly win an argument with them will be the second highlight of your day after going to the toilet.
18. You deserve a medal for your skills at blocking out the hate.
Be the punching bag you want to see in the world.
19. And you will always be polite to the person on the other end of the phone.
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Why does my horse need an Omega-3 supplement?
All mammals, including horses, need a proper balance between Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids to help maintain a healthy immune system. Yet standard horse feeds often contain excessive amounts of Omega-6 fatty acids, and few (if any) Omega-3 fatty acids. This causes a nutritional imbalance.
By supplementing with Grizzly’s Omega Aid for Horses, which provides concentrated amounts of Omega-3 fatty acids, you can effectively adjust the Omega-3 / Omega-6 ratio of your horse’s feed, thus establishing a better balance in his or her overall immune system. About one ounce per day is enough for an average horse.
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You are given a rooted tree that consists of $n$ nodes. The nodes are numbered $1,2,\ldots,n$, and node $1$ is the root. Each node has a color.
Your task is to determine for each node the number of distinct colors in the subtree of the node.
The next line consists of $n$ integers $c_1,c_2,\ldots,c_n$: the color of each node.
Print $n$ integers: for each node $1,2,\ldots,n$, the number of distinct colors.
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If you enjoy winter sports such as cross country skiing and are stuck in the middle of Germany, may I recommend this world class cross country ski town in the Thuringia forest. Its famous for the winter Biathlon where many of the gold medal champions come to train also home of Germany’s winter sports pros. Its allot of fun to do the “Gummie Bob” basically your going down the bobsled course on a 6 person bobsled shaped inter-tube at 30 kph so that’s crazy and fun at the same time. Also there are some great chances to see events like Ski Jumping and what not.
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AurelienBernier 19:6a9062d54eb0 1 #include "mbed.h"
AurelienBernier 19:6a9062d54eb0 2 #include "robot.h" // Initializes the robot. This include should be used in all main.cpp!
AurelienBernier 19:6a9062d54eb0 3 #include "math.h"
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India is the national sport hockey, but in terms of popularity, cricket is far ahead of hockey. Cricket is a game that has played in every street-mohalla of India There is hardly any Indian who has never played cricket in his life, whether he knows the rules of the game or not. In schools, children are often asked to make a project over cricket. You can use this information related to cricket in your project.
Cricket is a game that is played between two teams Each team has 11 players and some other players Before the game, tosses between the two teams, and the winning team gets the opportunity to select batting or bowling. Firstly, the batting team gets the other team a target. If the other team in the fixed hour chases the target then it is declared the winner and if the first team gets out before the other team gets the goal then the first team is called victorious.
A team battles in cricket and the other team is bowling. The batsman tries to make maximum runs for his team and the bowler tries to dismiss it. A boundary line formed around the ground If the ball goes straight out of the boundary line, the batsman gets 6 runs and if the ball crosses the boundary then it gets 4 runs. Apart from this, batsmen can also make runs by running between wickets. The bowler has only one goal - to dismiss the batsman The batter can be out in this game in many ways, including catch-out, stumping, run-out, hit wicket, clean bowl.
Test cricket - Test cricket is the oldest format of this game A test match is played for 5 days. It gives both teams a chance to play two innings The special thing about a Test match is that there is no limit to the number of overs for any team. Approximately 90 hours of play is played every day for five days.
Fielder - All the players of the bowling team are standing in the field. These players were told to stop the fielder.
Umpires - two umpires All judges like getting out in the match or making runs take the umpire Third umpire - sometimes the umpire can not decide whether the batsman is out or not, or the ball is a stage outside the boundary line or inside The third umpire is held to take such decisions He helps in making the computer while sitting in Pavilion.
Man of the match - This title was given to the best performer during the whole match. Records- When a player gets extraordinary achievement during the match, it is called a record.
Century - When the batsman completes 100 runs, he is called a hundred. In the same way, there are half-centuries and double centuries in the game too. Over-Cricket has an oval of 6 balls How many overs are bowlers in a match, it depends on cricket format.
Duckworth Lewis Rule - This game is one of the most intriguing rules of this game. When the match has been turned off due to bad weather or any other reason, then the Umpire Series - Many matches played in series World Cup - This is the most popular and enhanced tournament of cricket. In this tournament, the world's best team competes for the championship title.
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in the 2000–01 National Basketball Association playoffs, Allen Iverson played an average of 46.2 minutes a game, leading the Eastern Conference?
Allen Iverson is the only player who led the NBA in steals for three consecutive seasons?
Allen Ezail Iverson (born June 7, 1975, in Hampton, Virginia) is an American professional basketball player who is on leave from the Philadelphia 76ers for the remainder of the 2009-10 NBA season. The 76ers selected Iverson with the number one pick in the 1996 NBA Draft. He was named the NBA Rookie of the Year in 1996–97 season. Iverson is an eleven-time NBA All-Star which includes winning the All-Star MVP award in 2001 and 2005.
Winning the NBA scoring title during the 1998–99, 2000–01, 2001–02 and 2004–05 seasons, Iverson has become one of the most prolific scorers in NBA history, despite his small (listed at 6 feet, 0 inches) stature, with a career scoring average of 26.7 points per game, being sixth all-time. Iverson was also the NBA Most Valuable Player of the 2000–01 season and led his team to the 2001 NBA Finals the same season.
Iverson represented the United States at the 2004 Summer Olympics, winning the Bronze medal.
Iverson also played for the Denver Nuggets, Detroit Pistons and the Memphis Grizzlies, before returning to Philadelphia for part of the 2009-10 NBA season.
As a high school junior, Iverson played quarterback for the Bethel High School football team, leading the team to the state championship.
On February 14, 1993, Iverson and several of his friends became involved in an altercation with a group of white teenagers at the Circle Lanes bowling alley in Hampton, Virginia. Iverson's crowd was raucous and had to be asked to quiet down several times, and eventually a shouting duel began with another group of youths. Shortly thereafter, a huge fight erupted, pitting the white crowd against the blacks. During the fight, Iverson allegedly struck a woman in the head with a chair. He, along with three of his friends who are also African-American, were the only people arrested. Iverson, who was 17 at the time, was convicted as an adult of the felony charge of maiming by mob, a rarely used Virginia statute that was designed to combat lynching. Iverson and his supporters maintained his innocence, claiming that he left the alley as soon as the trouble began. Iverson said, "For me to be in a bowling alley where everybody in the whole place know who I am and be crackin' people upside the head with chairs and think nothin' gonna happen? That's crazy! And what kind of a man would I be to hit a girl in the head with a damn chair? I rather have 'em say I hit a man with a chair, not no damn woman."
After Iverson spent four months at Newport News City Farm, a correctional facility in Newport News, Virginia, he was granted clemency by Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder, and the Virginia Court of Appeals overturned the conviction in 1995 for insufficient evidence.
In spring 1994, Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson visited Iverson at Hampton's Bethel High School.
At Georgetown, Iverson won two Big East Defensive Player of the Year awards, All Rookie Tournament 1st Team, and a gold medal for his win at the World University Games in Japan in 1995. Iverson led all USA players in scoring and assists, averaging 16.7 points per game and 6.1 assists per game. He ended his college career as the Hoyas' all-time leader in career scoring average, at 23.0 ppg.
Iverson was the first of just two basketball players, Victor Page being the other, to leave Georgetown early for the NBA under Thompson.
After two seasons at Georgetown, Iverson was selected first overall by the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1996 NBA Draft. He played with the Sixers for 10 years. During his tenure he was Rookie of the Year, League MVP, 2x All-Star MVP, and led the league in scoring for four years. After his rookie season, during which he led the 76ers in points, assists and minutes, Iverson was named the 1996 NBA Rookie of the Year and was a member of the NBA All-Rookie First Team.
During the offseason, Iverson and his friends were stopped by policemen for speeding late at night and was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and for possession of marijuana. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to community service.
After the 1998–1999 season, during which he averaged 26.8 points, earned his first scoring title and was named to his first All NBA first team., Iverson made his first trip to the playoffs. He started all ten playoff games and averaged 44.4 minutes per game despite being hampered by a number of nagging injuries. Iverson led the Sixers to an upset over the Orlando Magic, before losing to the Indiana Pacers in the second round.
Prior to the next season, Iverson signed a six-year, $70 million contract extension. That year, Iverson averaged 28.4 points and again led the 76ers into the playoffs. In the process, Iverson was selected to the Eastern Conference All-Star team for the first time of what would be 11 straight appearances. In the playoffs, Iverson averaged 26.2 points, 4.8 assists, 4 rebounds and 1.3 steals per game, with a high of 40 points in the first round opener at Charlotte on April 22, 2000. Philadelphia advanced past Charlotte, but was eliminated again by Indiana in the second round. That season, he was the only player other than Shaquille O'Neal to receive a NBA Most Valuable Player vote.
In the 2000 off-season, the 76ers actively tried to trade Iverson, and had agreed to terms with the Detroit Pistons before Matt Geiger, who was included in the deal, refused to forfeit his $5 million trade kicker.
During the same offseason, Iverson recorded a rap single named 40 Bars. However, after being criticized for its controversial lyrics, he eventually was unable to release it. Going under his moniker, "Jewelz", the album was alleged to have made derogatory remarks about homosexuals. After criticism from activist groups and NBA Commissioner David Stern, he agreed to change the lyrics, but ultimately never released the album.
That season, Iverson led his team to wins in the first ten games of the season, and was named starter at the 2001 NBA All-Star Game, where he won the game MVP. The Sixers also posted a 56–26 record, the best in the Eastern Conference that season. He also averaged a then-career high 31.1 points, winning his second NBA scoring title in the process. Iverson won the NBA steals title at 2.5 a game. Iverson was named NBA Most Valuable Player, and named to the All NBA First team for his accomplishments.
In the playoffs, Iverson and the Sixers defeated the Indiana Pacers in the first round, before meeting Vince Carter-led Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Semifinals. The series went the full seven games. In the next round, the Sixers defeated the Milwaukee Bucks, also in seven games, to advance to the 2001 NBA Finals against the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers.
Iverson led the Sixers to their first finals since their 1983 championship. In game one of the 2001 NBA Finals, Iverson scored a playoff high 48 points and beat the heavily favored Lakers 107–101. In the game he notably stepped over Tyronn Lue after hitting a crucial shot. Iverson would go on to score 23, 35, 35, 37 in games 2–5, all losing efforts though the Sixers were not swept like many predicted. Iverson enjoyed his most successful season as an individual and as a member of the Sixers during the 2000–01 NBA season. In the 2001–02 season, the Sixers failed to repeat their success. Iverson and others struggled with injury, and despite Iverson averaging a league high 31.4 points per game the Sixers fell to the sixth seed in the 2002 Playoffs, where they fell to the Boston Celtics in the first round.
Iverson began using a basketball sleeve during this season during his recovery from bursitis in his right elbow. Other players, including Carmelo Anthony, and Kobe Bryant, have adopted the sleeves as well, as did fans who wore the sleeve as a fashion statement. Iverson continued wearing his sleeve long after his elbow had healed. Some believe that the sleeve improved Iverson's shooting ability, while Steven Kotler of Psychology Today suggested that the sleeve may act as a placebo to prevent future injuries.
For most of the early portion of Iverson's career, his head coach with the Sixers was Larry Brown. Iverson often praised Brown, saying that he would not have achieved so much in the sport without Brown's guidance. However, the two frequently clashed; for example, when the 76ers were defeated in the first round of the 2002 NBA Playoffs, Brown criticized Iverson for missing team practices. Iverson responded by saying, "We're sitting here, I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we're in here talking about practice," and went on a rant that included the word "practice" 14 times.
In the 2002–2003 season, Iverson once again put up stellar scoring numbers (27.6 points per game), was named an NBA All-Star and led the Sixers to the playoffs. This time they were eliminated by the Detroit Pistons in the second round after a 6-game series. Brown left the 76ers in 2003, following the playoff loss. After his departure from the 76ers, both he and Iverson indicated that the two were on good terms and genuinely fond of one another. Iverson later reunited with Brown when Iverson became a member and co-captain of the 2004 United States Olympic men's basketball team.
During the latter part of the 2003–2004 season, Iverson bristled under the disciplinarian approach of the Sixers' new head coach Chris Ford. This led to a number of contentious incidents, including Iverson being suspended for missing practice, fined for failing to notify Ford that Iverson would not attend a game because he was sick, and refusing to play in game because he felt "insulted" that Ford wanted Iverson to come off the bench as he worked his way back from an injury.
On February 24, 2004, Iverson urinated in a trash can at Bally's Atlantic City casino in full view of staff and patrons. He was told by casino management not to return.
In 2005, league commissioner David Stern instituted a dress code that required "business casual" attire for players on league or team business, and banned, among other items, t-shirts, jeans, and large jewelry worn over clothes.
The 2005–06 NBA season would be the last full season for Iverson in a Sixers uniform. He averaged a career high 33.0 points per game, but the Sixers missed the playoffs for the second time in three years. He had also begun to clash with coach Jim O'Brien, who was fired after the season.
On December 9, 2005 after the Sixers defeated the Charlotte Bobcats, Iverson paid a late-night visit to the Trump Taj Mahal. After winning a hand at a three-card-stud poker table, Iverson was overpaid $10,000 in chips by a dealer. When the dealer quickly realized the mistake and requested the chips back, Iverson refused and a heated head-turning argument between him and casino staff began. Atlantic City casino regulations reportedly state that when a casino makes a payout mistake in favor of the gambler, he or she must return the money that they did not legitimately win by playing.
Also in 2005, Iverson's bodyguard Jason Kane was accused of assaulting a man at a Washington DC nightclub after the man, Marlin Godfrey, refused to leave the club's VIP section so Iverson's entourage could enter. Godfrey suffered a concussion, a ruptured eardrum, a burst blood vessel in his eye, a torn rotator cuff, cuts and bruises, and emotional injuries. Although Iverson did not touch Godfrey himself, Godfrey sued Iverson for the injuries caused by his bodyguard. In 2007 a jury awarded Godfrey $260,000. The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the verdict in 2009.
On April 18, 2006, Iverson and Chris Webber arrived late to the Sixers' fan appreciation night and home game finale. Players are expected to report 90 minutes before game time, but both Iverson and Webber arrived around tipoff. Coach Maurice Cheeks notified the media that neither would be playing and general manager Billy King announced that Iverson and Webber would be fined. During the 2006 off-season, trade rumors had Iverson going to Denver, Atlanta, or Boston. None of the deals were completed. Iverson had made it clear that he would like to stay a Sixer.
On November 29, 2006, following a conflict at practice, Iverson stormed out of the gymnasium. That same evening, Iverson missed a corporate sponsor night at Lucky Strike Lanes in Philadelphia. All the 76ers besides Iverson attended this mandatory event. Iverson was fined an undisclosed amount by the 76ers. Iverson claimed he overslept after taking medication for pain related to having two abscessed teeth pulled but it was reported that Iverson told teammates earlier in the day he planned to blow off the event and was simply going to take the fine.
On December 8, 2006, Iverson reportedly demanded a trade from the Sixers (although he would deny that). As a result of the demand and missing practice prior to a matchup against the Washington Wizards, Iverson was told not to play nor attend any further games. During that game, which was televised nationally on ESPN, Sixers Chairman Ed Snider confirmed the trade rumors by stating "We're going to trade him. At a certain point, you have to come to grips with the fact that it's not working. He wants out and we're ready to accommodate him."
On December 19, 2006, the Philadelphia 76ers sent Iverson and forward Ivan McFarlin to the Denver Nuggets for Andre Miller, Joe Smith, and two first-round picks in the 2007 NBA Draft. At the time of the trade, Iverson was the NBA's number two leading scorer with teammate Carmelo Anthony being number one.
On December 23, 2006, Iverson played his first game for the Nuggets. He had 22 points and 10 assists in a losing effort to the Sacramento Kings. In Iverson's first year as a Nugget they made the playoffs. They won the first game and lost the next four to the San Antonio Spurs.
Iverson was fined $25,000 by the NBA for criticizing referee Steve Javie following a game between the Nuggets and Iverson's former team, the Philadelphia 76ers, played January 2, 2007. During the course of the game, Iverson committed two technical fouls and was ejected from the game. After the game, Iverson said, "I thought I got fouled on that play, and I said I thought that he was calling the game personal I should have known that I couldn't say anything anyway. It's been something personal with me and him since I got in the league. This was just the perfect game for him to try and make me look bad."
Former referee Tim Donaghy supported the claim that Javie had a longstanding of hated for Iverson in his book, Personal Foul: A First-Person Account of the Scandal that Rocked the NBA, which a Florida business group published through a self-publishing arm of Amazon.com after it was dropped by a division of Random House, who cited liability issues after reviewing the manuscript.
In a December 2009 interview with 60 Minutes, Donaghy said he and fellow referees thought the punishment was too light. Before Iverson's Nuggets played the Utah Jazz on January 6, 2007, Donaghy said he and the two other officials working the game agreed not to give Iverson favorable calls as a way to "teach him a lesson". Iverson attempted 12 free throws, more than any other player on either team. On 12 drives to the basket, he drew five fouls, three of which Donaghy whistled himself, and did not receive a call on one play in which he was obviously fouled by Utah's Mehmet Okur.
Iverson returned to Philadelphia on March 19, 2008 to a sell-out crowd and received a standing ovation in a 115–113 loss.
On November 3, 2008, Iverson was dealt from the Denver Nuggets to the Detroit Pistons for guard Chauncey Billups, forward Antonio McDyess and center Cheikh Samb.
Iverson, who had worn a number 3 jersey his entire NBA career, switched to number 1 for the Pistons. The number 3 was being worn by Rodney Stuckey, and although Stuckey stated that he would be willing to give up the number, the NBA ruled that a change in numbers could not take place until after the season.
On April 3, 2009, it was announced by Pistons President of Basketball Operations Joe Dumars that Iverson would not play the remainder of the 2008–09 season. Dumars cited Iverson's ongoing back injury as the reason for his deactivation, although two days prior Iverson stated publicly that he'd rather retire than be moved to the bench as Piston's coach Michael Curry had decided.
On September 10, 2009, Iverson signed a one-year contract with the Memphis Grizzlies. Iverson stated that "God chose Memphis as the place that I will continue my career," and that "I feel that they are committed to developing a winner."
However, Iverson again expressed his displeasure at being a bench player, and left the team on November 7, 2009 for "personal reasons." On November 16, the Grizzlies announced the team terminated his contract by "mutual agreement". Iverson played three games for the Grizzlies.
The New York Knicks initially showed interest in signing Iverson, but team president Donnie Walsh announced on November 20 that he would not offer Iverson a contract.
Iverson in December 2009, after his return to the 76ers.
On November 25, 2009, commentator Stephen A. Smith published on his blog a statement attributed to Iverson announcing plans for retirement, which also said, "I feel strongly that I can still compete at the highest level."
Less than a week later on November 30, Iverson and his representatives met with a Philadelphia 76ers delegation about returning to his former team, and accepted a contract offer two days later. General manager Ed Stefanski declined to go into the terms of the agreement, but an unnamed source told the Associated Press that Iverson agreed to a one-year non-guaranteed contract at the league minimum salary. Iverson would receive a prorated portion of the $1.3 million minimum salary for players with at least 10 years of experience, and the contract would become guaranteed for the remainder of the 2009-10 season if he remained on the roster on January 8, 2010, and with a portion of his salary coming from a league pool, the 76ers would pay Iverson up to around $650,000. Stefanski said the team made the decision to pursue Iverson after starting guard Louis Williams suffered a broken jaw and was expected to miss at least 30 games.
On February 22, 2010, Iverson left the 76ers indefinitely, citing the need to attend to his 4-year-old daughter, Messiah's health issues. He had missed five games earlier in February and missed the All-Star Game after he was voted in as starter. On March 2, Stefanski announced Iverson would not return to the 76ers for the rest of the season.
In his Philadelphia Inquirer column published March 7, 2010, Stephen A. Smith wrote that according to "numerous NBA sources", Iverson would "either drink himself into oblivion or gamble his life away", and that Iverson had already been banned from casinos in Detroit and Atlantic City. Smith also wrote that Tawanna, his wife of eight years, had separated from him and filed for divorce, seeking custody of their five children, as well as child support and alimony payments.
Iverson was a member of the gold medal winning 1995 World University Games Team that finished 7–0 in Fukuoka, Japan. Part of a team that included future NBA stars Ray Allen, Tim Duncan, Kerry Kittles, Othella Harrington, Austin Croshere and others. Iverson led the USA in scoring, assists and steals averaging 16.7 points, 6.1 assists and 2.9 steals a game, while shooting 56.0 percent from the field overall and 37.5 percent from beyond the 3-point line.
On being selected to playing for USA Basketball in 2003, Iverson said,"It's a great feeling to be able to represent the USA. It's an honor. It's a tribute to all the coaches I've had in my life - Coach (Larry) Brown, Coach (John) Thompson and my high school coach, Mike Bailey. I feel good about being able to make a team like this - it's really one of the great things I've done in my life. It makes me feel good about the person my mom raised."
Iverson helped the USA to a 10–0 record, the gold medal and a qualifying berth for the 2004 Olympics at the August 20–31 FIBA Americas Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Puerto Rico. Started all eight games he played in, and averaged a team second best 14.3 ppg., 3.8 apg., 2.5 rpg., 1.6 spg., while shooting 56.2 percent (41–73 FGs) from the field and 53.6 percent (15–28 3pt FGs) from 3-point and 81.0 percent (17–21 FTs) from the foul line.
In the USA's 111–71 victory over Canada on August 25, he accounted for an USA Olympic Qualifying single game record 28 points and made a single game record seven 3-pointers. Playing just 23 minutes, he shot 10-for-13 overall, 7-for-8 from 3-point, 1-for-1 from the foul line and added three assists, three steals and one rebound. All seven of his 3-point field goals were made during the final 7:41 of the third quarter.
He finished the tournament ranked overall tied for 10th in scoring, tied for fourth in steals, fifth in 3-point percentage, tied for seventh in assists, and ninth in field goal percentage (.562). Iverson also missed the USA's final two games because of a sprained right thumb which was suffered in the first half of the August 28 Puerto Rico game. In a game against Puerto Rico, he recorded 9 points on 4-for-6 shooting from the field overall, and added five assists and three rebounds in 26 minutes of action in the USA's 101–74 exhibition game victory on August 17 in New York, N.Y. He was also named to the 2003 USA Senior National Team on April 29, 2003.
The team's performance at the Olympic Games, however, would ultimately prove to be a disappointment. During the exhibition period prior to the Games, Iverson and LeBron James were benched for a game for having arrived late at a practice session. The United States' team had played a dismal game versus Germany, which had failed to qualify for the Olympic competition. Iverson did succeed in keeping the game from going into overtime with a half-court shot in the closing seconds. Despite the win, the team continued to struggle. After losing to the Puerto Rican team during round robin play, they would ultimately claim a bronze medal.
^ Nance, Roscoe (February 22, 2004). "Iverson puts heart on line, ignores injuries". USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/educate/college/firstyear/articles/20040222.htm. Retrieved 2008-12-22.
^ Latimer, Clay (December 20, 2006). "He brings baggage but also a big heart". Rocky Mountain News. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2006/dec/20/he-brings-baggage-but-also-a-big-heart/. Retrieved 2008-12-22.
^ Falkner, David (January 30, 1995). "The agony and the ecstasy". The Sporting News. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_n5_v219/ai_16434629/. Retrieved 2008-12-22.
^ a b Sielski, Mike (March 4, 2007). "Iverson Answers the Call". ESPN.com. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/classic/bio/news/story?page=Iverson_Allen. Retrieved 2008-12-22.
^ "Iverson Receives 3 Years' Probation". Washington Post. August 27, 1997. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/13672551.html?dids=13672551:13672551&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=AUG+27%2C+1997&author=Thomas+Heath&pub=The+Washington+Post.
^ Smallwood, Jr., John (March 2001). "Brotherly Love Like - Allen Iverson, under the coaching of Larry Brown, emerges as team captain of the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers". Basketball Digest. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCJ/is_5_28/ai_71187961.
^ Chris Broussard. "Now a Leader, Iverson Turns Image Around". New York Times. June 6, 2001. Retrieved on December 31, 2008.
^ a b c Steven Kotler. "Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant and Basketball's Placebo effect". Psychology Today. April 17, 2008. Retrieved on January 8, 2009.
^ Larry Platt. Only the Strong Survive. Harper Collins, 2003. 9.
^ "Allen Iverson news conference transcript". CNNSI.com. 2002-05-10. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/news/2002/05/09/iverson_transcript/.
^ Wood, Skip (2002-05-09). "Brown puts balm on Iverson's feelings". USAToday.com. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/nba/sixers/2002-05-08-iverson-brown.htm.
^ a b "NBA Star Allen Iverson and Casino Staff Battle it out in Atlantic City". http://www.onlinecasino-news.com/20051217/nba_star_allen_iverson_and_casino_staff_battle_it_out_in_atlantic_ega.aspx.
^ "Bad Answer: Iverson On Way Out Of Philly". http://www.nypost.com/seven/12082006/sports/bad_answer_sports_peter_vecsey.htm?page=2.
^ Abbot, Henry (December 3, 2009). "Personal Foul: Tim Donaghy's NBA tell-all now available". TrueHoop (ESPN.com). http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/11202/personal-foul-tim-donaghys-nba-tell-all-now-available.
^ Beck, Howard (October 29, 2009). "Tim Donaghy Again Forces an N.B.A. Investigation of Referees". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/sports/basketball/30refs.html. Retrieved October 29, 2009.
^ Berger, Ken (December 8, 2009). "Disgraced former ref Donaghy details scam on '60 Minutes'". CBS Sports. http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/12624836/disgraced-former-ref-donaghy-details-scam-on-60-minutes. Retrieved 2009-12-08.
^ "Grizzlies part ways with Iverson". The Sports Network. November 16, 2009. http://www.tsn.ca/nba/story/?id=298628.
^ Beck, Howard. "Sticking to Game Plan, Knicks Pass on Iverson". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/sports/basketball/21iverson.html.
^ "Online report: Iverson set to retire". Associated Press. November 25, 2009. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/basketball/nba/11/25/iverson.retires.ap/index.html.
^ Stein, Marc (December 1, 2009). "Sources: Sixers closer to Answer". ESPN.com. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4702589.
^ Jasner, Phil (December 3, 2009). "Iverson's humble homecoming". Philadelphia Daily News. http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/sports/78396707.html.
^ Juliano, Joe (December 2, 2006). "Iverson agrees to non-guaranteed deal with Sixers". The Philadelphia Inquirer. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/breaking/sports_breaking/20091202_Iverson_agrees_to_non-guaranteed_deal_with_Sixers.html.
^ "Iverson officially done with the Sixers". Philadelphia Daily News. March 2 2010. http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/sixers/Iverson_officially_done_with_the_Sixers.html. Retrieved 2010-03-03.
^ "Iverson reportedly has gambling problem, too". The Baseline (Sporting News). March 8 2010. http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/35765978/ns/sports-nba/.
Allen Ezail Iverson (born June 7, 1975), nicknamed A.I. and The Answer, is an American professional basketball player for the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association.
If Coach tells you that I missed practice, then that's that. I may have missed one practice this year but if somebody says he missed one practice of all the practices this year, then that's enough to get a whole lot started. I told Coach Brown that you don't have to give the people of Philadelphia a reason to think about trading me or anything like that. If you trade somebody, you trade them to make the team better...simple as that. I'm cool with that. I'm all about that. The people in Philadelphia deserve to have a winner. It's simple as that. It goes further than that ... If I can't practice, I can't practice. It is as simple as that. It ain't about that at all. It's easy to sum it up if you're just talking about practice. We're sitting here, and I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we're talking about practice. I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we're talking about practice. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it's my last but we're talking about practice man. How silly is that? ... Now I know that I'm supposed to lead by example and all that but I'm not shoving that aside like it don't mean anything. I know it's important, I honestly do but we're talking about practice. We're talking about practice man. We're talking about practice. We're talking about practice. We're not talking about the game. We're talking about practice. When you come to the arena, and you see me play, you've seen me play right, you've seen me give everything I've got, but we're talking about practice right now. ... Hey I hear you, it's funny to me too, hey it's strange to me too but we're talking about practice man, we're not even talking about the game, when it actually matters, we're talking about practice ... How the hell can I make my teammates better by practicing?
2005-06 Free Throws Leaders: Total Free Throws Att.
Iverson Receives 3 Years' Probation - washingtonpost.com - search nation, world, technology and Washington area news archives.
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0.999997 |
What do you think this poem is about - war against the world, war against false reality, or war against self?
That the one I fought for did not even exist – they said it was all a myth.
That my sight – no, my vision – was wrong and unclear as the murky waters of my mind.
And that I fought this fight against the air.
Is more than just about death and dying – it’s all about trying.
Then what was I ever fighting for? I questioned as I looked upon all my battle wounds – the scars that I wore like a decorated soldier having fought in all those dreadful wars.
But the scars were never there, they said.
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Gregor Mendel experimented with growing sweet peas and worked out the underlying rules of inheritance.
Did he mend a pea? No, he mended an L (Mendel).
Gregor Mendel born in 1822, was a monk and biologist in what is now the Czech Republic.
He set out to study patterns of inheritance and did this by cross pollinating sweet pea plants with different characteristics.
He studied the way in which these characteristics were passed from one generation to the next. From his observations, Mendel was able to work out the underlying rules of inheritance.
The Punnett square in the next section graphically illustrates what he found.
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What do 100% of mobile users want? No fails!
The rush to make everything mobile has generated new ways to do business, new ways to organize ourselves and new ways to communicate, but mobile apps aren't your father's mainframe, desktop or laptop applications.
Nope, mobile apps exist in a world where not only is the underlying network transport anything from great to non-existent (which leads to all sorts of complexities), but also the polish and brio of leading mobile apps has created user expectations that, if I were to hazard a guess, are an order or two of magnitude greater than enterprises are used to delivering!
The issue of vastly greater mobile app user expectations is, I'd suggest, pretty much all Apple's fault. If only Steve Jobs hadn't been so obsessive about design values and perfect execution, all of the mobile app development shops would have a much easier time of it. But no, Apple DJ (During Jobs) produced the iPhone, the iPad and iOS, and along with those platforms the idea that apps should be slick, polished, responsive and beautiful became the norm.
If you doubt that users feel that way, consider a recent survey: The 2012 Mobile App Review by Apigee, a company that provides API-based services to support mobile apps. This survey (conducted online in October) of more than 500 U.S. mobile app users aged 18 and older, revealed some interesting stats.
First of all, 44% of those surveyed said that poor performance would make them delete an app immediately! Moreover, 18% of them admitted they would delete a mobile app if it froze for just 5 seconds. Just think of that. Five seconds at best, immediately at worst!
What's interesting about this low tolerance is the app could be trying to retrieve data from a slow remote server over a slow network, but if the app appears to be non-responsive, users will more-or-less immediately rate it to be a fail. Apps need to be built to deal with users whose patience has shrunk from minutes in the 1990s to seconds in the 'aughts, and now to milliseconds here in the 'teens.
The survey also found that freezes (76%), crashes (71%), and slow responsiveness (59%) were major deal-breakers, as was heavy battery use (55%).
The survey also found that how the app publisher responds will make a big difference in how users feel about a problematic app. Almost 90% said the No. 1 thing that will make them feel better about a failing app is if the publisher fixes the problem quickly with 46% wanting personal responses and 21% wanting a public apology (it's worth noting that failing to apologize appears to get 100% of Apple execs fired).
So, when you plan to release your next mobile app for your enterprise, whether it's developed in-house, bespoke developed, or a commercial product, think very carefully about how the app looks, feels, communicates, how it might fail, and how you'll handle problems if anything goes wrong. One hundred percent of users will "like" you for making the right decisions.
Gibbs is up on stats in Ventura, Calif. Your percentage satisfaction to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter and App.net (@quistuipater) and on Facebook (quistuipater).
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0.999949 |
The opening ends to the overhead view of where "A Minor Hiccup" ended: In the deserted alleyway with a graffiti-marked dumpster as Penny reveals her secret to Ruby.
Ruby: (Taking Penny's hands in her own.) Of course you are. You think just because you've got nuts and bolts instead of squishy guts makes you any less real than me?
Penny: I don't... um... (Leans in close to Ruby's face.) You're... taking this extraordinarily well.
Ruby: You're not like those things we saw back there. (Taps her chest.) You've got a heart, and a soul; I can feel it!
Penny: Ooohh... oh Ruby (Grabs Ruby into a hug and shakes her back and forth.) You're the best friend anyone could have!
Ruby: (Muffled groaning.) I can see why your father would want to protect such a delicate flower!
Penny: (Releases Ruby, fully back to her happy self.) Oh, he's very sweet! My father's the one that built me! I'm sure you would love him!
Ruby: Wow. (Giggles.) He built you all by himself?
Penny: Well, almost! He had some help from Mr. Ironwood.
Ruby: The General?! Wait... Is that why those soldiers were after you?
Penny: They like to protect me, too!
Ruby: (Scoffs) They don't think you can protect yourself?
Penny: They're not sure if I'm ready yet... One day, it will be my job to save the world, but I still have a lot left to learn. That's why my father let me come to the Vytal Festival. I want to see what it's like in the rest of the world, and test myself in the Tournament.
Ruby: Penny, what are you talking about? Save the world from what? We're in a time of peace!
Soldier 1: (Off-screen.) Check down here!
Ruby: (Struggles and screams as she is carried toward the dumpster.) Penny, wait! What are you doing? You don't have to go with them! I can help you!
Ruby lowers her head into the garbage as the lid is put down, but she lifts it a little to peek at the scene outside.
Soldier 1: (Off-screen.) There she is!
Soldier 1: Why were you running? And what happened to the other girl?
Soldier 1: You shouldn't cause such a scene.
Soldier 2: Are you okay?
Penny: (Shows off her "injured" palms.) Just a scratch.
Soldier 1: Penny, your father isn't going to be happy about this.
Soldier 2: Please, just come with us.
Penny and the soldiers are heard walking away as Ruby looks on in sadness... until a rat screeches from below her feet, causing the young Huntress to fall and close the lid on herself.
In the ruined parts of Vale, the sound of an engine gets closer and closer until Bumblebee pulls into the street and stops just short of the camera, showing Yang Xiao Long behind the handlebars in her matching helmet.
Yang: (Taking off the helmet, talking to someone off-screen as she gestures with her thumb to the music playing nearby.) Come on, my friend's right in here!
Yang gets off the bike to reveal Neptune sitting right behind her, hair and goggles messed up with a petrified expression of terror on his face.
Neptune: (Sounding dizzy) Cool... (Shakes his head, somehow perfectly fixing his appearance, and gets off the cycle, looking around worriedly.) And where exactly is... here?
Junior: (Walking out from the bar) What are you two idiots doing?!
The Henchmen shout incoherently until an explosion knocks them to the ground and forces the doors open, allowing a familiar face to walk in through the smoke as "I Burn" starts playing.
Yang continues to smile and pose as eight guns are pointed in her face with an equal number of angry Henchmen behind them. Though this doesn't faze her, she stops and glares at the recording studio where the track is messing up until the frightened bear-headed DJ takes the needle off the record and retreats back under the table.
Neptune: (Appearing behind Yang as the Henchmen continue hoisting their guns.) Yeah, so could you define "friend" for me?
Junior: Stop, stop! Nobody shoot. (Cuts his way through the crowd of goons, straightening his tie.) Blondie, you're here! ...Why?
Neptune: Whoa-ho-ho-ho, what a woman... (Breaks from his lovestruck staring to see the twins Melanie and Miltia Malachite standing beside him.) 'Sup?
Meanwhile, Blake's fingers trace three scratch marks on a wall before peeking around its corner and seeing a pair of horned Faunus as they are ushered into a building by a bearded man. She turns to Sun next to her.
Sun: You sure? (As Blake glares at him and starts moving towards the entrance while unfastening her bow) Y'know, I'm just gonna take your word for it.
The two walk inside the building to a hallway filled with cases, seeing another man announcing "New recruits, keep to the right!" at the young pair as they follow.
Sun: I don't get it. (Holds out the half-mask in his hand.) If you believe what you're doing is right, why hide who you are?
Blake: The masks are a symbol. Humanity wanted to make monsters out of us, so we chose to don the faces of monsters.
Sun: Grimm masks... That's kind of dark.
The new recruits to the White Fang are moving in a line to the side of the stage, a mere few dozen compared to the hundreds of white-vested, black-hooded soldiers to their left and up above in the balconies. Blake and Sun look around themselves when they stop, and a fully-masked man with tattoos standing starts speaking before the large sheet emblazoned with the bloody wolf and claw marks.
White Fang Lieutenant: Thank you all for coming. For those of you who are joining us for the first time tonight, allow me to introduce a very special comrade of ours! I can assure you, he is the key to obtaining what we have fought for for so long!
The dark pants and brown shoes step forward before the orange tip of the Melodic Cudgel taps on the stage. The camera pans up to reveal none other than Roman, smiling confidently even as the crowd starts protesting.
Roman: (Waving mockingly) Thank you, thank you! (As he speaks, Neopolitan walks out from behind the sheet.) Please, hold your applause!
Antler Faunus: (Pointing at Roman from her place right in front of Blake and Sun) What's a human doing here?!
Roman: I'm glad you asked, "Deerie"! Now, I'll be the first to admit, humans... are the worst. (Salutes as an example.) Case in point. So, I understand why you would like to see us all locked away, or, better yet, killed!
Sun: (Leaning over to Blake.) So, is he going somewhere with this?
Roman: But, before the claws come out, I'd like to mention the fact that you and I all have a common enemy: the ones in control, the people pulling the strings, the dirty, rotten humans that run our kingdoms! (As the crowd changes their tune and starts agreeing with him.) Government, military, even the schools: they're all to blame for your lot in life! (Lets the crowd cheer as the two heroes share a look.) And they're all pests that need to be dealt with! Fortunately, I'm the best exterminator around... No offense to any rodents in the room.
With a snap of the fingers, the curtain falls, and the whole mass of Faunus applaud at the sight of the Atlesian Paladin-290 behind it, the mark of the White Fang painted on its shoulder.
Blake: How did he get that?
Blake: (To Sun) We should get out of here.
White Fang Lieutenant: Will all new recruits, please come forward!
Sun: (As the line surges forward with the two having to follow) Welp!
Back at the Club, Junior puts down his glass as he sits behind the bar separating him from his interrogator.
Yang: How can you not know?
Junior: I haven't talked to him! I haven't even seen him since the night you first came in here. (Leans over to point in Yang's face.) He paid up front, I lent him my men, and none of them ever. Came. Back.
Neptune: (Rushing to Yang's side to raise a question of his own.) So where did they go?
Junior: (After a long pause) What kind of stupid question is that? They never came back! (To Yang) Who is this guy?
Yang: (Pushing Neptune out of the way with one hand.) Don't worry about him; worry about me (Neptune straightens and stands to attention) if I don't find out what I want!
Neptune: (Following with his hands in his pockets.) We get everything we need?
Yang: Well, we got everything we can. Hopefully the rest of the team is having better luck.
The White Fang is still cheering loudly as the recruits are marched to the stage, with Blake and Sun having no choice but to follow along.
Sun: (Whispering to Blake) What are we going to do?!
Blake: (Noticing the junction box on the wall.) He can't see in the dark.
With that, Blake unsheathes Gambol Shroud, transforms it into a pistol, and shoots at the box, making the lights go out for the whole building and turning the screen dark.
Roman: Don't let them get away!
Before the two student Huntsmen crash through the window and start running as fast as they can, the mechanized sound of running power signals the Altesian Paladin's activation, and it crashes through the wall of the building in pursuit of the runaways, who leap off of a car and manage to get on the roofs. The Paladin follows beside them on the street as Blake and Sun run, jump, and flip from rooftop to rooftop.
Sun: (Amidst twirls in the air) So you wouldn't happen to have... oh, I don't know... some form of backup?!
Weiss Schnee is seen leaving the Cross Continental Transmit tower's elevator when she grabs her own Scroll and listens to Blake's message.
Sun: (Scroll-call, in the background) HEEEELLLLP!
Weiss rolls her eyes and starts running out the door, a little smile on her face as she does so.
Ruby is still beside the dumpster (which is boarded up, possibly to keep the rat imprisoned), staring at her Scroll.
Sun: (Scroll-call) Big robot! And it's big! Really big!
Yang is back on the motorcycle in her helmet and sunglasses with Neptune looking at the Scroll in her hand over her shoulder.
Sun: (Scroll-call) That Torchwick guy is in it! But not, like, it didn't eat him; he's, like, controlling it or something!
Yang: Where are you guys?
Right on cue, behind them, Blake and Sun can be seen running through the street with the Paladin hot on their heels before they all disappear from view.
Sun: (In both person and on the Scroll) HURRYYYY!!!
Neptune: I think that was them.
Blake and Sun somehow make it to the highways, jumping down into the busy street and continuing their escape by hopping on cars while the Paladin follows them by pushing vehicles out of the way. Sun pauses to look at their pursuer's path of destruction and offer a quick "Whoa!" before leaping onto more cars, much to the anger of Roman inside the robot, his face surrounded by blue holographic screens.
Yang and Neptune are able to follow the mech suit on their ride, coming up next to it as it runs.
Yang: We've gotta slow it down!
Neptune reaches for his gun, but Roman notices the pair on his sensors and crashes into a multitude of cars with the Paladin's strong bulk, sending them flying towards his chasers.
Yang swerves, leaning her bike to the side in avoidance of flying debris while Neptune flails in a panic. Back on two wheels again, Neptune unslings his weapon, aims as sparks start flying, and fires several bolts of blue electricity at the Paladin, causing Roman to grimace from the force of the attacks.
Switching strategies, Neptune flips the gun and it grows a shaft and an energy blade at the end, then jumps from Yang's bike as the spear's head splits in three and drives it into the top of the Paladin. Sun and Blake pause in their car-hopping to look back.
Neptune is trying his best, but the mech keeps bucking and threatens to make him fall. Closing his eyes, Sun smashes his palms together, and from the golden Aura around him, his Semblance creates two glowing outlines that copy their creator, leaping off and going back over the tops of vehicles to collide into the Paladin's front. They explode into blinding light upon contact to let Sun leap forward with Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang held high, but Roman finally turns enough to send Neptune flying off and knocking into his leader, sending both of them off the highway.
Weiss: (Scroll-call) Blake! I'm in position!
She is seen twirling over a highway and landing in the middle of the road, holding Myrtenaster at the approaching Roman. He smiles as his robot charges the girl, but Weiss spins and plunges her blade into the ground, summoning a circle of ice across the pavement that causes the Paladin to slip and crash, actually flying over the young Huntress and falling off the ramp, landing further down before Ruby, already having her Crescent Rose out in scythe form.
The Paladin stands back up, and the rest of Team RWBY falls beside their leader to take up positions. Roman chuckles, moving the robot slowly towards the girls.
Ruby and Blake jump back out of the way as Weiss performs her same ice-circle trick, but backs out of Yang's way when she jumps into the air and hits the epicenter with her Ember Celica, creating a wave of mist that surrounds Roman. Immediately, the Paladin activates its laser sensors to make up for the lost sight, but it barely sees the afterimage of Blake and narrowly misses the dashing Yang. A gun manages to fire at the area between Blake and Yang, but out from the blast comes Ruby, who slashes the metal with her blade, causing it to falter.
Blake and Weiss go in this time, each girl going for the feet until Weiss jumps up and stabs a sensor before leaping off of a white glyph. Roman lifts the Paladin's foot to crush Blake, but Weiss summons another glyph under her teammate to launch her backwards before the crushing blow can land. Roman growls and fires off the missiles, but Weiss and Blake flip backwards as the explosions merely hit where they were.
Finally, Weiss jumps up too high, and Roman fires a double energy blast at her. Myrtenaster absorbs the damage, but Weiss is thrown back, so she casts a beam of light from her weapon to the ground under Blake, forming a yellow clockwork circle that's absorbed into the Faunus girl and lets her slice through each launched missile with ease in a flurry of super-fast slashes.
Ruby: (Running into the fray) Ladybug!
Ruby shoots herself forward and cuts at the robot's legs, then turns as Blake aims herself at the giant's feet as well. They both dash forward and attack at the same time, circling each other around the Paladin with each strike until they both launch themselves into the air and come down together on the shoulder, cutting off the left arm entirely.
Yang doesn't waste a second, jumping onto the Paladin's back and punching the top with fiery shotgun blasts. Roman is knocked around in the cabin, but seeing as he can't reach her with his remaining mechanical arm, he runs backwards through two columns and leaves her embedded in a third before backing away and turning towards her. Just as she is falling down, the remaining arm extends a closed fist, and when it punches her, she flies through the column and doesn't get up.
Ruby: Don't worry! With each hit she gets stronger, and she uses that energy to fight back! That's what makes her special.
Yang slowly gets back on her feet, hair burning a brilliant white as she clenches her fists. Sensing victory, Roman throws a punch, but Yang catches it in her own hand (despite the ground cracking beneath her) and, eyes red with rage, smashes her knuckles into the second arm, obliterating it under her force.
Blake throws her Gambol Shroud out for Yang to catch while flying, and the Faunus uses the momentum to swing the glowing girl around for a final hit to the robot. Roman, however, steps out of the way just in time to avoid complete destruction.
Ruby: We have to slow it down!
Weiss: And how do you propose we do that?
Twirling their weapons so they both point at Roman, Weiss creates a series of glyphs in front of the scythe's sniper barrel, and a single shot through the circles creates a dazzling spiral of energy that creates large icicles upon impact with the Paladin. Ruby continues to shoot as Weiss freezes the fire, and as the ice completely envelops the robot's body, Blake swings her partner around in a circle one more time, but with Roman unable to move, the Paladin is hit by the speed and power of Yang's fists, flying into the air before crashing down in a hundred pieces and a defeated criminal.
He looks up just in time to see Yang, still burning with her absorbed power, fire a single shot at the defenseless thief, but he's saved at the last instant when the two-toned girl seen before drops in front of him and merely opens her pink umbrella, deflecting the blast entirely. The new arrival hangs the weapon over her shoulder as Roman addresses the victors.
The pink-and-brown girl curtsies her enemies with a bow, but Yang will have none of it, charging forth with fists raised to strike the outlaws... only to break their image as if made out of a mirror and turn just in time to see them escape in a Bullhead. The rest of team RWBY runs up to Yang's side, now cooled down with the end of the fight.
Weiss: Yeah, I guess she really made our plans... fall apart!
Yang: (While Weiss smiles, Ruby giggles, and Blake starts walking away, she simply states) No. Just... no.
Weiss: (Getting mad.) What- But, you do it!
Weiss: Was this not it?
Weiss: (Walking with her teammates.) Well, at least I'm trying!
Ruby: Wait... Where are Sun and Neptune?
Sun and Neptune are sitting in the middle stools of the "A Simple Wok Noodle House" eating their plates of noodles with the Shopkeep behind the counter and their weapons leaning on the other two stools.
Neptune: They're probably fine, right?
His question answered, Neptune turns back to his noodles, and the two eat in silence until the screen cuts to black and the credits roll.
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0.974194 |
What is the best internet provider in Barneveld?
The centrally located town of Barneveld is one of the many small communities that make up the majority of Wisconsin. Roughly 1,200 people live in Barneveld itself, with thousands more living in the rural communities that surround this region. Neighboring communities include Blue Mounds, Daleyville, Dodgeville, and Yellowstone. If you live in this part of rural Wisconsin, you could find a competitive high speed Internet plan that fits your needs.
One popular choice for those in the Barneveld area is CenturyLink. Through this company, those throughout Barneveld and surrounding communities can access high speed DSL service. Plans vary in speed, so you can pick the option that suits your usage habits and preferences.
Frontier FiOS has seen quite a bit of growth in this region of Wisconsin in recent years. The company's expanding DSL network includes much of Barneveld.
Those interested in high speed cable can turn to Charter, the main cable provider in Barneveld. This company offers extremely fast download speeds and reliable connections.
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0.99999 |
How do I know if I owe use tax and how do I remit it?
In most states, consumer use tax is typically due when the purchase was made through a catalog, toll-free number, over the internet or out-of-state. It applies to the items or services brought into, delivered into or used in the state you are locate in. To determine if tax is due please contact your local tax accountant.
Consumer use tax can be paid directly to the state department of revenue by filing a use tax return or, in some states, by including an amount on the income tax return filed each year with the state.
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0.999999 |
How long have you been roleplaying in general?: Since 2012.
What previous experience do you have as a staff member, either here or on other communities?: From 2014 to 2016 I owned, operated, and moderated Eagles Gaming EpochRP, a custom DayZ Epoch server. In 2015, I also worked as a content developer for GOAT Dark RP.
Have you received any punishments or citations on the server? If so, what were they for?: No.
Why should we choose you over other applicants for this position?: I believe that I am a qualified applicant because after running and maintaining a roleplaying server I understand that in order to have a positive roleplaying experience, it must be maintained by a dedicated staff that renders an unbiased and impartial decision. I was reintroduced to serious roleplay through the Mobsters Paradise server, and I would like to assist in its growth, whether that be with resolving a dispute with a player or assisting a new player in understanding how the server operates. Lastly, currently my only character on the server with any faction affiliation is my police character (Detective Patrick McGlover), allowing for an unbiased approach to moderation situations.
Please summarize the duties of a staff member: The primary duty of a staff member is to maintain the quality roleplaying that occurs on the server, this is done by reinforcing the rules set by the server as well as ensuring that all players have their disputes settled both fairly and in such a way that both parties understand why the decision was made. Furthermore, whenever a request for a staff member is made, it should be dealt with in a timely manner. This could mean that the staff member would have to sacrifice some in–character playing time to answer it. Lastly, the staff member must be professional and approachable, as they are representing the server and should strive to make the roleplay experience as positive as possible.
Basic Information Steam Name: Trader Joe SteamID: STEAM_0:1:42744104 What rank are you applying for?: Admin How long have you been playing on Mobster’s Paradise: 3 months How long have you been roleplaying in general?: Since 2012. What previous experience do you have as a staff member, either here or on other communities?: From 2014 to 2016 I owned, operated, and moderated Eagles Gaming EpochRP, a custom DayZ Epoch server. In 2015, I also worked as a content developer for GOAT Dark RP. Staff Knowledge Section Have you received any punishments or citations on the server? If so, what were they for?: No. Why should we choose you over other applicants for this position?: I believe that I am a qualified applicant because after running and maintaining a roleplaying server I understand that in order to have a positive roleplaying experience, it must be maintained by a dedicated staff that renders an unbiased and impartial decision. I was reintroduced to serious roleplay through the Mobsters Paradise server, and I would like to assist in its growth, whether that be with resolving a dispute with a player or assisting a new player in understanding how the server operates. Lastly, currently my only character on the server with any faction affiliation is my police character (Detective Patrick McGlover), allowing for an unbiased approach to moderation situations. Please summarize the duties of a staff member: The primary duty of a staff member is to maintain the quality roleplaying that occurs on the server, this is done by reinforcing the rules set by the server as well as ensuring that all players have their disputes settled both fairly and in such a way that both parties understand why the decision was made. Furthermore, whenever a request for a staff member is made, it should be dealt with in a timely manner. This could mean that the staff member would have to sacrifice some in–character playing time to answer it. Lastly, the staff member must be professional and approachable, as they are representing the server and should strive to make the roleplay experience as positive as possible.
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0.999999 |
Should energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be developed?
Viewpoint: Yes, energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be developed because dependence on foreign resources poses a serious threat to the security of the United States.
Viewpoint: No, energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should not be developed because the gain would be minimal and the cost to the environment unacceptable.
When the first major oil strike occurred, at Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, the momentous character of the event could hardly have been appreciated. There were no automobiles then, nor could anyone have imagined the importance that petroleum would acquire within three-quarters of a century. Even if they had, most observers would have presumed that America had all the oil supplies it needed.
At that time, paleontologists were just beginning to understand the fact that dinosaurs had once ruled the planet. It would be years before scientists understood that the deposition of their bodies in the earth—the result of a great cataclysm some 65 million years ago—had provided Earth's "new" human rulers with a vast but nonetheless limited supply of energy in the form of petroleum.
Likewise it would be years before prospectors began to discover ever more abundant supplies of oil on U.S. soil, first in Texas and surrounding states, and later in Alaska. Also in the future lay the discovery of even more impressive reserves in the Middle East, a region that until the mid-twentieth century was economically impoverished and geopolitically insignificant.
By 1973, much had changed. America and other industrialized nations had millions of cars on the road and regularly imported millions of barrels of crude oil from Saudi Arabia and other nations, which—because of their vast oil wealth—had become powerful players on the international scene. In 1973, Americans would be forced to confront their dependence on foreign oil. That was the year when the Organization of Oil-Exporting Countries (OPEC), composed primarily of Arab nations, placed an embargo on oil sales to the United States in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel. The results were disastrous: suddenly scarce, petroleum was in high demand, and anyone who lived through that time can recall the long lines at the gas pumps, the frustration of cancelled family trips, the exigencies of enforced conservation, and the fears raised by dependency on hostile foreign powers for the fuel that literally runs our nation.
Those fears subsided somewhat with the conclusion of the embargo—unsuccessful inasmuch as it failed to sway U.S. policy in the Middle East—but they have resurfaced again and again over the years. One of the most dramatic instances of such resurfacing occurred after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Though a small band of Muslim extremists actually carried out these acts, the subsequent response by a large segment of the Arab world—most notably, a refusal to wholeheartedly condemn the terrorists' actions—once again gave notice to Americans that their trade agreements with Saudi Arabia and other oil-exporting Arab nations could break down at any time.
In the eyes of many Americans, three decades of strained relations with the Arab world only served to reinforce the need to develop oil resources on U.S. soil. By that time, most economically viable reserves in the continental United States had been tapped, but Alaska still presented a potentially rewarding frontier for future exploration. In response to the embargo of 1973, America stepped up its efforts to extract oil from Alaska.
Significant oil reserves had first been discovered along the shores of the Arctic Ocean in 1968, but the lack of infrastructure (including roads) in that largely uninhabited region had presented an impediment to exploitation of those reserves. Then, in 1969, a group of petroleum companies paid the state $1 billion for drilling rights and proposed the building of a pipeline. Opposed by environmentalists, the proposed pipeline had gone unbuilt, however, until November 1973, a month after the Arabs imposed the embargo, at which point Congress authorized the construction of a 789-mi (1,262-km) pipeline.
The pipeline made possible the transport of oil from the Prudhoe Bay oil field on the Arctic coast to the harbor at Valdez, from whence oil tankers transported it to the ports on the West Coast of the United States. However, environmental concerns remained, and loomed greater in the years that followed. In part, this was due to the growth of an increasingly powerful and politically forceful environmental movement, which was still in its infancy at the time the original pipeline was proposed. But concerns over the threat posed to the Alaskan wilderness by the extraction and transport of oil had also spread far beyond the limits of the environmentalist movement to the population as a whole. This was particularly the case after the 1989 disaster of the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker that ran aground off of Prince William Sound, causing the worst oil spill in the history of North America and doing immeasurable damage to the environment.
In the essays that follow, arguments are made, based on scientific speculation regarding the recoverability of resources, both for and against the development of energy resources in ANWR. In other words, not all arguments against drilling necessarily revolve around environmental concerns alone, and not all arguments in favor of it are based purely on concerns for national security. Obviously, those two positions—the environment on one hand, and national security on the other—play a major role in governing one's views on the advisability of exploiting the resources at ANWR. However, at heart the question is one of costs versus benefits.
On the one hand, there are the costs involved in the impact on the environment, as well as on the lives of native peoples. Furthermore, there is the sheer economic cost of extraction and development of ANWR reserves against the economic and political benefits to be accrued from those actions. On the other hand, there is the political cost of dependence on oil exported by increasingly hostile nations, combined with the potential economic benefits, both to the state of Alaska and to the nation as a whole.
Viewpoint: Yes, energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be developed, because dependence on foreign resources poses a serious threat to the security of the United States.
For the last 40 years of the twentieth century and into the first decade of the twenty-first century, drilling for oil in the Coastal Plain of the 19 million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been strongly debated. The ANWR, located in northeastern Alaska, is an area abundant with fauna and flora, and rich with oil potential. Energy experts agree that the Coastal Plain (commonly called 1002 Area) is currently the most promising domestic onshore oil and gas prospect. The consensus of most petroleum geologists is that its potential is on the order of billions of barrels of recoverable oil and trillions of cubic feet of recoverable gas.
Since 1985 oil and gas leasing on this federally owned land, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (within the Department of the Interior), has been banned. Exploration and development of oil and gas are supported by the oil companies and by the majority of Alaskan officials and citizens, but has been opposed by many environmental organizations. The inhabitants of the area, the Inupiat Eskimos and Gwich'in Indians, are also actively involved since they have a direct economic relationship to the land, and to its wildlife and other natural resources. The U.S. Congress will ultimately decide whether to open up the ANWR for oil exploration and development.
Under federal law, 17.5 million acres (about 92%) of ANWR will remain permanently closed to all development. The remaining 1.5 million acres (about 8%) on the northern Coastal Plain of ANWR is the only area being considered for development. If oil drilling commenced, less than one half of one percent, or about 2,000-5,000 acres, of the 1.5 million acres of the Coastal Plain would be directly affected. According to Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK), the actual area in the ANWR covered by such structures as drilling rigs, buildings, and roads would be less than the size of the Anchorage International Airport.
The 11 countries of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) account for more than 40% of the world's annual oil production and possess about 75% of the proven reserves. At the time of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the United Stated imported only 36% of its oil. As of 2001, the U.S. imported, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a little over 55% of the oil needed domestically. Experts at the Department of Energy are expecting the import percentage to increase from 55% to 65% by the year 2020.
Little interest was given to oil potential in ANWR when oil prices were low. However, in 1999, OPEC and other oil-exporting nations agreed to cut oil production. Within five months world oil prices went from $10 to $33 per barrel; but leveled off in 2001 to about $26. Consequently, interest in Alaskan oil, and especially in ANWR development, has drastically increased. Recent OPEC production agreements have renewed calls for U.S. policies that might reduce dependence on foreign oil and help with uncertainties in energy markets due to continuing Middle East crises.
United States oil production has steadily declined since its peak in 1973. ANWR development would alleviate current oil supply problems. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), peak annual ANWR production—assuming that 9.4 billion barrels of petroleum are recoverable at a market price of $24 per barrel—would be approximately 1.4 million barrels per day, compared with projected U.S. oil imports of 15.3 million barrels per day and total oil use of 24.3 million barrels per day in 2015. (The level and timing of peak production would depend upon the rate at which the ANWR oil fields are developed; according to the EIA, from the time of approval to first production would be from 7 to 12 years.) Supporters of development argue that ANWR oil would reduce dependence on foreign sources, and that the additional incremental supply could be crucial in determining oil prices. At the upper estimate, the U.S. Geological Survey projects that ANWR reserves could total as much as 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil, an amount that represents all the oil currently imported from Saudi Arabia for the last 30 years.
New petroleum technology, including advances in computing and exploration methods, developed since the early 1970s will allow companies to tap underground reservoirs with a much smaller surface impact. Senator Murkowski recently said that through such technologies oil companies could safely develop a manageable "footprint" (the area occupied by infrastructure) in order to protect the surrounding environment and the ecology. If the Prudhoe Bay oil fields were built today using the latest techniques, the footprint would be 1,526 acres, 64% smaller than when actually built. In addition, millions of dollars of research on wildlife resources and their habitat on Alaska's North Slope have greatly increased the scientific understanding of arctic ecosystems and have also shown that wildlife and petroleum extraction can coexist.
The indigenous Gwich'in Indians are most apprehensive about oil development in the Refuge because they depend on the barren-ground caribou of the Porcupine herd for food. They fear that ANWR development would disrupt the caribou's calving grounds and diminish their food supplies. However, Department of Interior Secretary Gale Norton stated in 2002 that the wildlife of the ANWR can be adequately protected and America's treaty obligations with native tribes would not be violated by oil exploration in the ANWR chiefly due to improvements in oil-drilling technology.
Proponents of drilling point to the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk, both about 60 mi (100 km) west of the Refuge, and the central Arctic caribou herd. According to Pat Valkenberg, a research coordinator with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the herd has increased its numbers from 15,000 in 1985 to 27,100 in 2000 despite several hundred miles of roads and more than a thousand miles of elevated pipe.
As mentioned previously, drilling in the ANWR can now be accomplished with far less impact than could have been possible using older technology. Among the improvements are smaller gravel pads to support the wells, greater distances that can be reached from a single (draining) pad, the re-injection of drilling wastes (eliminating the need for large waste pits), and a reduction in the need for gravel roads. In addition, other improvements include three-dimensional seismic exploration, four-dimensional time-lapse imaging, ground-penetrating radar, and enhanced computer processing of resulting data on geological structures. According to the Energy Department, these latter improvements have increased the number of successful wells from about 10% to as much as 50%, resulting in a decrease in the number of pads and exploration costs. Together, these advances decrease the developmental impact.
Between 1980 and 1994, Alaska's North Slope (ANS) oil field development and production activity contributed over $50 billion to the U.S. economy. The oil-rich region extended eastward from the 2-billion-barrel Kuparuk River field, past the Prudhoe Bay field (originally 11 billion barrels, now down to about 4 billion barrels), and a few smaller fields (such as Lisburne and Endicott), and in all likelihood extends through ANWR's 1002 Area. With the close proximity of these current oil resources, it is believed that the ANWR could easily contain the largest un-drilled, petroleum potential known in the United States.
The state of Alaska is already strongly tied to oil with regards to its revenue base. The Prudhoe Bay field, the largest single accumulation of oil ever discovered in North America, is located on lands owned by Alaska. The proportion of the state budget utilizing petroleum revenues has risen from an annual average of 12%, initially in 1968, to 90% 15 years later, and currently holds at 80%. According to Arctic Power, an Alaskan nonprofit organization, since 1987 the North Slope oil fields have provided the country with nearly 20% of its domestic production. But its actual production has been on the decline during that same period. Peak production was reached in 1980 with 2 million barrels per day, but is currently at nearly 1.2 million barrels per day. By 2010 oil flow is predicted to drop to just 315,000 barrels per day, and no new fields have been identified to compensate for the decline.
Industry interest in the 1002 Area is based in part in keeping the Trans-Alaska Pipeline operating efficiently. Oil is transported from the North Slope by the 800-mi (1,290-km) system, from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez in south-central Alaska, where it is then transferred to tankers. Pipeline costs are largely fixed; a smaller flow of oil means higher pipeline rates per barrel.
Both the national and Alaskan state governments have important political and economic reasons to develop natural resources and assist those corporations extracting them. Revenues (estimated in the billions of dollars in the form of bonus bids, lease rentals, royalties, and taxes) and employment (estimated by Senator Murkowski to create between 250,000 and 735,000 jobs) from such companies are central to their financial welfare. Backed by the majority of Alaskans, two U.S. senators and one house representative from Alaska are strong advocates of oil development in the ANWR in order to meet the state's economic needs.
Mark Rubin of the American Petroleum Institute says that ANWR is the best place to look for domestic oil. The Coastal Plain lies between two known major discovery areas. To the west, the Prudhoe Bay, Lisburne, Endicott, Milne Point, and Kuparuk oil fields are currently in production. To the east, major discoveries have been made in Canada, near the Mackenzie River delta, and in the Beaufort Sea. Rubin adds that if current predictions hold, then there is more oil in ANWR than any other place in the United States. Petroleum geologists agree that the Coastal Plain is America's best possibility for a major discovery like the giant "Prudhoe Bay-sized" discovery. Estimates from the Department of Interior range from just under 6 to upwards of 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
According to a February 2000 poll performed by the Dittman Research Company, more than 75% of Alaskans favor exploration and production of the oil reserves in ANWR as long as it is done in an environmentally sound way that keeps land disturbances to a minimum. According to a poll taken by the Los Angeles Times between January 31 and February 3, 2002 (and backed by earlier polls with similar results), 48% of all Americans favor opening a part of the ANWR to energy exploration. Alaska Democratic Party Chairman Scott Sterling said that he supports oil drilling in ANWR as long as wildlife is protected.
The Inupiat people of the North Slope have called the Arctic their home for thousands of years. They have depended on Alaska's North Slope and the area within the ANWR for their very lives. The majority of Inupiat Eskimos support onshore oil development on the Coastal Plain. These partial-subsistence hunters will gain financially (by providing jobs, schools, and a better economy) from leasing ANWR's potentially rich land to the oil companies. On the other hand, the Inupiat people fear the potential disruption of wildlife and their way of life. However, former Inupiat Mayor Benjamin P. Nageak said that since the first discovery of oil in 1969 the oil companies have consistently met the strict standards and regulations that were imposed on them in order to protect the land. Nageak went on to say that his people have the greatest stake possible in seeing that all development is performed in an environmentally safe way.
Oil development in the ANWR could yield up to 16 billion barrels of oil. The U.S. economy is highly dependent on oil and because of this the country is currently importing over half its oil, much from the Middle East. Conservation and renewable energy have great potential, but for today and for many years to come, oil will be a major source of energy. While it may be gratifying for some to strongly resist drilling in sensitive areas, it is naïve to ignore the national security and economic benefits that ANWR oil extraction can provide. Rather than trying to prevent the inevitable, ecologists (and others sensitive to the environment) should work hard to design and implement enforceable environmental standards for drilling in sensitive areas such as ANWR. Because the United States—at least for the foreseeable future—is so dependent on petroleum, the energy resources of the ANWR should be developed.
Viewpoint: No, energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should not be developed, because the gain would be minimal and the cost to the environment unacceptable.
Early explorers to the North Slope of Alaska often noted oil seeps and oil-stained sands on the surface. Yet it was not until 1944 that oil exploration began in earnest on 23 million acres of what was then called Naval Petroleum Reserve Number 4 in northwestern Alaska.
In 1968, North America's largest oil field was discovered near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. The Trans-Alaska pipeline was finished in 1977. By 1981, the oil fields around Prudhoe Bay, Endicott, and offshore in the Beaufort Sea, yielded about 1.7 million barrels of oil per day—about 25% of U.S. domestic production. By 1988, these oil fields showed signs of exhaustion and oil yields declined. No new oil fields have been discovered in this area.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, oil companies leasing off-and onshore sites farther east announced the potential for oil drilling on these holdings. These sites are situated in or just offshore of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), designated by Congress in 1960 as an 8.9-million acre protected wilderness. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA, 1980) doubled ANWR's size, but omitted protection for the shoreline region known as 1002 Area, pending further research into its oil-production potential and its effects on wildlife. This region is the main focus of interest for oil companies and conservationists. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has analyzed the region's energy potential, and found that ANWR and 1002 Area do contain oil. The questions remain, though, about whether it is economically feasible to recover it.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) meanwhile conducted numerous studies to assess the effects of oil exploration and extraction on ANWR's wildlife. They concluded that resource exploitation would seriously affect the Porcupine herd of caribou, destroy polar bear den areas, and disrupt key breeding bird sites.
There is oil under ANWR. But the first two questions that need to be answered are: "How much is there?" and "Is it economically and technically feasible to extract it?"
The most reliable studies of potential oil deposits under ANWR have been conducted by the USGS. The agency assessed the potential for technically recoverable oil in ANWR and in 1002 Area. The agency has reported that there are three likely scenarios surrounding the amount and recoverability of the oil.
Scenario 1: Most Likely, Most Recoverable, Least Amount.
There is a 95% probability of finding 5.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil from ANWR's Coastal Plain. Peak production rates for this scenario are estimated between 250 and 400 million barrels per year.
There is a 50% probability of finding 10.3 billion barrels of oil that are recoverable from ANWR's Coastal Plain. Peak production rates for this scenario are estimated between 400 million and 600 million barrels per year.
Scenario 3: Least Likely, Least Recoverable, Greatest Amount.
There is a 5% probability of finding 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil from ANWR's Coastal Plain. Peak production rates for this scenario are estimated between 600 and 800 million barrels per year.
No matter how much oil is under ANWR, it will take time to develop the area and extract it. For all scenarios, and at the highest extraction rate, significant amounts of oil will not be produced until about 10 years after development begins, with the greatest yield after 15-20 years. Maximum yield will be recoverable for less than five years, before it begins declining rapidly. Thus, any amount of oil recovered from ANWR will not affect immediate energy needs and will contribute most to our energy needs for a period of only a few years. As discussed below, even at its greatest, this contribution is insignificant compared with U.S. energy consumption.
Not all of the oil believed to underlie ANWR is technically or economically recoverable. The FWS reports that at prices lower than $16 per barrel, there is no economically recoverable oil in 1002 Area of ANWR. The amounts and rates of oil extraction set out in the above scenarios assume an oil price of $24 per barrel to make extraction economically feasible. It is clear that the most recoverable oil (at 95%) yields the least economic return in terms of oil production.
Much of the oil under ANWR and 1002 Area occurs as small, widely dispersed deposits. The USGS, with concurrence from oil companies, states that accumulations of less than 100 million barrels of oil are uneconomic for mining. Other economic factors that influence the cost of oil extraction are the current state of oil-extraction technology and the field's proximity to infrastructure.
The region known as 1002 Area is 100 mi (161 km) wide and located more than 30 mi (48 km) from the tail end of the nearest pipeline and more than 50 mi (80 km) from the nearest gravel road and oil support facility. To be fully developed, 1002 Area would require the construction of all the above, plus production sites, power plants, processing facilities, loading docks, living quarters, airstrips, gravel pits, utility lines, and landfills. Thus, its isolation adds significantly to the costs of developing its oil. The USGS report shows that far less oil can be economically recovered than actually occurs, or even than is technically recoverable. (Technically recoverable oil is defined as the in-place oil that is available for extraction based on geology and the state of current oil-extraction technology, regardless of cost.) Further, when oil prices decline, some oil companies may simply abandon their oil fields, leaving the infrastructure and waste lagoons intact.
The crux of the argument in favor of oil drilling in ANWR and 1002 Area is that it will significantly reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil; that it will make the United States more "energy independent." That argument is patently untrue.
As of 2000, the United States consumes about 19.6 million barrels of oil each day, or 7.154 billion barrels per year. If development of ANWR's oil fields began tomorrow and oil began to flow by 2010, the national rate of oil consumption would by then be more than 8 billion barrels per year. By the time of ANWR's maximum output, in 2020, U.S. oil consumption is projected to be about 9.5 billion barrels per year. Yet at its maximum output, ANWR would yield merely 800 million or so barrels of oil per year. And this high yield would last for only about five years, before declining drastically.
In short, even if ANWR could produce the maximum amount of oil (16 billion barrels, at a 5% chance of recovery), it would at best contribute less than 10% of U.S. oil needs. If the mean amount of oil was recoverable (10.3 million barrels, at 50% chance of recovery), at best about 5% of U.S. oil needs would be met. For the most recoverable oil (5.7 billion barrels, at 95% chance of recovery), only about 2% of our oil needs would be met by ANWR.
Those who are concerned with U.S. dependence on foreign oil—which should be everyone—obviously cannot find relief in ANWR's oil. However, raising fuel-efficiency standards in American cars and trucks—or even using better tires—will significantly reduce our oil consumption and thus our need for foreign oil. Raising the fuel-efficiency of cars, SUVs, and trucks to 39 mi (63 km) per gallon (mpg) would save vastly more oil than occurs in all of ANWR. At 39 mpg, we would save a whopping 51 billion barrels by 2050. Just using more efficient tires would save more oil than ANWR can produce. On an annual basis, by 2020 (the time of ANWR's maximum output), if vehicles are getting 39 mi (63 km) to the gallon, we would be saving more than 1.2 billion gallons of oil per year—far more than ANWR yields.
ANWR is one of our last, great undisturbed wildernesses and the last U.S.-owned remaining intact arctic-subarctic ecosystem. It is recognized as a key component in an international arctic-subarctic refuge network (including neighboring preserves in Canada, where resource exploitation is forbidden). The FWS studies have shown that oil extraction in ANWR, and particularly in 1002 Area, will have severely negative effects on wildlife.
ANWR is home to the Porcupine herd of caribou, which migrates through the refuge and into and out of adjacent preserves in Canada. However, the largest concentration of caribou calving locations lies within 1002 Area. The FWS has shown that oil extraction in this area would reduce suitable calving locations, reduce available forage for caribou, restrict their access to insect-relief habitat on the coast, expose the herd to higher predation, and alter ancient migratory pathways, with unknown consequences for the herd. The FWS concludes that there is no doubt that oil drilling will damage, perhaps irremediably, the Porcupine herd of caribou. A 1987 FWS report also indicates a similar "major" effect (defined as "widespread, long-term change in habitat availability or quality" that would negatively affect wildlife) for ANWR's muskoxen.
The FWS reports that ANWR and 1002 Area are "the most important land denning habitat for the Beaufort Sea polar bear population." Denning bears are female bears with cubs. Without these denning areas, this population of polar bears would decline, due to increased cub mortality. Development might also result in more deadly bear-human confrontations.
More than 135 species of birds are known to nest in 1002 Area, including many shore-birds, waterfowl, loons, songbirds, and raptors. Oil drilling would result, at the least, in disturbance of nests, at worst, in destruction of the habitat required by breeding birds for nesting and feeding. Most affected birds include snow geese, seabirds, and shorebirds.
ANWR is tundra. Permafrost lies beneath it. This land and its vegetation are extremely vulnerable to disturbance and mend slowly or not at all. The land is still scarred, and the vegetation still damaged, where simple seismic studies were conducted more than 15 years ago. Tire tracks leave scars and ruined vegetation that takes decades to recover, if they recover at all. Wildlife cannot survive in this harsh place while waiting for vegetation to recover. And if simple tire tracks leave permanent scars, the damage inflicted by the infrastructure built to sustain oil extraction will do irremediable damage.
The Inupiat and Gwich'in peoples of northeast Alaska depend on the caribou for survival. (Gwich'in means "people of the caribou.") Not only do these native people have a deep spiritual and cultural attachment to the caribou, but they rely on them for much of their subsistence, from meat to skins for clothes and shelter to tools and trade. The Gwich'in are most closely associated with the Porcupine caribou herd, which is most threatened by oil development. Both the Gwich'in and the Inupiat continue to lobby the U.S. government to abandon plans for oil development in ANWR, and to pressure the Canadian government to oppose it.
To make oil drilling in ANWR more palatable, Congress nominally reduced the size of the area open to "production and support facilities" to 2,000 acres on the Coastal Plain (1002 Area), or a 2,000-acre "footprint." "Footprint" is an oil-industry term used to describe the number of acres actually covered with a layer of gravel to support oil-field infrastructure.
However, this provision excludes "leasing and exploration," which will be permitted on the entire 1.5-million-acre Coastal Plain. Exploration means drilling. Oil companies do not drill anywhere they will be prohibited from extracting profitable oil.
Further, the 2,000-acre limit applies only to "surface" acreage. It does not cover "seismic or other exploratory" activities. Seismic research is done with convoys of bulldozers and "thumper trucks." Oil exploration entails erecting large oil rigs and airstrips for aircraft.
The limitation also does not apply to aboveground pipelines, which, because they do not touch the ground, are not considered as part of the acreage developed! FWS studies show that caribou avoid calving within 2.7 mi (4.4 km) of pipelines and roads, thus greatly expanding the "footprint" impact of development on wildlife.
The impression given by the limitation is that the 2,000 acres will be contiguous and compact. That is false. Nothing prevents smaller, intermittent developments over a vast area of the Coastal Plain. In fact, the USGS has reported that "oil under the coastal plain is not concentrated in one large reservoir, but is spread underneath [it] in numerous small deposits." Developing these widely dispersed deposits would damage an area far greater than 2,000 acres—and would affect wildlife throughout the region.
There is oil under ANWR. However, the amount of oil that can be extracted technically and profitably does not begin to approach the amount of oil the U.S. needs to reduce its dependence on imports. Improving fuel efficiency will have a far greater impact on reducing our oil consumption and dependence on foreign oil. Furthermore, it will save a priceless and irreplaceable wilderness that a secretary of the interior described this way: "[ANWR's] wildlife and natural [wilderness] values are so magnificent and so enduring that they transcend the value of any mineral that may lie beneath the surface. Such minerals are finite. Production inevitably means changes whose impacts will be measured in geologic time in order to gain marginal benefit that lasts only a few years."
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://www.r7.fws.gov/nwr/arctic/index.html>.
"Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Potential Impacts of Proposed Oil and Gas Development on the Arctic Refuge's Coastal Plain: Historical Overview and Issues of Concern." U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Report [cited July 12, 2002]. <www.fws.gov>.
"Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1002 Area, Petroleum Assessment, 1998." USGS Report [cited July 12, 2002]. </geology.cr.usgs.gov/pub/fact-sheets/fs-0028-01/fs-0028-01.htm>.
Baden, John A. "Drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?" Bozeman Daily Chronicle (31 October 2001).
Chance, Norman. "The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: A Special Report." Arctic Circle. University of Connecticut [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/ANWR/>.
Corn, M. Lynne, Lawrence C. Kumins, and Pamela Baldwin. "The National Arctic Wildlife Refuge." The CRS Issue Brief for Congress. National Council for Science and the Environment [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://cnie.org/NLE/CRSreports/Biodiversity/biodv-14.cfm>.
Doyle, Jack. Crude Awakening: The Oil Mess in America: Wasting Energy, Jobs, and the Environment. Friends of the Earth, 1994.
Lentfer, Hank, ed. Arctic Refuge: A Circle of Testimony (Literature for a Land Ethic). Milkweed Editions, 2001.
Mitchell, John G. "Oil Field or Sanctuary?"National Geographic Society [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/08/01/html/ft_20010801.3.html>.
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) [cited July 12, 2002]. <www.nrdc.org/land/wilderness/anwr>.
NWR News [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://www.anwr.org/index.html>.
The Oil and Gas Resource Potential of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 1002 Area, Alaska. Open File Report 98-34. Staff of the U.S. Geological Survey. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey, 1999.
Petroleum Supply, Consumption, and Imports, 1970-2020 (million barrels per day). National Association of State Energy Officials [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://www.naseo.org/events/winterfuels/2001/presentations/Blake1.pdf>.
Potential Oil Production from the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Updated Assessment. Report # SR/O&G/ 2000-02, U.S. Department of Energy [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_publications/arctic_national_wildlife_refuge/html/execsummary.html>.
"Senator Launches Battle over Drilling in Arctic Refuge." Inside Politics. February 21, 2001 [cited July 12, 2002]. <http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/02/26/arctic.refuge.drilling/>.
Strohmeyer, John. Extreme Conditions: Big Oil and the Transformation of Alaska. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.
Trustees for Alaska [cited July 12, 2002].<www.trustees.org>.
Union of Concerned Scientists [cited July 12,2002]. <www.ucsusa.org/energy/brf_anwr.html>.
Ward, Kennan. The Last Wilderness: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Wildlight Press, 2001.
The animals of a particular habitat, region, or geological period.
The plants of a particular habitat, region, or geological period.
Relating to or denoting geological surveying methods involving vibrations produced artificially, such as by explosions.
Prudhoe Bay, on the North Slope west of ANWR, has been in oil development since the early 1980s. Since few people ever go there and see for themselves, not many people know what the impact of oil exploitation has been. Below are a few facts that should be considered before developing ANWR for oil extraction.
More than 1,000 square miles of tundra are covered with gravel (an area greater than Rhode Island); 23 additional oil fields cover another 2,000 acres; the Trans-Alaska pipeline and haul road eat up another 10,000 acres; there are more than 1,123 mi (1,807 km) of subsidiary roads and pipelines connected to oil wells, with an additional 500 mi (804 km) of roads along these pipelines; there are two 6,500-ft (1981-m) airstrips.
More than 10,000 acres of wetlands have been filled and covered by gravel for roads, airstrips, drill pads, and other facilities. All told, more than 22,000 acres of the North Slope is covered in gravel; there are 350 mi (563 km) of gravel roads; one mile of road requires 50,000 cubic yards of gravel. (Phillips Petroleum used more than 1 million cubic yards of gravel to fill in a 100-acre wetland for just one well.) Gravel is mined from open pits along floodplains, river deltas, and riverbanks; gravel mines covered the entire flood-plain of the Put River. The FWS estimated that over 60-million cubic yards of gravel have been mined, enough to cover Rhode Island with a 1-in (2.5-cm) layer of gravel.
The Arctic is arid, getting a mere 3-12 in (8-30 cm) of precipitation per year. Oil exploitation is water-intensive: each year 27 billion gallons of water are used for oil extraction; a single well requires 1.5 million gallons for drilling and another 360,000 gallons for "camp" use. Winter roads are "paved" with 6-in (15-cm) thick ice: one mile of road requires 1-1.5 million gallons of water for "paving," ice helipads need 2-3.6 million gallons; one airstrip gets 8 million gallons of water for ice-paving.
Between 1991 and 1997, 25 billion gallons of toxic pollutants were discharged into surface waters of the North Slope. Saline water (estimated at 16.4 million gallons) from the Prudhoe Bay is drawn into wells, contaminating freshwater resources.
Oil and other contaminant spills are a chronic problem: there are about 400 spills a year of various toxic substances onto the surface; between 1984 and 1993, there were 1,955 crude oil spills (376,321 gallons), 2,390 diesel spills (464,856 gallons), 977 gasoline spills (13,382 gallons), and 1,360 hydraulic fluid spills (77,301 gallons). From 1996 to 2000, more than 1.3 million gallons of oil (crude, diesel) were spilled. In 2000 alone, 18,000 gallons of drilling mud spilled at a BP facility, 9,000 gallons of crude gushed from a ruptured pipeline, destroying a wetland, 92,000 gallons of a salt water/crude oil mixture covered the tundra near a Phillips Petroleum site.
As of 1990, more than 4 million gallons of crude, gasoline, diesel, hydraulic fluid, acids, corrosives, heavy metals, lead, and other toxic chemicals had been spilled on the North Slope. Oil companies admit that they are unable to control or to clean up spills, citing the inclement Arctic weather. Their "spill drills," or clean-up tests, fail repeatedly.
Before 1988, about 6 billion gallons of drilling wastes were dumped into 450 unlined reserve pits. After mixing with snow and freezing, during spring melt, the wastewater flows over the tundra as toxic runoff and accumulates in wetlands and ponds. Lawsuits have forced oil companies to abandon surface pits. Today, the waste is injected under the permafrost. To date, less than half the surface reservoirs have been cleaned up. In March 2001, more than 5,000 gallons of drilling waste spilled onto the tundra from a waste injection facility.
"Should energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be developed." Science in Dispute. . Encyclopedia.com. 20 Apr. 2019 <https://www.encyclopedia.com>.
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Learn strategies for designing for climates where scarce water, large temperature swings and delicate ecosystems require careful intervention.
Arid climates like Las Vegas and much of the Southwestern United States, Mexico and many other areas of the world are very severe. They are characterized by a scarcity of water, high evaporation rates, large temperature swings and very delicate ecological systems. As such, they offer designers challenges and, at the same time, opportunities in logically responding to substantial variations of temperature, water, air movement and an inherent unique beauty of the landscape.
Historically, there have been two basic design strategies for dealing with such climatic extremes. The first uses high mass construction, adobe or other masonry, that tempers the pulse of thermal energy through a fixed form building envelope so that heat can be used at night in the winter or flushed back to the outside in the summer. The second utilizes low mass structures, such as a tent or a tipi that can be adapted in response to changing climatic conditions. Traditionally, tipis were set up on open mesas or plains to take advantage of summer winds. Cooling ventilation was controlled by opening and closing areas of the skin along the bottom edge and at a central apex flap. In the winter, the tipis were moved to more sheltered landscapes and fur insulation linings were added to the interior to retain heat, which could be supplemented with a central fire that was also managed with air flow controlled by adapting the structural skin.
Unfortunately, many designers have viewed these two basic strategies as an either/or proposition. It is my belief that these strategies can be advantageously combined in many situations. Generally speaking, thermal mass can be used as a heat sink to store warmth or cool, and low mass fabric elements can be designed as “selective filters” to control warmth or cool, producing elements such as sunlight, air movement, water and other energy sources.
Another historical example, the Apache Tribal Council meeting ramada in San Carlos, Ariz., embodies principles that can be beneficially utilized with fabric structures. From a general or macro environmental viewpoint the ramada was planned to shade from the high overhead summer sun, while letting air move under and through the structure. In the winter, low sun radiating under the ramada provides warmth. From a more specific or micro perspective, the shadow cast by the ramada moves throughout the days and the year. So, in response to the specific climatic conditions at any given time, users can choose to sit in the shade or sun as desired. This is especially useful during varying conditions of the spring and fall. Another, perhaps even more important purpose of the ramada is that it provides a setting open to the natural environment and symbolically, by being visible, invites broad-based participation in governmental discussions.
Provision of shade throughout the day, in the summer; solar access in the winter; choices of sun/shade in the spring/fall.
Forming and shaping of buildings to create advantageous self-shading or solar gain/day-lighting.
Unique characteristics of various exterior micro-environments, i.e., building/exterior interfaces on the south, southeast, east, northeast, north, northwest, west, southwest and the roof; north/south, northeast/southwest, east/west and southeast/northwest alley ways; adjacent to natural features—foothills, arroyos, hill tops, valleys, open desert, tree covered, etc.
Advantageous mean radiant temperatures of surrounding surfaces, i.e., warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
The influence of interrelated site and landscape elements.
Provision of cooling sources, i.e., fountains, water harvesting, landscape irrigation/misting, waterwalls, natural and/or assisted air movement, flow through or exhaust cooling from adjacent buildings, cool towers; and heating sources, i.e., passive solar gain and re-radiation, outdoor heaters, fireplaces or exhaust heat from adjacent buildings.
Three recent tensile membrane structures in Arizona are all shaped so that the downward or restraining curvature is oriented east/west to parallel the high arc of the summer sun across the sky. However, each varies in response to different architectural design objectives and the local climatic context.
At the Hualapai Nation Visitors Center at the Grand Canyon (fig. 1 in the box above) the author served as tension structure consultant to The Architecture Company, Richard Fe Tom, AIA. In this project, the south edge of the upward or supporting curvature is raised to provide an inviting entry and to allow direct and reflected sunshine under the canopy to provide warmth by direct radiation and re-radiation of heat absorbed by the rocky sitescape environment. The side profile of the structural form alludes to a big horn sheep, which is an important figure in Hualapai culture. In addition to shading in the summer, the form of the canopy collects and directs prevailing wind currents that rise from the canyon floor across the site ridge plateau through the visitor seating area.
At the “Summer Invitation” on the Phoenix Civic Plaza (fig. 2), which was a temporary exhibit focused on demonstrating possibilities for comfort during the hottest time of the year, the south edge was lowered and undesirable solar radiation was screened further by surrounding landscaping on the south, east and west and a supporting trailer structure on the north. The upward curvature rose from south to north. Warm air rose by convection along this surface drawing in ambient air along the south so that a natural cross ventilation air movement was generated. When it was desirable, fans at the top edge on the trailer could be turned on to enhance the airflow.
At the new entrance for the Tucson Zoo in Reid Park (fig. 3), the tensile membrane together with an arcing ticket booth wall provides shade for a ticketing and entry area on the north side. During the day as the sun drops toward the west and temperatures become warmer, the extent of the shading increases toward the northeast, which is the main entry approach area. The lowest point of the membrane, supported by a “V” shaped mast, is oriented to the west-northwest, the direction of the most intense late afternoon summer sun. The configuration of the membrane and this edge point directs rainwater run-off into a cistern. From there, it is used to irrigate and sustain xeriscape desert landscaping, which further enhances shading of the area. Inside the entry on the south, heat is generated by solar radiation toward and re-radiated from the surrounding surfaces. This will be advantageous in the winter and occasionally in the spring and fall. In the summer, more shading will be desirable in this area. For this and the related following project, the author was a tensile fabric consultant to the architects Burns Wald-Hopkins.
The xeriscaped area on the northwest side of the zoo entry will be extended further to engage an adaptive recreation center (fig. 4), which is currently being developed for the City of Tucson Parks and Recreation Department. Initially, this project was studied as a traditional enclosed building. Preliminary analysis indicated that the mechanical system costs for indoor swimming pools would be prohibitive. Much like the Apache Tribal Council Ramada, the project was re-envisioned as a pavilion in the park with a 485m2 fabric structure covering a recreational swimming pool, a lap pool and a resistance current pool. Locker rooms and a therapy pool with a roll-up door that opens to the outdoor deck area are in adjacent building elements. The fabric structure is formed so that air will be drawn in about the perimeter and rise up to exhaust vents at the top of the 24m central mast. During the day the shadow of the pavilion roof form will move across a generous landscaped and pool deck area, always providing users with a choice of staying in the shade or sun. More shade will occur when the sun is high overhead in the summer; and more lower winter sunlight will penetrate under the southeast, south and southwest edges of the pavilion.
In the mid 1980s the University of Arizona Environmental Research Lab Solar Oasis (fig. 5) began to study possibilities of an integrated approach to site/landscape development and built form that would reflect sustainability considerations of land, energy and water use and air quality.
A major component of this project, which continues today, is a south facing tensile membrane green house roof. Several fabrics were tested for this structure over the years. With any given fabric shading/translucency the problem for plant growth was too much shade in the winter and not enough in the summer. The current solution is a sky blue chain link mesh that serves as an arbor for deciduous vines. Leaves are lost in the winter allowing direct sunlight to the plants. In the summer, a thick canopy of leaves grows out over the arbor. Like a ramada, this provides shade but permits warm air to rise up through the canopy. When the vines are irrigated with a misting system, air dropping through the canopy is cooled providing an “evaporative cooling” effect for the greenhouse area and other terrace areas of the solar oasis beyond.
At the Seawater Farm in Massawa, Eriteria, East Africa, the project is focused on sustainable development and enhanced food production. A key component is a series of 80 20m-diameter shrimp cultivation ponds. Each requires a ribbon of shade around its perimeter. Criteria for a prototype structure (fig. 6) that the author helped develop on site were to maximize the use of local labor and materials. The alternative developed used the matt weaving abilities of local women to fabricate membrane segments, native ropes, posts fabricated from plentiful eucalyptus limbs, and anchors and other elements made from materials found at the main recycling market in the capitol Asmara.
Concepts studied and/or explored at the University of Arizona solar oasis and the “Summer Invitation” at the Phoenix Civic Plaza were developed further in a design (unfortunately unrealized) for a permanent Arizona solar oasis (fig. 7) at that site in Phoenix. The plaza, like many public places built in the 1960s, was pleasant in the winter, but in the summer surface temperatures were often over 540C, a classic example of the urban heat island effect out of control. To remedy this, it was proposed to re-introduce biology into the city by removing a third of the plaza deck and parking garage below and replace it with nutrient rich desert soil, in which a xeriscape desert garden could be cultivated. The garden would have been sustained by water harvested from roofs of the surrounding fabric structures and the Convention Center and Symphony Hall buildings.
The fabric pavilions were designed to shade from the high overhead summer sun at mid-day and take advantage of the long shadow cast in the afternoon by the Hyatt Hotel on the west. However, certain south oriented edge areas of the pavilions were raised to permit winter solar gain through the openings of the adjacent street corridors and over the Symphony Hall. Within this shaded environment, cooling was to be provided by new and existing fountains, a long water wall between the two plaza levels, landscape irrigation and cool towers. The towers would supply cool airflow through the pavilions into the garden, where a large feature tower would flood the garden entry with a sea of cool air. The garden tower was proposed to be a fabric structure that visitors could ascend to a top platform for an overview of citywide environmental and resource issues, and then descend down through the cool air inside the tower to the garden below. The tower concept was developed in a study model (fig. 8) and tested with a one-quarter-scale mock-up (fig. 9) set up at the Arizona state capitol on a recent Earth Day. The author was the design architect for the proposed Arizona Solar Oasis and NBBJ was the architect of record.
I would like to suggest that as issues of resource availability, environmental impact and society’s recognition of the need for a more sustainable and regenerative approach to design and planning become more critical, fabric structures have a wonderful opportunity not to be planned as singular objects but as integrated elements and components of built environments designed with a comprehensive focus on such issues.
R. Larry Medlin, an architect with extensive experience in tensile structure design, teaches at the School of Architecture, University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
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Can you tell me what the new name for Nagpur University is now? Also provide me the names of important members of Nagpur University with their designation?
Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University (RTMNU), formerly Nagpur University, is a public university, established on 4 August 1923.
It is named after Rashtrasant Tukdoji Maharaj, a renowned spiritual leader, orator, and musician from Vidarbha. It is a member of the Association of Indian Universities and the Association of Commonwealth Universities.
Its vision is to be one of the leading knowledge centres with pledge to excellence, bearing, innovation and inclusion in education, research, extension and human development, making worldwide competitive youth with national character and social commitment.
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Take a look under the hood of Kubernetes's autoscaling infrastructure with this article that breaks down how each works separately and together.
How am I going to scale pods and applications?
How can I keep containers running in a healthy state and running efficiently?
With the on-going changes in my code and my users’ workloads, how can I keep up with such changes?
I’m providing in this post a high-level overview of different scalability mechanisms inside Kubernetes and best ways to make them serve your needs. Remember, to truly master Kubernetes, you need to master different ways to manage the scale of cluster resources, that’s the core of promise of Kubernetes.
Configuring Kubernetes clusters to balance resources and performance can be challenging, and requires expert knowledge of the inner workings of Kubernetes. Just because your app or services’ workload isn’t constant, it rather fluctuates throughout the day if not the hour. Think of it as a journey and ongoing process.
Effective Kubernetes auto-scaling requires coordination between two layers of scalability: (1) Pods-layer autoscalers, including the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) and Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA), both of which scale available resources for your containers; and (2) cluster-level scalability, which os managed by the Cluster Autoscaler (CA), that scales up or down the number of nodes inside your cluster.
As the name implies, HPA scales the number of pod replicas. Most DevOps use CPU and memory as the triggers to scale more pod replicas or less. However, you can configure it to scale your pods based on custom metrics, multiple metrics, or even external metrics.
HPA works best with deployment objects as opposed to replication controllers. It does not work with a rolling update using direct manipulation of replication controllers. It depends on the deployment object to manage the size of underlying replica sets when you do a deployment.
Vertical Pods Autoscaler (VPA) allocates more (or less) CPU or memory to existing pods. Think of it as giving pods some growth hormones. It can work for both stateful and stateless pods but it is built mainly for stateful services. However, you can use it for stateless pods as well if you would like to implement an auto-correction of resources you initially allocated for your pods. VPA can also reacts to OOM (out of memory) events. VPA requires currently for the pods to be restarted to change allocated cpu and memory. When VPA restarts pods it respects pods distribution budget (PDB) to make sure there is always the minimum required number of of pods. You can set the min and max of resources that the VPA can allocate to any of your pods. For example, you can limit the maximum memory limit to be no more than 8 GB. This is useful in particular when you know that your current nodes cannot allocate more than 8 GB per container. Read the VPA’s official wiki page for detailed spec and design.
VPA has also an interesting feature called the VPA Recommender. It watches the historic resources usage and OOM events of all pods to suggest new values of the “request” resources spec. The Recommender generally uses some smart algorithm to calculate memory and CPU values based on historic metrics. It also provides an API that takes the pod descriptor and provides suggested resources requests.
VPA mainly updates the resources inside the deployment or replication controller specs.
When pods are restarted the new resources all applied to the created instances.
Changes in resources are not yet possible without restarting the pod. Main rational so far, is that such a change may cause a lot of instability. Hence, the thinking to restart the pods and let it be scheduled based on the newly allocated resources.
Cluster Autoscaler (CA) scales your cluster nodes based on pending pods. It periodically checks whether there are any pending pods and increases the size of the cluster if more resources are needed and if the scaled up cluster is still within the user-provided constraints. CA interfaces with the cloud provider to request more nodes or deallocate idle nodes. It works with GCP, AWS and Azure. Version 1.0 (GA) was released with Kubernetes 1.8.
The CA checks for pods in pending state at a default interval of 10 seconds.
When there is one or more pods in pending state because of there are not enough available resources on the cluster to allocate on the cluster them, then it attempts to provision one or more additional nodes.
Kubernetes scheduler allocates the pending pods to the new node. If some pods are still in pending state, the process is repeated and more nodes are added to the cluster.
Use “cluster-autoscaler.kubernetes.io/safe-to-evict”: “true” responsibly. If you set many of your pods or enough pods that are on all your nodes, you will lose a lot of flexibility to scale down.
If you would like to reach nirvana autoscaling your Kubernetes cluster, you will need to use pod layer autoscalers with the CA. The way they work with each other is relatively simple as show in the below illustration.
HPA or VPA update pod replicas or resources allocated to an existing pod.
If no enough nodes to run pods post scalability event, CA picks up the fact that some or all of the scaled pods in pending state.
Pods are scheduled on the provisioned nodes.
I’ve seen in different forums, such as Kubernetes slack channels and StackOverflow questions, common issues due to some facts that many DevOps miss while getting their feet wet with autoscalers.
HPA and VPA depend on metrics and some historic data. If you don’t have enough resources allocated, your pods will be OOM killed and never get a chance to generate metrics. Your scale may never take place in this case.
Scaling up is the mostly a time-sensitive operation. You want your pods and cluster to scale fairly quickly before your users experience any disruption or crashes in your application. You should consider the average time it can take your pods and cluster to scale up.
Do not confuse cloud provider scalability mechanisms with the CA. CA works from within your cluster while cloud provider’s scalability mechanism (such as ASGs inside AWS) work based on nodes allocation. It is not aware of what’s taking place with your pods or application. Using them together will render your cluster unstable and hard to predict behavior.
Kubernetes is a resources management and orchestration tool. Day-2 operations to manage your pods and cluster’s resources are a key milestone in your journey mastering Kubernetes.
Have the right mental model in mind focusing the pods scalability using HPA and VPA.
CA is recommended if you have a good understanding of your pods and containers needs.
Understanding how different autoscalers work together will help you configure your cluster.
Make sure you plan for worst case and best case scenarios when it comes to how long it will take your pods and cluster to scale up or down.
Written by Mohamed Ahmed, Co-Founder of Magalix. Like what you read? Follow the Magalix blog for more content by Mohamed: .
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Was Jesus a Jew, from the line of David?
Mary's husband Joseph was a Jew (means of Judah) of Davidic descent, and Jesus was his legal son (Luke 3:23; literally: son-by-law).
But Jesus' human genes came from Mary, who was a kinswoman (=niece) of Elizabeth (Luke 1:36), who in turn was a Levite (Luke 1:5).
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Why should I cure my tobacco?
Curing tobacco is a means of removing any unpleasant smell that uncured tobacco has. You can smoke your tobacco without curing it if you don't mind the smell (not unlike herbal tobacco), but I'd advise against it. Curing tobacco doesn't take long and vastly improves the smell.
During my younger years, it was common practise of mine to pick up the ripened brown tobacco leaf that had fallen from the lower stem onto the ground, roll it into a cigarette and smoke it. Other allotment holders would sample the leaf with enjoyment. I don't know if it was the oudoor air, but no unpleasant smell spoilt the smoke.
I would further mention that one particular year I was late pulling up the stems after removing all the large leaf. It was after a frost had turned all the small leaf on the plant dark brown. I tried to see if this brown tobacco leaf could be smoked: it could, with a very strong cigar flavour for both Havana and Virginia. I have never followed this idea through, but how about one of you readers of this site giving it a try?
My next attempt at curing tobacco required a greenhouse. I calculated that it would require the whole of the British summer to cure the leaf. Because of this the curing took place the following summer after growing the crop. The principle was to suspend a platic sheet holding water near the top of the greenhouse. A small fan blew across the water, raising the humidity in the air. This system worked and is shown in my instructions, but I needed a system that would work much faster. I am impatient by nature and after months of growing I needed results and a smoke that wouldn't have heads turning whenever I lit up.
To cure your tobacco leaves, you'll need a tobacco curing chamber. You should avoid using wooden tobacco curing chambers as the smell of the wood will be absorbed into the tobacco. Further down this page I give full instructions for building your own portable tobacco curing chamber, just like the one in the picture above, that will cure 18 kilos (40 pounds) of tobacco leaves in just 4 weeks. This should cost you no more than about £50 / $75 using materials from boot sales or about £100 / $US150 using new materials and equipment. This chamber can be scaled up or down depending on the size of your tobacco crop.
Hundreds of years ago, tobacco was smoked in pipes or was ground into snuff to be rubbed into the gums. Tobacco curing was unheard of. Tobacco wasn't smoked as cigarettes until cheap paper became available. The tobacco smoked back then must have smelled because it hadn't been cured.
The first clues to curing tobacco came from the old sailing ships that brought tobacco to Europe from the West Indies. The ships were in at sea for several weeks with tobacco on board. They were also in port for two or three weeks while the tobacco was loaded and unloaded. The heat and humidity were high and together with the salt air caused a natural fermentation in the bails of tobacco. By the time the tobacco reached our shores it was partially cured. From this, many different techniques for curing tobacco have been developed.
The first stages in curing your tobacco leaves are the drying and colour curing of your tobacco to remove moisture and turn the leaf brown. Your tobacco leaves are about 90% moisture, so while each plant can give you 1 kilo (2 pounds) of tobacco leaves, the dried weight is only about 100 grams. Whilst drying, Virginia tobacco leaves will turn yellow and then brown. Green stemmed tobacco plants such as Havanna take longer to colour change and tend to go straight from green to brown.
Commercial tobacco companies put their tobacco leaves in large open-ended barns to allow the warm breeze to blow through and draw off the moisture. For the home grower, you can hang your tobacco leaves on canes or galvanised wire in a car port or other sheltered outdoor area. I normally hang my tobacco under overhead grapevines which shelter the tobacco leaves from the rain.
You can dry your tobacco indoors, but control the temperature carefully to avoid drying the tobacco too quickly. If you dry your tobacco too quickly, some of the green pigment may remain. The drying and colour curing of your tobacco is complete when the tobacco leaves have turned brown, and the mid-rib is bone dry and brittle.
There is no quick way to dry out your tobacco leaves. Ovens, microwaves and freezers do not really help and the best way to dry and colour cure your tobacco is to dry it naturally. You can speed up the process slightly by crushing the mid-rib, but be warned that the sap in the mid-rib is like an acid to the other tobacco leaves. If you crush the mid-rib, you must hang your tobacco up within a couple of hours.
Another way to speed up the drying and colour change process of your tobacco leaves is to stack them and cover them with a blanket or a rug to keep the heat in. The tobacco leaves will then sweat like compost, which speeds up the colour change. The pile needs turning daily, with the inner leaves moved to the outside. Damp leaves will need to be allowed to dry off before being put back into the pile. After about 5 days, the tobacco leaves can be hung out to dry as normal.
You could also lay the tobacco leaves out on the grass on a hot sunny day and they will dry within hours. Depending on the temperature, the humidity and the breeze, green leaves will turn yellow or yellow/brown, and yellow leaves will turn brown. You may be lucky enough to have green leaves turn completely brown. The main drawback to this method is that because the leaves are drying, they are losing their moisture. This makes them much lighter and one small gust of wind can carry your dried tobacco leaves away.
Over the many years that I've been growing tobacco, I've experimented with many different methods of curing tobacco. As a result of this experience, I can now provide you with instructions for building your own very cheap and very effective portable tobacco curing chamber. This will cure about 18 kilos (40 pounds) of tobacco leaves in as little as 4 weeks and should cost you no more than £100 / $US150 using new materials and equipment, or half that if you use second-hand materials and equipment.
The aim of curing tobacco is to sweat the obnoxious smell from the tobacco leaves. To make tobacco leaves sweat you need to create a warm and humid environment. My portable tobacco curing chamber is ideal for this.
For the sides of the tobacco curing chamber, I used sheets of 2-inch thick polystyrene. 3 sheets of 8ft x 4ft polystyrene will be enough to build a tobacco curing chamber measuring 1 metre square by 1 and a half metres high. This cost me about £29 (US$50) from my local hardware store. You can build a smaller curing chamber if you don't have much space, but you won't be able to cure as much tobacco.
To provide heat, I used an oil-filled electric heater. This ideally needs to run at a constant 130°f (54.5°C).You will find most oil-filled electric heaters will have thermostats set to cut out at much lower temperatures. You should be able to replace the thermostat on oil filled radiators with a clamp-on water heater thermostat. These cost about £12 (US$18) from your local hardware store. You can heat at lower temperatures, but your tobacco will take much longer to cure.
Moisture needs to be raised inside the tobacco curing chamber to keep the leaf flexible but not wet. A humidifier is ideal for this. Humidifiers are little more than water tanks with a fan to blow a fine mist of water into the air. Mine holds 6 litres of water and uses 5 litres every 24 hours.
Hold the base, sides and top of the curing chamber together with double sided carpet tape or other strong tapes. Cut an opening in one side to act as a door. Use tape as a hinge to keep the door closed.
Finally, drill a 2 inch hole at the base of the chamber to allow fresh air in and another hole near the top to allow the smell to escape. If you fit a length of hose from the top hole to outdoors then the smell can escape without affecting your home.
When the unpleasant smell has gone, your tobacco has cured and is ready to smoke, although leaving your tobacco to mature over the years will improve the tobacco flavour. The whole tobacco curing process should take about 4 weeks. The cost of running the curing chamber is minimal as the chamber is made from thick polystyrene which will retain heat. The thermostat on the heater inside the curing chamber will cut in and out only as required, so only minimal heat is required. Humidifiers cost very little to run.
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Public international law, which governs the relationship between provinces and international entities, either as an individual or as a group. It includes the following specific legal field such as the treaty law, law of sea, international criminal law and the international humanitarian law.
Supranational law or the law of supranational organizations, which concerns at present regional agreements where the special distinguishing quality is that laws of nation states are held inapplicable when conflicting with a supranational legal system.
codifications contained in conventional agreements, generally termed treaties.
Article 13 of the United Nations Charter obligates the UN General Assembly to initiate studies and make recommendations which encourage the progressive development of international law and its codification. Evidence of consensus or state practice can sometimes be derived from intergovernmental resolutions or academic and expert legal opinions (sometimes collectively termed soft law).
International law has existed since the Middle Ages but much of its modern corpus began developing from the mid-19th century.Two sophisticated legal systems developed in the Western World: the codified systems of continental European states (Civil Law) and the judge-made law of England (Common Law) The fall of the Roman civilization did not result in the loss of the concepts of Roman Law. Starting in the later Middle Ages, unlegislated Roman law (ius commune or lex mercatoria) was applied by merchants in northern Italian city states and north-western European countries as the basis for commercial (and other) relationships. In the 20th century, the two World Wars and the formation of the League of Nations (and other international organizations such as the International Labor Organization) all contributed to accelerate this process and established much of the foundations of modern public international law. After the failure of the Treaty of Versailles and World War II, the League of Nations was replaced by the United Nations, founded under the UN Charter. The UN has also been the locus for the development of new advisory (non-binding) standards, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Other international norms and laws have been established through international agreements, including the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war or armed conflict, as well as by agreements implemented by other international organizations such as the ILO, the World Health Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the International Telecommunication Union, UNESCO, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund. The development and consolidation of such conventions and agreements has proven to be of great importance in the realm of international relations.
Conflict of laws, often called "private international law" in civil law jurisdictions, is less international than public international law. It is distinguished from public international law because it governs conflicts between private persons, rather than states (or other international bodies with standing). It concerns the questions of which jurisdiction should be permitted to hear a legal dispute between private parties, and which jurisdiction's law should be applied, therefore raising issues of international law. Today corporations are increasingly capable of shifting capital and labor supply chains across borders, as well as trading with overseas corporations. This increases the number of disputes of an inter-state nature outside a unified legal framework, and raises issues of the enforceability of standard practices. Increasing numbers of businesses use commercial arbitration under the New York Convention 1958.
There are ambitions to make the East African Community, consisting of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, a political federation with its own form of binding supranational law by 2010.
The Union of South American Nations is an organisation on the South American continent. It intends to establish a framework akin to the European Union by the end of 2019. It is envisaged to have its own passport and currency, and limit barriers to trade.
The Andean Community of Nations is the first attempt the countries around the Andes Mountains in South America. It started with the Cartagena Agreement of 26 May 1969, and nowadays consists in four countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. It does have a supranational law, called Agreements, which are mandatory for these countries.
Wikipedia for Schools is a selection taken from the original English-language Wikipedia by the child sponsorship charity SOS Children. It was created as a checked and child-friendly teaching resource for use in schools in the developing world and beyond.Sources and authors can be found at www.wikipedia.org. See also our Disclaimer. These articles are available under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Version 3.0 Unported Licence. This article was sourced from http://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=409908353 .
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Washington: US President Donald Trump signed a memorandum authorizing US trade representative Robert Laitheiser to launch an investigation into the violation of intellectual property rights of American companies by China.
"Violation of intellectual property of American companies by other countries cost us millions of dollars and jobs," Trump said during a press conference.
According to Trump, in the near future, the US will tighten rules aimed at securing fair trade, noting that "this is a big step and this is only the beginning."
"I ordered the US representative in trade negotiations to study China's policies and actions in connection with the transfer of American technology and the theft of American intellectual property," he said.
The US trade representative investigates China's violation of the intellectual rights of US companies.
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October 31, 2003: The University Food Market (formerly Ta-Kome deli) closes after 46 years.
Photo: Steve Jensen, 1985; CLICK for detail A deli of some sort has had the corner spot on this block since who knows when. About 1957 whatever deli was there at the time (name?) was purchased by the family of the present owner, Charlie Pastor, and called Ta-Kome, "Home of the Hero" (left). Until 1986 it was a single-width establishment, only 25 feet wide, one of the most crowded spots in town. To its right was Salter's, a huge, ancient, cavernous, dusty book store specializing in Columbia course and/or used books (they'd sell you a new book for $30 and buy it back the next day for ten cents, and sell it the next for $29.95). (And to Salters' right, for a couple years, was Ta-Kome II, a Ta-Kome satellite that sold takeout hamburgers and french fries).
When the Salters finally retired about 1985, Ta-Kome got the space, expanded to fill half the block, and renamed itself University Food Market (UFM), since now it was indeed a supermarket as well as a deli. Instead of one cash register there were six, plus aisles and counters galore, and about 40 new jobs were created. UFM is the primary source of calories for the neighborhood and still one of the most crowded spots in town, especially since absorbing the legacy of Mama Joy's (a long-lived Italian deli just down the street, closed in 2001 after more than 50 years), and even more while D'Agostino's supermarket on 110th Street was closed for a year in 2002 for construction of "The School".
17 September 2003: UFM announced it will close after almost 50 years on November 1st, and will reopen under new management. About 50 people work there; as of this writing, their future is uncertain.
November 12th. The lead article in today's Spectator is Low Wages Force Some UFM Employees to Quit. I had a discussion with Morton Sloan, the new co-owner. He said that some wages were "artificially high" and needed to be adjusted to market rates for fairness with his other stores. The new wages typically run below $10.00 an hour. Most cashiers are making between $5.50 and $7.50 per hour. $7.00 an hour is $12,000 a year. $10.00 an hour (the high end of the non-managerial wage scale at the new UFM) is still only $18,000 a year (this was offered, for example, to a counterman with 27 years seniority, supporting a family with three teenage children).
Poverty is defined as an income below $18,400 for a family of four or $15,260 for a family of three (2003, nationwide). The cost of living in NYC is more than 3.5 times the US average. The new wage scales might be "fair" and "good business practice" in today's economy, but they are not living wages, especially for single parents. New York City minimum wage, by the way, is $5.15. NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum says, "a minimum-wage earner would have to work 154 hours every week to afford a two-bedroom unit at fair market rent" (see Links below).
Morton Williams should be credited for keeping so many of the original UFM people on rather than firing them; for having a union shop; for remodeling with the store open rather than closing it for three months; and for employing (according to Sloan) 90% minorities (primarily Hispanic) in its stores. MW should be encouraged, however, to consider the cost of living and raising children in New York City when determining what is a fair wage, and also to include seniority in the calculation -- 10, 20, or 30 years of loyal service is worth something. Similarly for scheduling: UFM's working parents need to be able to drop their kids off at school or day care in the morning and pick them up after work on a predictable basis, just like any other working parents.
The previous owners were able to run the store with more employees and higher wages and still make a profit. Happy workers are good business. Let's hope Morton Williams succeeds in its new location. The neighborhood needs a good and affordable food market, and the employees need their jobs. Morton Williams has every prospect for success, due to its prime location and the impending shutdown of its main competitor in the neighborhood, West Side Market (85 more jobs lost). Share the wealth with the workers who make it possible!
Salaries remain low, but schedules are settling down and there have been some promotions. The store is now open 24 hours, which means there must also be a shift's worth of new jobs. These are signs of progress.
I discovered that there has been an ongoing discussion of UFM on the Yahoo MHNET group (follow the link and then search for "university food market"). Most postings echo the sentiment that the UFM people have been like family all these years, that the layoffs and salary cuts have not been a good way for Morton Williams to introduce itself to the neighborhood, and that the mood in the store since the turnover ranges from "bad vibes" to "shell-shocked" to "grim". I don't think Morton Williams appreciated how visible, well-known, and well-liked the UFM people were among the customer base it has inherited.
Ed Kent wrote of the new arrangements dividing "those of us who have got it made in the neighborhood from those who labor at poverty level wages on our behalf. It will be difficult to chat about our respective kids and how they are doing in school or whatever. I imagine being on one's feet for many hours behind a cash register must leave one pretty weary over a long stretch... I don't mind slightly higher prices, but I will object most strenously to bad treatment of our staff friends."
18 November - 7 December: No heat in store for three weeks.
25 November 2003 Spectator article: UFM Adds Amenities Under New Ownership But many area residents remain unhappy with the store's labor practices.
8 December 2003. RKF Secures 6,200-SF Corner Location on Broadway for Morton Williams Supermarkets (Robert K. Futterman & Associates, Inc, press release). "Principals of [Morton Williams] include Columbia University alumni who understand the community and have a vision of what the corner location could become."
10 December 2003. I spoke with Avi Kaner, VP of Morton Williams, who said (regarding the increases that were promised after the first month but had not yet materialized), "They [the employees] will immediately receive the appropriate raises." He also says that the store now employs more people than it did prior to changing hands. The raise was 25¢ and it first appeared on December 24th; it comes to $9.50 per 38-hour week.
29 December 2003. Julio (deli counter, 9 years) promoted to manager and sent to the 59th Street branch. The "Julio Special" remains behind on the sandwich menu.
15 January 2004: Armando, former deli manager (and previously at Mama Joy's), appointed assistant store manager.
17 January 2004: The Good News: Space heaters were installed in two of the six checkout counters, and a veteran cashier (Ritha) was promoted to assistant manager. The Bad News: José Jiménez, beloved night manager of Ta-Kome and UFM for 37 years, quit in disgust after having his salary slashed, then being transferred from the store he loved to another branch and put to work mopping floors -- a sad day for customers and his fellow workers alike. A customer writes, "...on my parting hug he told me that he had tried and tried but that he just couldn't take it anymore and he had finally quit... i then saw him walk out for good. we'll never see him again. so the nice manager who was always so friendly and helpful is gone! he always told me that after his many years there that we his customers were his family. what a loss to the community!"
19-20 January 2004: The scaffolding in front of the store (which has been up since long before the transfer of ownership) was taken down, which means renovation of the storefront will begin soon.
It was from this building -- 601 West 115th Street -- that a chunk of masonry fell in May 1979, killing a Barnard College student; this was the origin of NYC Local Laws 10 (1980) and 11 (1998), which require inspection of the façade of every residential building over six stories tall every four (or five) years; hence the scaffolding on this building and thousands of others all over the city ever since.
21 January 2004: Storefront renovations commence. A plywood shelter is being constructed over the north bank of windows (where the new cash registers are being installed) which should provide some shelter when the window glass comes out.
26 January 2004, 8:00am. More windows coming out, 14°F. New York State Consolidated Law, Chapter 31 ("Labor Law"), Article 14 ("Mercantile and Other Establishments"), Title 1 ("Sanitation"), §382 ("Ventilation, temperature and humidity"), states "Every mercantile establishment and every restaurant shall be provided with proper and sufficient means of ventilation by natural or mechanical means or both, as may be necessary, and there shall be maintained therein proper and sufficient ventilation and proper degrees of temperature and humidity at all times during working hours." Consult the temperature chart above; note that the average high for the period is below freezing (and only a fraction of a degree above the average low for January) and that the outside temperature is approximately equal to the inside temperature, especially at the checkout counters. Apparently management is now making an effort to route more power to the counters for the space heaters, but this is taking some time. Remodeling with the store open for business is far preferable to closing the store and furloughing the workers but shouldn't temporary heating have been part of the plan from the beginning?
29 January 2004, 8:00am, 21°F. More windows being replaced; cold wind blowing through the deli area, still no heat. Most of the cashiers now have working space heaters, but the new (temporary?) entrance/exit door by the cashiers has no air lock or shield, and a cold wind comes in every time the door opens. Meanwhile, most of the old shelving and cabinetry is being replaced and rearranged throughout the store (this has been an ongoing process but moved into high gear in recent days). The produce section has been moved to the front windows (where the cashiers were) and almost everything else has moved too, except the deli counter and the aisle closest to it.
30 January 2004, 8:00am, 15°F. All the cashiers have at least one working space heater, some have two. Good! (But the rest of the store is still cold.) Reorganization of the interior space continues and new floor tiling is being installed.
1 February 2004. The Local 338 union contract starts today. CLICK HERE to read the contract (PDF format, about 2.5MB). CLICK HERE to view a comparison table of the Local 338 contract with other union contracts covering similar work forces (such as cashiers and cafeteria workers) across the street at Columbia.
2 February 2004. Columbia Spectator : "Morton Williams Disappoints Employees, Satisfies Customers" (Scan/PDF) (Searchable/PDF): "Since Morton Williams Associated Market purchased UFM, 23 of the original 45 employees have left. The store claims it is trying to improve the shopping experience for Morningside residents, but many residents are increasingly vocal in their opposition to Morton Williams' treatment of its employees." The article goes on to allege a systematic pattern of pay cuts, schedule changes, transfers, and mistreatment whose effect (I won't speculate about motive) has been to encourage "overpaid" employees -- those with years of seniority -- to resign so they can be replaced by lower-paid ones.
9 February 2004. Columbia Spectator : "Debates Continue On Store's Policies", focusing mainly on Local 338.
10 February 2004. Columbia Spectator : Letters to the Editor regarding Morton Williams UFM.
13 February 2004. The second 25¢ installment of the promised 50¢ raise takes effect this week.
19 February 2004. Columbia Spectator : "Supermarket Scandals" (Opinion) "Veteran workers' salaries were slashed -- sometimes by as much as 70 percent -- and many were transferred to other Morton Williams stores in the city and assigned menial tasks. … Somebody should have checked Morton Williams' wage-slashing exploits; that somebody is Local 338 … And although the union vehemently rejects this assessment, 338, quite simply, hasn't been doing its job. … The starting hourly wage for a cashier at Morton Williams University Market (as the store is now known) is about $6. That comes to $12,000 a year. You show me how to live on $12,000 in this city, let alone raise a family… Why didn't Columbia demand that MWUM pay a living wage? … Columbia Human Resources recently posted an ad for part-time cashiers … at $15-$17 an hour. If the University believes such work is worth $17 on one side of Broadway, how can it justify leasing to a company that pays one-third as much across the street?" (SEE TABLE).
26 February 2004. Columbia Spectator : "Morton Williams Defends Cuts". And my response (LOCAL COPY). What disturbs me about the tone of this discussion is how so many people seem to feel that the UFM workers are trying to put one over on "us" in their desire to earn a living wage, as if they don't deserve to have enough money to pay their rent or feed their children, no matter how hard or how long they have worked. But we're going in circles. Morton Williams says it has done nothing wrong; they bought a store and offered jobs to (most of) its employees at the going rates. The employees have done nothing wrong either; they worked for years and years at UFM until their wages became higher than the current sub-poverty "industry standard" set by Wal-Mart, to the extent that Morton Williams feels it can call their former salaries "unreasonable" and "outrageous". Long-time UFM customers, however, are appalled at what has happened to their friends on the UFM staff. UFM was one of the very few long-lived and stable businesses in the neighborhood -- 46 years at the same location. It must have been doing something right! Part of that something was making lifetime careers for good hard-working people, whom we came to know and love. To see them fired or their wages slashed after all these years was almost as much a slap in the face to us as it was to them. No wonder you don't find the same crowds of customers in the store as there were before.
At UFM, we are seeing the new economy up close and it's not pretty. Of course other neighborhood stores deserve the same attention, but tend not to get it because few of them last very long and/or they have extremely high employee turnover and/or they are not the type of store you would visit 2-3 times a day. Indeed, Morton Williams does not deserve to be singled out in the new world of Duane Reades, Wal-Marts, and all the rest. But for Columbians it's hard to ignore what has happened at UFM because it's in the family. If I have focussed unfairly on Morton Williams, I hope others will focus on other establishments until there is a consensus that all people who work deserve a living wage, and that companies deserve our business when they "Just Say No" to the Race to the Bottom.
24 March 2004. Columbia Spectator Letter to the Editor: "Morton Sloan Owes Grocery Workers Respect and a Living Wage".
26 March 2004. Columbia Spectator Staff Editorial: Welcome to the Neighborhood - Morton Williams' worker practices are not acceptable here, concludes with "Morton Williams needs to change its ways, or Morningside Heights needs to take its money elsewhere." This stops just short of calling for a boycott that would probably hurt the employees as much, if not more, than MW. All former UFM employees (except a few) got a very raw deal and most of them are now gone, many of those still out of work. MW should find a way to make amends. As the editorial points out, this is a community that respects and rewards socially responsible businesses.
15 June 2006. Charlie Pastor, of Mamaroneck, NY, died at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, almost 50 years after he opened the Ta-Kome deli on the corner. I always loved his store; it had a special place in my heart, like family, magical things happened there. Everybody loved and respected Charlie and wishes he had never left.
Photo: Frank da Cruz, July 2004. CLICK for larger view.
University Foods (UFM sketches by Bob Taylor of Columbia Teachers College).
NY State Labor Law Article 14, Title 1.
US Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII.
US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Overview.
Down and Out in Discount America , Liza Featherstone, The Nation .
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Hiring a broker to sell your home could be expensive sometimes, and if you want to save out on that expense then why not try to sell it yourself? There are only a few easy steps required to do so.
The first step you should take when selling your home by yourself is to put up a "For Sale By Owners" sign in front of your home. This sign, which is commonly referred to as the FSBO sign will provide a chance to the passer by that's this piece of property is up for sale. This way anyone passing by your house would know that it is being sold. Moreover if you manage to sell your house through a FSBO sign, you have managed to save tens of thousands of dollars that would have otherwise gone to the broker as his / her commission. On the flip side, it is sometimes seen that mostly houses this way go to the brokers, but this needlessly not be the case if you follow these few and simple tips at hand.
Another important aspect that needs to be kept in mind is that when using the FSBO sign to sell your home, it is normally expected that you will have to share your savings that you get by not getting a broker with the buyer. Therefore it is seen that FSBO-sold homes go for a price that is below that market value. So it is necessary that you price your house competitively.
If you are confused as to how the pricing should be done, then you should envision yourself as the buyer and reverse the roles. You could even go visit homes being sold via a FSBO signboard so that you are aware of the mechanism of the entire process. Moreover this would help you in setting up a price for your own house as well.
Appearance always does count, whether its humans or non-human things. Simply it is simply good marketing to make your house look new and aesthetically pleasing. If any repairs need to be done, make sure that is taken care of. A new paint job or fixing up the yard or garden all add up to the aesthetics and make the house look beautiful and inviting.
Also be creative and gear up the marketing efforts behind your house. You could play with the FSBO signboard and use flashy colors, pictures etc to make it attractive and distinguished. Or if your budget allows, you could even put up an advertisement in the local newspapers, or even make flyers and put them up in public places. If you do choose to go for any of this, then make sure that your phone and answering machine are functioning properly and keep a check on them so as to not miss on any client. Anything that you do to make your house go public yourself furthers you away from the broker!
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What differentiates diesel engines from other kinds of engines?
"The compression ratio is higher, there is more power."
Technically speaking, the compression ratio of an engine is the comparison of the total volume of the cylinder at the bottom of the piston's stroke divided by the volume of the cylinder remaining at the top of the piston's stroke. Since we are familiar with gasoline engines, let's quickly discuss their compression ratios and a condition that spells disaster in a gasoline engine, detonation or "pinging."
Serious damage to gasoline engines can result if you attempt to run a high compression ratio with low-octane fuel. Detonation or "pinging" is the ignition of the fuel due to the high temperature caused by a high compression ratio/high pressure developed by a given design. The fuel is ignited prior to the spark of the spark plug resulting in rapid uncontrolled burning.
Remember, the diesel is a "heat engine," using heat developed from the compression of air. High compression ratios (ratios ranging from 14:1 up to 20:1) are possible since air only is compressed. The hot compressed air is sufficient to ignite the diesel fuel when it is finally injected near the top of the compression stroke. A high compression ratio equals a greater expansion of the gases following ignition and a higher percent of the fuel's energy is converted into power! The diesel compression ratio is higher, there is more power!
"It's in the injection system."
Diesel designed the "heat engine" using the injection of fuel at the last moment to ignite the compressed air. Understanding the heart of the diesel, the fuel pump, is another key to answering the fuel-efficiency question.
A gasoline engine is stochiometric. Stochiometric: the quantitative relationship between two or more substances, especially in processes involving physical or chemical change. With a gasoline engine there is a stochiometric equation of 14 parts of air to one part of fuel. Remember, always 14:1; whether at idle or full throttle, the fuel and air are mixed outside the cylinders in a carburetor or injection manifold and the mixture is introduced via the intake valve. 14:1 always.
Fuel and air in the diesel design are not premixed outside the cylinder. Air is taken into the cylinder through the intake valve and compressed to make heat. Diesel fuel is injected near the top of the piston's stroke in an amount or ratio corresponding to the load on the engine. At idle, the air-to-fuel ratio can be as high as 85:1 or 100:1. At full load the diesel still boasts a miserly 25:1 or 30:1 ratio! It is in the injection system.
One type is the Inline-style. Plunger pumps actuated by the pump camshaft send fuel pulses through six high-pressure fuel lines to the injectors. The pressure opens the injector valve allowing fuel to pass into the combustion chamber.
Metering of the fuel (for example, at idle 65:1 or full load 25:1) is controlled by a fuel rack and gears which rotate a metering helix to allow fuel into the six plunger pumps.
Another type is the rotary-style fuel pump. Think of this pump like a mini automobile spark distributor. A rotary "head" sends fuel pulses through the high-pressure fuel lines to the injectors. Just like the in-line fuel pump system, the pressure opens the injector valve and fuel is injected.
"The btu value of diesel is greater."
Quite true, the btu, or British thermal unit, for diesel fuel is 130,000 btu's per gallon and a weight of 7.4 lb/gal. The value for gasoline is 117,000 btu's and a weight of 6.0 lb/gal. If we go back to our basic physics rules for energy, you'll note the fuel in the tank has potential for work if it is injected into the cylinders and, combined with the compressed heated air, ignited. The piston is forced downward, the crankshaft rotates, the alternator turns.
The diesel design (the "heat engine"), compression ratios (the "heat engine"), the fuel injection system (allowing 85:1 down to 25:1 air-to-fuel versus gasoline at 14:1) and fuel btu's (diesel fuel has more power), all these diesel attributes add up to more KW per gallon of fuel!
Final notes: We've covered the principle of diesel operation and the high compression ratios needed to make the heat for diesel engine combustion. The high compression ratio causes the engineers to design, test and manufacture the block, heads, head bolts, crankshaft, connecting rods, rod bolts, pistons, piston pins, etc., with greater structural capacity. In other words, diesels are inherently heavy in relation to their gasoline brothers.
A diesel generator produces twice the power per gallon of fuel that a gas generator does.
A gallon of ("off road") diesel is cheaper than a gallon of gas.
Diesel fuel does not blow up. In fact, it is hard to get it to burn at all.
A diesel motor will last four times longer than a gasoline engine.
Untreated diesel fuel lasts longer in storage than untreated gasoline.
Treated diesel fuel lasts longer in storage than treated gasoline.
Diesel fuel treatment costs less than gasoline treatment.
Spoiled diesel can be reconditioned to refinery specifications. Spoiled gasoline can not.
Unmodified diesel motors can be run on vegetable oil.
Natural gas should not normally be relied upon if you live in an earthquake prone area. The whole point of a generator is to be independent of, and replace something a utility failed to provide. Why would you want to hook up your generator to yet another utility?
The engine rpm's, (and therefore the frequency output of the generator) will not be very stable if you're running a lower torque engine with a lower energy fuel like propane/NG and you're running that combination at full capacity. Frequency stability isn't that important to a power saw but it is important to your electronics.
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There may never be a clear winner in the battle between cat lovers and dog lovers over which species is man’s best friend as they both have a large fan base for different reasons, but there are several compelling arguments to be made for either pet-loving team. Here are some of the arguments for both puppies and kittens in the Puppies Versus Kitten debate.
Kitten Versus Puppy: Which Is Better?
According to science, people who own kittens and cats are up to 40% less likely to die of a heart attack than people who own other animals due to the stress relieving benefits of their company that puppy owners don’t report receiving to the same degree.
As well, kittens can be cheaper to own each year, whereas puppies cost more due to requiring more toys, treats, food, and higher average bills at the veterinarian.
Kittens have a smaller carbon footprint than puppies considering they eat less meat, so you can rest easy knowing that you are helping reduce the burden on both the environment and the meat industry by owning a kitten.
Further, it was recently shown in a scientific article that people who are drawn to the personality of kittens and become kitten owners tend to be more intelligent than puppy owners.
Puppies are great companions for people who need a service animal as certain breeds can be big enough and strong enough to help other-abled people when they require physical assistance.
Puppies are also known to develop higher understanding of commands than kittens, making them much better behaved. As well, puppies provide immediate unconditional love to their owners, while cats can take some time to warm up to their owners and show their love in different ways.
Further, puppies require a lot more attention and playtime from their owners, so they are better-suited to more active people who are able to give their pet the attention and exercise that they require.
So, Which Kind Of Pet Is Best For You?
Ultimately, it comes down to which kind of pet suits your lifestyle and what you are looking for in a pet. Some people will get the most out of having a kitten, while others may get the most out of having a puppy.
If you are unsure which kind of pet is the best for you, write down what sort of needs you have and take in to account your schedule and daily routine so you can budget your time for your new pet.
Puppies are a lot more demanding on their owners’ time, and require a lot more attention and exercise each day. If you are able to accommodate a puppy, then you should look for the breed that suits your lifestyle. If you are unable to accommodate a demanding schedule of an animal, then a kitten might be best as they require minimal supervision and only some entertainment each day.
Let us know in the comments: Are you a cat person or a dog person?
Kate McQuillan is the co-owner of Pet Sitters Ireland, a Pet Sitting and Dog Walking business. Kate has 2 Pointers, Joey and Coco, and a cat named Smug. Living in rural Ireland with her husband Mike she is a huge animal lover, an avid blogger and all round lover of Social Media.
Louth Dog Walking Services: A Guide To Hiring A Louth Dog Walker.
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Thomas Settle, congressman and superior court judge, was the son of David and Rhoda Mullins Settle of Rockingham County and a member of one of the most important political dynasties in North Carolina history. He was the father of Thomas Settle, Jr., legislator, supreme court justice, and a founder of the North Carolina Republican party; the uncle and father-in-law of David S. Reid, senator and governor; and the uncle by marriage of Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, the prominent senator and presidential candidate in 1860.
Settle was educated by tutors, read law, and was admitted to the bar in 1816. In the same year he was elected to the North Carolina House of Commons, where he served on the committees of propositions and grievances and privileges and elections. The next year he defeated Bartlett Yancey for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and won another term, serving in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth congresses (1817–21). Declining to run again, probably because he had recently married, he returned to his law practice. Settle ran for the House of Commons again in 1826 and in the two succeeding sessions. He was an active member of the General Assembly in both committee work and floor debate. For two sessions he served on a conference committee, the committee of propositions and grievances, and a select committee on the wool tariff. When Speaker of the House James Iredell won the governorship, Settle was elected speaker on 6 Dec. 1827 to succeed him.
He served as speaker of the house throughout the 1828 legislative session. In this assembly Robert Potter sponsored resolutions to investigate mismanagement of banks in the state and to prosecute the banks in order to cancel their charters. Some banks were indeed poorly managed, but Potter's resolutions threatened the whole banking structure of North Carolina. The House of Commons vote was a tie, and Speaker Settle cast the deciding vote against the resolution to prosecute the banks. After this session he did not seek reelection.
On 24 Dec. 1832 the legislature voted to send Settle to the state superior court. After serving ably on the bench for twenty-two years, he resigned on 1 Aug. 1854 because of declining health. In his day he was one of the most highly respected superior court judges in the state. A contemporary and early biographer, John H. Wheeler, wrote that Settle was "distinguished for his ability as a statesman and as a judge, and esteemed for his virtues, learning, and deportment." After the founding of the Whig party in the 1830s, Settle was considered one of its leading members. In 1836 he was nominated for a seat in the U.S. Senate but was defeated in the legislature by one vote. Settle became a trustee of The University of North Carolina in 1826 and remained on the board until his death in 1857. An active Baptist, he was a member of the Hogan's Creek Church and was moderator of the Beulah Association for a number of years. He served as a trustee of Wake Forest College. In his lifetime he accumulated several thousand acres of land, incorporating several large plantations. In 1850 he owned thirty slaves.
On 21 Sept. 1820 Settle married Henrietta Williams Graves (1799–1886), of Caswell County, the daughter of Azariah and Elizabeth Williams Graves and the sister of Calvin Graves, a state legislator. Thomas and Henrietta Settle had four daughters and two sons: Henrietta Williams and Caroline L., twins born on 7 Oct. 1824 (Henrietta married Governor David S. Reid, and Caroline married the governor's brother, Hugh K. Reid); Thomas, Jr., born 23 Jan. 1831; Fannie K., born 10 Nov. 1833 (married first J. W. Covington and then, after his death, Oliver H. Dockery; David A., born 7 Nov. 1839 (remained unmarried); and Elizabeth, born in 1842 and died young. Thomas and Henrietta Settle died in Rockingham County and were buried in the family cemetery near Reidsville. Photographs of the Settles are in possession of the family.
Kemp P. Battle, Sketches of the University of North Carolina (1889).
Journals of the Senate and House of Commons of the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina (1816, 1826–28).
John W. Moore, "Early Baptist Laymen in North Carolina" (a scrapbook of Biblical Recorder clippings in the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill).
William R. Reece, The Settle-Suttle Family (1974).
Rockingham County Deeds and Wills.
Richard R. Saunders, Open Doors and Closed Windows (1948).
Settle Family Cemetery, Rockingham County.
John H. Wheeler, ed., Reminiscences and Memoirs of North Carolina and Eminent North Carolinians (reprint, 1966).
"Settle, Thomas, (1789 - 1857)." Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. United States Government. http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=S000254 (accessed March 19, 2013).
Thomas Settle Papers, 1808-1879 (collection no. 00656-z). The Southern Historical Collection. Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/s/Settle,Thomas.html (accessed March 19, 2013).
"Book, Accession #: S.1981.27.215." 1817. North Carolina Historic Sites.
1 January 1994 | Butler, Lindley S.
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Most composers of Latin America from the 20th and 21st centuries are not well known in North America. While the music of Carlos Chavez, Alberto Ginastera, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Astor Piazzolla has penetrated our repertoire in North America, the extensiveness of their output is not emphasized or they are composers about which we know little when compared to those of the United States and of Europe. Other composers of a younger generation are also worth noting such as: Marlos Nobre, Gerardo Gandini, Celso Darrido-Lecca, and Mario Lavista. Through these composers one can find a rich array of music that utilizes the experienced environment of the composer. These two generations of composers also represent at least two general aesthetics in compositional techniques that were influenced by trends occurring in Europe and the United States. Basically, what occurred in European and United States music history had its parallel in Latin America. However, Latin American composers were also influenced by native, folk, and popular musics of their homeland. Some composers were more affected by one or the other, but all in all, in their music there is a unique blend of European styles and techniques with Latin American influences.
Before we go any further, I would like to point out the use of the term "Latin America." Latin America is a varied place with many countries, cultures, traditions, influences, and ideas, contrasting cultures within in countries, varying traditions within cultures, traditions that influence and shape various countries simultaneously or at different times, and so on. The use of the term "Latin America" can be used in a misleading way when used to describe a generality of that area. When the term "Latin America" is used in this paper, it is meant to portray a physical area of the world and the people of it and not a generalized idea that can be applied to all of Latin America. As varied as North America and Europe are, Latin America is too; or it can even be argued that it is more varied.
Nearly all the composers mentioned above studied abroad in Europe or the United States at one point or another and learned the current trends that were occurring in art music of their respective times. Generally, the composers then took these new ideas and utilized them in their own compositions when they returned to their countries. On a superficial level, it can be assumed that these composers were merely copying European and American techniques and ideas, but were they? What use was it to them that they learned these techniques? Did they form any uniquely ideas on their own, such as Boulez and Babbitt with total serialism? What is different about Latin American composers? music than from Europe and the United States? Is it distinctively "Latin" or mere copies of their European and American counterparts? Or are these questions of any relevance at all? These questions are more relevant to some composers than others, but the idea of what is "Latin American" art music is still evident. These questions will be explored below as biographical accounts and thoughts on selected composer?s works will be given.
It can be said without regret that Villa Lobos, Chavez, Revueltas, Piazzolla, and Ginastera were all great composers. Each composer's music is different from one another but still have similar influences. The idea of nationalist music was en vogue in Europe at the end of the 19th century in Europe with Dvorak, Smetana, Rimsky-Korsakov and others, and later to some extent in the United States in the first half of the 20th century with Copland. The same occurred in Latin America in the first half of the 20th century when counties were looking to identify themselves. Again, this is a generalization as some composers were more "nationalistic" than others. Also with the influence that Copland and Nadia Boulanger had on Latin America composers, "neo-classicism" made its way to Latin America.
Nationalist music and neo-classicism can mean many different things. Either description is neither a style nor an aesthetic but an idea. Some may argue with me, but I say this since there are varying styles within each term. Dvorak's music is different from Smetana's, as it is from Alexander Borodin?s. Stravinsky's neo-classical music is different from Copland's as it is different from Prokofiev. What pervades in their music is the idea of nationalism and neo-classicism. Nationalistic music is art music that is influenced by nationalistic themes and ideas that can range from folk tunes (as in Smetana's case) to political propaganda (as in Shostakovich?s case). Neo-classicism is music that is influenced by the idea of classicism in music, or music from the 17th-19th centuries. Perfection, symmetry, consonant harmonies, hierarchy, the music of Mozart, Pergolesi, and Bach all have influenced the "neo-classical" composers in some way or another. However, the neo-classical music of Stranvinsky is different from that of Copland. It can even be said that Copland was not an intentional neo-classicist, but in the idea of neo-classicism it can be seen, due to the fact that he chose not to write music that was "avant garde" but tonal and tradional?-in an "American" way with his open harmonies. Copland can also be considered a nationalistic composer as well and through that we can see that both these terms can be applied to one composer instead of one idea applied to one composer.
These ideas ring true with the composers of Latin America. Nationalistic and neo-classical movements were ideas rather than styles in the art music of Latin America during the first half of the 20th century. Now we will turn to take a closer look at how these musical movements and ideas affected the aforementioned composers.
Carlos Chavez was a Mexican composer of importance and arguable the most well-known. Born in 1899, he went on to write music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, ballets, chorus, and solo piano (Radice, 2003). His career was multi-faceted as he was not only a composer, but a conductor and lecturer (Behague, 1979). Ch?vez directed the Orquestra Sinfonica de Mexico until 1949 as well as the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes until 1953 (Behague, 1979; Radice, 2003). After that phase of his career, he dedicated his time to composition, won the Guggenheim in 1956 and delivered the Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard from 1958-1959 (Behague, 1979). Those accomplishments are life time awards given to composers and great musicians which signify their importance and relevance to art music.
Two important works written for orchestra were Sinfonia de Antigona and Sinfonia India. Sinfonia de Antigona is said to have been influenced by Stravinsky's neo-classical "style" (Behague, 1979). This was considered to be one of the non-nationalistic pieces which utilize European techniques (246). Other works reflected that characteristic as well. Sinfonia India incorporates Native America (Mexican) stylistic elements (Radice, 2003). Pentatonic scales, modes, quartel harmonies, meter changes, repetitive motifs were used to depict native elements (Radice, 2003). The 1930s-1940s was a time in which Mexican art music saw the rise and fall of nationalism in Mexico with the assimilation of different techniques and styles such as neo-classicism and polytonality (Behague, 1979). These two works mentioned reflect all three of those trends and ideas.
Upon hearing Sinfonia de Antigona one can be struck by the colors Chavez uses from the orchestra. Another thing that is striking about this work is the fact that he hardly writes for a full texture. Only certain sections or groups of instruments play at a time, which give way to its thin texture. For example, the violins usually play without the rest of the strings but with woodwinds and brass. The piece incorporates heavy use of woodwinds in a dark manner by using the lower pitched woodwind instruments. Also, the quality of the chords, give the music its dark character. Through this the texture is still thin but sounds full; the mix of dark colors and thin texture give the piece a unique sound. The writing is mainly vertical, in that chords and harmony play an important role, but there are some melodic occurrences apart from the chordal writing. The harmony prevalent in this piece is of modal nature. The rhythmic drive is slow and intense but still contains drive. By listening to this I do not hear Stravinskian neo-classicism at all. I hear a unique and highly personal composer's music with a clear aesthetic all his own.
Argentinean composer Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) was a self-proclaimed nationalistic composer. He "came of age" during the peak of musical nationalism in Argentina and gained his reputation as a national composer in 1937 with Danzas Argentinas for piano and his ballet Panambi (Behague, 1979). In 1941, he established himself as the leader of the nationalistic movement in Argentina with another ballet, Estancia in 1941 (Behague, 1979). However, those two ballets were problematic to some in its reception due to its extra-musical content (Radice, 2003). Ginastera defined three periods in his compositional life: objective nationalism, subjective nationalism, and neo-expressionist (Schulz). It is interesting that a composer would define periods of his work, usually periods in a composers work occur naturally and unintentionally as with Beethoven. Nothing is ever said that Beethoven set out to create three distinct periods in his music. Nevertheless, these distinctive periods show Ginastera's variety and capability as a composer.
Panambi and Estancia reflect the objective national period in Ginastera's output. This period (1937-1949) is defined by the inclusion of the gauchesco (Argentinean cowboy) tradition, strong local color, conscious treatment of indigenous themes, a clear tonal idiom with inclusion of some extremely dissonant passages (Behague, 1979). However, Ginastera rarely directly borrowed actual folk materials (Behague, 1979). His second period can be understood from its given term. Subjective nationalism (1948-1958) encompasses nationalism not in a direct way but by implication (Behague, 1979). The "Argentine accent" is what is said to be prevalent in this period as it does not employ folklore material (Behague, 1979). His third period does not contain nationalism in its being, but compositional techniques of the 20th century are used, such as: twelve tone, serialization of other elements in music, micro-tonality, polyrhythms, and atonality in a non-serialist manner (Behague, 1979). His last period, obviously, does not reflect the ideas of neo-classicism and nationalism, but again shows his varied talents and interests as a composer. For that reason, this later period will be looked at in the next section of this paper.
Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) was a very prolific and significant composer of Brazil. His musical training consisted of instruction on the piano and cello but was also compelled with the music of Brazil (Radice, 2003). After receiving classical training in music, as a young man, Villa-Lobos ventured on his own to explore Brazil and its native musics (Radice, 2003). He also collaborated with musicians in popular music idioms at the beginning of the 20th century, such as the Chor?es (Behague, 1979). Villa-Lobos also met Milhaud and through him, developed a liking of the music of Debussy and the French composers of Le Six (Behague, 1979). With his trip to Europe, Villa-Lobos began to obtain international acclaim, and especially with the promotion of his music by pianist Artur Rubinstein (Behague, 1979).
It is safe to say that Villa-Lobos was no doubt a nationalistic composer. With his varied influences and experiences, it is no wonder that his music has an innate blend of European techniques and nativistic elements. Villa-Lobos was a nationalist of a folkloric sort, in which nationalism was inescapable (Behague, 1979). Through use of native music, Villa-Lobos aimed to evoke a "total vision" of Brazil (Behague, 1979). His approach to the incorporation of folk elements in his music, were intuitive and not scientific (Behague, 1979).
Nonetto for flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, harp, celesta, battery, and mixed chorus was influenced by urban popular music through its rhythm and woodwind colors (Behague, 1979). Other elements are evident such as use of tone clusters, quartal/quintal harmonies, parallel harmonic movement, and "altered" chords (Behague, 1979). There is a strong rhythmic drive and element to this piece. The uncommon mix of this ensemble creates very unique colors and sounds not usually heard together and the inclusion of a chorus further adds to that claim. His melodic lines are clearly passionate with short-lived motivic and rhythmic patterns. The gestural and melodic ideas "jump around" throughout the music that then goes into another groove or short-lived idea. This creates a very intuitive and improvisatory sense to the music. The music is fresh, alive, and exciting, the listener does not know what to expect next while there is a constant rhythmic pulsating drive.
The other two composers, Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940) and Astor Piazzolla are also notable composers of their respective countries: Mexico and Argentina. Due to the limited extent of this paper, these composers will briefly be explored. Revueltas career is similar to Chavez's in that he taught, composed, and conducted, but Revueltas studied abroad and became familiar with European and United States currents in music of his time (Radice, 2003). He was able to hear music by Sch?nberg, Stravinsky and Les Six in Europe and met Henry Cowell, Roy Harris, Edgard Varese and Copland in America (Radice, 2003). Revueltas was a nationalist composer of international reputation who made the popular and folk music in Mexico of his time a source of his style (Behague, 1979). When those who know of Piazzolla hear his name, one word can immediately come to mind: tango. Piazzolla studied with Ginastera and Boulanger and composed in a variety of genres (Behague, 1979). As a young composer, he utilized Western European genres, such as sonata form, but later as a more experienced composer, he elevated the tango with striking dissonances, chromaticism, jazz, inclusion of counterpoint, and virtuosic writing (Behague, 1979). Through the progression of the tango brought forth by Piazzolla, he can be considered a nationalistic composer.
The next generation of composers also tended to follow the trends from Europe and the United States. These trends were different all together and went against the established tradition of tonal music and tonal hierarchy in music. The music of Marlos Nobre, Gerardo Gandini, Celso Garrido-Lecca, and Mario Lavista incorporate avant garde techniques of Europe in their music, but create a different result. Nationalism seems less of a concern for them. However, with the adoption of these techniques, one can wonder why they would adopt them and for what reason the acquire them. How are these techniques used in their music? What kind of result occurs and how is it different from composers of Europe and the United States? Were there any original Latin American compositional ideas or a continuation of European ideas?
To understand the trends that occurred in Latin America, one must understand the musical movements that occurred from the 1920s onwards in Europe and the United states. At the end of the romantic era, Wagner and even Mahler started to push tonality to its extreme. There are moments in Wagner's music that can be considered "atonal" as in Tristan und Isolde. Sch?nberg was a revolutionary. His early music was out of the romantic world of Wagner and Mahler, but soon started to abandon tonality and wrote "free atonal" music, utilizing intervallic cells, but actually his pupil Webern was the first to write a piece "without a key." In the late 1910s Sch?nberg started to develop an idea of writing music with all twelve pitches in a set order that came to be known as the twelve-tone method of composition. This took the music world by storm and soon, there was a movement of twelve-tone composition. Webern developed the idea further, intuitively, by serializing other aspects of music such as dynamics and register. This was found by Boulez, which lead him to create the idea of the total serialization of music after World War II, in which all aspects of music would be ordered an planned (rhythm, pitch, register, timbre, dynamics, etc.). Boulez created a following in Europe as the composer Milton Babbitt in the United States developed the same idea. Other trends that followed were the use of electronics, aleatoric writing, improvisation, and chance operations. To put it briefly, aleatoric writing is music in which the composer introduces elements of chance or unpredictability and leaves different aspects of the music, such as pitch, rhythm, dynamics, etc., to the performer or interpreter. Chance operations in music are controlled by such methods of dice throwing to determine events in music. There were two extremes in art music of the 1950s: total organization (total serialism) and total freedom (aleatoric and chance music). Composers of the time experimented with both idioms.
Again, the same can be said for these ideas or techniques of composition as can be said for nationalism and neo-classicism: serialism and aleatoric music are not styles but methods of writing music. Music that is serialist can "sound" "atonal" or imply tonaliy, whereas aleatoric and chance music can sound serialist whereas both can sound "random" and like a "bunch of noise." It depends on how the composer uses these methods that will create a resultant sound. The music of these Latin American composers is no exception.
Marols Nobre (b. 1939) is a Brazilian composer that has utilized the ideas of serialism and electronics in his music. He studied at the Di Tella Institute in Buenos Aires (1963-1964) where his teachers included Ginastera, Koellreutter, and Camargo Guarnieri (Behague, 1979). He soon adapted the twelve-tone technique in his music after having been influenced by Milhaud's dissonant treatment with a nationalistic concern (Behague, 1979). After delving into the twelve-tone technique, he set out to create music that was in a "free serialist" method (Behague, 1979). His music also contained aleatoric elements "with nativisitc overtones," extended techniques, and extremely contrasting dynamics (Behague, 1979).
Two works of note by Nobre are Ukrinmakerinkrin (1964) and In Memoriam (1973), both for orchestra. Ukrinmakrinkrin is described as having an atonal-serial language with some "native ritualistic flavor" and some aleatoric structures (Behague, 1979). In Memoriam contains clusters of sound or "sound blocks," with "complex and brilliant orchestration" and Brazilian percussion instruments (Behague, 1979). From the descriptions above, it can be said that Nobre uses these techniques in his own way and not to copy or imitate other composers who utilize these techniques. The concern seems to be that of writing music he likes to write. However, this is just an assumption from reading about him.
Another piece by Nobre, Mosaico para Orquestra (1970) is an interesting one. It is a single movement work with three contrasting sections (Marlos Nobre). Thick masses of differing sounds abound in the first section, as the second is more lyrical with brief occurrences of short lived quick motivic gestures, and the third section is a "pure divertimento" for orchestra with "tightly composed writing" and "controlled randomness" (Marlos Nobre). Upon hearing it one does find sustained harmonies with mixed timbres of instruments in the beginning with aleatoric "sounding" figures, un-metered patterns that are repeated quietly in the winds. There are bits of motivic fragments in the orchestra lead by the brass with "outbursts" from the whole orchestra. There is a sense of a duality between uncontrolled sounds and directional sounds. The music abruptly changes by new harmonic and textural treatment. Thin texture is pristine where soloistic occurrences are heard as the color of instruments are brought to the fore. The music can be described as slow paced and silvery that then leads to more direction with a bit more regularity and thicker chords (roughly 3 notes). This can be considered the "textural climax" of the second section as the music returns to the quietness that prevailed before, but influenced by the thicker textural idea. Percussion is used to initiate the third section, as sustained brass notes in a quick tempo are heard with frequent and quicker motivic gestures. Aleatoric elements can also be heard in the end with regular occurring broad hits in the percussion. Upon hearing this piece, one can sense a feel of intuition, conviction, and a clear personal aesthetic of the composer that allows his creativity and voice to be heard.
Celso Garrido-Lecca (b. 1926) is a prominent composer from Peru. He received his musical training at the Lima Conservatory with Rodolfo Holzmann and soon after was the composer and musical advisor for the Theater Institute of the University of Chile (Schulz, 1992). He also later headed the National School of Music in Peru and in 1963 and 1968 won the National Prize for Peruvian Culture (Schulz, 1992). His music contains quartal and quintal harmonies, atonality, twelve tone technique, and "locally derived" musical traits such as pentatonicism (Behague, 1979). His musical output is symphonic and chamber as has been performed in Europe and the Americas (Schulz, 1992). Pieces of note are his Suite for Woodwind Quintet (1956), Musica para seis instrumentos y percusion (1956), Sinfonia (1960), and Laudes (1962).
Argentinean composer and pianist Gerardo Gandini (b. 1936) is another composer from Latin America influenced by the European avant garde. Gandini was a student of Ginastera and Caama?o (Behague, 1979). Gandini became one of the major musical figures in Argentina in the 1960s and also co-founded a professional contemporary music organization, Agrupani?n Euphonia (Behague, 1979). His teaching engagements have been with the Di Tella Institute and Buenos Aires Catholic University (Behague, 1979). Gandini is also an active performer of new music in the Americas and Europe (Behague, 1979). The techniques he uses are serialism, atonality, extreme manipulation of dynamics and timbres with rigorous economy and concentration of musical ideas and means (Behague, 1979).
Two pieces are worth noting, Musica Nocturna (1964) for flute, violin, viola, violoncello, and piano and Eusebius, four nocturnes for piano or one nocturne for four pianos. Musica Nocturna is non-thematic, utilizes instrumental effects and contains pointillistic treatment of small intervals (Behague, 1979). There is an idea of static music partnered with fast and elusive sounds (Behague, 1979). Eusebius is basically an homage to Robert Schumann's Davidsbundelertanze, No. 14 (Schuartz). These nocturnes are very short, lasting no more than a couple minutes or so. Upon hearing the first one, one can find a slowly paced sound environment in which each note is carefully sounded, nearly one at a time, sustained by the pedal in the upper register which creates a thin texture. Quartal harmonies open the second nocturne which utilizes different harmonies than the first but still with a thin texture and the idea of "carefully paced" sounds pervade. More melodic ideas encompass the third nocturne but still the thin texture is apparent. Adjectives such as reflective, quiet, careful and beautiful come to mind when describing this nocturne. In the fourth, one can find more movement and more melody with thicker voice and "new age" sounding harmonies-quite different from the others. When all four nocturnes are played simultaneously at the same tempo, the fifth nocturne is realized.
A Mexican of the younger generation of composers is Mario Lavista (b. 1943). His teachers are varied and from different parts of the world. In Mexico at the conservatory he studied with Hafter and Quintanar and in Europe with Jean-Etienne Marie, Henry Posseur, Xenakis and Stockhausen (Behague, 1979). He also has attended Darmstadt where he be Legeti and studied electronic music in Tokyo (Behague, 1979). In the 1960s he was considered a follower of the avant-garde and a "bona fide" experimentalist by incorporating improvisation, chance operations, and elctro-acoustic and visual elements in his compositions (Behague, 1979).
His Divertimento (1968) represent his experimentalist side while a more recent piece, Cuaderno de viaje (1989) sounds a bit more tame. Combined, both versions of the Divertimento include audience participation in which the instrumentation contains a woodwind quintet, five woodblocks, five loud speakers, four amplifiers, three potentiometers, and a mike mixer (Behague, 1979). From reading the instrumentation, one can immediately think "avant garde" but his "avant garde" stature is questioned when one listens to the works on his Cuaderno de Viaje CD released in 1994. On it, a work for solo viola is found, Cuaderno de Viaje. This piece is a "deep search into the viola?s possibilities in the realm of harmonics" (Brennan, 1994). It is a calm, slivery, piece that uses consonant harmonies. It has no incorporation of amplifiers, speakers, microphones or any other extra-musical effects.
It is hardly ever safe to classify one composer or another as being a part of one compositional school of thought. As with the case with the composers mentioned above, it can be seen that for the most part, their output is varied. Each of these composers delved into different processes of writing and have created different results within their own outputs and when compared to each other. But by using these techniques, are these composers copiers of composers of the Untied States and Europe? By using the ideas and methods, the answer is yes, but in the larger picture, I would say no. Their music reflects a different aesthetic, different ears, and tastes. Beauty and elegance was found in all the composers' music to which I listened. An innate sense of rhythmic drive clearly persists in the music of the older generation as well, which is influenced by non-European elements. These composers used these techniques in their own way and through it, their personal voice spoke. Some of Chavez does sound like Copland, such as Sinfonia India, but Sinfonia de Antigona contains a different character that is distinctively Ch?vez. In Nobre's Mosaico, aleatoric writing is used but does not sound the same as say Stockhausen. While utilizing these European and United States techniques, these composers used according to their personal taste and ear to create distinctively personal music.
It was not found that any of these composers created an original idea apart from European and United States thought. However, the apparent inclusion of indigenous musical influence and a different ear for music than their counterparts creates different sounding art music. It can be assumed that beauty and elegance are more of a concern for these composers than their other western colleagues. That is an overgeneralization of course, but those two adjectives come to mind immediately upon hearing each of these composers' music. The music, in general, also seems more paced; the music is patient and lives and absorbs the sound. This music should be regarded on equal footing with music of Europe and the United States when taught in other parts of the western world. This music has validity, conviction, and a voice of its own different from what our education as classical musicians in the United States brings us. When one thinks of western art music, Latin American art music should also come to mind.
Techniques. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
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Climate forcings are a major cause of climate change. A climate forcing is any influence on climate that originates from outside the climate system itself. The climate system includes the oceans, land surface, cryosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere.
These examples all influence the balance of energy entering and leaving the Earth system. These types of forcings are often referred to as radiative forcing and can be quantified in units of the extra energy in watts per meter squared (W m-2) entering the Earth near the top of the atmosphere (TOA).
Not all climate changes are caused by climate forcings, however. Climate is intrinsically variable and can change even if there is no external forcing. An unforced change would be some kind of natural shift like an El Nino. El Nino events tend to cause atmospheric warming because they are transporting heat from the ocean back into the atmosphere. This happens even though there is no change in solar output or other external forcing.
Climate forcing must generate a response, the same way a mechanic force causes an object to move. A positive radiative forcing involves shifting the balance such that the Earth gains heat and the climate warms. As the climate warms, the Earth will emit more infrared radiation to space, but this change at the top of the atmosphere is a response to the forcing, and not a new forcing. Warming will continue until a new balance is achieved between energy gained and lost at the top of the atmosphere.
Understanding climate forcing is actually easy. Think of it this way. If you are standing and someone begins to push against you, initially you may start to fall over. This is a state of imbalance due to the forcing imposed on you. Your natural reaction is to readjust your posture to push back (and avoid falling over). If the person keeps pushing, you will need to keep pushing back. The forcing is the initial push, your reaction is the response.
The Earth reacts to positive radiative forcing by warming up until a new balance is achieved at a higher temperature. This new steady state is actually a forced steady state as opposed to an unforced steady state, which would be the natural state without the human induced forcing.
The rate at which the Earth's climate warms in response to positive radiative forcing depends on several factors besides just the forcing. A major factor is the thermal inertia of the ocean which slows the response because the ocean can store a lot of heat. It takes a long time to warm the ocean, just as it takes a long time to cook a turkey. The temperature of the atmosphere is also influenced by the oceans, so the slow warming of the ocean also slows the warming of the atmosphere.
A number of processes are now contributing to forcing the Earth's climate away from a natural state. To get a sense of the net effect, you can add all the components of forcing that are positive and negative and you end up with a view of the total forcing in the climate system of Earth.
The following figure shows changes in climate "forcings" or factors that have contributed to climate change since 1750, before human influences on climate were very significant.
The following figures show effective global climate forcings employed in our current global climate simulations (e.g., Hansen et al. 2007a,b), relative to their values in 1880.
(a) The separate radiative forcing data are available as a text file. The figure is also available as a large GIF or PDF.
(b) The net forcing data are available as a text file. The figure is also available as a large GIF or PDF.
Hansen, J., L. Nazarenko, et al. 2005a. Earth's energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications. Science 308, 1431-1435, doi:10.1126/science.1110252. (See also Imbalance webpages).
Hansen, J., M. Sato, et al. 2005b. Efficacy of climate forcings. J. Geophys. Res., 110, D18104, doi:10.1029/2005/JD005776. (See also Efficacy webpages).
Hansen, J., et al. 2007a. Dangerous human-made interference with climate: A GISS modelE study. Atmos. Chem. Phys. , 7, 2287-2312.
Hansen, J., et al. 2007b. Climate Dynam. , Climate simulations for 1880-2003 with GISS modelE. Climate Dynam. , 29, 661-696, doi:10.1007/s00382-007-0255-8.
NASA/NCDC/NOAA What are climate forcings?
NASA/NCDC/NOAA Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years Published July 14, 2000 Science, 289: 270-277.
RealClimate: Water vapour: feedback or forcing?
Current volcanic activity and climate?
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Which site do you want to explore?
Primary care includes health promotion, disease prevention, health maintenance, counseling, patient education, diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic illnesses in a variety of health care settings (e.g., office, inpatient, critical care, long-term care, home care, day care, etc.).
Primary care is performed and managed by a personal physician often collaborating with other health professionals, and utilizing consultation or referral as appropriate.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. � What is a Billiken?
It�s not the big issue for Oregon, which today plays the Saint Louis Billikens in the NCAA Tournament, but it�s an often-asked question from fans of opposing schools.
The best explanation provided by Saint Louis is the school mascot is a �good-luck figure� adopted a century ago as a mascot for the university�s athletic teams.
It was originally a small statuette introduced in 1908 that was later described as �the period�s pet rock.� Popular nationally for a short time, it ended up being adopted by Saint Louis after a sportswriter compared the face of the billiken figurine to a coach�s at the school.
There have been other versions through the years, but for the past six decades, the St. Louis university has used Billikens as its nickname.
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Trends in B2B content marketing that need to be kept up with.
B2B content marketing is important for marketing managers to be successful at to ensure their company is receiving the most amount of business. The most important aspect of B2B content marketing is to be useful and show professionals the company is the leading resource in their industry.
Content marketing trends are being updated every year and it is important for marketing managers to keep up with these trends. Content marketing is important for businesses to do purposefully and should be a part of every company’s website. Content is important for companies but only if it adds value to the company.
B2B content marketing is the technique of using content to expand a business’s audience, strengthen and develop the company’s brand and drive sales by appealing to other businesses. Business-to-business content marketing is similar to business-to-consumer marketing with the content being exclusive to businesses. While B2C content marketing is more focused on engaging customers, B2B content marketing must be focused on being useful. B2B marketers have a priority to be seen as a leading resource for professionals in their industry or else they are not successfully marketing the company. Useful content is the main priority for B2B content marketing to accomplish.
A major trend that is affecting B2B content managers is the fact that content marketing budgets are increasing. Companies are realizing the huge importance of content marketing and allocating more of their budget to this type of marketing. Content marketing adds both immediate and long-term value to companies and more businesses are beginning to understand this. Companies that provide interesting content while promoting their brand are coming out on top against their competitors. Companies are also beginning to develop more customized content for their audiences. The best type of content marketing is having different types of content that are aimed at the different types of visitors a website has.
The main focus for content marketing managers is to deliver the perfect content to the right buyer at the ideal moment. Another trend emerging in the content marketing world is the necessity to keep content interesting. Audiences want to be entertained and fun, unique content is an excellent way to do that. Content marketing is more than just providing audiences with content, it should also lead them through the sales funnel. Engaging content that offers customers a call-to-action is proving to be the most successful for companies.
Data has become an essential tool for businesses to make the best decisions affecting the company. Content marketing that is driven by data is the best way to ensure content created is being delivered to the right audience at the right time. Data is improving content by analyzing existing content and the content created by a company’s competitors. Many companies only focus on content that is engaging to audiences but many are leaving out the most important aspect of content that attracts customers; a call-to-action.
Providing a call-to-action with engaging content leads audiences through the sales funnel and transforms them into customers. Content must create awareness, be engaging, improve conversations and lead audiences through the buying journey. After creating and executing a successful content marketing strategy, marketers should document their B2B content marketing strategy to use in the future. Many marketing managers leave this step out and have to start from scratch on their next project. Documenting successful B2B content marketing strategies will provide managers a clear starting point for any future content marketing they must do.
Content is king and that does not seem to be changing anytime soon. Not only do companies need to create engaging and useful content, it is important that the content lead audiences through the sales funnel so the business can begin to provide their product or services to those audiences. There are many things marketing managers can do to create successful B2B content and useful content is the most important. B2B content managers will be successful at creating content for marketing as long as they stay up-to-date with content marketing trends and use B2B content marketing strategies to their advantage.
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Americans waste a lot of food, mostly fruits and vegetables. Some ways to fix this are growing your own food, composting, and eating organically. Growing your own food eliminates mysteries about your food and lowers the chances of food related illness. It also helps reduce food waste because you only pick the food when you need to use it. Any unused fruits and vegetables can be composted for future use. Additionally, growing your own food doesn’t require the use of harmful chemicals. Overall, I want to let people know that growing your own food is a simple and beneficial activity that many people overlook.
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What is a Dope Sheet?
A Dope Sheet is made for the person making the animation to organize his thinking and give instructions to the person filming. Without it it is hard for the filmer to understand what is going to happen next.
It is layed out in column on the left is used so that the animator can jot down notes on the path of the actions.
The second column is so that the director can wright down any dialog that may be happening in the scene.
the third column is for The final column is for camera instructions.
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It’s easy to fill the time with video games and television, but there are many activities that are much more beneficial for your kindergartner or preschooler. When it’s cold outside and begins to get dark earlier in the day, children may spend less time outdoors. There are ways for parents to keep their children engaged with fun learning activities that can be enjoyed indoors.
Here are 7 ideas to help keep your kindergartener busy at home on cold, winter days:1. When cold winter holidays keep your family inside, change some of your household routines. Encourage your kindergartener to decorate her own room, or rearrange a shelf. Invite her to color or paint items and add a personal touch.
2. Create a different dining experience by having your child pretend to be a chef and explain how to make a dish, prepare the table, or serve dinner. Keep your child engaged by encouraging her to explain what she is dong so everyone can understand.
3. Have a singing contest. Let your child choose his favorite song to perform for the family. For even more fun, encourage the family to participate. Allow your kindergartener to dress from your closet to resemble the artist who sings the song.
4. Create human art projects. Let your children paint themselves with water-soluble paints. Put on old clothes and let your children enjoy this fun activity right before bath time.
5. Build a pillow fort. Let your kindergartener engage the imagination with a fort that fills the room. Use chairs, pillows, sheets, and any other items around the room to build the fort. Engage your child’s imagination further by using the fort for story-time or naptime. For extra fun, turn off the light and enjoy playing inside the fort with flashlights.6.
6. Create a gooey concoction in the kitchen using food coloring, flour, water, and other textured items. Even children who show no interest in cooking will enjoy playing with bright food coloring and combining them to create new colors.
7. Create music with items around the house. You can use real musical instrument, pots, bottles, or whatever you can find that will make a sound. Take it a step further and try to play a song and join as your children sing and play!
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WWE NXT star Hideo Itami could face an uncertain future with the company after suffering yet another serious injury that is likely to keep him out of action for 'months'.
The Japanese wrestler only returned to the ring in June after being out for over a year following shoulder surgery, but initial signs suggest he could be out for yet another lengthy spell due to a neck injury.
During an NXT live event, Itami was in a tag team match alongside Shinsuke Nakamura, facing off against Tino Sabbatelli and Riddick Moss.
With the match in full swing, Itami was sharing the ring with Moss before he botched a powerslam, resulting in him landing on his neck.
This happened during an October 2 house show, and Itami hasn't wrestled since, but it's now reported that it's a significant neck injury and he's likely to be sidelined for an extended period.
The exact injury hasn't been revealed as of writing this article, but looking at the video, it looks like a serious one for the 35-year-old.
You can see the botched powerslam below.
According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, the neck injury is a significant one, and although no exact details have been revealed, Itami is likely to be out for the foreseeable future with no return date set.
The injury means Itami won't be competing in the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic, which he was entered in alongside his partner Kota Ibush, but it could also be damaging for his future.
Itami has only been with WWE since 2014, and in that time he's already missed a year because of a shoulder injury. Add a serious neck injury to the list, and it's not looking good for the Japanese star.
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0.960377 |
Why is the Convex Hull property (e..g of Bézier curves) so important?
Recently I read some course notes and articles on Bézier curves. They all sum up the properties of Bézier curves, like the partition-of-unity property of the basis functions (Bernstein polynomials), variation diminishing property of the curve (the curve doesn't wiggle/oscillate more than the control polygon does), and also the convex hull property.
Apparently the latter is an important property, but I cannot find why this would be the case. It has something to do with the numerical stability of convex combinations -- but then again, why are convex combinations more "numerically stable" than other types of combinations, like affine ones?
So, when one compares a Bézier curve to e.g. a Lagrange curve (which interpolates all its control points), the former curve remains inside the polygon spanned by its control points (the convex hull), while the latter doesn't. I know this is because a Bézier curve is created using only convex combinations while the Lagrange curve isn't. But why is this property so important? What makes it better than a Lagrange curve?
The convex hull property guarantees that if your control points are all contained in a small region of space, then the curve won't shoot off arbitrarily far from there. See Runge's phenomenon. Better yet, try it yourself on Mark Hoefer's Lagrange interpolation applet: add points until there are twenty or so, then drag one of the points in the middle off the curve and see what happens. This is why the convex hull property is important for how easily you can control the curve using the control points.
Convex combinations are certainly also important for numerical stability. In an arbitrary affine combination, you could have very large positive and negative values being added together to give a modest result, and this cancellation of the higher-order bits would lose precision in the result. In fact, this does happen in Lagrange interpolation, because the basis functions oscillate far outside the $[0,1]$ range. On the other hand, with Bézier curves all the basis functions are positive, so no unnecessary cancellation happens, and you don't lose a lot of numerical precision relative.
The convex hull property is the basis of Bézier clipping, a technique for solving some problems adaptively. Prime examples are curve intersection and zero finding for ray tracing for instance. See Curve intersection using Bézier clipping by Sederberg and Nishita.
The convex hull property is useful for doing a quick check prior to doing some more expensive calculation. For example, suppose I need to intersect two Bezier curves. It is fairly easy to determine that their convex hulls don't overlap. So, if I find that this is the case, there is no need to try to find the intersection, because there won't be one. Saying it another way, checks based on convex hulls can give you an "early exit" from geometric algorithms. This can lead to enormous speed increases.
The convex hull property is even more important with Bezier surfaces. This is because surface computations are typically more expensive, so an "early exit" is more valuable.
The fact that the basis functions are non-negative makes interactive control easier. When you displace a control point by a vector $v$, you are ensured that all points of the curve will be moved by some positive multiple of $v$, and therefore will move in the same direction as the control point.
The fact that the basis functions sum to 1 is crucial -- if this were not the case, the equation defining the Bezier curve wouldn't even make sense. Arbitrary linear combinations of points don't make sense; only affine combinations make sense.
Is there an explicit form for cubic Bézier curves?
Control Points of Bézier Curve?
Can a rational Bézier curve take exactly the same shape as a part of the sine function?
If control polygon is symmetric w.r.t X-axis then Bézier curves also is symmetric w.r.t X-axis?
why a Bezier curve is guaranteed to lie within the convex hull of its control points?
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0.996837 |
Edward Said, who recently passed away, belongs - or belonged - to a tradition of critical Marxism, which needs to be distinguished from Marxism and understood as the philosophy of historical materialism. Born to Palestian parents and brought up in Cairo, where he attended private English schools, Said was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and one of the leading and most articulate advocates of the Palestinian cause. He is most known for his epoch-making study Orientalism, which has been instrumental in making post-colonial studies into one of the fastest growing fields within the humanities.
What does Said mean by the term orientalism? According to him, Western society in general, and the colonial powers Britain and France in particular, developed over the course of the nineteenth century a series of discourses - academic, literary, political, etc. - on the Orient and the Arab world. Since the same regulating norms, perspectives, and ideological biases dominated all these narratives, they came to constitute what Said calls a system of representation. It is to this closely knit web of thought, scholarship and cultural production, and its empowering institutions, that the term Orientalism refers.
Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between "the Orient" and (most of the time) "the Occident." Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poet, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, "mind," destiny, and so on ... the phenomenon of Orientalism as I study it here deals principally, not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient . . despite or beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a "real" Orient.
Edward Said: Orientalism (London: Vintage, 1979, pp. 2-3.
If we are to believe Said, this Western pursuit of learning, vision and knowledge about the Orient was not motivated by a disinterested search for truth, but by a desire to serve Western imperialism and dominance. The Oriental is in this vast and multi-faceted literature thus persistently portrayed as barbaric, devoted to despotism and submission, and lacking "high culture" and civilization. He is, in other words, a suitable object upon which the Western conqueror may impose his rule, his political order and his way of life. As a result, the Arab and the Muslim have become caught in a web of racial, cultural and generally dehumanizing stereotypes that has determined, and continue to determine, the asymmetrical relationship between the Western "We" and the Oriental, or colonial, "Them".
The great virtue of Said's method is that it allows us to look behind the mirror of representation and to perceive the abstract categories and the totalizing tendencies of the discourses that envelope the world of human particulars like a prejudicial filter. But he has often, and with reason, been accused of Occidentalism, of creating a homogenized and undifferentiated image of the West.
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0.999975 |
What does a drill press do?
The drill press enables you to use really large drill bits to bore wider holes. The best part is that you can do this repeatedly and with the exact same precision and size every time. The machine lets you do a variety of tasks safely and securely including: angled drilling; working on elaborately shaped work pieces such as furniture legs; working with a spindle sander for sanding; boring squares and rectangles into a piece of wood; drilling holes into metal for incorporation into wood pieces.
Those four characteristics are explained in detail in a related article, so check that one out as well.
A drill press or drilling machine is commonly found in many modern machine shops. It is a device equipped with a driving tool or cutting tool attachment, typically a driver or drill bit. The power tool is highly useful for cutting holes into a variety of stock or materials. It can also be employed to fasten various workpieces together through fasteners.
Aside from power and capacity, drill presses are categorized under several basic types.
Classified as a light-duty drill press, the upright sensitive drilling machine is typically equipped with a belt-driven spindle head. It is generally employed for doing work of moderate-to-light duty levels. The name of this type of drill press is derived from its capability to be hand fed. The tool is hand fed into the stock to empower the user to get a literal ‘feel’ of the tool’s cutting mechanism. Available in workbench and floor forms, the upright drill press, and all other drill machines, should have a solid build and a stable base to ensure safety for the operator.
An upright drill press is designed for heavy-duty tasks. It typically features a gear-driven spindle head. The upright drill press is utilized for boring large holes on projects with generally larger or heavier elements. This type of drilling machine also enables the user to manually feed or even do automatic feeding of the tool right through the stock. The machine’s power feed system propels the tool deep into the stock. Some upright drill press models are equipped with table height adjustment mechanisms to facilitate tool feeding.
Giving the user the ability to cut angular or intersecting holes in one easy setup, the radial arm drill press can be outfitted with a trunnion table or tilting table, which features a shaft that supports and positions a tilting plate. The radial arm drilling machine can be depended on for heavy-duty hole cutting tasks and is referred to simply as a radial drill press. This type of machine enables effortless positioning of the spindle right over the stock instead of simply raising the workpiece towards the tool. The unique design of this type of drill press provides greater versatility, since it allows the user to work on large parts that can be impossible to position optimally.
A radial drill press delivers power feed on the spindle, along with the automatic mechanism for lowering or raising the radial arm. Mounted on the radial arm is the wheel head, which can be adjusted along the arm to ensure ease of use and greater versatility.
There are also special purpose drilling machines used for a variety of applications. Some models are able to drill 20 holes simultaneously or slice holes as narrow as 0.01 inch.
One example of the special drill machine is the gang style drill press, which features a number of work heads mounted over just one worktable. This model is highly useful when you have to carry out successive hole drilling. The first head may be employed for spot drilling, then the second for tap drilling, then the third used in conjunction with the tapping head to tap a hole. The fourth head can be used to slice out a symmetrical sloping edge or for chamfering.
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0.999007 |
(CNN) -- France's Michel Desjoyeaux won the Vendee Globe solo round the world yacht race for a record second time on Sunday.
Desjoyeaux crosses the line in triumph at Les Sables to win his second Vendee Globe.
He crossed the line off Les Sables d'Olonne in a time of 84 days, three hours, nine minutes and eight seconds to smash the race record by over three days and claim a 150,000 euros first prize.
Desjoyeaux first won the sailing classic in 2001 and emerged victorious again after an incident-packed race which saw two French competitors dramatically rescued.
As Desjoyeaux took line honors on board Foncia, his Open 60 yacht, only 12 of the original 30-strong fleet were still racing.
The French have so far dominated the race, which is run every four years, winning all five previous competitions.
Skippers are tested to the limit, sleeping only in snatches of 20 minutes as they first battle the Atlantic, then the iceberg strewn Southern Ocean, round Cape Horn and struggle back through the Atlantic to the finish at Les Sables.
Desjoyeaux's victory was all the more meritorious after a fault with his yacht meant he was delayed for 40 hours at the start.
But he took quickly took command and has left second-placed competitor Roland Jourdain on board Veolia Environnement over 1400 nautical miles behind.
In his previous win, he relegated famous British yachtswoman Ellen McArthur into second place, over a day behind.
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0.999999 |
There should be another string of characters on the frame that has both numbers and letters.
This is for the pickups, but should be enough for you to identify the year with the correct number.
The first ----- letter will be C for Chevrolet or T for GMC.
The second---- C for 2 wheel drive or K for 4 wheel drive.
The third is the engine description .
The sixth is Year. 3=73, 4=74, 5=75, 6=76, 7=77, 8=78, 9=79, A=80.
The second ----- letter's will be GC for Chevrolet or GT for GMC.
The fifth -----is going to be 1, or 2, or 3 1= 1/2 Ton, 2= 3/4 Ton, 3= 1 Ton.
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